Hello, this is my first grow and I just noticed caterpillars near harvest. I have 6 plants which I have been growing outdoors in 5 gallon pots under a 6x8 greenhouse. I'm at the end of flowering and recently started noticing a few sugar leaves turning brown. I mistakenly thought it was due to heat and as the plants were nearing harvest. However, upon further inspection I started noticing a few caterpillars and then looked inside the buds and started seeing their poop as well as some bud rot set in. the bud rot doesn't look bad from the outside as the majority is still green, however, I do see it on a handful of sugar leaves and inside near the trail of poop from the caterpillars. This is so disheartening, but live and learn. I noticed indicas were hit harder over the sativas. In any case, I flushed about 10 days ago and about to harvest tomorrow, last watering was a couple days ago. I wanted your help on how I should harvest this crop and prepare it for drying. I already cut out several budlets that had some budrot, but was curious on if I should even keep the buds that have trails of caterpillar poop, or throw those away all together. Many buds, unfortunately have some sort of poop on them. I would say up to 40%... all except one plant, the tangie, had some type of poop trail. My plan was to eliminate any buds with clear budrot and then for the remaining to do a wash using the 4 bucket method of water/hydrogen peroxide mix, lemon juice with baking soda mix and the remaining two buckets with water. I would only use the hydrogen peroxide mix with branches that had trails of poop or in which I removed any budrot. For those branches that didn't have trails of poop, I was going to just use the lemon juice/ baking soda mix and water buckets. Please help, any advice on how to handle this crop and prepare for drying is greatly appreciated. Thanks! Randy
You very likely have a case of bud rot. The butterflies lay larvae on the buds which hatch out caterpillars and give you bud rot. Cut out, off what you can. I lost several pounds one summer because of it. Next time, when your buds start to resin up start lightly coating them with basic garden dust. This will deter pests and kill caterpillars on contact. You reapply when it rains and rinse the buds at harvest. We've used it on garden veggies for years. Just chalk it up to experience and be better prepared next season. But I definitely know the sick feeling. Lol. It's a good practice when handling outdoor plants, to wear gloves and change each time you move to the next plant. It's super easy to transfer problems between plants when handling them. Sorry!! TWW
Dealing with same thing. I was told to use BT spray all throughout the flower cycle. Next year I will use netting to stop moths and butterflies from laying eggs all together Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum