I see a lot of shield bugs in my world. I generally ignore them. From your words, I'm guessing they're friendly.
Radogast's Hi-Brix Basement Grow - New Location - New Soil - New Experiences
I've had up to 3 ladybugs at a time that were captured elsewhere in the house and brought into the veg area. I hadn't seen a ladybug for 6 days, and I'd seen 3 gnat flybys in the last 4 days. The young lady of the house brought me a ladybug home from school yesterday. Today, I saw it on one of the chamomile plants in the veg area.
If bugs get to be a problem, I mix up a solution of 1 part neem oil, 50 parts water, then whisk in enough liquid soap to emulsify the oil and start foaming (about 2 parts, I don't measure.) I call it my 2% solution. This solution loses effectiveness if not applied within a few hours, so I foliar spray a dripping wet batch immediately before lights out. This has been effective at keeping gnats and spider mites out of sight.
I prefer my lady bugs - they do all the work
I feed the lady bugs a small dab of honey on a popsicle stick in the edge of a pot.
My wife is feeding honey to a ladybug in the bathroom. She has had shield bugs (stink bugs) on her popsicle stick, but they don't like the basement and attic as much a they like the living areas of a house.
HIGH SIERRA LADYBUGS
Blazinjones
Well-Known Member
I've had up to 3 ladybugs at a time that were captured elsewhere in the house and brought into the veg area. I hadn't seen a ladybug for 6 days, and I'd seen 3 gnat flybys in the last 4 days. The young lady of the house brought me a ladybug home from school yesterday. Today, I saw it on one of the chamomile plants in the veg area.
If bugs get to be a problem, I mix up a solution of 1 part neem oil, 50 parts water, then whisk in enough liquid soap to emulsify the oil and start foaming (about 2 parts, I don't measure.) I call it my 2% solution. This solution loses effectiveness if not applied within a few hours, so I foliar spray a dripping wet batch immediately before lights out. This has been effective at keeping gnats and spider mites out of sight.
I prefer my lady bugs - they do all the work
I feed the lady bugs a small dab of honey on a popsicle stick in the edge of a pot.
My wife is feeding honey to a ladybug in the bathroom. She has had shield bugs (stink bugs) on her popsicle stick, but they don't like the basement and attic as much a they like the living areas of a house.
omg tht is so funny u said tht i was alwas told growing up tht they were helpful to plants at doin tht so ive been doin exactly tht and was jus thinkn about this yesterday about puting it up on 420 like in my journal r sumthn but idk i jus forgot lol musta been high wen i was scooping ladies n drooping em in the grow forest lol but yea i always wonderd if i was doing a gud thing by bring them in hahaha guess i was well we got lots of em around here and come to think of it not really many pests either jus a few gnats and i jus had alil bit of a white fly issue which i think r still craweling in an out of bottom of drain hoes into soil i seen one the other day go in one so wondering how do i get rid of them way down deep in the soil??
I've always scooped them and put them in my garden when I find them. Of course, I don't have any bugs in my indoor(ish) garden, so they just starve and die. I learned from Rad to feed them sugar water or honey. I'll have some longer lived ladybugs this year.
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- #585
I think they are too stupid to cause much damage. They must eat tiny spiders or something because they never seem to destroy anything I care about
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- #586
Lady bug on bug patrol with feeding stick in background.
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- #588
Re: Heating the brick wall.
The heater doesn't come during lights on. The lights heat the room and I have a fan set to exhaust air when temperature reaches 84 F. At night time the heater is heating the room to 72? degrees.
There has to be some heat sink effect from the Brick wall being surface heated to 81-84 in the daytime.
Once the temperature has fallen to where the heater is running, do you think there is a heat sink advantage to heating the wall as opposed to heating just the air?
Er....,My thoughts would be that the ambient temperature of the wall would be below your lights off temperature most of the year. Heating the wall would buffer the on off swing of the heater and stabilize the room temperature somewhat.
You are already venting off the lights on heat. If the lowest temperature of the wall goes up a few degrees, I would think it would be a plus.
Or I could be wrong.
I never know
KingstonRabbi
Well-Known Member
To be effective heat sink would need to be heated during lights on to release heat during lights off (which it does slightly from the warmer air). Heating the wall during lights off would absorb heat rather than releasing heat, and thus waste energy that would otherwise heat the air during lights off.
If the wall is colder than temp during lights off then insulation may be better than heat sink anyway.
Or I could be wrong and it would raise daytime temps which would raise wall temp which may help keep temps up at night. like Canyon said.
"If the wall is colder than temp during lights off then insulation may be better than heat sink anyway."
Agreed.
