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Lady bugs?


Oolong83
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Hey guys

This is rather urgent, my grow area has become infested with spider mites. Ive gone the neemoil route, but they are persistent little fuckers. My next route is to get lady bugs, however i have no idea where to get them. Does anyone know where i can purchase ladybugs in the Blouberg area? 

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What stage of growth are you in? Neem oil is a preventative and wont treat infestations. Pyrol will do that. The Margaret Roberts or Ludwigs spray will also do the trick but it stinks, rather spend a bit more on Pyrol.

I used to stay in Table View and the builders warehouse there used to stock it. Not sure if it still does, nevertheless you wont struggle finding it in the cape

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11 hours ago, Bakstein420 said:

How difficult would it be to breed lady bugs? Would there possibly be a big enough market for them?

Looked into this a while back....

Ladybugs and their larvae are voracious eaters. Youd need a massive supply of aphids, spidermites etc to keep a high individual cycle going. So you would in fact have to adopt a number of breeding programs to make it sustainable.

Then, they dont do well in indoor environments overall, and they will more likely be focused on escape than de-pesting.

My solution is to provide an outdoor area, my veggie garden, where they breed and flourish in summer. That way I can catch a few and take them indoors. The larvae are a better choice to take indoors.

 

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Hi @Oolong83 , just wanted to add that @Totemic is right about the ladybug breeding, not impossible for personal use, dont know about selling. I documented some of my ladybird breeding project this year, u can check it here if u are interested 

 Solid advice from @greenkush there most likely the best route if u want to stay organic and the flowers started.

Best of luck with it man! :-greenthumb

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  • 1 month later...

Hi guys. I also have issues with spider mites up to a point where there's webbing over the actual bud, let alone a little webbing on the leaves. I bought some R300 stuff and a wetting agent and boom, nothing happened except creating mutant mites. I could hear them laughing at me. I figured I HAD to try something and soon so I crshed some garlic and left in in a bottle of water for a day. I sprayed this dracula potion all over my plants, over the top and under the leaves. I so badly wanted a pizza after that! My entire house smelled like garlic but guess what, those little fuckers were no more. It seems that lasted more than a week (possibly 2) before I noticed that I needed to respray. So far so good. I've now placed some rocks around my garden because spiders like to sit on the rocks waiting for prey. Just yesterday I was researching where and how to get more ladybugs and behold, one appeared in my garden last night. So that's all you need to do, just research it and they appear. One can also build a ladybug house which seems pretty simple. Hopefully I find some ladybird eggs in my garden soon. Will be a needle in a haystack though.

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