Locusts are an agricultural nightmare. The eggs of this kind of insects are buried in the soil and hatch into larvae in the spring. At the end of spring and early summer, they emerge from the soil and become adults. At the end of summer or autumn, they enter the mature period and begin. Mating, freeze to death in late fall or early winter.
There are many types and colors of this kind of insects, so they don’t need to be subdivided. They usually have wings. The larvae are like crickets, and the adults feed on the leaves of plants and other parts of the plants.
Harm of locusts
- The maturity of larvae is signaled by temperature, not growth time. Once mature, all larvae in the area are mature. Generally, after a few days of continuous low temperature and humidity, the sudden high temperature will cause the locust larvae to burrow out of the ground on a large scale.
- Super strong growth ability, it only takes one month for a newly mature larva to grow into a full-sized adult.
- Migration ability, locusts will migrate with the warm monsoon, and the longest migration mileage per day exceeds 100 kilometers.
- Super large food intake, an adult locust can eat leaves 5 times more than its own body weight every day.
- Drug resistance is strong. There is no low-toxic insecticide that can effectively target locusts on the market. Even if there is, locusts that have not been completely killed will adapt quickly.
Similarly, hemp is one of the plants eaten by locusts. Indoor growers do not need to worry about this problem, but this bug is a nightmare that outdoor growers cannot resist. If your outdoor planting base suddenly has nothing, it may have been cut by someone or eaten by locusts.
Means to prevent locust plague
- Prevention is prevention. Before planting and transplanting, turn the land in advance to expose all the insect eggs in the land to sunlight and air, let the turned out soil completely dry up, and kill these insect eggs in advance.
- Kazeke, malathion crude oil, lifulin, malathion + second-line oil, fipronil are more effective pesticides that can kill locust nymphs and larvae. However, these pesticides are very toxic and can only be used on plants in the growth and seedling stages. Use in the flowering stage will leave huge safety hazards. These pesticides are very destructive to the human respiratory system and skin and mucous membrane tissues. When using them, be careful to stand in the upper wind and wear protective clothing.
- If only sporadic locusts can use pyrethroid insecticides, spray all plants thoroughly at one time, and also spray a lot of grass around them.
- Cover the cannabis field with a greenhouse or use a plant net. If there are many locusts, spraying pesticides is meaningless. You can only quickly build a plastic greenhouse or spread an insect net to cover the hemp. This method is suitable for marijuana fields entering the flowering period, and needs to be combined with polyester insecticides to kill the locusts in the shed.
- Harvest in advance. If there are too many locusts, many cannabis branches and leaves will be severely damaged, even a little bald. Don’t hesitate to harvest them all at once.
Adult locusts like heat and dryness, while locust larvae like shade and humidity. If your planting base has more than 3 days of continuous light rain, followed by a week of hot and hot weather, then locusts are likely to patronize your planting base. Once there is such a short-term rainy weather followed by a long-term high temperature and hot weather, you should go to the fields and stomping your feet when you go. Once you find a small bug jumping around, it is a locust. Use highly toxic insecticides quickly. Eliminate them completely.
Indoor growers don’t need to pay attention to these, after all, the locusts are still quite large and easy to spot, just catch them and kill them.