I have used many many products for pest and mildew control while growing. I am kind of a tester for my grow store. I personally find that the best that I have used thus far is Neem Oil. It just controls so many different things as well as controlling pests. It is kinda the catch all for preventatives. Fungus, mildew, pests. For mites I have had a great sucess rate with it, you just have to apply it in a regular cycle and your pests will disappear. Basically for any kind of pesticide you use, if you use it as often as the eggs hatch, you will erradicate your pests. This requires that you spray every 3 days. R E L I G I O U S L Y. . . I mean when you spray, the plants should be sagging and dripping. I spray from the bottom to the top first hitting the bottoms of the leaves really well and then spray the tops after. You have to spray every 3 days or you will still have pests popping up randomly.
In general, the Neem Oil seems to last a lot longer than anything else. After I dose the plants with Neem for the first time, the problems virtually go away. This is where you can't be complacent like I have in the past, lol. You think they are gone, but they aren't. You HAVE to spray again 3 days later, and then do a spray another 3 days after that. I normally will try to hit them with a water spray or a Power Wash spray in between. So basically plan on spraying your plants with something for 10 days straight and the problem will go away. This is how you eradicate the bugs. It works 100% every time. The problem is that it is such a pain in the a$$ to take each plant out of my room and give it all the TLC it needs EVERYDAY for a week and a half! I am a busy man between the dispensary and my grow. So the problem I run into is that I normally can only spray every 5 days, which keeps everything in check very well. But it does not get rid of the problem all together.
The dosage that I use is just as it says on the bottle. 4 TBS/gal with 1/3 tsp wetting agent. I have used Antibacterial dish soap when I ran out of wetting agent and it worked quite well also, some people say that it decreases the effectiveness, I thought it actually helped a bit more. Shake vigorously often to keep the mix emulsified. It will cling together in cooler water. I use tepid water, not cold, but not hot. Too hot decreases effectiveness and I don't like to shock the plants with cold water, though some say that they only use cold water to foliar. I prefer Neem Oil over anything else. It is my go to if I have some really infected plants. The only bad thing about it is that you can't really use it in the last 2-3 weeks of flowering because it can leave a bitter after taste in your buds.
I just started using this other stuff called Purespray. It is OMRI certified. It is essentially just a horticultural oil from what I understand. I sprayed my plants in veg as I am dealing with an infestation at the moment. After a couple of days, I must say that I am pretty impressed with the results. I mixed a dosage just like I did for Neem and sprayed all my mothers and veg plants down. It looks as though I'll have a new veg spray. I have heard not to use during flowering. It doesn't say why, I assume because it is a heavy oil base and could affect the bud negatively. For veg though, so far it has been great. The plants loved it when I sprayed them and perked up quite a bit after the drenching.
For my plants that have an outbreak in the last few weeks of flowering, I'll use Mighty Wash. It says that it is safe to use up to the day of harvest and that it is a frequency tuned water that is tuned to kill mites, their other products focus on other things such as PM wash for Mildew, Power Wash as a cleaner, and Mighty Wash for mites. I have had mixed results with it. When using before a harvest it has worked great in killing the bugs, but when used during early flowering, the bugs just kinda shrugged it off. For early flowering I use Neem and only use Mighty Wash at the end, and then the night before I harvest, I will give it a final wash with Power Wash or PM Wash since those are basically just clear liquid, where as the Mighty Wash is pink, has a pleasant smell, and can leave a bit of a residue.
I hope this helps you a bit. I'm sorry it's lengthy. I got into some good Urkle tonight.
I am going to start a thread on my experiences with Organic Pesticides and Fungistats for people to look at to get an idea of what the products do. Keep an eye out. -Bird
