Hay gang,

I was wondering if anyone out there would be so kind as to look at my pictures and help me out by identifying the problem. I'm assuming that it is either a fungal issue or a deficiency issue. It's not a major disaster as it has been going on for a while (over a year) and my garden is doing well (although bud size has been sporadic from huge to mediocre).

The damage tends to be isolated to just a few leaves and it generally shows up in veg cycle on a leaf or two per plant. In flowering another leaf or two will be affected. I tend to believe it is a deficiency of some sort and thanks to the good people here, I've been addressing my compost shortages and hope that any deficiencies I do have will soon be resolved.

cheers!

Looks like thrip damage to me mate. 908

me too .....thrip attack seems most likely , if you cant see them then get one of those sticky insect traps and they'll soon show themselves

hmmm I'm not seeing any. I'll have to take a closer look during the day (me garden is dark right now).

I've got white flies and fungus gnats and have been using sticky traps for them. Getting some parasitic wasps tomorrow and watering with nematods to deal with that. Might that help in the fight against thrips?

cheers!

whitefly will produce the kind of damage you have randall

some of that soap type insecticide will see them off or even a drop of two of washing up liquid/detergent in a plant spray will do the trick

excellent. Thank you so very much dear sir.

Scotts Bug Clear will get rid of them if you are not too far into flowering.

Works a treat.


regards
chrisesq

ahhh. but I am in san francisco. I'm trying to avoid sprays. I used some prymethium (sp?) and it really was messy and slowed growth down quite a bit.

My white fly infestation was really bad prior to that. Now I'm sort of holding steady. They are most prevelant on my oldest plants so I've been ripping off leaves that have nasty infestations (white flies infest one leaf bad and then move on from there).

Now the funny thing is that in my veg room, where I first see the damage above, I don't have any white flies. In fact the leaves look pretty clean. I need to look more closely me thinks.

~sigh~

That looks like bug damage to me, either thrip or whitefly.

Best solution in flower is a contact spray that either smothers them or dessicates them. As cf says a soap type spray will kill them without harming your plants or depositing any harsh chemicals, just make sure you spray the underside of the leaves where the bugs are. And spray at regular intervals to catch any newly hatched pests. Don't be ripping the leaves off if they can still photosynthesise or you'll slow your plants down.

Thanks felix.

I don't like ripping off any leaf until it is nearly ready to fall off on it's own, but when you find a leaf that is infested (makes me skin crawl it does) it may be best to rip it off. I was advised that by my hydro shop guy and he really seems to know his stuff (the owner, not so much his help).

I don't like sprays of any sort as they gum up the stomota and slow growth. I've been keeping it under control by taking EVERY plant and cleaning EVERY leaf by hand. It's effective but very tedious and hugly time consuming. But worth it to avoid spraying.

I'm going to try the biological controls next and see how that works. If it isn't happening I'll try sprays again.

Cheers everyone. Everyones suggestions have helped in some way. You folks are the best!

its admirable to be so against using any foreign agents on your plants randall but really a little soap is so innocuous as to not matter.
i have used a mild soap spray on my veg for thrips and the plants far from suffering will thank you for getting rid of the hitch hikers.

there are plenty of commercial sprays that are very kind to the plants and derived from plant extracts themselves and its also possible to make your own insecticide if you dont want to spend out.

its been a while since i had my own garden but i used to treat infestation with homemade sprays (as well as companion planting)
boiled up rhubarb leaves are an effective organic insecticide as well as a brew made from old cigarette ends ( the rhubarb spray is a much nicer thing to make tho )


if you are getting to the stage where you have to remove leaves because they are so infested then you need to intervene with a spray for the sake of your plants (imho)

definetly thrips that is use scotts bug clear its amaizing that stuff is , also flush ur plants but let the run off go into a bucket and not the trays then empty the run off water down the toilet ,


i had thrips its hard toget rid of them all but i just change my trays every day and every time i feed my plants i collect the run off in a bucket then throw away i dont care about losing abit of nutrients

thrips dont live in the soil so flushing aint going to help

edit blue sticky traps work with thrips ,but looks like you may have a lot of them

~just groans~

they might not live in soil but how i found i had thrips was by looking in my trays ? dont they attack the roots ?

Like cf says there are soap sprays that are incredibly gentle on your plants, they can be used on veg that are going to be harvested that day. It's a lot less time consuming and ultimately damaging to your plants as you are not twisting the leaf stems and bending them regularly.

no they eat the greenery

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