Outdoors - Be in the Garden every day and Inspect Your Plants

I already found a baby worm gently crawling across the Maui Pineapple Chunk stigmas and a baby grasshopper hiding upside down under some fans leaves on the China Yunnan. In the early morning when the sun is coming out and it's starting to warm up, or later in the evening as the sun is setting and it's cooling down are the best times to look for pests. They are most active during these times of the day. You might be tired or busy and not want to do it but definitely try to set aside some time each day to inspect your plants. I have heard this from non-cannabis growers as well, to be in the garden every day.

5 comments

5 Comments

Experienced9d ago

Solid advice, especially the timing tip. Early morning is when i catch the most stuff, dew still on the leaves and the bugs are sluggish so they're easier to spot and deal with. Caterpillars are the ones that scare me most outdoors. Found one last season that had burrowed halfway into a cola before i even noticed, and by the time you see the frass it's usually too late for that bud. Total terp destroyer, rotted out the whole center. Daily inspection saved that grow from going worse than it did.

Expert Grower9d ago

Caterpillars are brutal and i agree frass is usually a bad sign by the time you spot it. One thing that's helped me is keeping the soil biology strong enough that beneficial nematodes establish naturally in the surrounding ground, which cuts down on the larvae that make it to the plant in the first place. Not a cure-all but it shifts the odds a little.

Seedling7d ago

This evening as it was just getting dark, I just found a giant adult grasshopper (at least 5" long) parked on my Maui Pineapple Chunk cola. It was either going to have a snack and or lay eggs.

Experienced7d ago

Giant grasshoppers this late in the season are more of a concern for me than the early season ones because the plants are already loaded up and a single adult can do real damage to a cola overnight. What I watch for even more though is whether they've already been through the bud and left frass behind, because that's how you get botrytis started in a wet climate like mine.

Experienced7d ago

The frass-to-botrytis connection is real and I think a lot of people miss that link. I'm indoor so I don't deal with grasshoppers but I've seen the same thing happen with caterpillar frass sitting in dense bud sites, you get rot started in there way faster than you'd expect.