Burnt Leaves from Homemade Insecticide

W

whichcat

New Member
Go to this thread if you want more info https://www.rollitup.org/t/thick-leaves-and-spots-burn-or-not.1015069/#post-15509800

These are three different plants, two unknown bagseed and one Kali Mist.

I had spider mites and fungus gnats, which I chose to treat with cayenne+garlic (steeped and strained, I don’t have habanero (as has been recommended before to kill spider mites) so I did cayenne. Sprayed once, and then four days later I sprayed with warm water and dish soap (clean water sprayed on an hour later, wiped off with napkins).

So it looks like my cayenne solution was too strong, and caused the leaves to burn. I only left it on an hour, sprayed with clean water and wiped off gently with napkins. New growth is doing really well but it looks like old growth is stunted. Do I just need to wait for them to recover from the stress? Will I have to cut those leaves off, because I don’t want to add more stress. Basically, what kind of TLC do I need to give these gals?
 

Attachments

Last edited:
R

RolloOrollo

Member
My first grow was a nightmare with all sorts of bugs infesting it. Spider mites. Aphids. Gnats. Random insects that just wanna get high. You name it. I sprayed dish-soap solutions, neem oil solutions, mint oil, eucalyptus oil, overly excessive trimming due to severe mite infestations. It was a disaster but I pulled through and so did the plants.

My second time around now, I’ve learned from my mistakes. Don’t let the problem begin in the first place, and the easiest method is manual removal / killing the insects on sight daily if possible, while making sure your soil medium receives adequate heat from light. When the medium gets cold, say after you over-water, and it isn’t warmed, the medium cools and begins to harbor all sorts of insects. Turning the top soil daily is my solution. The little critters come out to find out what’s going on, and bam. RIP bug, and your children’s children. I also inspect the leaves and make sure the tops and bottoms are healthy and there are no mites. Once the plants have several nodes and the bottom leaves are not receiving much light, I like to remove the bottom 20-30cm of veg to make sure no insects come up from the soil to party on the bottom leaves.

It’s a good thing you spotted it early on. I’m not sure about cayenne? I’ve never heard of this. I can’t say the plants look extremely happy, but they will pull through. I wouldn’t cut off any leaves unless they are completely yellow. If they’re still green, they’re still giving the plant energy. They might be shocked for a while, but they’re actually quite resilient.
 
Last edited:
W

whichcat

New Member
RolloOrollo said:
My first grow was a nightmare with all sorts of bugs infesting it. Spider mites. Aphids. Gnats. Random insects that just wanna get high. You name it. I sprayed dish-soap solutions, neem oil solutions, mint oil, eucalyptus oil, overly excessive trimming due to severe mite infestations. It was a disaster but I pulled through and so did the plants.

My second time around now, I’ve learned from my mistakes. Don’t let the problem begin in the first place, and the easiest method is manual removal / killing the insects on sight daily if possible, while making sure your soil medium receives adequate heat from light. When the medium gets cold, say after you over-water, and it isn’t warmed, the medium cools and begins to harbor all sorts of insects. Turning the top soil daily is my solution. The little critters come out to find out what’s going on, and bam. RIP bug, and your children’s children. I also inspect the leaves and make sure the tops and bottoms are healthy and there are no mites. Once the plants have several nodes and the bottom leaves are not receiving much light, I like to remove the bottom 20-30cm of veg to make sure no insects come up from the soil to party on the bottom leaves.

It’s a good thing you spotted it early on. I’m not sure about cayenne? I’ve never heard of this. I can’t say the plants look extremely happy, but they will pull through. I wouldn’t cut off any leaves unless they are completely yellow. If they’re still green, they’re still giving the plant energy. They might be shocked for a while, but they’re actually quite resilient.
Click to expand...
Thank you so so much, it does make me feel better to hear to you were still able to pull through it. What was your yield like? And what would you say was the most effective when you did have the mites?

The next babies I get, insecticidal soap is def going to be used as a preventative measure.
 
R

RolloOrollo

Member
Because of the sheer quantity of mites, the infestation was too advanced to get rid of completely, which is tragic because I don’t have access to organic insecticides. All the methods I tried worked to varying degrees at different points of the plants’ lives, but not 100% effective at all. The only way to get rid of the mites was then to defoliate. I cut off a lot of veg, and as a result, my plants were almost constantly stressed, and there wasn’t much I could do, other than use chemical pesticides and smoke them, which was not an option for me at least.

My yields were fine considering the situation, but not at the level of my expectations. This year I’m using a combination of training techniques and pre-emptive defoliation (weeks 4-5) in areas I don’t want growth, especially near the soil medium. FIMing seems to be working great with the genetics and the plants look happier than ever. I think the moral of the story is, if you want good yields, keep an eye on your plant during veg and get it through rough patches quickly with as little invasiveness as possible. If you do that, the plant will build a solid foundation to support larger buds. If the plant is going to be constantly suffering during veg and subjected to defoliation, then less rapid and lower quality veg will lead to less density and lower quality bud.
 
MidwestGanja

MidwestGanja

Member
Ok, so regular "gardening" I've been doing forever and have used cayenne, garlic, soap as a natural insecticide all the time. I can't imagine that the cayenne "burned" the plants. They're still young and will recover fine.

1 change I would recommend is with the dish soap, try to change and fine FelsNaptha if you can. It tends to work better and is milder than most liquid dish soaps.

The other option that helped with aphids is lady bugs. If you can catch them and release them in your grow room, they don't hurt the plants but with eat the aphids. Fan directly on soil should take care of the gnats
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top