Bagworm, Webworm, Tent Caterpillar.....

[SmokeyTheBear]

Bagworm, Elm Spanworm, Tent Caterpillar, Spring Cankerworm, Gypsy Moth, Fall Webworm, Cabbage Looper, Imported Cabbage Worms, Tomato Hornworm.

Plants are showing signs of a bad PH but the ph is perfect. I can only assume something is eating the roots and slowly killing the leaves.

Does anyone know if any of these larvae will eat the roots of plants? I am seeing signs of webworm. I can see a few webs with eggs on my one week into flowering plants. I just sprayed them with Sevin and watered the plants with Thuricide. Any more insight would be great. Thanks.

 

[Cali MedPatient]

Are you sure you don't have spider mites? See any very small lighter colored spots on the leaves?

I think the larvae of a webworm is a caterpillar. And they would be eating the leaves, but I'm not sure.

Give us a little more info about your situation, and post a picture or two if you can. It would go a long way towards figuring out what's going on.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Getting picture now. Now keep in mind. These plants were perfectly healthy at transplant two weeks ago. I haven't fed them with anything besides molasses which I gave them one week ago.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

These plants were beatuiful and a very healthy green two weeks ago. They got really sickly within one week.

This picture is of the some webbing.

This is just one of the tops that looks great even just one week ago. A week ago is when I first noticed the yellowing.

I think this was the shell of something. I picked it off of the leaf and it crunched in between my fingers.

This is one of the tops of the plants. This whole plant was healthy green a week ago.

Same plant, but it's the inside of plant with webbing on it.

 

[Cali MedPatient]

Sorry to tell you, you have a very bad infestation of spider mites, most likely two spotted spider mites. See those little dots walking around on the webs? If you look closely, you will see them move.

By the time they are webbing like that you have a full blown infestation. When its 85 degrees it takes 3-4 days for an adult to lay its eggs and for the eggs to hatch. Which means they multiply a 100 fold or more every 3-4 days.

The first thing I would do is get a shop vac and gently vacuum off all of the webs. Then I would remove all of the most heavily spotted leaves, like the one in pic 3. Every leaf like that has hundreds of tiny eggs stuck to it.

Then you're going to need to spray with a miticide. I'd suggest Avid or Floramite if you can get it. They are kinda toxic, but if you're comfortable smoking Sevin then you probably won't mind. Azatrol will help, but won't wipe out an infestation like that. It works better as a preventative. What ever you spray, you should spray every 3-4 days. Because it's really hard to kill those eggs. So you have to kill the adults, wait for the eggs to hatch, and kill those youngsters before they have a chance to lay more eggs.

Looks like you have a ways to go before harvest. If you can get clones you might want to just kill those plants, and start over, because it's going to be a battle.

When you do start your next crop, make sure you spray diligently to keep them away. Good luck. And do some research, they are a very common pest in indoor gardens, and there's tons of posts about them, there's even a sticky in this forum. They are also known as the borg because they are a pain to get rid of. Good luck.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Would it help if I removed the plants from the grow room for a few days and cleaned it with bleach as well? I don't have any clones ready to go at the moment and really wanted these plants ready for the holiday season.

 

[Cali MedPatient]

No, I wouldn't bother cleaning anything with the bleach, they mostly live on the plants, until they get to the infestation level, then they start roaming around looking for other plants to feed off of. You can clean with bleach after you harvest. Put your energy into getting them off of the plants. Vacuum the mites off, get as many adults as you can off, pick off the worst looking leaves and burn them or bag them up and get them away from your room. Then spray to kill any remaining adults and the new ones that will be hatching by the minute. Spray asap. If nothing else, use some insecticidal soap until you can get something better. If you can get to a hydro store, they may have a mite knockdown.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

What do you think about neem oil? I have an old container of neem oil here. Two tablespoons of neem and a teaspoon of dish soap per gallon. You think that would kill the spider mites? or at least control them?

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

I bought some avid. How much should I use to make 1 gallon or spray?

