i moved the plants onto the deck due to excessive rain and the next day i woke up and checked on them and found a pest problem (see first pic). I eradicated the pests but the following day i found even more damage to the buds (2nd pic) and found another caterpillar and removed it.
I do not see anymore caterpillars but i will be keeping a very close eye on this. The caterpillars were eating the white pistils down to the green bud and have affected about 5-6 bud sites on one terminal (or one branch i guess?).
Do i remove the entire terminal? i don’t mind cutting it off if it’s in the best interest of the plant since it’s a larger plant (last pic for reference). Do the buds that were chewed down come back or are they gone?
I have not had many problems with caterpillars over the years I have been growing outdoors.
I think that you would be well served in cutting out any flowers ravaged by the bastids, but… @Meesh Is a veteran of many battles vs. those loathsome destructive little creatures. I think she could give you some great advice.
I usually hit caterpillars hard with btk. I don’t recommend spraying things on your buds, but health canada claims it’s harmless to humans. Usually the key to the caterpillars is hit them early so they’re wiped out before the plant starts to bud.
I found those fnckers on a plant. Used @JoeCrowe recommendation. BTK. Killed everything. But damage is done on the buds. I would not fool with them. Cut them off. Pull your buds away gently and try to remove anything brown or black. You probly dont wanna smoke that shit anyways. I found also to reapply in about a week. And check any other plants that are outside. It would be odd that they attack one plant and leave everything else alone.
Thanks, i cut off the problematic buds. This will make it easier to detect new damage as well. i have 4 other plants that i started later and they are about 3 weeks behind this plant in bud development and they are untouched.
I’m going to go to the hydroponic store now and grab some of that stuff now.
I spray it 2 weeks to harvest sometimes closer if they’re bad. But if your on it from start of bud to week 3-4. You should be ok. Once buds get dense they’re hard to see before it’s rotted out a solid piece.
I would cut the pillar damage out. No, it won’t grow back. I would hit them with bt spray as well, now and again in 10 days. Make sure they are not in direct sun when you spray. Bt doesn’t kill on contact but will make pillars stop eating immediately and starve them to death.
They’re required by law to put the warning about calling poison control on the label of the btk, when realistically it’s completely harmless. I find that detail funny… what if you did phone poison control? would they start to chuckle?
alright i soaked those plants with the stuff (youtube said to spray until runoff, but i didn’t spray quite that much). also didn’t really spray on the underside of the leafs, the instructions just said to spray the “bottom”, does that mean the underside? Saw a bunch of moths flying around my cell phone light while outside. LETS GOOO.
Thanks that seemed to have worked. I found one dead caterpillar on a leaf (first pic). Is it possible the BT spray hurt some of the pistils on the flowers? It seems that the white pistils have brown tips now whereas yesterday i don’t remember this. The pistils on flowers that are more inward of the plant that i might not have hit has hard with the BT spray are still white.
The first pic shows a flower more inward on the plant with white pistils and the 2nd pic is a flower on the outside… I know they change on their own but was wondering if bt spray will do this to?
yeh there was only one dead pillar on the entire plant that i could find. the pillars eat the hair all the way down to the bud. There are too many brown pistils for it to be the pillars. The pistils do change to brown on their own tho right?
