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Pest control with predators


Guest Totemic
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I love organic gardening, and never use any pesticides on any plants.

 

When I started growing cannabis indoors however, I was forced to use pesticides, especially to control red spider mites.

 

In nature, it's an eat or be eaten world, with no pesticides, and that got me researching predator insects that love aphids, white fly, and most of all spider mites. So the result was that the common ladybug is best suited for this job, but I can't see myself going on a bug hunt to find enough of these little beetles to be effective. Go and look for these, and you'd be surprised just how hard they are to find. Then there is also no place where you can buy them "off the shelf" in South Africa.

 

But, it is actually easy to get your own sustainable supply of ladybugs going right in your back yard, for the price of a store bought head of Celery.

 

We all always chuck the base of the celery in the bin, but you can regrow it.

 

Here is how you can do this: www.17apart.com/2012/02/growing-celery-indoors-never-buy-celery.html

 

I did this 6 months ago in mid Winter, planted out the plant to a sunny spot in spring, and I now have an almost 2m flowering Celery plant.

 

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To the point though; aphids just can't resist the juicy soft stems of the Celery plant, and if you leave them to proliferate, soon various insects arrive, but one in particular makes themselves home. The ladybug.

 

The plant will soon be teaming with what seems to be a few different insects, but in actual fact they are all ladybugs in different stages of their development, and all eating as many aphids as they can.

 

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This one plant in my garden is producing enough ladybugs for the entire neighborhood I'm sure, and there are plenty left to service any indoor environment.

 

Some further reading on ladybugs: http://www.lostladybug.org/files/9%20LLP%20All%20About%20LadybugsPDF.pdf

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

I think the better idea would be to keep them outdoors and take individual beetles indoors. 10-20 beetles would work well in an average indoor environment size. The beetles live for quite a while, and do return back to the celery plant while they have babies there. I have noticed that they nurse them by carrying aphids to the larvae, so taking the whole plant and moving it around from outdoor to indoor, I reckon you risk serious indoor contamination.

 

I'm just not sure what effect your other pesticides will have on the beetles. I use no pesticides in an outdoor environment, and very little indoors, limiting it to neem oil only really.

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  • 3 years later...

I thought I'd bring an old thread back to life.

20181219_065847.thumb.jpg.8d198474043d925f08bb656d60fa2691.jpg

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Every year in my garden ladybugs breed like crazy. This year they have taken a liking to my coliander.

I will be collecting larvae and eggs this year and set up and research a captive breeding program.

They have a verocious appetite for the most common plant pests and have allowed me to garden pesticide free for years.

:-peace

 

 

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