knifethrower
Well-Known Member
Hey guys/gals, I stumbled on this quite by accident. I haven't tried to duplicate it (why would I deliberately infest my precious plants
). But here is what happened.Somehow, aphids infested my indoor grow and devastated it. I was running the HID's 24 hours (simply because I got lazy and hadn't gotten around to setting up the timer yet
). I tried every natural spray recipe I could find and even got desperate and tried hand picking the little buggers from the plants but there were waay too many to get them all. They just reproduce incredibly fast. Have you ever seen the old Star Trek Episode " The Trouble With Tribbles"?
I was just about ready to throw in the towel. Most of the plants had been sucked to death by the aphids and only the two strongest plants remained. Being a dye hard myself I still decided to go ahead and install the timer for an 18/6 day and pulled the plug on the lights. I got called away before I installed the timer and didn't get back to it for two days. These plants spent at least 48 hours in total darkness. I was pretty depressed about the whole thing and didn't check on the plants for a few days and then the most amazing thing took place. When I finally went to check on the plants a few days later to see if they were at least still alive I was shocked! I couldn't find even one little aphid alive! There were however thousands of little husks littering the floor and the top of the soil. ALL OF THE APHIDS WERE DEAD!!!
I don't know if they died from shock or what. I had been fighting them literally for months with absolutely no success.
I am in no way an expert on aphids but I have a couple of theorys on what may have killed them.
1)Several generations of these aphids were born and died in total bright light and when I took that light away they just died of shock.
2)Maybe aphids just don't eat when it's dark and 48+ hours without light was enough to starve them to death.
I have a 3rd theory that I wasn't going to mention but, who knows...My dogs around that time had been given too much broccoli and were having horrible gas. Occasionally they will wander into my grow room when I have the fence down and maybe, just maybe one of them had ripped off a really noxious fart and gassed the little buggers to death
.
One of those original plants is still alive after 14 months as a mother.
If this infestation ever happens again I may just have buy some broccoli for the dogs and send them into the grow room.
But I will try total darkness first.
). But here is what happened.Somehow, aphids infested my indoor grow and devastated it. I was running the HID's 24 hours (simply because I got lazy and hadn't gotten around to setting up the timer yet). I tried every natural spray recipe I could find and even got desperate and tried hand picking the little buggers from the plants but there were waay too many to get them all. They just reproduce incredibly fast. Have you ever seen the old Star Trek Episode " The Trouble With Tribbles"?I was just about ready to throw in the towel. Most of the plants had been sucked to death by the aphids and only the two strongest plants remained. Being a dye hard myself I still decided to go ahead and install the timer for an 18/6 day and pulled the plug on the lights. I got called away before I installed the timer and didn't get back to it for two days. These plants spent at least 48 hours in total darkness. I was pretty depressed about the whole thing and didn't check on the plants for a few days and then the most amazing thing took place. When I finally went to check on the plants a few days later to see if they were at least still alive I was shocked! I couldn't find even one little aphid alive! There were however thousands of little husks littering the floor and the top of the soil. ALL OF THE APHIDS WERE DEAD!!!
I don't know if they died from shock or what. I had been fighting them literally for months with absolutely no success.
I am in no way an expert on aphids but I have a couple of theorys on what may have killed them.
1)Several generations of these aphids were born and died in total bright light and when I took that light away they just died of shock.
2)Maybe aphids just don't eat when it's dark and 48+ hours without light was enough to starve them to death.
I have a 3rd theory that I wasn't going to mention but, who knows...My dogs around that time had been given too much broccoli and were having horrible gas. Occasionally they will wander into my grow room when I have the fence down and maybe, just maybe one of them had ripped off a really noxious fart and gassed the little buggers to death
.One of those original plants is still alive after 14 months as a mother.
If this infestation ever happens again I may just have buy some broccoli for the dogs and send them into the grow room.
But I will try total darkness first.