Caterpilars

Hi everyones.

I've had them last year as well, the litlle green caterpillars bolix...they discretly munch the small bud stem from the inside, and big flocks of your buds fall on the ground or dry in the colas....you'd loose a third of a crop with them.

I didn't realise they were munching them on the plant before smoking them in hookas on top of a mushroom:)

So far the only way i have managed to control them is to go searching in the bud for them, great for finger hash but the last thing you want to do with ripening buds....

I hope somebody here could help me with a better option.

regards to you all.

Clouseau.
 
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We don't get bud eating caterpillars here, so I've got no experience, but you could try watering the soil around the plant with good quality cold pressed neem once or twice a week until harvest. The plant absorbs the neem and dispatches any bug that bites into it. Neem used this way doesn't seem to alter the taste. Good luck.
 
hi clouseau ,
3 years we got this problem outdoor,caterpillars make buds rotten.
before i was using pyrethrum as prevention and it work really well.
but 3 years before we decided to stop using pyrethrum ,it s natural but not good for life and nature.....
now i use only bacteria and aromatherapy,it work well but do not for catterpilars . i was thinking BT can work , i try it this year but do not work.
the organics wine yard have the same problem, they use nets over the plant and hormonal perturbator (against butterfly)
i still doing some research ,i will post it here.
 
Hi Skippy,
Thanks for the Neem oil watering suggestion,I didn't realise it would work throught roots absorbtion.I will give it a try and publish results.
 
Hello la résistance,

Yep, they seems to be all over the place for the past years. I would have the same opinion as yourself on pyretrhum , tryed traps last year and removed all of them after spending 20 mn trying to save a bee that had got stuck to it...

We try to rely on a good balance between pests and predators and it usualy works well.(err, give and take)
I have two types of caterpillars, one small brownish that come from a small blueish buterfly, and the other is a bright green that I think is Pieride du chou
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piéride_du_chou.

regards

Clouseau
 
I believe the BT is generally in the mix as endospores which are pretty impervious to almost everything. In other words they shouldn't die.
 
Mmm, looks like the neem oil might have done the trick, hard to know for sure this time, but it seems that the litlle green monsters are gone....:)

Great news Inspecteur. That approach works indoors so it should work outdoors as well. Hope you have a bountiful and happy harvest. Fingers crossed.
 
Hi everyones.

I've had them last year as well, the litlle green caterpillars bolix...they discretly munch the small bud stem from the inside, and big flocks of your buds fall on the ground or dry in the colas....you'd loose a third of a crop with them.

I didn't realise they were munching them on the plant before smoking them in hookas on top of a mushroom:)

So far the only way i have managed to control them is to go searching in the bud for them, great for finger hash but the last thing you want to do with ripening buds....

I hope somebody here could help me with a better option.

regards to you all.

Clouseau.

Assuming you are dealing with all caterpillars who were born on the plants from eggs and didn’t just wander into the garden, beneficials are the best way to go. Parasitic wasps lay their eggs inside the wasp/butterfly eggs and take over as a parasitic host. The end result is the caterpillar eggs never stand a chance at surviving because they’re never born in the first place. I have a particularly bad caterpillar problem where I’m at bc of all of the surrounding foliage (which attracts butterflies), and this method took crop loss from 70% down to 15 or 20%.

I’ve heard BT is great as well, and I’m planning on implementing it in next year’s garden. The plan is to stop BT a week or two into flowering and have the wasps going for the entire grow from veg through harvest.
 
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