Yeah! It's Bud Worm Season. Pics

jbcCT said:

Starting to doubt how effective BT really is. I don't like to soak them but finely mist, let dry and repeat.

Partly because your right. They stay tucked in the bud. They don't hang out off the bud as we know.

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Hmm, pretty sure with bt you have to drench. The caterpillar has to eat leaf material with the bacteria on it.

jbcCT said:

I've only picked 3 or 4 small worms off the entire year.

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3 or 4 worms? You are really lucky. I'll bet I have picked at least 25, nearly all on the same plant. Of course my stinkiest prettiest girl which BTW has been sprayed with BT half dozen times.

BT is fine for veg or early flower, but those cabbage worms don't come in force until the plants gets stinky. Once they are in the bud there is not much you can do with it, clipping early before the whole bud dies off works best for me. What if BT did kill that worm...now you have a dead worm & its poop in a dying bud.

For me, if in full flower clipping right away is best.

Azamax 2-3 times(once a week) before flower begins
+Bt on them before the worms get there, as soon as flower starts or slightly before
Might have to re-apply Bt every 7-10days until the last 10-14 days during flower if they're bad all season

Well boys fighting the good fight I see. Got home from work, did an inspection. Picked two off. They are really small at this point. Thoroughly sprayed with BT again. Had some rain recently. I f***ing hate bugs. The thing I mentioned about BT effectiveness; one they have to consume it, second it prevents them from eating but they could live on another week and like the other guy said, then you just have a dead worm in the bud.

I don't know man. F***ing bugs.

Baja.Beaches said:

3 or 4 worms? You are really lucky. I'll bet I have picked at least 25, nearly all on the same plant. Of course my stinkiest prettiest girl which BTW has been sprayed with BT half dozen times.

BT is fine for veg or early flower, but those cabbage worms don't come in force until the plants gets stinky. Once they are in the bud there is not much you can do with it, clipping early before the whole bud dies off works best for me. What if BT did kill that worm...now you have a dead worm & its poop in a dying bud.

For me, if in full flower clipping right away is best.

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Cant argue with this post. The man is right. From what I gather if your growing outdoors your going to lose a portion to the worms. Every. Single. Time.

Any idea why this is happening to my WHOLE PLANT? The hairs dry and disappear. Makes no sense. I had long beautiful white hairs and all of a sudden they're NON stop drying out and disappearing. Along side some bug issues i'm having, but it's happening to the whole plant. Could it be from nutes? Should I trash the plant?

Muzzle2 said:

Any idea why this is happening to my WHOLE PLANT? The hairs dry and disappear. Makes no sense. I had long beautiful white hairs and all of a sudden they're NON stop drying out and disappearing. Along side some bug issues i'm having, but it's happening to the whole plant. Could it be from nutes? Should I trash the plant?

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Can you put more pictures up? I would never trash the plant. It's resilient and maybe a portion of the flower can be rescued. Young bud worms will eat the hairs giving the top of the cola a bald look. From that pic it does not appear to be the case.

As far as bud worms are concerned. I despise these little motherf**kers. I'm so f***ing pissed.

Muzzle2 said:

Any idea why this is happening to my WHOLE PLANT? The hairs dry and disappear. Makes no sense. I had long beautiful white hairs and all of a sudden they're NON stop drying out and disappearing. Along side some bug issues i'm having, but it's happening to the whole plant. Could it be from nutes? Should I trash the plant?

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Looks to me like you're in the home stretch. As the bud matures the pistils will die off and shrivel up. Followed by the calyx's swelling. The trichomes should (although I've heard that's not always the case with some varieties) continue their degradation and start turning amber.

Up until yesterday, it was still raining everyday here. So my shit is rotting even without worms. But I saw a few brown buds on my Random Bud #5 X TPD a couple of days ago. When I snipped off the buds, they had little worms in them. I didn't have my BT in the pack, and it was getting dark anyway. I ended up giving the plant a pretty good haircut. Hate to do it, but I have lost several to meltdown this season. I went back yesterday and gave them all a good drench with BT.

#farmerlife

Spiders and praying mantis work very well . I introduce a few mantis and caught up few spiders! Just do this every so often until you have them hanging out . Haven’t seen a bud worm since .

Found some of these fuckers, on one plant it's really close to being done the other two have about 4-5 weeks left, damn. Should I just yank the one that's almost ready? All cloudy trichs with a few amber?

If BT isn't working next year give Spinosad a try. Last year budworms devoured my garden. This year, after spraying Spinosad every 10 days through veg and flower I only lost 2 cola's to bud worms all season.

Repeating much of what's here... (success?) story with only a few wigglers, in a humid grow.

https://www.rollitup.org/t/small-worms.975902/#post-14475905

Some final thoughts on my first season using BT. Couple things in this thread I don't agree with wanted to share some thoughts on that.

First off, this product works very well. It eliminated 100% of any budworms I had. There are a few things though to maximize it's effect. First off is timing. In my neck of the woods, moths move in around mid July. Worms appear like clockwork first week of August. Get in tune with when these pests cycle in your area. During this period you want to apply the product every two days, early morning being the best time, as this is when worms feed most often. Proper dilution and really drench foliage and all growing or fully forming buds.

