TOP FIVE CANNABIS PEST

Pest infestation can be a nightmare for any grower. Like any other crop, cannabis can often be affected by ravenous animals that are desperate to feast on them. Bugs and pests love to attack cannabis plants. Luckily for growers, there are a lot of ways to get rid of bugs and pests without harming your plants or affecting your bugs. Whether you are growing indoors or outdoors, you need to know the enemies of your plants in order to protect the plants from them. From crickets to caterpillars, moles to mites, there are a lot of pests that can damage your plants.

The top five cannabis pests are listed below-

Crickets and Grasshopper

Crickets and grasshoppers are the most common cannabis pests. They live among the branches and feeds intensively on leaves. They are noisy insects and can be identified by the sounds they make and their distinct bite marks they leave on the leaves. Pest controls can attack the cannabis pests directly and kill them. Treating cannabis plants with neem oil, insecticidal soaps, and pyrethrum based products can also be used for invasion against cricket and grasshopper attacks.

Red Spider Mites

Red spider mites usually occurs in places with high humidity levels, and on indoor plants. These insects damages and kills cannabis plants in a short span of time by sucking the sap from its leaves. An adult spider takes up to million nibbles in less than a month. A collection of adult spiders can wipe out an entire plantation in no time. Red spider mites leaves whites spots on the leaves of cannabis plants when it sucks the saps. They might also leave yellow or black spots on both sides of the leaves. These symptoms are often confused with lack of nutrients. It is advisable to use a magnifying glass to be absolutely sure of the cause. They also leave a cloth like structure on the leaves sometimes. These can be treated by growing your plants in a clean and ventilated environment. Red spider mites grows well in dry areas and reproduces very quickly when the temperature exceeds 27 degree Celsius. So it is highly recommendable to keep the temperature in the growing area under 25 degrees, and a humidity of 55-60 percent. Once it is detected, the damaged leaves needs to be treated by cleaning the problematic areas with a mixture of alcohol and water. Other products such as neem oil, potassium soap and pyrethrum oil can be used effectively to combat red spider mites.

Caterpillars

Caterpillars are pests that need to vegetate in order to form their chrysalis, so they feed on the plants at a very fast rate, and can ruin the plantation in the blink of an eye. So it is essential for you to act fast as soon as caterpillar invasion is detected. Yellow or translucent eggs, small teeth marks, and black droppings in the surface of the leaves are signs of caterpillar invasion. Caterpillars can easily be removed by hand. You can also apply insecticides made by mixing pepper and garlic. Another option is introducing Trichogramma wasps (which is widely used to control pests), spined soldier bugs, or a biological treatment containing Bacillus Truringiensis to the plantation. 

Leaf Miners

Leaf miners do not attack all strains of cannabis in the same way. They lay eggs inside the leaves, and the larvae begins to dig tunnels into the leaves about two weeks after the deposition of the eggs. After the initial damage on the plant is done, the leaf miner larvae eats the tissue and leaves, and leaves a long brown line on the cannabis leaves. You can also find small holes made by adult flies. The adult leaf miners can be stopped from laying more eggs. You can place adhesive strips near the crops to keep leaf miners away. You can remove the pest manually or treat the plant with insecticides as Spinosad (which should be used very cautiously and only when there are no bees around).

Aphids

Aphids are tiny yellow winged bugs that commonly infest under cannabis leaves. They are fast spreading, as they reproduce very fast, and can jump from one plant to another. Just like the red spider mite, they suck the sap from the leaves. They consume nutrients within cannabis and as a result the leaves appear yellow and wilted. In addition to eating cannabis plants, the feces of Aphids attract ants, and in a way creates an even larger infestation problem. They also introduce viruses from plants that are nearby which hinders the growth r slows down the production of flowers. You can know about the presence of Aphids by dry, yellow leaves, colonies under leaves and stems, and a kind of honeydew that are secreted. To get rid of Aphids, you can introduce predators like lacewing larvae, which feed on them. Aphids hardly move, which makes it easy to remove manually or can simply be crushed. You can speed up the process of combating with Aphids with the use of garlic or tomato leaf water. The solution can be made by soaking tomato leaves or garlic and mineral oil in water for twelve to twenty four hours, then strain the mixture and then apply to one small area of the plant.