🐞TOP THREE Beneficials, Predatory Insects, and Companion Planting, with Matthew Gates

9:46AM Jan 29, 2025

Speakers:

Jordan River

Keywords:

beneficial insects

predatory insects

companion planting

pest management

bio controls

aphid reproduction

scale insects

parasitoid wasps

pollen feeders

indoor gardening

outdoor gardening

banker plants

nectar sources

pest scouting

IPM strategies

Greetings growers from around the world. Jordan River here back with more grow cast and maximum pest pressure. Today, we've got Matthew gates on the line. You know him. You love him. He's the pest expert. We're doing pest to palooza. Make sure to check out grow cast podcast.com/classes, we're in your town and we're on Zoom. Now, that's right, you can attend the class via zoom. Please come and join us for an amazing pest fest all day, if you can make it live, or join for the master class in the Learn and burn Q and A via zoom, any one of our classes. I'm so excited for this class, you guys. It's really, really good, and we go over some of the stuff today. But you know how it is. We've only got so much time here on air. We're covering beneficial insects today you're gonna learn everything you need to know about Matthew Gates's top three bio controls, how to apply them, how these beneficials behave in our garden, and when to use them and when not to use them. So I know you're gonna love today's episode, but before we jump into it, quick, shout out to AC infinity. That's right, they make the best grow gear on the market. Acinity.com, code grow cast one five saves you 10% that is the maximum discount we've had the code forever. We've been partners with AC infinity for years. And why? It's because they make the best tents you can get your hands on. They make the best inline fans, the best oscillating fans. They make really, really great quality accessories like scissors, pots, Ratchet hangers and things like that. And now they also have lights. They've got the ion board and now the ion frame bar style, really, really great stuff at AC infinity. Get the whole grow kit you've been after. You know you can get a three by three kit, a five by five kit. You know you want another one, just go ahead and pop over there. Use code grow cast one five always at checkout for the max discount, and thank you for supporting us and AC infinity. We love them so much. They make our favorite grow gear out there. I'm looking at two AC infinity tents in my bio dome, and you won't regret grabbing one. Use code growcast, one five at AC infinity.com THANK YOU to AC infinity. Okay, let's get into it with Matthew gates, thanks for listening. Enjoy the show. Hello podcast listeners. You are now listening to grow cast. I'm your host, Jordan River, and I want to thank you for tuning in again today. Before we get started, as always, I urge you to spread the show. Tell someone about grow cast, get someone growing for the first time. It's the best thing you can do for us and for the community. And of course, see everything we're up to at growcast podcast.com/action, there you'll find the membership and the seeds and the classes like Pesta Palooza, which we will be discussing today. Thank you everyone for tuning in to grow cast Podcast. I'm excited about today's episode. You guys know that when it comes to growing, it's not just learning about plant biology, it's so much more you have to put on 1000 different hats to be a successful gardener, and a large part of that is learning about bugs, IPM strategies, pest management and insects. And you guys know, I've got a whole class around it with a guy named Matthew gates, who's on the line right now. What's up, Matthew, how are you doing? Man,

I'm doing well, thanks, Robin. Me, yes, sir.

We just got back not too long ago from Pesta Palooza, New York. Man, you killed it. What a great class. You did such a good job with the curriculum. Your performance was absolutely awesome. The students loved it. The all day pest fest, that is Pesta palooza. Thank you, man, and congrats on putting on an awesome class.

I was so excited, and I'm still reeling from the experience and the really excellent questions from a lot of the people who came by. It was a sharpening time for both of us, for me and the people who came in. Yeah,

it was super, super cool, man. I really can't say enough good things, and you know, we'll rap about it more and everything. But I just want to thank you here on air and say everybody, if you're interested, grow cast, podcast.com/classes, we have new dates up there. We're in SoCal, we're in Florida. We're coming to a town near you. I love learning about pests. Matthew, there's all these different facets to growing cannabis, and if you want to, you could dedicate your whole life and your whole field of study to just one of these things, right? Like I said, plant nutrition, or things like soil and biology in the soil. But man, insects, that's one of those ones. Like I said, you could literally study your whole life, and you'll never know everything when it comes to insects. It's so true.

Like I was saying recently on another podcast, like over 90% of animals are insects or anthropods, at least. That's crazy.

