Yeah! It's Bud Worm Season. Pics

Thanks, I'll cut off the damaged buds this morning. Is it better to completely saturate the plant with BT or would it be better to hit it more often and use less. With my veggies I hit it until its just wet then hit it again about 3 days latter.

CrazyChester said:

Thanks, I'll cut off the damaged buds this morning. Is it better to completely saturate the plant with BT or would it be better to hit it more often and use less. With my veggies I hit it until its just wet then hit it again about 3 days latter.

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use less more often. it burns. i mixed it just a little heavy last year, maybe a tablespoon and a half in a gallon of water. burnt my plants. i have been misting until the leaves just start to drip. i do this 3 times a week. i can see small holes in my leaves here and there but no further damage and no caterpillars. *keeping fingers crossed*

Use neem oil. It's safe for fruiting plants which means it won't kill you if you spray it on the buds.

Yep, that's the stuff. With veggies you can spray and harvest the same day. I've read that ranchers feed it to animals to ride them of certain parasites.

The directions say to mix one or two teaspoons per gallon so I mixed it at 2 tsp/gal and haven't seen any plant damage. I'm going to spray a second dose tomorrow. Its three times a week until I get down to the last two weeks.

I hope I can make it another month without getting to paranoid. The Mormon neighbors make me worry.

Praying Mantis solves this NP. They hatch in late July but mature and feed at the end of August when buds are blooming. We've had them established in our yard for 15 years plus. Very cool looking but also killers when it comes to plant parasites. You can buy them but it wouldn't help until next year. I have seen at least 5 sitting on my plants at any one time ready to eat anything that dares to touch my babies. You also don't have to flush after spraying lol.

Well, I meant what I said about Bacillus Thuringiensis affecting the taste of your bud. The last time I grew an outdoor crop (uhhh, 1994) I sprayed them 3 weeks before harvest, which I thought was plenty of time to wait, and the buds smelled like BT for a month after drying.

HTH

I'd like to see Dan do that aswell actually. What a retard lol.

Damn buddy that looks like some straight fire that sucks about the worms. Hope its all taken care of very soon!

I've only lost about 4 buds. I removed the damaged buds cleaned them up, fast dried them and gave them a smoke. WOW!

I'm hoping I've got them under control but if not I'm going to harvest my plant. Its about two weeks from finishing but I'd rather harvest early than loose it all to the worms.

Its funny, my other plant shows no damage so far.

CrazyChester said:

I've only lost about 4 buds. I removed the damaged buds cleaned them up, fast dried them and gave them a smoke. WOW!

I'm hoping I've got them under control but if not I'm going to harvest my plant. Its about two weeks from finishing but I'd rather harvest early than loose it all to the worms.

Its funny, my other plant shows no damage so far.

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i lost a few lbs to them last year. went straight into the garbage.

If it makes anyone feel better I lost well over 2 oz's to them this season.

ahh fellas, I would never crush up and smoke a worm even if it was full of my hard grown THC. Was just joking around

Is it okay to soak your budding plants with neem oil and will that prevent or kill these worms and caterpillars? Also, will neem oil help keep rot and/or mildew in check on your maturing buds?

I went out this morning and after 3 doses of BT I still had worms. So I decided to start taking the plant down. As I started manicuring the buds I learned a little about Bud Worms. They seem to hatch and grow from the inside of the bud and then eat and crap their way out. Sometimes they take a round about way out to the surface and sometime they come straight to the surface. I had one work its way half way up to the top of a nice cola.
To me it stands to reason that the moth comes in and lays its eggs on the buds, then the plant grows the bud around the eggs, then after the bud has developed the worms hatch. This makes it real important that you start spraying early because its hard to get the BT deep enough into the bud to kill the worms when they first hatch. You can spray late and still kill the worms that are already on the surface and you should, but the damage has already been done once you see the worms on the surface.

Conclusion: Follow fdd's advice and start spraying early and spray often. I think that if you did this you could use lighter concentrations of BT.

Fortunately I've had a lot of worms that made for the surface right away. So I've only lost about 8 buds, which were all at the top of the plant. The lower limbs have little to no damage so far. I'm glad that I cut it. Two more weeks and I would have probably lost half of the plant. And when you're only growing two plants that's a lot of loss.

I would have taken pictures today but my hands were so stickey that I didn't want to pick up my camera.

I do have some Pics of the plant just before I started chopping it. The first four pics are of the infested plan and the rest are from the other plant that needs at least another three weeks but seems bug free so far. I'm sure bummed that I had to cut her down early. But its better than giving half of it to the bugs.

beautiful plants. stupid worms. i have those little tiny brown moths all over my backyard. i'm still lightly misting every 3 or 4 days. everything looks ok, so far.

Hope all works out well for ya CrazyChester . Those are butes !!!!

fdd2blk said:

beautiful plants. stupid worms. i have those little tiny brown moths all over my backyard. i'm still lightly misting every 3 or 4 days. everything looks ok, so far.

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You probably won't have the problems I had since you started early. Next time I'll take your advice and start as soon as I see flowers. I'll still get about a half pound from this plant which would nearly fill my needs for the year. And I'll get nearly the same from the other plant as long as the bugs don't start in.

I noticed one other thing about my two plants. The plant that is bug free has spiders on it and the bug ridden plant doesn't. Could be that the spiders either ward off the moths or they eat the eggs or the eat the hatchling worms. Who knows.

CrazyChester said:

You probably won't have the problems I had since you started early. Next time I'll take your advice and start as soon as I see flowers. I'll still get about a half pound from this plant which would nearly fill my needs for the year. And I'll get nearly the same from the other plant as long as the bugs don't start in.

I noticed one other thing about my two plants. The plant that is bug free has spiders on it and the bug ridden plant doesn't. Could be that the spiders either ward off the moths or they eat the eggs or the eat the hatchling worms. Who knows.

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spiders do help. i have little brown moths flying everywhere. those ones you find in your flour or whatever. as i walk across my yard they fly up outta the grass. they are EVERYWHERE!! i hope the Bt is working. my plants are too tall for me to see the tops. i have no idea what's going on up there.

I know the little brown moths lay eggs on broccoli plants and broccoli has flowers that in some ways resemble pot flowers. BT works great on the broccoli worms.

I've also found that bud worms like sunlight. Last year I brought my buds out into the sunlight to take some pictures and as soon as I spread them out in the sun they all came up to the surface. That's probably why I find them in heaver concentration on the colas.

I can't remember the name of those moths, are you two sure it's those that make the worms? Do you think someone who hasn't seen moths is alright? I usually have a lot of "baby hornets" out going through my girls first thing in the a.m., but these past few mornings have been getting cooler and cooler and I don't see them anymore. Now we've got praying mantises all over the place, but they don't stay where you put them.

Anyway, my buds aren't too thick yet, how common is this problem? I see a lot of threads on bud worm and rot lately and it's got me concerned.