ok, i'm in the third week of flowering, outdoors, all natural sunlight set up... i fed them fish emulsions through the veg, and admin. a dosage of indonesian bat guano the first week of flowering.... problem is, i went out to inspect the lady today, and i handled a couple of the small buds... to my surprise, one contained "web looking material" and what appeared to be a small spider crawled out... i know spider mites are to small for us to see, so i know its not that.. should i be worried?
if you want to keep spiders away you can place a hedgeapple by your plant. the hedgeapple has been used as a crawling insect repellent for hundreds of years. if you dont have any of those laying around, try covering the rim of your pots with vaseline. the vaseline should keep most creepy crawlers from making it to the plant. oh, about the web... wash it out real good with water only in the morning. this will ensure the area dries by night.
update... i saw some pics of spider mites online, and the spider i'm seeing doesnt resemble them at all... its a small, all white spider that has burrowed in the center of a young flowering cola... i first spotted it yesterday, and removed it once, but to my surprise he was in the same bud today, and i again pulled his web apart, but this time it dropped an egg out of its abdomen, and i threw it on the ground... should i be worried about this? i've been looking for info online all day, but no one seems to know what this thing is... i looked at pictures of thripes,aphids,fungal knats, etc... and this spider doesnt resemble any of them...
Even though identifying the bugger is important, you can try some of these remedies: Chemicals Hot Pepper Wax,Safer Yard & Garden Insecticide (which can be used right to the day of harvest),GNATROL( used in hydro in the water as well as soil),Doc's Neem Pest Soap,Safer Sticky Stakes,TR-11000 Pyrethrum. Organic ways: Insecticidal soaps, neem, oil, and spinosad are the safest insecticides that can be used to control.. Soaps and neem are non-toxic and are great to use when you have a lot of pets and want to be friendly to nature and its animals. Spinosad works very very good in controlling the caterpillar population and is non toxic to wild-life, pets, and humans. It hardly has any impact at all on the plants.
thanks man... someone told me to shoot small jets of water on the plant to knock off any insects on the plant. Is this true?
yes, water can be used to knock off bugs. however, it won't keep them from coming back, also if you're going to hose down your plant do it in the morning so the flowers can dry out. I'd start trying the organic methods we've listed above.
If you see spiderwebs then it must be a spider. Spiders are GREAT to have in your plant for they catch smaller insects, including flying ones.