I didn't know that. So, yeah, they're so vast, they're so interesting, they can be so damaging, they can be so harmless, and they can be so beneficial. So it really is a wild world when it comes to insects, and I'm just excited to be exploring this with you. Man, you've been working on a few new videos, though. What subjects have you been cooking up behind the scenes for your zenthan all YouTube channel? Yeah. So

basically, one of my the most long standing series that I have on my channel is my pest prime. Or series. And if you check out on Twitter or Instagram or even on YouTube, you just type in or hashtag test primer all one word, then you'll find various videos that I've made on all kinds of insects and also other kinds of tests that might be microbial or fungal or bacterial or something or a virus, for example, several viruses of cannabis, for example, I've talked about, and it's meant to be, in a lot of cases, it's meant to be short and like, the bare minimum essentials that you need to know, like, what does it look like? How to combat it, you know, what are some strengths weaknesses? Like a briefing, almost like that kind of a thing. But recently, I decided to make two pet primer videos, or maybe you could maybe consider them like an expansive version of these that go and deep dive a particular group. Usually I do like a species like the P aphid or the hemp press it might or whatever. But in this case, I decided to do the entire, like, scale insect family, or, you know, sub order or whatever. And I'm also, I'm doing aphids and scale insects, because, actually, they evolved from a common ancestor. They're the most closely related in that of these two divergent lineages, and they're also basal to all of the piercing like SAP feeding insect group, the hemitra. And so I just find it really fascinating and helpful to know a lot of this interesting information about how they evolved and when they did, and what are the genes that allow them to be so effective at feeding on plants and defeating their defenses, so that you can know as a grower, what might be products that would work well against them, what would be products that wouldn't how to combat notion the difference? Yeah, exactly. And then also maybe even ways you can, like accentuate the defenses of your plants that are concerned with aphids or scale if you know how they work? Yeah, exactly. That

makes a lot of sense, too. When you see these scale insects you've talked about these, you know, we've discussed off air, these are the ones that kind of look like lumps on your plants, like a bump on your plant when it's attached to the side of the stalk, right. And aphids kind of have that appearance as well, you know. So I guess it kind of makes sense that, um, they're closely related, those two insects. What are some, some interesting phenomenon or facts about how these insects behave?

Well, here's one. So for scale insect, they get their name because they they look like scales. They look like bumps. In fact, their Latin name, or the coxo morph. Coxo is from Greece, from Greek. It means they watch a berry looks like a little, you know, this little bump, little berry or something, and they the females, this, the adults, males practically never exist. They just reproduce asexually for the most part, and scale so but scale insects females, back a long time ago, the adults looked like aphids, a little bit, but the last common ancestor of all insects of all scales, rather the females are actually they look just like the nymph, which is this little like, you know, like small domed insect that can move. Once they find a place to sit and eat, they stay there, and then they just get bigger and bigger and bigger, and they just become this like bump on a log, literally. And basically, they look like they're young form, but they can still reproduce. And they just become these generators. They turn out hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of a little crawler nymph that will then get blown on the wind, or they'll settle elsewhere on the plant. A lot of people don't interact with them. I find that's kind of a lesser encountered insect. But when they do come about, they kind of come about out of nowhere. They're kind of cryptic. They'll, like, stay on, like, the trunk of a plant, and you might even not notice it if you're not looking for it. But then what happens is that, you know, over a couple of months, you get hundreds more than established and then you're like, where did this come from? So that's why it's important to craft Scout,

yeah, man, absolutely. That's That's really interesting. They just basically fuse with the plant and then start pooping out babies. Is that? Was that what's happening with the scale insect? Yeah,

basically, I guess, a long time ago, like we're talking like, early, early, like, carbon difference when it's like, swampy and there's a bunch of, like, litter everywhere, and everything's all wet and humid back back then, I guess it was advantageous to just be a literal bump on the log and like, don't look at me, you know, I'm not moving around. I don't have to even fly. The thing that makes insects unique is that the first animals have powered flight, and that allows them to colonize the earth. And these scale. Sex went the opposite way. They got rid of their wings, and now all that energy that they would use to beat their wings, which takes a lot of the sugar, now they use that to just make a bunch of babies, and they wouldn't have been able to do it without a bunch of, believe it or not, microbes that some of which used to associate with plants got into their bodies and then became their way to digest their food for them. So if it wasn't for these microbes in their bodies, they wouldn't be able to feed on the staff. It'd be there'd be too much sugar and none of amino acids. There's bacteria that basically are able to digest the sugars and break down some of their waste, even the insects waste and other sorts of things from the plant, and then convert those into the essential amino acids they need to survive. And so that's the only way something like an animal can eat on a purely clone SAP diet. And this is true for aphids and all the other piercing mouth part insects. But because these were the first to do it, or some of the first that still exist anyways, that allowed them this provenance. And once flowering plants that were not very rugged or rough, you know, like the primitive plants were like the tree, like ferns and that kind of thing. Once flowering plants started evolving in the Cretaceous, all that's raw scale insects, aphids, they basically diverge with the plants as they diverge. And that's why you see a lot of times a big tendency, not always, but a big tendency for different species to become specialized on like one family or a couple of species in the genus, or something like that. That

is super fascinating, and it makes sense with the reproductive rates of aphids, right? This is one of their special abilities, one of their superpowers. It seems maybe it's this whole family. Like you said, the scale family is the ability to reproduce super, super fast. It's important to learn which ones of these are related to each other, like you said, their their history, their behaviors. It really does help you gain a better understanding and give you a better chance in your garden as well. