You've obviously never hunted thrips. Easy as hell to kill them by hand. You just give the leaf a gentle run between your fingers quickly.
Soapy tasting buds suck and they will taste of soap. If you must use it add some canola oil to the mix. 7 - 10ml/L. Put it in a smaller amount of water with the soap and gently mix it inn by rocking the container back and forth so it doesn't foam up then add the amount of water needed to get the level you want. Canola oil is actually the killing ingredient in a lot of so-called organic bug sprays. Neem oil works too but will really make your buds taste nasty.
Soapy tasting buds suck and they will taste of soap. If you must use it add some canola oil to the mix. 7 - 10ml/L. Put it in a smaller amount of water with the soap and gently mix it inn by rocking the container back and forth so it doesn't foam up then add the amount of water needed to get the level you want. Canola oil is actually the killing ingredient in a lot of so-called organic bug sprays. Neem oil works too but will really make your buds taste nasty.
If I were to spray anything I'd try 5% peroxide or even some diluted iso-propal alcohol. ISO Won't leave a taste or residue.
How much leaf damage are you seeing? Thrips make little windows in the leaves as they suck the juices out of one area in a block and not randomly over the leaves like mites. New damage looks shiny on the surface of the leaf so it's fairly easy to see where new feeding activity is going on. Gets dull after a day or two.
Not my first rodeo with those little f'ers.
I used to get the 35% food grade peroxide from the health food store but now they only have the 29% and the other store I was at only had 17% and they wanted $20/L for it. I just dilute it down to the strength I want with a simple algebraic equation.
That stuff probably works as good as anything but will still ruin buds if sprayed in flowering. I use Safer's Ends All II with a little neem or canola oil added to get rid of thrips, mites etc. A bottle of the concentrated Safer's is only $14 and makes 10L of mix at 50ml/L and only 10ml or less of neem or canola oil to make it more effective. Sprayed one branch on an AK47 plant 2 weeks into flowering and cropped the plant about 2 weeks ago. I tagged that branch and tried smoking a bit of that bud and it's horrible! Tossed out those buds as I don't even want to use them to make oil with. I can only imagine what the buds would have been like if I sprayed 6 weeks into flowering. Might as well toss the plants now and save the hassle of spraying at all.
Yes, will just have to see if I can find any to buy in my area or if I can order from abroad.
That's exactly what I'm doing once a day now, and so far it doesn't seem like more damage is done to the leaves. I caught it pretty early stages with only 2 plants having a couple of leaves each affected so it's not impossible to kill them by hand at this point. Hope I can keep this up 'til harvest.
If you keep at it now they will be gone in a couple weeks or less and you shouldn't have any when you go into flower.
Spinosad, man, spinosad.
Is Spinosad available in California?
i would be amazed if it was not, Jayne. it's been omri rated organic since 2003
I would think so, the brand I use is called Monterey Garden Spray.
i've been using the bonide brand, "captain jack's dead bug brew", pretty effective, the concentrate is pretty cheap, 25-30 bucks a quart, and a quart lasted me almost two years. i use it in my garden outside too. if you spray it in the evening, it's safe for bees. until bug's start to develop resistance to it, it's the shit. if you alternate spinosad and pyrethin, they never get used to it and it wipes them all out
What, no Trump hate to go with your usual copy/paste and babble?
Your mother, pinhead.
So... ignored.