Safe pesticide for around pets

[Seattle Bong Ripper]

i am having a slight thrip problem early in veg, i think my soil had bugs in it.

i want to kill them with something organic and safe around pets. my cats like to lay next to the exhaust hose.

i was going to use Azamax, but the product apparently does not list if it is safe around kids or pets. i would prefer to know for sure before i start buying stuff.

so my question is: does anyone have any experience or advice on killing thrips in a very safe and non toxic way that is safe to pets? any product recommendations or recipes?

thank you all for reading

 

[Rosebud]

Safers insecticidal soap will work and it is non toxic BUT, you have to use it as the label says and repeat the applications when they say, i think it is 5 days or so. Read it and see. Also, I put a piece of paper in the pot and lay the pot on it's side and spray the hell out of the underside of the leaves by rolling the pot around and spray everything. Then put the pot right side up and spray the plant that way too. Let dry before putting back under the lights. Spray the dirt before you take the pot back in the room.

Good luck, you can beat thrip, but get um the first time or they get resistant to things like soap.

 

[Hushpuppy]

If you use the Azamax as a soil drench and keep the animals from chewing on it or nosing in the soil It should be fine. It is biodegradable and is absorbed by the plant through the roots which makes it not taste good to the bugs regardless of where they chew. But then after about 10 days it is broken down by the plant and has to be redrenched again. If the infestation isn't too bad 2 doses will wipe them out. Also when the buds are smoked, you can't smell or taste it, even after having a treatment within 2 weeks of harvest.

 

[Seattle Bong Ripper]

yeah i can keep them from chewing and nosing around, but they love hangin out by my exhaust. i am more worried about poisoning the air with something they cant handle, but it will probably be fine. thanks for the replies guys

 

[TwoHighCrimes]

Hey There SBR .

Interesting Thread friend , I have just today purchased eco neem oil to cure a number of sucking insects .
Its an australian product/brand yet it is apparently derived from botanical products i.e its organic ..,
I also have pets and i gotta say that its awesome to see that you really do care for your pets as well .
Bottom line is that i think the world needs more seattle bong rippers !
All the best and GL .

 

[Seattle Bong Ripper]

thanks THC

yeah if my love for weed ever caused harm to my pets, there wouldnt be enough weed on earth to make me happy again. theyre part of the family

thank you for your thoughts

 

[Hushpuppy]

yeah you gotta protect the "kids", but if you use the Azamax as a drench rather than spraying it (which you can do in emergency situations), it shouldn't produce any odors or off-gassing as it stays within the plant and the soil for about 10 days before breaking down. I wouldn't be afraid to use it that way with my dog around it.

I am fairly sure the hand that is growing out the side of my head has nothing to do with breathing the fumes of my pesticides.....I think :hubba:

 

[Seattle Bong Ripper]

yeah if my cat grows a second face ill let you know

 

[Seattle Bong Ripper]

so i just wanted to update

after much closer inspection my thrips turned out to be spider mites. i still wanted to try something i know for sure was safe, so i decided to make a pesticide myself.

somewhere in the depths of this site i found a recipe of a habanero spray(wish i could find the post so i could give the author of the recipe a name-drop). so i just put strained habanero puree, vinegar, dr bronners soap, and water into a spray and doused the plants from top to bottom multiple times. i tasted a drop of it before adding the soap, and it was mighty spicy.

i am still spraying every 2 or 3 days to keep them dead, but i have seen no moving bugs since the 2nd or 3rd spraying. i have noticed no adverse effects from the spray, just dont add too much vinegar or itll stink.

i love this site, i can always find an answer to my problems. the spray i made not only worked, but was cheap and easy to make, and contains nothing that i woulndnt feel comfortable pouring down the drain or letting my pets near. big ups to MarP!

 

[Rosebud]

Great news. Organics all the way! Good for you.

 

[Seattle Bong Ripper]

so bad news. my mites eventually came back strong(probably because it was difficult to spray the undersides of all the leaves in my SCROG). i came home one day to find webs on a lot of my tops. i decided to grab some Azamax. i did a foliar spray and a root soak. the mites are temporarily halted, but my plants are suffering. also i noticed this morning after the azamax, my plants look even yellower/browner and crispier than last night.

