What about taste and smells? Someone on RIU said it made his bud taste funny
Iāve sprayed as late as three weeks into flower with no Iāll effects. Riding it out is an option, but will reduce yield.
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I donāt know Someone, but I know spinosad. It has a smell but it is not an odor. It rapidly degrades. Thorough coverage is important but you donāt have to soak your plants for it to be effective. Start at the bottom of the plant spraying upwards towards the undersides of the leaves. Wet the leaves and move on. Once you have worked your way to the top leaves mist the upper surfaces of the leaves on your way back down to the bottom.
Get some blue and yellow sticky traps to put in your grow. The blue traps are designed to attract thrips, but they willl also go to the yellow traps. By monitoring the traps after you spray you will know if the thrips are under control.
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Sprayed with spinosad?
I really donāt care if I get a reduced yield.
I just donāt want to get sick or be harmed by smoking the buds I grow.
Iād rather have a reduced yield than get hurt smoking buds.
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Been dealing with thrips as well. One interesting item Iāve read recently is to douse a cottonball with vanilla extract.
Luring Thrips with Extracts
For a long time weāve known that thrips are attracted by scent as well as visual stimuli such as color. But now there may be a way to utilize this scent-attraction to help thrips trap themselves, thus removing them from the crop. One new way to do this, even though this still requires some more experimentation, is to soak plain old cotton balls in vanilla or almond extract and place them in the crop. Apparently thrips are quite attracted to these scents and will actually make their way into the cotton balls looking for the source. The good part is once they burrow into the cotton balls they find it nearly impossible to extricate themselves. This is a novel, inexpensive approach that can help reduce thrips numbers simply by way of trapping them.
Helpful Tips and Hints - Page 2 of 2 - GreenMethods
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Should I defoliate a bit so itās less I have to spray? Also how do I get the sugar leaves without hitting the buds?
Iām ready. I have high anxiety about doing this though I must admit.
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Thrips hide in flowers. Spinosad kills by contact and by ingestion. Thorough coverage is important. Lightly spray the flowers. Before spinosad became widely available thrip infestations were a terrible problem.
https://tobacco.ces.ncsu.edu/2016/12/what-foliar-insecticides-are-recommended-for-tobacco-in-2017/
Read through the link and pay attention to the tables. Blackhawk is the spinosad insecticide. It is not a restricted use pesticide and there are no residue concerns with its use. It is inexpensive safe and effective.
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@buzzmobile dropping the spinosad knowledge bombs here.
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Keep the knowledge flowing. There is a lot of information missing on smoking certain insecticides and pesticides.
I got scared from an article about Eagle 20 where itās fine for food crops, but turns into hydrogen cyanide under pyrolysis.
Until studies are done for cannabis I guess what is OK for tobacco crops is the closest we have to whatās good for cannabis.
Iām still leary on spraying. I mean this is why I started growing in the first place to be able to know what is and isnāt on my marijuana.
I just know me and I know Iām paranoid and have anxiety issues particularly concerning health (hypochondria) and I feel like I wonāt be able to smoke the final product without being nervous over what the spinosad is doing.
People think Iām crazy that I want to let it ride.
The plants look beautiful and I just have a hard time believing the thrips are going to ravage this in 4 weeks time. Maybe itās my lack of experience with thrips that make me believe this.
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Itās your decision in the end. The problem with waiting is the population explosion. The adult thrips live for about 30 days laying 2-10 eggs a day. So instead of a couple, you will have thousands by the end.
I dont like to spray in flower either, but will shut everything down until the thrips are gone. I waited it out and the crop quality is way down.
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And this is where Iām torn.
Do I wait it out and see how bad it gets and hope it doesnāt get that bad and miss my window to spray and also delay my next batch a couple weeks while I spray and clean.
Or do I spray and worry about what I may be smoking?
How was the smoke @ReikoX when you waited? Did you see a lot of thrips in your buds or did they vacate once you trimmed?