I used half inch foil backed rigged foam and doubled it up for the outside walls of a cinder block garage grow room. I don't know how much the vapor barrier would help you, but the foil paints well, stops a lot of mechanical damage, can be cleaned easily.
Best
Agreed.
I used half inch foil backed rigged foam and doubled it up for the outside walls of a cinder block garage grow room. I don't know how much the vapor barrier would help you, but the foil paints well, stops a lot of mechanical damage, can be cleaned easily.
Best
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- #592
Daytime temps are limitted by a temp sensor driven fan.
What you say makes sense. No sense heating a heat sink after the temperature falls - that sucks up your heat.
The best choices seem to be - Leave it as it is, or insulate the brick wall.
I disconnected the fan exhaust ducting so the exhaust is now heating my basement on the other side of the brick wall instead of the great outdoors. The basemeent air, is now in the mid 60s instead of mid to high 50s. Much more comfortable for basement activity
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My $4 whole house humidifier I placed outside the grow area has been doing a good job measuring the changing humidity (in 5F increments,) but isn't reducing the humidity. No water has been collected in the bucket. I put a $2 small room humidifier into the flower room. It has no humidity level adjustment. From the book, I can't tell if it has a fixed setting of 80% humidity or fails to work over 80% humidity. No wonder it was new in an opened box. I'll check later and see if it did any good
Morglie
Well-Known Member
The cement wall sounds just like what my flower room has. Just an FYI as I believe you moved into the Midwest around me. In the summer when my cement wall gets heated, my flower room goes to 75-85 with rh around 75%. Hopefully your room is better stablized than mine. The humidity in the Midwest in the summer is obscene.
Morglie's 1st Journal With Ace Sativas In Doc Bud's High Brix Kit
Fischer
New Member
Why do you guys like lady bugs so much?? I hate them! I have 29494949 of them in my house. Do they benifit a grow room??
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Morglie
Well-Known Member
Daytime temps are limitted by a temp sensor driven fan.
What you say makes sense. No sense heating a heat sink after the temperature falls - that sucks up your heat.
The best choices seem to be - Leave it as it is, or insulate the brick wall.
I disconnected the fan exhaust ducting so the exhaust is now heating my basement on the other side of the brick wall instead of the great outdoors. The basemeent air, is now in the mid 60s instead of mid to high 50s. Much more comfortable for basement activity
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My $4 whole house humidifier I placed outside the grow area has been doing a good job measuring the changing humidity (in 5F increments,) but isn't reducing the humidity. No water has been collected in the bucket. I put a $2 small room humidifier into the flower room. It has no humidity level adjustment. From the book, I can't tell if it has a fixed setting of 80% humidity or fails to work over 80% humidity. No wonder it was new in an opened box. I'll check later and see if it did any good
Is that a humidifier or dehumidifier that you're talking about?
I was trying to use one of those vic's humidifiers first. It raised my RH less than 5%. The one I picked up to replace it raised it from 20 to 55% and I only had it on a bit over half.
Morglie's 1st Journal With Ace Sativas In Doc Bud's High Brix Kit
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- #596
The room is temperature stabilized ( about 60 F last summer and 55 F this winter before I added heaters.)
The room is not RH stabilized, I depend on a machines to control everything. My wife is from the midwest and assures me that the 50-60% RH last July was unusually low
Good job on getting your humidity up. Doc Bud pretty much told me I should shape up my humidity if I wanted good buds
The veg room has a 3+ gallon humidifier about the size of a footstool that I am using to raise the humidity to 50-60%. I top up the water about once a week. I had a smaller (3 quart) humidifier in there that did a good job, but it died (after 3 years of use- after purchased used at Goodwill.) I have a similar sized one in the bathroom that I can grab in an emergency.
I have a dehumidifier in the basement near the house HVAC set to 45% RH. This dehumidifier is for the living area of the house. It drains by hose into the furnace sump, so after installation, I pretty much ignore it.
I installed a (whole house size) dehumidifier in the grow room to lower the intake to the flower area to 50% RH. This one has a collection bucket but it was empty after running for 3 weeks. I noticed this when my flower room reached 72% RH overnight. This was high because I left my RO water faucet turned on overnight and flooded the grow room floor. I installed a tiny dehumidifier inside the flower area yesterday. It collected about 16 oz of water, but the flower room RH still reached 71% RH overnight.
I'm not too upset about the dehumidifiers not working, I picked them both up at auction for a total of $6. I am concerned, but not yet worried, about the high humidity in the flower area. My oldest girl reached 30 days under 11/13 light today so I don't have dense buds yet.
The humidity will be dealt with - we have decided !
to 
Fischer. Are you growing or planning to grow?