I was noticing some nutrient issues, which are now getting bad. i have everything, crispy leaves, spotted leaves, leaves that curl up, leaves that curl down, new leaves are light green for a day, then turn yellow to white and spotty, necrotic spots, stunted growth etc. it started on the lower leaves but has consumed all the way up most of the plant. i was trying to wait until the mites were gone to flip to 12/12 so i didnt have to spray the nugs, but now i think i may have vegged for too long(9 weeks).

my plants were showing all sorts of issues(what i assume are nutrient deficiencies), so i thought a PH problem was there(my unreliable ph meter said my soil was very acidic). so i fed them(earth juice grow, catalyst, and meta-k, which i tested and found was actually very acidic) and i mixed weed ashes(had no hardwood ashes) into the feed to raise the PH. days later, my PH soil tests showed about 6.5-7(hard to tell with those color charts). i did the NPK tests, the N was completely depleted(which would explain the yellow leaves), but my P and K were completely off the chart in surplus(which would explain the crispy, spotted, necrotic areas). it is like my plants are taking all of the N but none of the PK, which has me confused.

since my PH is in the right area i am lost. perhaps some of my pepper and soap spray got into the soil and hurt the roots? or maybe the spray clogged the stomata? perhaps the weed ashes had a negative effect on the soil that i didnt foresee? perhaps i just need to flush the soil with plain or PHed water? some leaves are almost completely covered in spider mite bites, maybe the plant is struggling to complete photosyntheses or something due to all the bites?

if you guys had any advice to save my babies it would be greatly appreciated. i can include some out of focus pictures if you guys wanna see, but it would be easier just to tell you that it looks like N,P, and K deficiency all mixed together all over the whole of the plants. it even looks like some leaves are heat stressed(wavy leaves with black, crispy sections) even though the temps are 68-72 and the humidity hovers at about 30-40%.

thanks a lot for reading guys, if you need better descriptions or more details let me know. i need to fix this within maybe 2 weeks if i am going to save this crop, thanks for all your helps

 

[Hushpuppy]

Wow that sucks out loud. With so many problems happening at once, its hard to say what to do. I know with the Azamax, when you drench with it you have to be careful as it will throw off the PH. And its been my experience that when you are seeing all kinds of issues, its usually PH causing it.

However, given that you said you tested for nitrogen(how do you test for individual nutrients?) I would say you need to add some high nitrogen guano or compost tea. I love the teas because you get the nutes to the roots a lot faster, and the teas are usually full of microbes for chelating the nutes and helping the plants absorb the nutes. I would get a good nutritious tea and (if it doesn't have any mollasses, add some) set up a bucket with an air bubbler for a good 24hrs to oxygenate it before adding it to the soil.
The greenest of grow Mojo to ya bro

 

[Seattle Bong Ripper]

i must admit i have not been brewing the nutes ive been using. i got the earth juice line after reading the nute study by jmansweed. he says it "works best" when making an air infused tea, heating it to 85 degrees and bubbling it for 24-48 hours, but i cant really heat foaming chemicals over my stove for 2 straight days, so i have just been mixing it well and adding it to warm water. i do have an air pump that i could bubble the solution with, i suppose i could start doing that, but he says that just mixing thoroughly would also work. also, i have been using straight tap water, not letting it sit out for any period of time. if you think that could be an issue i could start doing that too.

i just re-read the nute study. turns out that he mentions that the earth juice WILL be low PH(and i havent been PHing and buffering my nutes--oops). but i have gotten some PH up and will start using that with my nutes.

the earth juice Grow and Catalyst are both high in molasses, he says, but later in the study, he says he developed his nute routine that includes hygrozyme and hi-brix molasses, so i dont know if the molasses in the nutes alone are enough. i have not been using any additives, just grow, catalyst, and microblast. but the earth juice line is all about getting healthy microbes in the soil, i fear that with my dr. bronners peppermint soap + vinegar + habanero juice may have rained down into the soil and perhaps affected the beneficial life in the soil.

i got a soil test kit that includes 4 containers and 4 10-packs of these pills. each container corresponds with a pack of pills. mix some soil, a pill and some water in a container and study the color against the chart provided. one is for testing PH, one is for testing N, one for P, and one for K, so the NPK is tested for seperately. all 3 buckets showed the same results, ph about 6.5-7, no N at all, P and K off the charts. i just got the test kit, i was previously using an analog meter(useless junk i know, i was just seeing if it said acid or base, not specific numbers) and it said my soil was slightly acidic to very acidic, so i mixed a ton of weed ash in my water(until the meter said the water was basic) and watered with it 2 weeks ago. now(with the better test kit) the soil reads 6.5-7ish but that may be residual ash in the soil because i have not watered in much volume since then.

