… I hit something wet and oily-sticky. This leaf has a blob of clear sap, viscosity somewhere between maple syrup and honey, fairly easy to spread on my fingers, and not all that much of an odor. Looks like it could have a couple of white flecks in it, but otherwise… fairly innocuous.
After an hour of inspecting, I could not find any evidence of this on other leaves.
Ladies and gentlemen, who wants to guess what we have here?
… and just in case it’s relevant, here’s the brief overview of my grow situation:
Organic soil, currently 54 days into flowering. Day temps of 70ºf, night temps currently dipping down to 50ºf (weather, amirite?), RH from 28-35%. Haven’t seen any flying buggers other than a few fungus gnats, but that’s a constant (minor) nuisance.
Looks like sap. Plants with a high sugar content (Brix) are more healthy and resistant to disease. Excessive nitrates = low brix. There are a few things you can do to increase the brix including increasing the ratio of N-P. You can check the sugar content of plants by pulverizing a leaf or 2 for a small amount of liquid and use a brix refractometer and it will tell you in a percentage how much sugar is in it.
The higher the brix the more healthy plants tend to be and resistant to pests and disease. Higher brix food crops also have a longer shelf life. I’ve seen sap clear, red and dark brown.
Guttation also creates sap but it usually only happens when lights are off and it comes out of the side of the leaves.
Looks too big to be honeydew to me. I’m leaning toward sap as well. How far are you from harvest? My only concern would be the moisture causing mildew or mold.
Gotta agree with @neogitus I see those on tomato leaves all the time and occasionally on squash.
If it was an insect it would be something pretty big!!
My initial thought was scale bugs – I have a ficus that seemed to exude sap onto itself and its neighbors, and realized that this wasn’t natural plant behavior after a cutting didn’t do the same trick. Entirely possible that they’ve found their way into my flower tent via sweet basil, but…
The given plant has been subjected to molasses repeatedly over the past few weeks, as this is one of the bottle-fed girls. Leaf in question was also twisted up in my Floppy Plant Support Trellis, and may have been damaged in that process.
After your replies, I’m leaning more towards “sap” – I couldn’t find any (other) evidence of bugs, and per my past experience with scale bugs, it seems like I’d have to have a massive infestation to see that much honeydew. I’ll keep a close watch, but this seems like an isolated incident.
My initial thought was scale bugs – I have a ficus that seemed to exude sap onto itself and its neighbors, and realized that this wasn’t natural plant behavior after a cutting didn’t do the same trick. Entirely possible that they’ve found their way into my flower tent via sweet basil, but…