Let us know if you have questions that aren't being answered somewhere else.
Folks here are usually pretty helpful and often pretty mellow
Lady bugs eat bugs. They normally leave plant leaves and sap alone.
Since I set out honey on a stick, they eat the honey and leave the plants alone - BUT thay would rather eat gnats and mites than honey or sap.
Fungus gnats have a way of appearing out of thin air (and out of peat moss and purchased soil.) My lady bugs are there to eat them. - They are cheaper and more fun than bug spray
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- #597
I planted a Borderliner clone today (she is greener than the photo - about like the leaf at the top of the screen.)
Last night I watered the older AK47 clone
AK47 is not as green as she appears in the first photo - she is more this color.
Picking up the waterlogged half-gallon pot - the side cracked.
My worker, tasked to keep the plant safe, was half buried in debris by the ensuing flood.
I've decided I don't want to start plants in half-gallon pots - just gallon pots.
The plants in gallon pots are greener and require less frequent watering. It's not a matter of genetics, the AK47 clone in the gallon sized pot is greener than the one above in a half-gallon pots.
I just take better care of my plants when they are in gallon pots, so that's what I will use
Last night I watered the older AK47 clone
AK47 is not as green as she appears in the first photo - she is more this color.
Picking up the waterlogged half-gallon pot - the side cracked.
My worker, tasked to keep the plant safe, was half buried in debris by the ensuing flood.
I've decided I don't want to start plants in half-gallon pots - just gallon pots.
The plants in gallon pots are greener and require less frequent watering. It's not a matter of genetics, the AK47 clone in the gallon sized pot is greener than the one above in a half-gallon pots.
I just take better care of my plants when they are in gallon pots, so that's what I will use
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- #598
A good long look at the flowering girls
Today was Brix foliar spray day,
also the two girls in week 3 were ready for an 'under the canopy' defoliation,
and last but not least, I wanted to take a good look at the buds of AK47,
so ... I hauled the girls out of their flower stall for a spa day and photo shoot.
HSO Amherst Sour Diesel - week 3 - she is almost finished with her stretch - She went from 13-25" tall.
Amherst Sour Diesel 3/4 view. I trimmed the bottom 10" agressively. This should bulk up buds a bit.
Amherst Sour Diesel top view. Her canopy spread, so now more chocolate bar shaped than Baby Ruth floating in a pool shaped.
AMS Borderliner - week 3 under 11/13 - She grew from 12-24" tall. Her canopy stayed fairly flat.
Borderliner 3/4 view. I told myself I was going to trim aggressively, but she still looks like a shrubbery.
Borderliner top view - She may not bud a well as Amherst Sour Diesel. We will see
AMS AK47 XTRM - Day 30 under 11/13 - She grew from 24-48" Tall. I added a stick to tie up the top.
AK47 is trying to grow a large main cola and good lower nugs. I'm rooting for her
This is 2nd day after 2nd Cat Drench. The buds and trichome production responded well
AK47 is growing thicker nugs than previous grows, but they are still quite airy - it's early.
The photo shoot is over - back under the 'golden' sodium lights.
Today was Brix foliar spray day,
also the two girls in week 3 were ready for an 'under the canopy' defoliation,
and last but not least, I wanted to take a good look at the buds of AK47,
so ... I hauled the girls out of their flower stall for a spa day and photo shoot.
HSO Amherst Sour Diesel - week 3 - she is almost finished with her stretch - She went from 13-25" tall.
Amherst Sour Diesel 3/4 view. I trimmed the bottom 10" agressively. This should bulk up buds a bit.
Amherst Sour Diesel top view. Her canopy spread, so now more chocolate bar shaped than Baby Ruth floating in a pool shaped.
AMS Borderliner - week 3 under 11/13 - She grew from 12-24" tall. Her canopy stayed fairly flat.
Borderliner 3/4 view. I told myself I was going to trim aggressively, but she still looks like a shrubbery.
Borderliner top view - She may not bud a well as Amherst Sour Diesel. We will see
AMS AK47 XTRM - Day 30 under 11/13 - She grew from 24-48" Tall. I added a stick to tie up the top.
AK47 is trying to grow a large main cola and good lower nugs. I'm rooting for her
This is 2nd day after 2nd Cat Drench. The buds and trichome production responded well
AK47 is growing thicker nugs than previous grows, but they are still quite airy - it's early.
The photo shoot is over - back under the 'golden' sodium lights.
looks awesome!!
KingstonRabbi
Well-Known Member
This is 2nd day after 2nd Cat Drench. The buds and trichome production responded well.
That's the understatement of the week!
I can't wait to do my next one. Definitely adds some excitement to time when it usually gets to be just routine for me.