The growing large plants, outdoors, thread...

big girls Guerilla style

big girls Guerilla style

I finally have some ladies I felt were worthy of putting in this thread.Especially since they are as big as they are in the middle of the swamp with no irrigation,no tending,no nothing but mother nature.

I started taking the Dream down on Oct 15th last year... never had any problems with mold.

Found another dead brown burnt tip on a different plant today... not liking this one bit. I have been spraying with BTk weekly for the last 5 weeks. Motherfuckers. I will keep searching for more. Relentlessly.

yea once you find one cat there are bound to be more....i stopped spraying any pesticide because i would rather lose a few colas and have a few cats than have sprayed nugs....i gotta focus on preventive sprays in veg and maybe natural predators as well...maybe keep a bird feeder close to the property...or like hydrosun said in my thread BATS.....we gotta start a bat colony they will eat all the moths...

trychogramma wasps. elegant solution to cats. did not use them this year... though I think I should have. Bat's huh? Can you keep bats?

if you hadnt been spraying the problem would be tenfold. i think some of these products are weak. i used double the recommended amount of safer bt last night because i have been spraying every 6 days with recommended dose and still seeing loses.

nomaad said:

trychogramma wasps. elegant solution to cats. did not use them this year... though I think I should have. Bat's huh? Can you keep bats?

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thats interesting we had a decent sized wasp nest on the property this year but they didnt seem to do much......i have no idea how to keep bats, im assuming i would setup some kind of shed and throw a few in there hahaah.....maybe a wasp nest would be better. i would to find a way to target the moths themselves. what about setting up insect light traps as well? most of the moths will congregate to the light and bait smell and ZAP...no moth = no cats...

are you guys sure its ok to spray BT and others in flower? i have been told by others on here that it affects the taste and quality....i like to smoke nugs that i know have nothing sprayed on them....

^^ for me its either spray or have nothing. 10 days out i stop. its organic and my only choice until i have a greenhouse. i dont notice it leaving a taste, others may differ.

I have sprayed BTk weekly until late september every year. Nothing but rave reviews on taste each year.

BTk is considered harmless to humans and most animals and cleared for application right up until harvest. I would not use it in the last 10 days, but until then? I feel pretty good about it.

Spinosad{ I used it up untill 2 weeks into bud. I sprayed them 3 times total this year. I havnt seen a cat in 3 of the plots, but 2 plots had a couple worms. Nothing like before when I didnt spray. We really got hit hard a couple years ago. That stuff works.

Like was said before Nomaad. You would have had tenfold if you didnt use it. Acceptable losses

So far.

Hey yes- i stop applying all bt/azatrol/spinosad the middle of september, dont want any residue leftover- we are in the homestretch now and any further cat damage i chalk up to acceptable losses.
Also, i don think the bats would work as they mostly eat flying insects- at night- that would leave the whole day for the moths to lay their eggs. (unless they only lay eggs at night)

I have used tricogamma wasps and did not think they had enough effect. Also, you cannot spray any spinosad or azatrol as it will kill them as well.

That being said - caters suck and i would do anything to get rid of them from my garden. I think this type of caterpillar/ looper was genetically engineered by the government to give outdoor weed growers fits........

YesProp: the wasps we're talking about are microscopic and lay their own eggs in caterpillar eggs. when the wasps hatch, the have the caterpillar larvae for their first meal.

It would seem that timing is very important. If the cats are already hatched, the wasps are worthless.

interesting notes on the sprays....i will make sure to pick up BTk and conserve next season and spray the living piss out of my plants until early september or so....


whats the approx timing from egg laying to larvae hatching? been doing a little research but cant find anything specific on the moth species that is hitting our crops....i doubt they are butterflies. most of the cats on our plants are small green ones...

mine are reddish brown. i'll take a pic if we find any more.

Yes4Prop215 said:

yea once you find one cat there are bound to be more....i stopped spraying any pesticide because i would rather lose a few colas and have a few cats than have sprayed nugs....i gotta focus on preventive sprays in veg and maybe natural predators as well...maybe keep a bird feeder close to the property...or like hydrosun said in my thread BATS.....we gotta start a bat colony they will eat all the moths...

