Tips and advice on managing spotted lantern flies,
The tree of heaven, learn to identify it. When I found these, there were
MANY slf's on and near them
Remove all tree of heavens within your vicinity. Seems obvious, but there were some growing between two fences that were 4+ inches in diameter I didn't notice.
Remove all vines/weeds around your property. Another obvious one, but I slacked around the pool, and under the deck, saw small half foot tall tree of heavens.
If you can't remove or reach, time for sprays.
Raid roach spray works quick, one quick spray and 30 were immediately hopping and freaking out until they died. If you have shrubs, trees or plants you want to keep or not spray raid on, use
Ortho lawn spray, it attaches to a garden hose, you spray your house, lawn, shrubs every 2 weeks even though the bottle lists that it'll stay killing for 6 months. DO NOT spray either of these on your cannabis.
Mow the lawn around your site to the shortest length possible, this helps in 2 ways. First the slf doesn't like being too visible and avoids short lawns. In my case, they ran up my cannabis, sunflowers and the weeds growing between the fences. Second it will keep birds on your lawn, although they don't explicitly hunt slf's yet, the insect is wary of them and the birds will eventually understand that slf is food. I've been leaving squished slf's around the lawn and backyard hoping the birds notice and develop a taste
Finally, you can get hoops and put a
Net/Mesh over your plant to prevent moths/slf's from getting to them. I'm reluctant to do this because I don't want to trap the leaf hoppers on my flowering plant.
The slf's like hardy/woody stalks/vines/branches/trees to suck the sap from. In my yard, I've found them on my cannabis plant, sunflower plant, random tree of heavens, and garbage weeds/vines that were growing for a while and are 4-6 inches thick. With your cannabis plants, you'll find slf munching/resting on your stalks/stems, and you'll often find them at dusk/evening. I've been flicking them off and spraying with raid on the ground or squishing them. Over the past few days, I've found their major nests, one which was 20 feet away from my plants that I had no clue about. After spraying and cleaning up, there are drastically less Slf's around. There will always be one or two in the morning/evening, however a week ago there were 13 adult slf's on the plant in the evening. It can be managed if you start in spring as that's when the early nymphs start hatching. I live in a city/suburb naturally there will be less compared to an area that has forests/trees within your home/growing area. As of summer 2022, they have infested 13 states across the East coast, they will move to the mid-west and West coast within 3 years. Good luck, hope this anecdotal battle will help you