“Vintage Pakistani x 88g13/hp (Deep Line Alchemy 11)” from Bodhi Seeds filling up my 6x4x6 greenhouse. A bit too crowded but it’s what I’ve got for now, I’m hoping to have a larger house for next season🤞
How well has the spinach been working to keep the grasshoppers distracted? Genuinely curious.
The spinach is in there to be protected from the grasshoppers outside. As far as I can tell there’s only a couple of baby grasshoppers left inside the greenhouse (if any) and so far they’ve not noticed the spinach.
Oh, my apologies.
I misunderstood your earlier post - I thought that you were using the spinach as a trap plant to distract the grasshoppers from your cannabis.
Hey so this morning we noticed aphids on the spinach so we yoinked that out of the greenhouse. I did a semi-thorough inspection and didn’t see any aphids or spots on the cannabis, so maybe it was acting as a trap plant as you suggested.
I’m going to take a closer look in the morning and probably hit them with a (hopefully final) round of neem solution just to be safe.
Neem has a pretty high chance of burning the pistils, which can stunt the flowers’ development, reduce your yield, and provide vectors for botrytis (bud rot). If it were me, I’d explore other options first.
Here on the farm, we use green lacewing larva with great success - they get right to work on eating up the aphids. If you don’t see any aphids on your plants but still want a preventative measure, assassin bug eggs are pretty cheap and should hatch within a week of receiving them.
If you’re in the US or Canada, I can recommend a great retailer for the assassin bug eggs if you’d like. And if you’re in the PNW I can also recommend one for the lacewing larva as well. Otherwise, your local grow store should hopefully know of a distributor.
Not in the PNW, but yes please share your source for the assassin bug eggs. Thanks!
thanks!
All good my friend! It’s actually a great idea :)
I know Marigolds have a deterrent quality to them for pest like bugs and stay in bloom for quite a while. But I’m not sure if they’d help with grasshoppers. We used them around our tomatoes this year with great success!
Absolutely! Rosemary, Lavender, and Basil also work in that regard with some pests too.
There’s also trap plants you can use to lure certain pests away from the plants you care more about.
For example, I use bush beans for spider mites. By keeping the beans near my crop, if spider mites make it into the greenhouses, they typically go for the beans first. So if I see mites on the beans, I can then take preventative measure to protect my crop.
