Ladybugs, Lacewings, and Trifecta

Have not been posting pics because plants in my bloom room are frosted with powdery mildew. Only a few clones in the veg area are showing signs of PM but the rest of my grow is infested with wooly aphids.
It started with some minor flooding that wasn’t properly dealt with and then we saw bugs that I thought were thrips. Spraying spinosad and neem oil on the plants did not quell them; after several wet downs the powdery mildew appeared and got worse from there. Turns out they are wooly aphids; millions of them.
Started by getting a new dehumidifier to help dry up basement. Ordered some lady bugs and green lace wings to hopefully eat the wooly aphids. I also ordered something called Trifecta; supposed to get rid of PM. Not cheap but worth a shot if it works.
Has anyone tried Trifecta?
Looks to be “all natural” but should I wait to spray plants until the ladybugs have done their thing? Worried trifecta might kill off the ladybugs…
Lacewings take awhile to hatch so they are the secondary line of defense. They come in egg form unhatched but the ladybugs are live; a few were already crawling around the box when it arrived so I put them in the grow room for now. Any help is appreciated thanks rollitup; I’ll put up some before/after pics when I get a chance…

I use Regalia for PM: https://marronebio.com/buy/regalia-cg/. It got me to harvest on some Lucky Charms genetics I needed. I hope the beneficials and Trifecta help you. But I'd never heard of it. I know Eugenol helps with dental pain and tastes terrible and is used commonly, in dentistry. I'll be curious to hear how it works and I'm very sorry you're going through this.

Pyrethrin or neem will work against the boogie woogies. As for the PM I use a dehumidifier, uva light, green cure, and very good air flow. Also a good cleaning, and leaving baking soda around the basement , changing monthly will help a little bit.

Pyrethrin will kill your beneficial insects and neem will kill them if sprayed directly on them so it might be tough to spray pesticides and use predators in conjunction

Baking soda is a great idea; gonna try that thx Nizz. Appreciate your input curious; ill go check out regalia but since I spent the dough on Trifecta I’m going to see how it does. I am worried that it will hurt the lady bugs so figure I’ll wait a few days before spraying anything else. Chose trifecta because it’s mostly just plant oils; hoping it’s safe for beneficial insects. Cannot seem to find an answer so it’s trial and error time.
There are several hundred ladybugs now roaming amongst my weed plants. They were released slowly through a small hole; kept a couple hundred in the mesh pack just in case the Trifecta spray diminishes their numbers. In other news the green lacewings eggs are laid; should hatch in a few weeks I guess. Stay tuned

Off the “PM TOPIC” but for aphids I used DE last year and it was the only thing that worked. I had millions as well. I used it on top of the medium. Then I washed buds at harvest. GL

From my experience if your gonna use the ladybugs, (or any of these guys---> https://www.naturesgoodguys.com/collections/aphid-control ) is best to get them before you have the problem.

ooof-da said:

Off the “PM TOPIC” but for aphids I used DE last year and it was the only thing that worked. I had millions as well. I used it on top of the medium. Then I washed buds at harvest. GL

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Been putting DE on my soil for awhile. Did not seem to deter them. I have wooly aphids; I used to call them thrips but I guess they are not the same thing. I was reading that PM is the result of the wooly aphids. Spraying neem oil and Monterey Garden Spray w/spinosad on the plants made the PM worse.

Week4@inCharge said:

From my experience if your gonna use the ladybugs, (or any of these guys---> https://www.naturesgoodguys.com/collections/aphid-control ) is best to get them before you have the problem.

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100% true. Neglected my indoor garden due to a family health issue; I’m sure nobody wants to hear my sob story. PM was the direct result of not solving my bug issue right away. Thought that neem oil, spinosad and DE would help fix it just as it has in the past. These wooly aphids are definitely another level of hell. Anyway the green lacewings should hatch soon and take care of any aphids the ladybugs missed. Natures good guys do ship fast; had my order in 2 days.
Have sprayed the clones and plants on veg with trifecta; will spray fine the plants badly affected by PM tonight after I take a few pics. Thanks for your input everyone

Richard Drysift said:

Been putting DE on my soil for awhile. Did not seem to deter them. I have wooly aphids; I used to call them thrips but I guess they are not the same thing. I was reading that PM is the result of the wooly aphids. Spraying neem oil and Monterey Garden Spray w/spinosad on the plants made the PM worse.


100% true. Neglected my indoor garden due to a family health issue; I’m sure nobody wants to hear my sob story. PM was the direct result of not solving my bug issue right away. Thought that neem oil, spinosad and DE would help fix it just as it has in the past. These wooly aphids are definitely another level of hell. Anyway the green lacewings should hatch soon and take care of any aphids the ladybugs missed. Natures good guys do ship fast; had my order in 2 days.
Have sprayed the clones and plants on veg with trifecta; will spray fine the plants badly affected by PM tonight after I take a few pics. Thanks for your input everyone

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I recently got a gang of gnats flying around my tent (garage grow and for the heat have to heavily ventilate with doors cracked, tent and garage) and a few critters crawling on the floor of the tent. A jungle of God knows what in my pots, the plants are doing great so I'm confident it's the Good Nature critters taking care of business. I won a few products on another forum from a photo contest and one of the products was Doctors Zymes Eliminator. Gonna give it a go this week along the floor area of the tent. I bet (or have a feeling) it's the same as the Trifecta.