 

[Hushpuppy]

If you need to heat the tea then it is easy enough to go to a pet store or aquarium store and get one of the nicer water heaters that will work in a 50-100gal aquarium and set the temp on it to 82 and stick in the bucket of tea and leave overnight with an air bubbler working at the same time. That is what I have in all of my resevoirs as I am in hydro. If you do it that way, make sure you have a pan under the bucket as the microbe action in combination with the aeration will cause a lot of foam to build up and spill over the side of the bucket sometimes. But having the air line in it helps to prevent any anaerobic microbes from taking hold in the mix.

I still am suprised that yer test picked up no nitrogen in the soil, however if you are not feeding very often and they are 9weeks in the same soil then they have depleted the soil and the earth juice isn't able to keep up with the needs of the plants. How much and how often do you feed them and how big are they at this point?

 

[Seattle Bong Ripper]

i was giving them 5ml of catalyst, microblast, and grow per gal, slowly upped it to 10 cat, 5 micro, 10 grow per gal(where i was last at). dont know if this is adequate but its what jmansweed suggested so i just went with that.

the clones were bought 10/28, planted roughly 11/7, i fed them on 11/14, 11/22 (11/22 is when i found first sign of bugs), then 12/7(then noticed the PH issue), then 12/23 was my most recent feeding. i know it was not a lot of feedings, but i started off waiting until my plants were slouching over to water them(took about a week for them to slouch). then i was waiting to resolve this (what i thought/think is)PH issue before i fed regularly again.

this morning they are very pale and the crisping is progressing up the plants. i am thinking i need some massive N (and N only) within the next day or 2 to to save them.

they are under a SCROG. the soil is roughly 12 inches high, the screen is 24 inches off the ground, so there is 1 foot from the soil to the screen(and obviously the main stalks are bent to the side adding a few inches to the "plant height"). then roughly 25 tops are sticking up through the screen, but some plants grew taller and some did not grow taller so half the tops are at the screen level and half are about 6 inches tall. so at its tallest point, it is about 18 inches tall and about a foot from the 400w hps, but remember its a SCROG.

 

[Hushpuppy]

From that description I would say they have been way underfed. At this point, unless there is still a lot of green plant left, there may not be a way to save them. However without seeing them for myself, I am speculating.

I haven't done much organic growing so my experience is limited. But I'm thinking, If you have a grow store anywhere around then I would go get some enhanced Nitrogen tea, or some fish emulsion that is high in nitrogen and feed them. It seems like the feeding regamin for them hasn't been enough to keep them working well, especially given the lack of N in the soil. The last plant that I grew in organic setup, I vegged it for about 6weeks and I mixxed up a good organic soil with bone meal, lime, garden tone, and Cow Peat(composted manure) for the initial setup in a 2gal pot.

Then when I put it into flower, I started using AN's Iguana Juice in an automatic feeding system that fed and watered at the same time with the nuted water once every day for 15minutes so that I knew she was totally saturated(I had an aerator in my solution so drying out for several days between waterings to get the soil aerated wasn't necessary) I always made sure to keep my tea at 6.6-6.9 which is the sweet zone for organic growing. Mine stayed fed and I had no problems. That is why I think you may not have fed them enough.

 

[Seattle Bong Ripper]

yeah, as i went through my grow log and counted the times i veg fed them, i thought it was more often than it actually was. underfeeding plus not PHing my nutes was probably my downfall. i am currently bubbling a hot water, PH up, and Earth Juice Grow tea right now, hopefully if i douse them with that tonight it will give just enough N boost to keep them alive.

thanks hush, you have been most helpful