Organic kick in the face for root aphids?

[nksv]

Neem meal. Did one or two waterings with neem oil. Top dress neem or mix with soil.

 

[KIS]

https://mlachapell.com/

 

[Alt_organix]

Botanigard has worked for us before on a bad infection. Use it as a soul drench twice 72 hours apart.

 

[VerdantGreen]

adding neem meal to the soil will prevent them, and it is a good fertilizer. i use 2-3g meal per litre of soil.

for existing plants try topdressing.

but yeah i would throw the soil away and start again for any new plants. good recycled soil is quite precious, but recycled soil infested with pests is just a liability.

VG

 

[redlaser]

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[moses wellfleet]

Seem to have had some success with macrocheles robustulus soil dwelling predator mites. Very similar to hypoaspis miles but they have a wider range of prey.

 

[growinthehills]

Have you tried Doctor Zymes, Nukem or Big Time Exterminator? I never tried any of those personally on root aphids but, I noticed that big time had a rate of only 5ml per gallon for soil applications and gave it as a suggestion to a couple customer when I worked at a garden store. One customer had root aphids on Dahlia's or some ornamental flower and the other was using it for cannabis and both came back and told me it really knocked them down.

I haven't had root aphids since those products came out otherwise I would definitely try it out. I did use it in between runs on recycled soil as a preventative and to maybe lower the population of russet mites hanging out in my soil.

 

[SICE]

They attacked some plants real bad.

I started applying been meal and they seem to respect the plant more... Not killing it as fast

I'm going to add some hydrogen peroxide to experiment

Anyone try watering with chilly water? Maybe it works like it does on spidermites

 

[DeluxeBerry]

Cold water works against spider mites? Tell me more, ive never heard of that one.

 

[CareStaker]

Cold water and Spino dispatched my mites in two sprays. Granted it was in winter, and I caught it early. The males were visible for about a week to 10 days after the second spray, but no females...and knock on wood they seem to be gone for the last two months.

 

[Cannavore]

Homemade worm castings chock full of 'todes and predator mites.

I use neem meal in the soil too.

 

[moses wellfleet]

If you are using soil drench measures like Beauveria Bassiana, nematodes, or neem oil. The bigger the container the more difficult it is to get full coverage. There are just too many places for the root aphids to hide in a 15 gallon container.

 

[TanzanianMagic]

Got a root aphid problem that is rapidly getting out of control. Will have to shut down and start over I guess!

While I have plants that are suffering, all different stages in perpetual grow, I want to use the opportunity to experiment, r&d etc. Try find something that will knock them back. So far tried beauvaria bassiana, steinerama nematodes, and predator mites. Difficult to know what effect these measures had. May have slowed them down!

Garlic. You should plant a clove of garlic in your pots, or sprinkle some dried garlic (not powder) on top of the soil.

The sulfur content alone discourages insects.

 

[moses wellfleet]

I'm not sure spice rack remedies are gonna get this!

Are you speaking from personal experience? I'm willing to try anything at this point. I guess it may help repelling them, and deter them from becoming established in the first place!

 

[calisun]

Got a mix of root aphids and fungus gnats. mainly fungus gnats but pretty sure I saw a few root aphids from eb stone recipe 420 soil. Repoted the plants and rubbed off the top inch or two of soil in the trash. Used met-52 soil drench. Covered the top of the pots with neem meal and put up a bunch of yellow sticky traps up. That all worked very well form . Went back to FF ocean forest. Most all pest come from the soil. when I get a new bag of soil I open it up spray a little water in it and put a yellow sticky trap in it and wait a couple days to see what I catch. Every time I pot up I spray with organic pesticides two to three days after and once more a couple days after that.
Evergreen growers online has the new formula Met-52. Mixes better and longer shelf life.
Good luck

 

[TanzanianMagic]

I'm not sure spice rack remedies are gonna get this!

Are you speaking from personal experience? I'm willing to try anything at this point. I guess it may help repelling them, and deter them from becoming established in the first place!

Very recent personal experience - yes.

Garlic is an old folk remedy known to deter all kinds of parasites.

Insects operate by smells and chemical messages.

The truth is that plants have many ways of dealing with insect attack, and garlic, onion, etc. use a high sulfur content to discourage feeding. And possibly do much more. Also cannabis likes sulfur because it needs to make cannabinoids. The resin itself is mainly silica, which is the main component of sand.

Last summer I had a problem with ants. Turns out that ants have colonies, from which they send out individual pioneers. When these pioneers find a food source, they take some of it, and leave a smell trail back to the nest. The worker ants then follow that trail, and all of a sudden you have a massive ant population. The solution is to elminate the smell trail with any strong smelling detergent, then eliminate the ants on your plants. And keep an eye out for more pioneers.

Our problem generally is that through industrialisation of agriculture, we are creating monocrops where there is only one plant for insects to feed on. Back in the old days, there were always strips of weeds next to fields, because farmers knew it suppressed pest pressure on their crops. Most likely by giving pests an easier food source, and creating an environment for predator insects.

This year I'm experimenting with growing a pot with just herbs - anise, dille, garlic so far, to see what it does.

 

[TanzanianMagic]

I'm not sure spice rack remedies are gonna get this!

Are you speaking from personal experience? I'm willing to try anything at this point. I guess it may help repelling them, and deter them from becoming established in the first place!

I just tried it out again last week, and yes it works very well. I lost one seedling because fungus larvae got to the roots and stunted it's growth.

After adding a clove of garlic to the soil, it certainly scared away the fungus gnat larvae. One seedling was lost to stunting and hermying because it's roots had been eaten by the larvae in the same pot. I was a little worried it might interfere with the germination of the seed, however it didn't. One Flash Seeds Panama Lime super auto is coming up.

It works very well. Cheers.

 

[moses wellfleet]

Pyrethrum works really well. Kills all stages of root aphids visible on the roots within 30 minutes of a soil drench. It may be possible to control even serious infestations with a weekly soil drench of pyrethrum.

The source was from a company the sterilizes organic fruit for expert. It came in wholesale containers so no brand name!

 

[wasgedn]

em.em-a as prevention....em5 for killing them..but its always something out of balance...thats the reason the aphids can go forward...you need to balance out..to much fert is stress..especialy bottle nutes