Hey guys and Saludos from Chile. A friend of mine down here sent me some photos of his plants and has some serious bug infestation . He’s in a greenhouse and we are in fall. The plants are in flower close to done maybe 2-3 weeks left if taken to term.
What do you guys reckon we’re dealing with here and how would you go about treating it being so far into flowering period.
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Aphids. A lot of em.
2-3 weeks from harvest? Lady bugs gobble aphids up.
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Citric acid is safe in flower. Its a main ingredient in many pest management sprays.1 gram per gallon to start. Heavy doses will burn pistils.
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If in veg, pyrethrium will knock them dead in a few min… wouldnt recommend in flower tho
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We’re in Chile (South America) in a rural area. Of he could even find to purchase I doubt they’d get here in time. I mean there are some 
type bug just around outside maybe he could catch some…?.?.?
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What about essential oils like tea tree.?.? He says he has tea tree oil, mint/eucalyptus oil, sulfur liquid, jadam soap/wetting agent, vinegar… Any of those might work
?.?
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Will these pests, aphids ruin his harvest.?.? Can you still use the flowers/buds.?.?
@bigLblazed @Hashpants
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Maybe he can spray them down with high pressure water or pick the most infected leaves and remove it… im not sure if the aphids actually suck the buds or just the leaves…
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Take em outside if you can, lay them down on something and use hard water pressure to blast em of the underside of leaves. Stand them up, use a blower if you got and dry them off.
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The aphids will ruin your harvest if you don’t act soon, once you’ve washed them make you own insecticidal soap.
You think it’ll ruin it even so far along in flower?.?.? He’s got probably 2 weeks left before harvest, 3 at most, in my estimation
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If you’ve never smoked aphid or spider mite infested plants, the taste will make you sick to your stomach. If your gonna make hash or something else with the buds you’ll be fine, if your gonna smoke the buds you gotta at least get them washed and or take of any leaves that look like this:
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@Heliosphear So what would be the protocol to wash. The worst leaves had been plucked, like the ones in photo. Should he wash both the live plants and then wash again when they are harvested.?.? How do you go about that. I’ve only ever dealt with thrips but I just tossed all my plants basically so I’m not sure what he should do
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Can he spray the insecticidal soap onto the buds/flower.?.?.?
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This sucks man but its hard to give advice this close to harvest. I’d physically remove as many as you can. Remove leaves, pinch them off wherever you can. If he can he should lower the temps to slow them down.
If you have access to something like this;
work really well
or;
Is considered safe late into bloom.
Really have to catch them earlier next time 
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the problem with those aphids is they secrete thier “honeydew” all over the plant so just removing leaves is not going to clean the buds of aphids or thier excretions.
the only thing the crop is good for is rendering to hash using a water extraction method. Reality is , it can’t be saved at this point no matter what you try and do or what you try and spray. Even just washing the flowers in 50 gallon drums… I don’t think that will clean them enough to remove the problem for smokeable flower. That’s just me though.
Year and a half ago I had to completely purge my entire grow space of plants and run a complete sanitizing protocol due to an aphid infestation that just got way out of control really fast.
In veg only, Safer’s End All kills them dead, sprayed every 4 days for 2 weeks to break the reproductive cycle. If you don’t break that cycle, there’s no stopping them.
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@SHSC-1 summed it up pretty well for you.
The only thing I would add is to spray some dawn dishsoap or similar on the plants before blasting them with water. This will help dislodge and clean off the honeydew to some extent.
Being this close to end of flowering I would stay away from pesticides.
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dish soap mixed in a sprayer soak the plant both sides of leaves leave it for 5 min or so bugs have a very fast raspatory system couple min covered in soap and they suffocate then spray with a pressure sprayer to wash all the soap and dead adults to have that many aphids i bet he has a metric tonne of ants they farm aphids for the honey dew they poop out
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Ok guys thanks for the advice… I have been relaying him the messages… He says it doesn’t appear to be on all of the plants and more so is concentrated on 3 specific plants. He is looking over them. O gave him the female GSD F6 I had for example and he says he’s combed over the plant three times and had t found a single bug…
Again thanks for the advice… I have only dealt once with pests, thrips specifically, and when that happened I ended up tossing everything except for a couple clones that were just rooted and smaller, and obviously not flowering. For those I used sulfur spray and sone other type of “chemical” liquid made for infestations. I sprayed the sulfur and then 3 days later I dunked/dipped the plants into a pitcher with the chemical liquid diluted per instructions, swishing them around in it a bit. Then 5 days later I did the sulfur again and it seemed to work. But this situation was outside of my experience and I appreciate the quick and varied responses
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