How do I get rid of catapillers

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
Check garden centers for Safer's BTK Biological Insecticide. Little bottle of concentrate to mix up with water. Spray it on and when the caterpillars eat it their guts get full of holes and they die. Made for veggies and harmless to anything but caterpillars. Other companies must make it too.

Go around your yard in the fall and get rid of any cocoons you find. Under the eves of buildings or anything that gives them cover and rake up all the leaves and compost or burn them. On trees like poplar you may see lots of rolled up leaves which is caterpillars drawing the leaf around them in their cocoon then it falls to the ground and they emerge in the spring to go after your plants again.

We had an infestation here about 3 years ago and all my woods were stripped bare. Looked like it was the middle of winter but new leaves grew out thinner than before. Glad I wasn't growing pot outside. :)

Good luck!
 

Babbakush88

Active Member
Check garden centers for Safer's BTK Biological Insecticide. Little bottle of concentrate to mix up with water. Spray it on and when the caterpillars eat it their guts get full of holes and they die. Made for veggies and harmless to anything but caterpillars. Other companies must make it too.

Go around your yard in the fall and get rid of any cocoons you find. Under the eves of buildings or anything that gives them cover and rake up all the leaves and compost or burn them. On trees like poplar you may see lots of rolled up leaves which is caterpillars drawing the leaf around them in their cocoon then it falls to the ground and they emerge in the spring to go after your plants again.

We had an infestation here about 3 years ago and all my woods were stripped bare. Looked like it was the middle of winter but new leaves grew out thinner than before. Glad I wasn't growing pot outside. :)

Good luck!
Thank you I will go check this out
 

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
It's basically the same as what @HarryCooter mentioned above but a different brand.

Have you seen any little white butterflies flitting around? If so they aren't butterflies but moths and love laying their eggs on cauliflower and broccoli in particular but tomatoes etc are fair game as well.
 

DblBrryInvestments

Well-Known Member
Chlorine and Copper harm the Bacteria.
That is chlorines job haha, but in small amounts like what would be present in tap water is not much of an issue for just basic BT sprays.

Chloramine is another story, I'm fortunate enough to have tap with only chlorine.

Chlorine is also a micronutrient and plays a role in the growth of plants.
 

Irrelevanttwat

Well-Known Member
Pyrethrum. Made from Chrysanthemum flowers. Grow the flowers, harvest, dry and soak in H20. Put H20 in spray bottle. Free bug spray.
 

kratos015

Well-Known Member
Grab yourself some habenero peppers, or the hottest peppers you can possibly find. Chop em up and throw them in a pot with water, onion, and garlic. Boil this up for a bit until it becomes concentrated, then strain it. Dilute it at a 10:1 ratio and spray it all over your plants.

Think of what habaneros do to humans, then imagine one of those little fuckers eating it. Any bug that eats anything sprayed with this stuff dies pretty much instantly and that's assuming the smell itself doesn't drive them off.

You can do this safely until pretty much the last week of flower, I would do this until I was a day or two away from harvest. It won't effect the taste or burn the plants or anything like that, it only harms bugs ;)

It's cheap, organic, and most importantly, effective.
 

Babbakush88

Active Member
Grab yourself some habenero peppers, or the hottest peppers you can possibly find. Chop em up and throw them in a pot with water, onion, and garlic. Boil this up for a bit until it becomes concentrated, then strain it. Dilute it at a 10:1 ratio and spray it all over your plants.

Think of what habaneros do to humans, then imagine one of those little fuckers eating it. Any bug that eats anything sprayed with this stuff dies pretty much instantly and that's assuming the smell itself doesn't drive them off.

You can do this safely until pretty much the last week of flower, I would do this until I was a day or two away from harvest. It won't effect the taste or burn the plants or anything like that, it only harms bugs ;)

It's cheap, organic, and most importantly, effective.
So just spray over all of it?
 

kratos015

Well-Known Member
So just spray over all of it?
Yup, all over the entire plant.

You're more likely to get mold from the caterpillars eating/shitting in your buds than you are from spraying the plants too much. I did this for every single outdoor grow, never had the slightest of problems and had zero changes to flavor, smell, or potency. I grow organic, which really limits what I'm able to use for pesticides so this was a godsend for me.
 

Roscko

Well-Known Member
Here are some other alternatives:

1. Remove all the caterpillars you can find by hand. Either let them crawl in a garden of someone you don’t like, or kill them. It’s up to you. Just throwing them away is not sufficient because they will come back.

2. Introduce parasitic wasps to your outdoor grow. There are web-shops in most countries that conveniently deliver beneficial insects to your home. These wasps lay their eggs on the larvae of the butterflies. Newborn wasps will feast of these organisms.

3. Get your hands on some praying mantis. This is a good option if you live in warmer climates because they don’t do very well when temperatures are too cold. These elegant predators are not leaving the plant until every caterpillar is killed and eaten up.

4. Spray your plants with neem oil. It won’t be very effective if you already have a large caterpillar population on your plants, but neem oil is always a good option to prevent pests from overpopulating your plants in the first place.

5. Apply a biological product like Biothur (Trabe), Spruzit Concentrate (Neudorff), or Pireprot (Ecoprotec). These products are tailored to get rid of larvae plagues and are generally made from gram-positive bacillus that is found in natural soils.

Even if all of these products are biological, keep in mind that some people, including you, might smoke or digest the cannabis blossoms you grow. Don’t apply them during the last 14 days of flowering if you want to harvest a product that is free of any traces.
 
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