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Issue #383 - Sunday, August 18, 2019
Dear Fellow Grower,
In today's issue...
- Check out an awesome article by guest grower jennybee698. She wrote a great guide on Integrated Pest Management (or IPM) which is a safe strategy for controlling pests. Learn how to keep your garden pest-free in a way that's safe for everyone...well, except for the pests.
- This outdoor season, growers have been getting hit hard by an array of pests. We've seen every cannabis-related pest under the sun, and even a few we didn't know about! Below, we've lined up a top-3 list of the pests we've seen the most in growers gardens this year. Know your enemy (it's bugs)!
- Once again, you all flooded us with great pics, and I was practically forced to pick three trophy pics this week instead of one. Each picture is great in its own way and I'm sure you'll love them, too!
Nebula Haze & Sirius Fourside (founders of GrowWeedEasy.com)
"Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain."
~Henry David Thoreau
Prevent Bugs with Integrated Pest Management (IPM) 🐛
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What You Need to Know About IPM – Integrated Pest Management
Wait, what is IPM?
“IPM is a process to solve pest problems while minimizing risks to people and the environment…an ecosystem-based strategy that focuses on long-term prevention of pests or their damage through a combination of techniques such as biological control, habitat manipulation, modification of cultural practices, and use of resistant (plant) varieties. Pesticides are used only after monitoring indicates they are needed according to
established guidelines, and treatments are made with the goal of removing only the target organism. Pest control materials are selected and applied in a manner that minimizes risks to human health, beneficial and nontarget organisms, and the environment.”
– UC CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE and NATURAL RESOURCES
Basically, IPM is using natural prevention and environmental methods safe for the humans, pets and wildlife within the habitat, prior to jumping in bed with environmentally damaging pesticides. Even when using a pesticide is the last resort, it should be chosen with the utmost care, all things considered.
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See the little, white “balloons” floating off the leaf surface?! These are Green Lacewing eggs! Lacewings are beneficial insects that eat the ‘bad guys”. Be sure to learn the beneficials in addition to learning about your common pests. Support the beneficials to maintain a natural balance in the ecosystem without pesticides.
I have been growing in my specific environments for years and I have learned the hard way which pests and disease are problematic to me and why. A “pest” can take many forms depending on where you are located… from deer and voles to aphids or the dreaded russet mite. (Just
writing it makes my skin crawl!)
There are many factors that affect what you may be up against – your weather (temperature, humidity), the surrounding vegetation, airflow and overall health of the plant play key roles.
Learning your environment and microclimates can take some time, close attention and research to see the patterns. Planning for pest and disease control is key when looking to harvest a healthy crop and – I’ll say it again – we need to be proactive instead of reactive. When faced with what may feel like an infestation, and we all as gardeners have been there, resist the urge to react with drastic sprays and instead take a deep breath.
There are other options worth trying first and our goal is to grow healthful medicine. As we head into flower, the fact that we are “in flower” presents its own limitations when dealing with pests. Spraying the buds? That can get real dicey and I look to avoid it, with one exception I’ll share in a minute.
Keep the bugs off the nugs!
My suggestions for preventive and proactive IPM:
- Get a jeweler’s loupe. If you don’t yet have one, get one now, it will be your best friend. A tiny, inexpensive magnifying glass. I get mine at Growbiz, it even has a tiny light. I keep mine on a lanyard and it goes into the gardens with me at all times. I have to wear reader glasses (that’s like double magnification lol!) so I put them on and look through my loupe, in the sun, for my best visibility. If I find a leaf with damage, I’ll usually pluck it
from the plant to best observe it. If just checking the plant randomly, the loupe allows me to view undersides of leaves without removing them, although I may really have to crawl around.Welcome to EditPad.org - your online plain text editor. Enter or paste your text here. To download and save it, click on the button below.
I usually buy a few of these at the start of every season. They are cheap and mandatory for me. You can see the resin on the loupe from where my fingers touch it, it is used so often when hands on in the garden.
Pay close, close attention EVERY DAY
It’s one of the reasons I still love hand watering even with drip lines installed… I get to spend the one on one time looking closely through my plants! By looking closely, I mean get up in that big mama!!
Look under the leaves, crawl on the ground underneath if you have to! If you see tiny yellow spotting on your leaves, something is eating it. Most bothersome insect pests (to cannabis) thrive on the undersides of leaves and suck the life juices from the leaf leaving a “stippling”, a yellow, spotted appearance.
Mites, thrips and whiteflies cause this type of damage. If you see this, pull out your loupe, check the undersides of the leaf and try to find the culprit. Other signs are tiny black dots near the damage – insect poop! (Yes, they poop where they eat, yo.) If you notice a shiny, snail like slime called “honeydew”, aphids are notorious for excreting this and it will cause black mold to form on leaves or groups of ants to hoard it.