Been harvesting now for almost 3 weeks and not a single worm found, I go through my stuff with surgical gloves on doing the initial trim. 100% elimination.

This product will not impact the quality of your buds whatsoever. Which is awesome, as spraying anything is a concern. You can drench those white hairs & buds, it will not harm them at all. Spray early morning and the sun will burn off most of the product by days end. My buds are beautiful.

It has no impact and does not make your plants stink. The product smells bad in concentrate but proper dilution takes care of that. I wash my outdoor after initial trim anyway, cant imagine not washing my stuff before I hang it as I like a clean product.

So hopefully this helps the next guy who tries this for the first time. I had my doubts and worried about the impact to the plants that BT would have. So I was was pleasantly surprised to learn just how well it worked for myself.

First-time grower in Bay Area, CA; - I've read all 87 pages of this post and will NOT be asking "what is BT?"

We had a couple modest outdoor plants. We knew nothing about caterpillars until way too late. (We know now for next time, tho.)

I was away for a month when my wife started noticing some buds dying and a friend who has grown a few times before came over and told her what was going on and to harvest ASAP. The plants were within a week or two so no worries there. But then she started finding a whole mess of caterpillars, and as stuff started to dry, they were coming out of the woodwork like rats out of a sinking ship.

So many beautiful top colas are laced with the little buggers droppings. Now that the buds are all dry and I'm back home, I'm trying to see if what can be salvaged. Looking with a loupe, If I see a dozen or so droppings it gets tossed. But if I see only 1 or 2, I try to clean and keep. But I have to assume there's gonna be some I miss, so I guess that gives rise to the old saying we had in college on the Mexican Brown Seed Weed, "That shit tastes like crap." I mean, having lived in Humboldt for a number of years, I can't imagine any big outdoor grower inspecting each and every bud like I've done for the last few days. I don't even want to think about how much sticky-stuff has been left on my rubber gloves peeling apart buds looking for droppings.

I have to assume at some point we've probably all unknowingly toked on a dry bug or it's droppings, so I'm not too worried about that; - but I'm wondering if there's anything that can be done with all those big beautiful colas that are pretty well littered with droppings? Is there any use trying to wash a big bud or three dozen after they've already dried? I don't want any mold rot, and we've been lucky not to have any because only the base of the plants was watered, so buds never got moisture.

Are all those big pretty colas literally just trash can fodder and nothing to be done?

We had caterpillar in some of our buds. We are going to turn that stuff into hash for edibles.

I myself notice it can happen from sept. 1st too november 15th-ish out here in cent.cali. thus year everything went extremly early starting from july1st-21st between 6 different plants/phenos dependong on transitional stretch time.

Im not sure how much this would help some people but ive noticed a trend. Im not sure if the tobacco moth just hates cookies or loves fruity stuff. My rundown pf the past 4 grows to damage.

-3years ago.
4 sinsOG (bluepower x kosher kush) and 1 gdp x tangie s1 from a buddy.
All suffered heavy damage

-2yrs
2x cookies and cream
3x bluepower
2x sinsOG x ??? Seeds from last years keeper.
The sins and BP took a beating, but the cookies and cream where hardly touched at all. The vanilla dom pheno take a slight hit but the cookie dom pheno didnt get hit at all.

-Last years
Sinmint cookies (forum cut x bluepower) 5x all phenos showing cookie traights hard.
No damage at all!

This year.
Dosimints (Dosido x sinmints) 5x
Plus one last sinsOG old bean i scuffed and got a fem.

The 5 dosimints didnt see any damage at all! (heavy in forum cut and OGKB gas)The sins OG got fucking thrashed.

My only conclusion i can point too are
1. They genuinly hate cookies
2. The heavily prefer zesty, citrus, berry, grape, etc flavored bud
3. Im just getting very lucky/unlucky(doubt now i did my last grow)
Never used a single pesticide on my plants outside of a couple neem oil sorays during veg depending on damage caused. So anything like thats out of the question. Anyone else ever experiend similar results?
forum cut dom. No damage at all in the slightest
sins OG that got thrashed! justice...

I'm telling you guys right now these little f**kers can be beat with just BT.

You have to start spraying as soon as buds start to form right through till the end of the season if necessary. When they hatch they are microscopic. You want that first bite to be the last.

You can soak the plants. One of my mistakes was worry that it would damage the bud but I was gonna lose it anyway. Next season I'll be on them early.

Moths were bad this year in the NE. Just got done taking the last down a week ago. Not a critter in the whole lot. No nasty paratroopers on the drying rack.....

I totally agree. I had some mold issues when spraying just BT.

But when mixed with Serenade which contains a mold eating bacteria, the combo was incredible. No mold and no worms. Don't put anything else in there, but those two bacterias together play well together.

I'd mix them both in a 55gallon drum and use a paddle pump to spray down the plants top to bottom once a week.