Sump pump, garden hose, Adjustable hand sprayer and a 55 gallon barrel
Never have to refill and makes getting full coverage a breeze.
Also a super cheap set up
Red ants farming aphids. This is only on one plant out of several hundred. Lady bugs got the aphids on the other plants, but the ants seem to have made a successful last stand on this one plant.
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Great picture thanks for sharing, interesting that they have maintained their presence on just the one plant. Anything else different about it?
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I’ve seen ants inadvertently chasing off ladybugs in a similar looking scenario to what @Autumn_Ridge_Hemp has going on. Thankfully it was an artichoke I was using for seed, far removed from the rest of the garden and not affecting anything else. That looks brutal, and for clarification, I liked the photo for the amazing documentation, not because I like what they’re doing. My heart goes out to you!
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Thanks. It is weird that it is only that one plant. I have no idea why. I didn’t even kill or spray it, just left it be. The ants can have their one plant aphid farm.
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What is everyone using in mid to late flower on aphids? I have some Jadam wetting agent that works good in veg and early flower but havent sprayed it once the pistils are starting to develop.
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It gets dicey using insecticide in mid-late flower, I usually discontinue insecticide all-together after day 20 of flower and rely on beneficial insects to control pest populations. That being said, in the event that you do have to spray insecticide during flower, I would refrain from using any kind of oil-based suffocants or Azadirachtin products; or anything else that has a residual effect. If I need to spray during flower I go with a product called Pyganic Specialty, its an organic Pyrethrin product of which there are several of varying cost. If you are shopping around for a product to use, look for ones that are Aqueous solutions, organic, and kill-on contact. Do some research to determine if people have failed pesticide tests after using the product in flower as well, if possible.
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Soap will limp one through an aphid infestation, but it has to be sprayed (and washed off) every 2 to 3 days. Some tomato growers use a flea and tick dog shampoo as their insecticidal soap because it contains pyrethrins.
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Thank you for the input. I have had good success with mighty wash which is just refrequencied water, but it is really expensive. If I have to go that route I will just to finish it off. I’m still in veg but I always see them come back when using the soap.
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Well atleast if you are still in Veg you have a wider variety of chems you can safely use. Ever tried any Azadirachtin? As long as you aren’t in flower its an excellent controller for Aphid, its an insect growth regulator that can control their ablility to feed and molt through their life cycles. A nice little trick is tank mixing Azadirachtin with a suffocant / surfactant for a combo attack. I’ve always used a combination of Suffoil and Azatin-0 so I can vouch for their efficacy, any other tank mix you might want to try I would suggest testing first on a small amount of plants before firing away on the whole crop. Ya never know!
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I have found Pyrethrin to be super effective against aphids. You will see them die quickly after an application. We use Pycana at 2 ounces per gallon for spray applications and 1 ounce per gallon for drenches targeting root aphids.
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Great callout! I’ve never used Pycana but I’ve heard that its really effective, do you think the Canola Oil is a useful additive to it? How does it perform as a drench for root aphid? I usually use Molt-X, an Azadirachtin product, I know people use Pyrethrin but I’ve heard mixed reviews.
I haven’t tried other blends of Pyrethrin on Cannabis so I can’t comment on the Canola, but certainly seems like extra sauce to smother the pests would be a benefit. It certainly works for root aphids but if you have root aphids it will take more than a Pyrethrin drench to eradicate . Multiple applications of Azatin-0 and Pycana have proved successful for us in the past.
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Yeah regular applications are required to even just keep them in check, im almost convinced theres no real way to eradicate root aphids once you’ve got them. Azatin-0 has the same active ingredient as Molt-X (Azatin has 1.5% more though) however I go with MoltX because its cheaper by the gallon than Azatin-0 and you still get the control.
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Good to know about Molt-X I appreciate it. Azatin-O is expensive!
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Pretty sure this is aphids.
No biggie. I cut em down this morning. But I’d really like to know what caused this stem munching.
I first noticed it when I defoliated. One branch fell off when I touched it. I’ve noticed a few more as well.
The stems look ok to me and unrelated to aphids. It could be wind stress. The white bumps are normal, just the stem trying to grow roots.
I’ve seen similar branch breaking on my own outdoor plants this year and I had contributed it to the action of “Sharpshooters”. They’re a particular variety of Leafhopper that are actually quite beautiful I’ll attach a few pictures that I took on my own plants. Could also be a result of wind damage like @Autumn_Ridge_Hemp suggested.
Pretty or not though, I was pretty fucking butthurt when those branches broke off.
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Definitely looks like ants are farming this colony on my grapes. Right next to my ladies. Scary. But I see a lot of different bugs on everything so hopefully there are more eating the aphids than spreading.
Lady bugs raided my ants’ aphid farm.
You could poison the ants with taro, or make your own out of boric acid and sugar syrup. The acid kills them slowly from the inside and they take it back to the queen. All non toxic to humans, of course.
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