Burrowing budworms followed by botrytis gray mold

[Lester Freeman]

I was forced to harvest my first grow early when I noticed parts of the bud that were discolored, and some smaller fan leaves looked dead. I inspected and found clusters of 30-40 eggs. These worms looked like little grubs, white bodies, and black heads. They were burrowed in deep , very deep, and the main stalk was hallow, so the mother worm stayed up in the main cola, as her babies laid eggs in the lower colas. Very disappointing. Also, pockets of gray mold were found accompanying the worm egg clusters. It seems that the worms could 'drill' into any little stem, and occupy its hallowed out core. This makes them very hard to find. I managed to salvage all I could, and spent 8 hours trimming, and inspecting for worms. The last thing I want is to be packing a bowl and to find one of these nasty, slimy things. Such a bummer considering how good the bud is.

Please let me know if you have encountered this problem, and if there may be a common fix. I would like to prevent this on my next grow because it takes a lot of work to hand-eradicate these worms, and they are gross.
Which spray product would be ideal for these guys? I know growing outdoors is difficult for this reason, also that I am very close to the ocean makes it way more difficult.

Any input on this insect? Sorry - no pics of them, my hands were too sticky to touch the camera!
Also, they seemed to gobble up trichomes and ingest them as a food source!

~RL~

BTW I'm just picking out the dead/infested parts with a toothpick because I need to salvage every last bit. I still managed to get about 20 grams (estimated mass).

 

[420]

Not sure what you have going on there, however this has been working great for powder mold SNS 244 Fungicide Spray | Sierra Natural Science

 

[Buckshot]

I have bee balm outside that is plaged with those little nasties, they damage all the flowers. I have never really attacked them so I don't know the answer ... yet.

 

[SurfBud]

I have the same issue, in southern California, near the ocean, and growing outdoors. I first noticed the worms when they were leaving behind little pieces of crap on the bud and then found them in the buds. They are called tobacco Budworms, at least i think thats what they are based on research i did. I went and bought a product called Monterey Garden Insect Spray and sprayed the Hell out of the buds ( at this point they are 4 weeks into flowering) and the little bastards died the next day, so did their eggs. The stuff thats in Monterey Garden Insect Sray is called Spinosad, and is an organic insect killer.

Later on, (about 6 weeks into flowering now) I am starting to find budrot in the place that the worms had hit the hardest. Of course i only see Budrot in the places the worms were, and since the worms are now no mas, i dont think the budrot problem will get much worse. Also i did a crackup job de-rotting the buds, so it wont spread too bad, i hope.


Anyways, i dont think the there is much you can do about them now since you have harvested, and this reply is a month late or so. i guess you could have still sprayed them down with Spinosad, so that way the worms died. but you still would get rot wherever you missed.

Note to next season: Buy Spinosad in any form, and at the first sign of the tobacco budworm, Spray, Spray, and Spray. You will most likely always have some budrot, but if you stop the worms from getting too infested in your plants, then youll yield much more when you harvest.

 

[Lester Freeman]

Indeed, your just like me! Same scenario, and environment. I appreciate the reply, even though its late. And yes, I do realize it is similar in genotype to the tobacco budworm, but it is obviously a much more invasive and worse phenotype in this case. I thank you for your recommendation on the Spinosad spray product, and I will look into it for the next time.

I have been using SNS-209 Systemic Insecticide on my next batch, and hoping that will be enough to ward off any more burrowing budworms.
It's funny that you had the exact same problem as me, also in a similar area.

Thank you so much for sharing your experience with me, and I hope we can work on completely fixing this issue. A bit of a higher yield is good, but the amount of work required to salvage a crop with no spray or insecticide is a lot.

Also note, that being by the ocean, I am very apprehensive about any kind of foliar spray, it could immediately sprout the growth of fungus if it becomes overcast/ slightly warm / no wind... not just bud rot( where its more likely ) but stem-rot is also a scenario by the beach.

Ocean grown outdoor bud is challenging!

Happy Harvesting, hope the worms have gone, they can find some sneaky sneaky niches to hide in ( inside the stem ) and possibly survive and reproduce. The one thing I've learned with these kind of worms, as that the second you think you got them all, you find more. Hope no more mold grows too, hard to combat it so close to the ocean.

Best of Luck

RL