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Itās shitty timing. Id get predatory mites but all the places are closed for the holidays.
Iām also not too thrilled at having to spend countless hours spraying every leaf. I have thousands.
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I hesitate to post this, because I know how
contentious this topic can be.
Which isā¦
The deployment of the final solution.
I have occasionally used it, and I handled it as if it were radioactive, because it is scary stuff!
But IME, it works very well.
There are many herb and veggie growers that use it without any concerns???
I cannot really vouch for its safety and I donāt feel comfortable recommending it.
We each need to assess the risk/reward of using it for ourselves.
Due diligence.
Good luck in your battle @SquirtleSquad
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from research, they are attracted to yellow and blue which also equals green to an extent
thoughts are-
colored sticky tapes or strips with colored construction paper tacks
let them build up, remove, repeat
cull affected leaves or most populated
something like that
or if you wanna get super ocd, use qtips, warm water and a very mild neem/soap or wetting agent mixture and wipe affected area or spray over top of medium in attempts to suffocate
im sure theres other solutions that you can probably find on the forum somewhere
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That is my plan. Remove affected leaves. Use sticky cards.
Was also wondering about shop vaccing up eggs/bugs by going over the plants (obviously far enough away to not suck up leaves)
But I heard they get knocked off pretty easy.
Iād rather spend hours doing that than hours spraying.
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me personally, i wouldnt shop vac. sounds less mother naturey
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Thrips do not go away by themselves. I have sprayed spinosad into the seventh week of flower. I run a 9 week cycle. When I have sprayed I harvest week 8 and week 9 early. I have a great deal of experience with pesticides and insects. I have been smoking Cannabis for over 50 years and growing and harvesting one plant a week for over 17 years now. I am not going to poison myself because I understand how to read and assess the risks and dangers of what I apply to what I ingest.
On every pesticide one can purchase there is one of three Signal Words : CAUTION; WARNING; DANGER. Those words indicate the least dangerous to the most dangerous chemical. On every pesticide there are directions for the personal protective equipment required and for handling, mixing, application, re-entry intervals, days before harvest and more information for safe handling of the material. Read and follow label directions. Twice as much is not twice as good.
Remove as much lower growth as you can stand to remove (the more the better for effective spray application) and use as fine a mist as your spray nozzle allows. The longer you fret about how to kill thrips the more those insects will multiply. Did you know there is an underground stage of reproduction in a thripās life cycle? Keep waiting and youāll be able to observe it.
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Itās decided then. Them fuckers are going down and Iām modifying my room so I only need to go in there once every two weeks for res changes and training.
I will shower and put on clean clothes before I go in.
I think my point of contamination came from adding lower growth that I stripped off the plants to my garden outside and then coming back in and working on my plants. The area of the plants affected are areas that I squeeze between my plants and wall and rub up against them.
The guy at the hydro store said heās used this. A couple grower friends have used it and reported nothing bad.
Your experiences seem lengthy and I appreciate your input. A couple others on here who are safe and responsible growers have used this as well.
This is enough to rest my anxious mind
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Started thinning the canopy to speed up the process. Didnāt feel good ripping my babies to shreds, but I estimate this sped the spraying process by 10 hours lol. I bet this hurt my yields more than the fucking thrips would have but who knows. Some people defoliate and swear by it increasing yields and Iāve never went this extreme before so it will be nice to see if it holds true.
Iām beat though. So much hunching and squatting for about 2 hours.
I put down a bunch of blue sticky strips at the base of each plant as well.
At the very least trimming will be a breeze lol. No larf here. My rosin press will be lonely.
Tomorrow I spray
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Are you spraying by hand? I use a Chapin sprayer.
Chapin International 19049 Industrial Xtreme Tri-Poxy Concrete Sprayer, 3.5-Gallon, Red https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000Q3X7J2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_KHOhCbQY1Z4DK
Best thing Iāve ever bought for my garden. I water with it too. 
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