 

[medicalmj]

I bought some avid. How much should I use to make 1 gallon or spray?

I'd stick with a combo of:
Spinosad, Essential oils (SNS 217, Zero Tolerance etc), and MIGHTY WASH. I'd get the mighty going first and if $ a problem just alternate b/w mighty wash and spinosad. Neem will leave a hard to remove oil film if done too late in flower, altho not really that bad for ya, just taste awful.

No harsh chems on them flowers!

 

[Cali MedPatient]

Spinosad will help, but for mites you need to double the strength of it. I agree with Medical, I would hold off on the neem. You can use it, but it will leave a residue. I try to stay away from harsh chems when possible, but you have them pretty bad, and you already gave them Sevin, so I'd say hit them with Avid. Use a 1/4 teaspoon per gallon, put it in a sprayer, and try to spray the tops and bottoms of the leaves, and all the stems also. Then spray again every 4 days, cuz you'll only kill the hatched ones, not the eggs, and all those eggs are gonna hatch soon. Don't stop there either, because they will keep showing up. They are a tough bug to eliminate. You think you got them all, and then they show up again.

And then look at the other threads and find something else you can spray on them cuz Avid isn't very good for you, but it will knock down the adults. Azatrol has a systemic action, and is organic, so you might want to alternate that between the Avid sprays. I haven't tried any other products except Floramite which also works very well, and isn't quite as bad for you as Avid. I don't know about Mighty Wash, or the others, so do some reading and talk to Medicalmj and others.

 

[SeaMaiden]

I would clean, and I would remind everyone that YOU make the best spider mite vector around!

I literally put my clothing, hat, shoes, everything in the freezer when I've been around plants that have spider mites.

At this point in the game there are few, if any miticides I personally would use. I would go with plant essential oils applied EVERY three days, raising humidity up into the 60% range, cooling the room a bit, down into the 70s if at all possible (this slows down their life cycle and can be sufficient to damn near completely shut them down, I have experience with this), as well as using a mix of isopropyl alcohol and water, again applied every three days.

They can easily build up resistance to the single site mode of action miticides, and they have already. In SoCal we've observed Floramite- and NPS-resistant mites, and I know others who have observed Avid-resistant mites. There are others, and science is only just beginning to really untangle how they (mites) do it (resist).

Please, DO NOT use Avid, Floramite, or Forbid on flowering plants.

Get plant essential oils from your local health food store. Let me see if I can find my own notes on the stuff to use.

Rosemary oil
Cilantro oil
Clove oil
Lavender oil
Peppermint oil
Thyme oil
Citronella oil
<crap, my desk is a complete and total fucking mess, I can't find my little PostIt notes!>
I'm forgetting some others... gonna run downstairs and see what's in my clipboard holder thingy.

K, use 5 drops of each per gallon water, again applied every three days.

 

[Cali MedPatient]

You've got a point SM. I haven't tried any of the essential oils, but I have tried some other products when I first got mites and had close to no results. I wouldn't spray miticides this late either, but he just hit them with Sevin, so I'm sure he's not too worried about chems. He's got them pretty bad if he's got webs and it looks like he's got another 4 weeks to go. Anyway, hopefully next time he'll be on the organic preventative train and keep them under check.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

I put two no pest strips in the room today. I also have the avid that I will use if the plants don't start to look better in a week.

 

[intotheunknown]

all really good answers here. and i also agree. killer spider mite infestation

at this point neem oil will do you no good. however...
my advice for next time around is to help prevent them with neem oil.

try using some pro-tekt silica and neem oil (mix as directed) and spray them down once or twice a week in veg.

prevention is key.

 

[Cali MedPatient]

prevention is key.

Words of wisdom there. I prevent them with Azatrol, which has the same active ingredient as neem, but is easier to work with. It's organic also. And I mix it with double strength spinosad and put it in a fogger. Foggers work way better than sprayers. I fog once a week until flowers form, and that keeps them away. I also spray my veg room once a week.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

At what temperature to spider mites go dormant?