Termites In Outdoor Plants. Not And Ideal Situation.

[Cajafiesta]

A quick Google search tells me that Termites are pretty uncommon in the UK, but I figure it's worth a shout, as there are members here in other parts of the world. 

 

 

Myself and Growerbuddy have several large holes at our outdoor grow with multiple plants in them.  One hole that contains something like 4 established, flowering Big Bud plants is apparently infested with termites.  The plants were doing weird stuff and the hole looked odd, out of nowhere.  We found one of the plants laid over on the ground on Saturday, but were confused.  The plant, visually, looked alive and well, but it was as if it lost it's "backbone" and just flopped over on several of the side branches..  We assumed a deer had bedded down in the hole and laid on the plant.  Fast forward to today, and the entire plant has flopped over, still green and alive looking, with broken stems and termites crawling out of the stems. 

 

 

Then it hit us.  The compost we used this year had a large percentage of wood chips as a base.  Shit. 

 

 

 

Do any of you folks have any experience with eliminating termites and/or preventing them from spreading?  

 

 

I've considered using Termite Spikes ( pretty standard over here around the perimeter of homes) around the perimeter of the plants at a distance that, I think, will be away from the plant root systems.  Something like making a circle around the holes that's around a 3 meter diameter.  I'm not concerned about the pesticide getting to the flowers from the "dosed" termites, but I am concerned about the plant root systems intaking the pesticide.    So that's something to look into. 

 

 

Boric acid apparently kills the shit out of them, but I'm not sure that there's a practical way to get it into an established colony.  And even if we can manage to achieve that, I have no idea what the impact to the plants and us will be from Boric Acid. 

 

 

Figured I'd see if anyone has any good ideas.  We've already lost a plant that would have easily yielded a pound, if it made it to the end game.  Ideally, we'd like to avoid any more of that, obviously. 

 

 

I'm all ears if anyone has any brilliant ideas. 

 

 

Thanks, Y'all!

[blackpoolbouncer]

First of all.......its not termites eating your plants. 

 

Back to the drawing board. It's something else.

Termites eat wood not healthy vegetative matter.

 

Edit. Actually I may stand to be corrected. There is some reports of it.

I would have thought the plants would have to be very woody but yea. Termites spikes probably not a bad shout 

Edited August 22, 2022 by blackpoolbouncer

[Cajafiesta]

It is most certainly termites. 
 

They eat the stems from the bottom up, from the inside out.  Growerbuddy split the stem and termites came crawling out of it. These are plants with 2.5” (errrrrr 6ish cm ) diameter main stems. 
 

I did some research. Consumer grade spikes are Hexaflumuron. It’s apparently an insect growth inhibitor. It prevents them from molting and they die. Allegedly, the workers take it back to the nest and distribute it as feed. 

According to a published paper on the stuff, it has low solubility in water and is pretty unwilling to separate from the soil. So I’m assuming risk of uptake by the plants adjacent to the spikes is lowish. Need to read more before I trust it, though. 

 

[MindSoup]

Arrrggghhhhh keep getting singed out when I comment, properly annoying. Just wrote a nice in depth reply and its disappeared, again..... 

 

Anyway long story short 

 

Not sure on either but maybe try Cinnamon (ants hate it so maybe termites do as well) or Neem (not sure about termites but from what I've read it kills anything that eats live plant material and nothing that doesn't). 

 

 

[Thai Stick]

Hmmm this is food for thought.... 

 

Interesting to stumble upon this as a number of weeks back at my outdoor plot where I was using tree logs to create a raised bed which was filled with lots of used pest moss soil, I had noticed the previous crop suffered a few losses which I put down to torrential rain. 

When I re planted this time i turned a few logs and they were infested with termites. 

Suffice to say I scrapped the logs and have used a bunch of bricks instead. 

 

Now the holes were dug around a meter deep, with the bottom half lots of old branches, leaves, elephant shit, cow shit, chicken shit, horse shit, then the top half is old peatmoss that's got some fish shit mixed in. 

 

Makes me wonder what is going on down there

 

 

 

 

[Baron von greenback]

3 hours ago, Thai Stick said:

Hmmm this is food for thought.... 

 

Interesting to stumble upon this as a number of weeks back at my outdoor plot where I was using tree logs to create a raised bed which was filled with lots of used pest moss soil, I had noticed the previous crop suffered a few losses which I put down to torrential rain. 

When I re planted this time i turned a few logs and they were infested with termites. 

Suffice to say I scrapped the logs and have used a bunch of bricks instead. 

 

Now the holes were dug around a meter deep, with the bottom half lots of old branches, leaves, elephant shit, cow shit, chicken shit, horse shit, then the top half is old peatmoss that's got some fish shit mixed in. 

 

Makes me wonder what is going on down there

 

 

 

 

Don't know about termites but dr schimmels red spider mite liquid will kill them and won't hurt your plants also I would dig there nest out they go deep I think or get chainsaw put a pipe on the exhaust and smoke them out mate my thinking is they live in a very well controlled environment that's why they build them towers they will either die or relocate I would think

[Thai Stick]

One thing I can definitely recommend not to do.... 

Is pour gasoline into the nest and set it on fire.... 

Their nests can stretch quite far. 

I could see smoke appearing from the ground in neighbours gardens more than 50m away. 

It was a very arse clenching moment.