Harvesting CATERPILLARS!

Hello everyone,

I have two plants under 500W HPS. They're both in 5 gallon coco/peat homemade amended soil. One of the plants is due to be put into dark tomorrow and the other has about a week left on it.

The problem is CATERPILLARS! I had several plants and was letting the last two amber up a little bit before the chop. About a week ago I noticed a leaf that was disintegrating. Upon further inspection I found a couple caterpillars in the mulch. Now this week my two plants are totally devastated. I pulled nine 2 inchers off the ladies last night. They seem to congregate on one more than the other. They have eaten off all of the fan leaves are working on the sugar leaves. The buds are very dense so I do not think they could penetrate into the middle, but I may be wrong. They have chewed up some of the supplementary limbs so much so that they can barely support the buds and are bending from the weight.

Is there anything this close to harvest that I can do? They have had barely any bug maintenance. Ladybugs and some neem spray in veg kept them bug free until now. Is spinosad or bacteria bacillus thurgeinsis of any use this late in the game? Pyrethrum? I kept the caterpillars alive so that I can test products on them, but I don't want sprays to ruin my buds.

If I put them in the dark for several days before harvest will the caterpillars keep eating them in the dark? Should I chop and wet trim to make sure they're rid of the cats? I have never dealt with this before sorry so many questions. Usually an inside grow but i had to keep doors and windows open because of intense heat....guessing how moths got in.

so close to chop , go ahead and chop or do it like the old timers b4 solutions in a bottle , sit in there and hunt them down . drag your fingers thru the dirt and kill em on the spot

sounds like budworm, but how you got this indoors beats me. Chop emdown. Dont wanna use pesticides this late into the season on your ripe buds, will throw the taste off

agreed

I cant hunt down a pest unless I see it first.

You kept them alive so you can test products on them....

You are a sick bastard! lol.

Thanks guys. I have really gone through the two remaining plants (I already harvested four others thankfully without caterpillar problems) and can't find any remaining. That's not to say they are not there in hiding.

I usually let them get two days of dark and then hang for 6 days then trim. Should I skip the dark and hanging and just cut down and trim then dry? I am afraid I will put them in the dark and there will be remaining bugs eating at the buds.

There is also little black pellets on the lower branches assuming poop. They are seriously stuck to the trichomes. Can I just get a duster and blow them away(Not sure if there is chemicals in computer duster), or maybe a basketball pump or a soft rinse with water?

The best bug defense is keeping the environment hostile to the bugs and healthy for the plants.(ac,Co2,early bug prevention,proper humidity)

soft body worms will probably dry up along with the bud. dry it a little first then put in the freezer for an hour or two.

if they are big enough to poop on your buds you should be able to pick them off. have you tried dunking them in water? your plants can hold their breath but bugs cant. cannabis oil is not water soluble so i wouldn't worry about washing the thc off just dont shake it under water a whole lot .

You could water cure your weed and they will float to the top of the water.

i hate me sum water cured grass . chop em , hang em & hope for the best

Dr.Pecker said:

if they are big enough to poop on your buds you should be able to pick them off. have you tried dunking them in water? your plants can hold their breath but bugs cant. cannabis oil is not water soluble so i wouldn't worry about washing the thc off just dont shake it under water a whole lot .

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These plants are pretty big. Close to the 3 feet tall, and now they are very weak and falling apart. I would be afraid to submerge them in water. I was thinking a rinse with RO water out of a spray bottle might have enough intensity to get them off. The really degraded ones are going into the butter. I'm assuming caterpillar poo and bacteria will be harmless after being cooked at high temps for a couple days.

I like your idea of putting them in the freezer. I dry my trim in the freezer and it cures pretty well in there. I'm guessing the bud shouldn't have any degradation spending a few hours in the freeze.

I have never heard of water curing. Looked into it a little and it sounds EXTREMELY different from what I am use to, and kind of scares me. Right now I can channel all of my hate towards the crawling critters. I would not be so forgiving if I blundered and rendered them useless.

What also scares me is that I have a couple plants hanging dry that were never touched by the bugs and I don't want to put them in the same room as them. I may try a whole new proess. I was reading that another drying technique is to trim right after the chop then lay the buds on a window screen and dry them out. it seems to dry them out a lot faster but at least this way I can know right away what's inside of my buds, and not sit around watering what is happening in the dark.

I am starting to see prevention is the cure. Never dealt with bugs inside before. This is my first time in a very tropical feeling climate (zone 1), and I was not expecting summer to hit so hard and fast. I had to open doors and windows to bring temps down which is also damaging the late bloomers. Last summer harvest I'll be doing for a while.

what do you think about a food dehydrator? maybe put the bud on a cookie sheet and stick it in the oven on as low as it goes 170 degrees if it goes that low and leave the door cracked open a bit. just for a little while until the outer sweet leaves get crispy. can you take a picture and show us what this monster looks like?

if you leave the door cracked the element will never shutt off and cook them . heat it to 170 turn off oven turn on oven light and leave the door shut . but thenm gonna be some subpar bud i think because theyve dryed wayy too fast .

It has its problems but it makes good beef jerkey.

I think hes just looking for a way to kill the worms. Ive never even seen bud worms before they sound bad . I took an old food dehydrator and disabled the heating element. now its just a dark box with a fan and some screens to lay the bud on if i need it to dry fast (rained on or mold issues) but I haven't needed it in over a year.

catipillar jerky , high in micro & macro nutes uummmmmmmm good . its popular in thailand anyway for that matter any bug is on the menu ,the cockroaches seem a bit too chewy & im afraid of the cream center that squishes out when u bite them in half . otherwise nom nom nom nom nom

tommy tang is the shit he makes good fwied bwon wice