In the bush - Advice on using insect nets?

[Fermented]

Every Summer here in the sub-tropics, I plant out seedlings in April, May and June* and by late July ~ November most years I get moth caterpillars problems. These insects don't do much actual damage, but the areas where they were sometimes becomes moldy during flowering (depending on the weather),

Naturally, I get the biggest plants in Summer, but it's heart breaking to see just how much I lose to mold. I have in the past sprayed with various sprays I've made myself or bought, some methods work ok. The best method would be daily visits to inspect each plant thoroughly and pick off caterpillars early as I don't like using any type of spray,
and as I grow in a go to jail for having a joint in your pocket type of country I try to minimize visits to my bush plots. I intend to fit a mist net painted with greens and browns to cammo it and string it up over the plants...Has anyone here tried using fine nets in the tropics to deter moths and caterpillars? I'd appreciate any advice! thanks

* By the way, I grow all year round guerrilla style in the bush, I can harvest plants from September to May. That's the advantage of tropical growing, the other is some years I only need to water these bush plants a couple of times during their grow. The down side are tropical storms, hard hitting resin knocking rains and leaf stripping, branch breaking winds...and ticks and other biting insects.

 

[Swamp Thang]

I too grow in the tropics where a joint would fetch me ten years in the joint if I got busted, so I understand your security concerns only too well. Caterpillars have never been an issue on my plots deep in the swamp, but if they were, a tent-style mosquito net, dyed dark green for stealth, would be a good idea to protect the plants.

Sewing several mosquito nets together might be necessary if your plants are greater in number than a dozen or so, and you could erect a structure made of bamboo poles to support the net and keep it in place when the wind picks up.

To keep the plants from outgrowing the tent, you can tie them down within the tent, to maintain a low profie. For mold prevention in the rainy season, an ICMAG contributor called Oldster1 recommended dissolving a single tablet of aspirin in a gallon of water, and spraying that solution on the buds when you spot mold.

Winding up my response with a quick rant, I must add that having to plant in hostile environments, on account of draconian weed prohibition laws, truly sucks.

There are a lot of nasty insects that can wreak havoc in the human body in my swamp, so I have to suit up in hazmat gear, which gets hot enough to make me feel faint, here at the equator, yet I have no choice but to cover up, on account of those bugs. If it weren't for those repressive laws, I'd plant in my back garden, and tend the plants anytime I choose. Buying isn't an option here either, because the only weed sold here is decayed and moldy.

Rant over

 

[maryjaneismyfre]

I know you don't like it but spraying is the answer. Spinosad and garlic pyrethrin mixture before flower, spray just after sundown to avoid bees and birds etc. My resident birds, skinks and toads have been around me for years now, with no ill effect so the wildlife is unaffected. Make an AAC tea if you can with right microbes including the bacillus (i forget its name) that eats worms..spray this before flower to establish a population. Let the systemic, stinky garlic, and microbes work for you. Picking off caterpillers gets tired quick. Spray weekly, alternate, AAC, spinosad mixture. Spray throughly and under each leaf surface and with a backpack sprayer for correct atomization and use a proper wetting agent, in fact you are not only wasting your time without a correct wetting agent you are being counter-productive breeding resistance to your sprays. When your plants slow their veg in preparation for flower and start first 1 or 2 white hairs, water then in with a 25-50% of spray strength spinosad solution with light food. This I find gives 4 weeks or so of protection with enough time for breakdown before harvest 3 or so weeks after that with no residues. The window of protection is long enough to stop critters from eggs hatching inside buds, at the end you have 3 weeks of no protection, be vigilant and pick what you see off. I don't ever spray flowering plants and don't need to even though I grew in a literal jungle, I've learned how to deal with it.
Also some sort of silica supplementation really helps.

 

[maryjaneismyfre]

In fact with outdoors, with the right microbes in the aac and the right input composts and plants with PGRS in them like alfalfa and kelp..I've given instructions to commercial field vegetable farmers and they have done two season applications to half a field as an experiment and the results were astounding! They doubled yield, waste from rots was down 7/8ths, the quality was way up across the board and they achieved double the market price and in total their net profit was up 500-1000% on that half of the field. It is vegetable farming and profits are only 20% in that case so any increase in productivity is amplified. They also changed the spray program to the above and saved a lot of money and replaced a whole storeroom of really toxic sprays with 3 or 4 products that were far more eco-friendly and cost a hellavu lot less and had less bad bugs than ever and more good bugs than ever. Big agri still has a lot to learn from us. There are many tools available to help the grower these days. And you don't have the be destructive to nature either.

 

[MJPassion]

Pheromone lure traps may be your best bet.


Find the types of moths that are attacking your gals then get the appropriate lure traps. They're used in the orchard industry.

 

[Bjorn to farm.]

Any insect cloth is going to throw a lot of shade.

 

[Hookahhead]

Do you know if neem grows wild around you? I live in Central America, near the equator and have hundreds of neem trees around me. I posted a guide on how to find and process it if it's in you're area. I find it's not very effective against every pest the internet seems to claim. However, I have definitely seen it proven effective against caterpillars.
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=357306

A bit of research to back my personal observations.
Effect of Neem Extract on Lymatria dispar L. (Lepidoptera: Lymantriidae) and Leptinotarsa decemlineata Say. (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae)
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274249441_Effect_of_Neem_Extract_on_Lymatria_dispar_L_Lepidoptera_Lymantriidae_and_Leptinotarsa_decemlineata_Say_Coleoptera_Chrysomelidae

 

[PDX Dopesmoker]

Direct sunlight is over 1000watts per meter square so you can probably cut a lot of that light off with shade and still grow nice plants. Doing some kinda total bug netting in the wild is some kinda challenge though. Thats like building a greenhouse in the wilderness on the sly or something

 

[Fermented]

Direct sunlight is over 1000watts per meter square so you can probably cut a lot of that light off with shade and still grow nice plants. Doing some kinda total bug netting in the wild is some kinda challenge though. Thats like building a greenhouse in the wilderness on the sly or something

That's for sure, especially when you factor in 100 mph storms that can happen several times per year so it's not practical at all so I would take down the nets before a storm approaches, it would also be just a net that was strung from trees without any support poles so it would look less conspicuous, but hey, a big net is still a big net and would be seen faster than my little cammo plots so I'll probably just try and go harder and try for more from the Winter and Spring harvests.

For this year's Summer grow I'll take into consideration all the helpful advice in this thread.

Happy Harvest!

Just yesterday, at a small plot with plants in early flowering I picked off 4 or 5 caterpillars from each plant, but this time of the year the eat the bigger leaves and don't live in the buds. These caterpillars have spikes all over their bodies and are thicker than most and 3/4 inch long. They form a cocoon with the serrated edges of the fan leaves joined together, so are easy to spot and squash/remove. These are not a problem, growing in the "Winter" here is great, about 99% of the problems I get during the Summer/Fall grows are just not a concern, the only problem is yield as the seedlings flower immediately when planted out, the other problem is sunlight in an established rain forest in Winter, with the sun being lower in the sky, most of my little plots barely get enough sun due to being surrounded by trees that get taller each year.

 

[ganjaloveru]

It is all is very good.