Fungus gnats are fairly easy to control even without help from a bottle. DE and sticky traps usually keep them at a minimum. They come from outta my worm bin so a net over the top keeps them from escaping. They keep dying and the worms devour their carcasses over and over again. Ahh The circle of life…
Thought we had already been through the wringer on pests over the years but these fuckers are some kind of evil…

Dr Zymes is not the same thing as it says no plant oils but OMRI listed is a big plus for me. I’m kinda wishing I saw this before; costs a dollar and a half less than trifecta AND it’s organic. Looks safe; tell us how it does.
So far the trifecta doesn’t seem to bother the ladybugs even when I’m spraying the plants with it; they just hop off to another leaf and hop back on when I’m done spraying…

So this is what I’m dealing with…

Hey…who blew coke all over my plants; not cool
After spraying the trifecta PM disappears but then again neem oil did much the same…



And the ladybugs keep on doing their thing which I hope is eating up all these little white bugs.

did not spray this plant and one other I won’t even take pics of cuz it’s so fugly…they are in the final weeks as you can see but the PM is not quite as bad.
So will the ladybugs survive? Will the wooly aphids finally begone? Stay tuned and find out here when I feel like posting about this shit once again so until then peace

FYI… ladybugs do not live in the packet they ship in for long. The ones I had saved for backup died over the weekend…moment of silence thank you that is all

Pretty sure Dr Zymes is just citric acid cant say for sure. But that's a serious infestation.

Richard Drysift said:

FYI… ladybugs do not live in the packet they ship in for long. The ones I had saved for backup died over the weekend…moment of silence thank you that is all

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That sucks. I was going to mention the other day that they should be hydrated and stored in a fridge till release if releasing them in groups.

Kamau42 said:

Pretty sure Dr Zymes is just citric acid cant say for sure. But that's a serious infestation.

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Yeah don’t really like sharing bad stuff that happens; prefer to post nothing but beautiful plants all the time but I thought this info would help someone maybe. Have had issues with insects but this is just crazy; it is from trading clones. This whole thing started in my friends garden and got into the clones & spread everywhere. This has affected 3 separate grows because we all got the same clones from the same mothers.
Dr zymes lists no ingredients which makes me wonder what’s in it. Citric acid is organic.

Kushash said:

That sucks. I was going to mention the other day that they should be hydrated and stored in a fridge till release if releasing them in groups.

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Yes should have put them in the fridge I don’t know why I thought they would live. There’s still several hundred working in the bloom room. I love having them; might get more of these don’t survive the trifecta spray.

Richard Drysift said:

Dr zymes lists no ingredients which makes me wonder what’s in it. Citric acid is organic.

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Its listed front of the bottle, active ingredient is citric acid. (1%) the 99% is water, yeast, and potassium sorbate. Seems crazy for a concentrate. But, seems to be helping on this side of town. (that or the high winds took care of most of them..lol) Capful to a 32 ounce spray bottle.
And yikes, from clones. I remember being all excited about a friend giving me a plant to take home, had it sitting in a pot in his backyard. (you see where this is going) after setting it up in a 15 gallon and trimming it down...next day full of ants carrying root aphids around city.... yup, tossed that sucker and quarantined (cleaned it out with Clorox) the tent. Shit happens. How would you go about checking a clone? just spray it down as a precaution?

Richard Drysift said:

Yeah don’t really like sharing bad stuff that happens; prefer to post nothing but beautiful plants all the time but I thought this info would help someone maybe. Have had issues with insects but this is just crazy; it is from trading clones. This whole thing started in my friends garden and got into the clones & spread everywhere. This has affected 3 separate grows because we all got the same clones from the same mothers.
Dr zymes lists no ingredients which makes me wonder what’s in it. Citric acid is organic.

Yes should have put them in the fridge I don’t know why I thought they would live. There’s still several hundred working in the bloom room. I love having them; might get more of these don’t survive the trifecta spray.

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I've always been a fan of Green Lacewing larvae. Look forward to seeing how yours do.
This one was carefully caught outside for pictures using a plastic coin holder.
Catch and release.

Richard Drysift said:

Yeah don’t really like sharing bad stuff that happens; prefer to post nothing but beautiful plants all the time but I thought this info would help someone maybe. Have had issues with insects but this is just crazy; it is from trading clones. This whole thing started in my friends garden and got into the clones & spread everywhere. This has affected 3 separate grows because we all got the same clones from the same mothers.
Dr zymes lists no ingredients which makes me wonder what’s in it. Citric acid is organic.

Yes should have put them in the fridge I don’t know why I thought they would live. There’s still several hundred working in the bloom room. I love having them; might get more of these don’t survive the trifecta spray.

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I like seeing the bad and the good. I learned something. I never knew what a wolly aphid looked like. And like Kush said keep the ladybugs in the fridge.

Week4@inCharge said:

Its listed front of the bottle, active ingredient is citric acid. (1%) the 99% is water, yeast, and potassium sorbate. Seems crazy for a concentrate. But, seems to be helping on this side of town. (that or the high winds took care of most of them..lol) Capful to a 32 ounce spray bottle.
And yikes, from clones. I remember being all excited about a friend giving me a plant to take home, had it sitting in a pot in his backyard. (you see where this is going) after setting it up in a 15 gallon and trimming it down...next day full of ants carrying root aphids around city.... yup, tossed that sucker and quarantined (cleaned it out with Clorox) the tent. Shit happens. How would you go about checking a clone? just spray it down as a precaution?

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My friend and I have been throwing clones back and forth for years. Never had an issue before; to be honest I didn’t even check for bugs.
Anyway this is day one after spraying Trifecta. Ladybugs are alive & doing their thing but there are still an fuckton of aphids on some of the younger plants. Not sure if they are all dead but don’t see them moving…double tapping them just to be sure.

Day two; after 2 drenchings of Trifecta.

Seeing no live aphids on the plants. They all appear to be dead. Ladybugs are unfazed by Trifectas lethal poison but they don’t seem to wanna eat the aphid carcasses. Smart fuckers…