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I actually notice some nights in my backyard there will be about 4-5 bats flying around over my yard and a couple neighbors. Not a bat expert and don't know of diff types of bats, but I've still had plenty of moths and cats this year, even with spinosad and btk.

Manual removal has saved my ass. Each small 5-20 min break I take is spent inspecting the buds.

nomaad said:

I have sprayed BTk weekly until late september every year. Nothing but rave reviews on taste each year.

BTk is considered harmless to humans and most animals and cleared for application right up until harvest. I would not use it in the last 10 days, but until then? I feel pretty good about it.

Click to expand...

I sprayed BTk till mid Sept last season and can almost call it a cat-free year, though the garden was very small and easy to maintain.

Stepping things up as much as I could this year, and stopping spraying once sept hit (bout 2 weeks earlier this year), Cats were very, very prevalent. Looks like next year I will use it a bit longer, I didn't notice any taste/quality loss either, was just worried it was too much spray for buds that were bulking.

watch that forecast closely for next mon-wed, the way the weather models are looking now it has the potential to be more like a full fledged early winter storm.. right now they are saying 1.5-3 inches of rain w/wind over NW California. hope they are over doing it...

The black or reddish brown caters are from gypsy moths, the bright green are most likely cabbage loopers. The moths look the same- pale yellow/ white, 1" wide and if ya spend some time in your garden, you will see how prevalent they are. What I cant seem to find out is if the eggs are layed at night..... If so then bats or netting at night could be more effective.

Yes4Prop215 said:

interesting notes on the sprays....i will make sure to pick up BTk and conserve next season and spray the living piss out of my plants until early september or so....


whats the approx timing from egg laying to larvae hatching? been doing a little research but cant find anything specific on the moth species that is hitting our crops....i doubt they are butterflies. most of the cats on our plants are small green ones...

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Most species of Lepidoptera take 4-10 days for eggs to hatch but can take as long as 14 days.
Forecast sucks balls!

yup cabbage loopers that is exactly what the cats look like....says they are nocturnal too. has anybody tried those bug zappers? something that can attract insects to it and kill them at night would probably help...setup a few decoys on the perimeters of the garden, and keep the plants sprayed down would make the lights more attractive targets..

says on the website they only lay eggs at night, so you can cover the plants....but their egg hatches in 5 days which is pretty damn fast....


FUCK YOUUUU MOTH!! FUCK YOUUU CATERRRPIRRRERR!!!



CABBAGE LOOPER CONTROL
http://blog.ecosmart.com/index.php/2009/07/31/cabbage-looper-control/
"These creatures go through about three life cycles during the summer; so, they can devastate gardens in waves. Once you identify cabbage loopers and moths as the tormentors in your garden, you can rid of them without destroying your plants.

Handpicking the larvae off the plants will get you started. However, the cabbage looper eggs are difficult to see – they’re light green and the size of a pinhead – and they only need two to five days to hatch.

Once you get an insecticide that’s safe to use in a vegetable garden, you can start spraying your plants.

The trick is to spray to cover the entire leaf. Don’t forget to spray underneath the leaves because that’s where the cabbage loopers like to feed the most. They tend to follow the veins of the plant but can eat through to the center of a cabbage head.

Spraying young cabbage looper larvae and eggs yields better results than trying to kill mature cabbage loopers larvae or moths. Some gardeners prefer to use pheromones, but since the moths fly at night, they can be managed by laying row covers. The covers prevent them from laying eggs on plants.

There are some natural remedies, like Bacillus thuringiensis, a widely accepted agent for killing cabbage loopers. It can be applied weekly for prevention of cabbage loopers.

But whatever treatment you use, make sure to cover the plant, as cabbage loopers will hunt for parts of plants that aren’t treated."




ive been reading every possible website about these things and still a few things im wondering about....how many eggs does each moth lay at a time.....one website mentions natural predators but doesnt elaborate..


also BT only works after the cat has hatched and starts to eat.....it kills the cats intestinally. so you gotta spray with something that would kill the moth if it landed or make the moths not want to land in the first place...

it says on UC davis that spinosad and BT are accepted organic treatments....anything else we could throw at them, i like triple and quadruple prong attacks, i hit spider mites with SNS17, avid, azamax, neem in veg than switched to monterey spinosad in flower.....surprisingly i have zero spidermite problems on my outdoor ladies.....