Aphids. Outdoors

Thank you for your concern, HqFarms. Rest assured, I only used it in early veg as a soil drench once and I was the only one consuming the final product. As to its effects on my health, I'm no more crazy than before and haven't noticed any negative effects. Of course, I speculate it may have cumulative effects over time with regular exposure. The scariest thing about Imid to me is the its apparent devastating effect on honey bees. So, if it must be used, IMO it should only be used on the roots. The pests on the plant itself that it may kill should only be killed by much less dangerous and just as effective products.

Hey CrushnYuba, I've been thinking about how someone like you with huge outdoor plants can deal with broad mites and their cousins. It's not like you can just turn up the thermostat any time you want.

However, I saw someone here talking about using a steamer (the kind you use on clothes). He said it was 180 degrees, so he was using a thermometer in one hand and the steamer in the other to try to keep the temp on the plants at 120 degrees.

Perhaps someone smarter than me can figure out a way to rig up a thermostat to a steamer that shuts it off when the temp gets too high.

A steamer would be perfect for big plants because the tiny particles of water would get in all the nooks and crannies of the plant without too much work.

Oh, and don't forget the aspirin. Someone said they brought a crop in with minimal damage despite broad mites due to using 325 mg of aspirin per gallon of water. Apparently it mitigates the toxins the mites release into the plants while feeding. It appears that those toxins may damage the plant much more than their feeding on it does.

Ants will protect and propagate any small, frass exuding insect in the aerial or subterranean portions of plants.

Solutions? Go ask a rich person to help you. They are the "superior" (only superior people have more money than most others- remember, they merit being rich) people and can afford to help others....I might know the answers, but I am poor as fuck. When I am rich, I will dole out the answers for free.

HqFarms said:

Ants don't farm root aphids, they just farm regular aphids. DE only works when it's dry. Make a barrier of cinnamon, crushed red peppers around your plants. Make a soap spray with peppermint, tobacco sprays work too. Find their mounds and poor boric acid down them

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Bongstar420: I'm not sure i follow

CrushnYuba said:

I'm not using imid. Turned out i didn't even have root aphids. I was just defending crazy chester.
Unless you have a better solution for pests like russet mites or root aphids, you can't judge him.

At this point Pesticides really are a part of commercial outdoor growing in northern California and that IS why people grow their own. I have friends that have lost whole seasons to russets. I use forbid 4f at the beginning of the year. All of my trim went to one of the New state legal extraction companies, and it was all batch tested. Countless samples and it was all clean. 4-6 months after spraying, that stuff is long gone as far as testing goes

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Not to be difficult, but out of interest and concern for the process and how accurate it is, but what is it specifically that was tested for? Did these companies test for metabolites or other downstream effects that could be dangerous.

I ask also because I have liver problems and I've learned a lot about it to work on healing it. One thing the liver does is take a substance and convert it to different forms for elimination from the body. Some substances wind up converted to something many times more dangerous and if you're liver isn't working well these more dangerous things can linger. Very extensive testing is required to know that plants aren't modifying various dangerous pesticides into other manageable forms for isolation or attempts to purge.

This is a potential area for major companies to be sneaky and take advantage of us. "Hey chemical X in our product Y was completely undetected after Z weeks. This stuff is SAFE!" Meanwhile, chemical X was converted by the plant into chemicals A, B, C, etc and A is neutral, B is more toxic, and C is beneficial to us. Get my point?

Any one can respond to this as I would love to know what things I might safely fall back to if any in a time of need?

HqFarms said:

I did, look above your post.

I have tried to help people many times with russets but no one wants to listen. Everyone wants the quick killer. Heat treatments work wonders. Hot water dips work better than just straight heat. Sulfer sprays work great to slow them down but not really as a killer. The best rotation of sprays I found was mytrocol(bontigard), sulfer, big time exterminator, essential oil. Spraying every two days and don't forget to do a rinse after the essential oils because you will suffocate your plant if you don't. Before that rotation and between every other spray do a heat treatment. The key part to this is after you knock them down real good is to add predatory insects to eat up everything you missed. I say do my rotation for about 3 weeks and then use predatory insects. Keep adding new insects every 2 to three weeks after. If all of that is too much just tear everything down and clean with pool shock

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Guys this approach works great! You described what I basically did for spider mites. I would neem the shit out of them, then 5-7 days later neem them again. And I would order predator mites to arrive around the time of the second spray. After the second spray I'd wash them off and apply spider mites. They totally act as a clean up crew and this was VERY effective. I don't think most people have thought about doing this sort of thing but it's stellar and keeps the chemicals out of your grow.

This season I've had an outdoor grow and finally will be getting to harvest without my crop being destroyed by broad/cyclomen/russet mites. I built a frame around the plants and cover them every three days with a sulphur burner going for about 15 minutes and have had NO pests - not only no microscopic mites, but I noticed under the leaf of one plant after I did a sulphur burn there were four or five aphids. I touched them and they did not move but smushed like they must have been alive before the burn. Normally, also, I'd be picking off caterpillars like crazy at this time in the season - but, none of them either! The only thing I've done for pest control is every three days put a tent over the plants and burn sulphur for 15 minutes. I realize not everyone can tent their plants, but, if you can you might have results like I have. The broad/cyclomen/russet mites are so bad around here, my plants would be dead by now if I did nothing, so I have to think the every three days sulphur burn has killed all the mites, aphids and caterpillars (and maybe a few other pests I didn't know were trying to get a foot hold).

You can spray powdered sulfur mixed with water for bigger plants.