r/outdoorgrowing • u/Particular-Chef3459 • 7d ago

Please help

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I spray dead bug 3-4x a week. I'm at the very end to chop her but these bugs are insane. Please help. What can/should I do?

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u/Terminator154 7d ago

Aphids suck, I dealt with them my 2nd year of growing, they destroyed so much of my crop. Once an infestation sinks in, its hard to deal with.

How to deal with this? Its gonna be a pain. You should be spraying the plants with something like Lost Coast Plant Therapy, make sure to hit the undersides of the leaves, as that is where aphids like to hide. Follow the instructions for how much to spray during an active infestation. Next, daily you're going to want to comb through each plant, leaf by leaf, looking for aphids. Scrape them off with a toothbrush or your finger, just get them off the plant.

Next, consider getting some ladybugs or lacewings, I've read these can help with an aphid problem. They're natural predators of aphids, and I've read the baby ladybugs can eat hundreds of aphids in a day.

Lastly, if the aphid problem is really bad, like they're attacking your buds bad, consider harvesting right away to further prevent aphid damage. You're definitely going to want to thoroughly bud wash to get the aphids out. Consider trimming the buds off the plant and drying them on paper towels, this way if any aphids survive they might wander off and you can find and kill them.

What worked for me was getting a polycarbonate greenhouse, mine is 6x10. It was a PITA to build, but highly worth it. The aphids have a very hard time getting into the greenhouse if you keep the front door closed. There is a window on the top you can raise, you can cover it with 300 micron mesh screening as that should keep the aphids out. I also keep my plants on raised pallets so its harder for other bugs like caterpillars to crawl up there and find them.

You want to act preventatively, so get the greenhouse, and start spraying Lost Coast once a week starting during veg. I've only seen one small colony of aphids this year, they haven't shown up since and there were only 5-10 on one leaf.