If you see a team of ants heading somewhere on your plant, follow them! They will likely lead you to something.
Stippling damage on cannabis leaves. This is a telltale sign that something is sucking the juices from your leaves. Investigate carefully and get to know your enemy! These leaves show damage from thrips.
This photo has a few things happening all at once! We have adult aphids on the left. The tiny, oval, glossy black eggs? Aphid eggs. And right there in the center, suspended in the air on a tiny thread, a little, white Green Lacewing egg. Green Lacewings are beneficial and seeing these eggs is a GOOD SIGN.
Another pain in the butt for me during flower is caterpillars. Oh, they get me in my area! When in the midst of flowering, moths like to lay their eggs on the sweet tips of the flowers, which equals caterpillars eating your buds and causing rotten spots!! (I always imagine them really stoned and looking like the Alice in Wonderland version lol!) Ah, I joke, but there is nothing more horrible than admiring a huge, stunning cola for weeks only to one day see a
big, brown, gooey rotten spot where the caterpillar has eaten out the inside, creating a nasty little rotten poop cave and ruining the entire cola. Booo all over that!! Pay close attention, all over, all the time! (more info below on how to stop caterpillars for good)
There's still more to IPM and more article left! So make sure you finish the rest of this guide to complete your knowledge of Integrated Pest
Management.
Thanks again to guest grower jennybee698 for sharing her knowledge!
About the Author Jennybee698
"I lost myself as a stay at home Mom. Say what?! Who can relate?! Who knew I would discover my most perfect ME, find my joy and my self-love, on my dirty knees in rows of tomatoes, under a shady trellis of cucumbers, blooming in the cut flowers and so high over a canopy of cannabis?! The gifts of gardening far surpass the obvious homegrown, healthful goods… and I want to share them with everyone."
The Top 3:
Most (un)Popular Pests This Season
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Between our forum, Instagram and website, we get A LOT of people sending us pictures of the plant problems.
This gives us a bit of insight into which pests growers seem to be dealing with the most.
With that in mind, here are 3 pests we've seen the most of this year (so far). These pests were very popular this year, and I don't mean that lots of people liked them!
If you happen to have one of these, click on their picture for ways to get rid of them!
They won't eat your plants like other pests, but they love using cannabis to raise their young. They're more of an annoyance, but still, if their stink gets on your bud you won't want to smoke it anymore...
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Planthoppers are one of those bugs that can take (too) many different forms, and one of them involves leaving a gross fluff on your plants.
These guys leave little brown spots on your leaves from where they suck out the nutrients. If I had a nickel for every time I saw leafhoppers this year, I'd have like $5 which is WAY TOO MANY NICKELS!
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"Thank you, thank you for your recent post of the 'glossary' :o) I do appreciate it! Now I can just go to my 'favourites' and find the meanings I need <my happy grin>. GWE is my site for getting answers and this makes it so much easier -- all in one place!!
Simply, thank you,
Sincerely,
Gillian"
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"Thank you so much for the excellent glossary and the informative newsletter, I something helpful in every one of them. I love you ladies and gentlemen!"
~Judith D.
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"These are 2 Gelato OG autos sprouted 5/26. The one on the left was topped at 5th node, the other left to grow naturally. Same dirt and nutes. Big one is about 3 weeks behind but it will be worth the wait!"
~Motoman15
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"16 cola manifold per your tutorial. Day 40 flower. Patio grow using Panda film tent for light deprivation (12/12) (problem with light pollution causing re-vegging) Reversed engineered nutrients from one of the expensive big guys.
Raw bulk chems off Amazon/Ebay and some math. Maybe $20 in feed costs. Back 2 Durban Poison. Middle 2 Jack Herer. Front one Bruce Banner. It is trained so cola's start 6" off soil. Plant 42" across. No support. Indoor growers can really take advantage of manifolding"
~Bud
(No description was included with this picture)
~Samantha
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Who Runs This
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Nebula Haze:
I'll be honest with you, when I first started growing, I struggled. Now, it is my
mission to make it easier for new growers to get started as well as help advanced growers get bigger, better yields with less time and money. We are updating and adding articles every single week and our goal is to eventually build a comprehensive growing resource so anyone and everyone can grow if they want to! If we all share the knowledge there's more buds in the world for everyone :) |
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Sirius Fourside:
Sirius Fourside is a hobbyist grower who has gained the bulk of his experience growing in water as a medium (deep water culture, bubbleponics).
"Growing cannabis can be a relaxing hobby in and of itself, but it also saves you money and keeps you from having to deal with shady characters. Cannabis is much easier to grow than people give it credit for, and growing in water
doesn't increase the difficulty much, if any. But whether you want to grow in water, coco, or a different medium, we'll show you how easy it can be!"
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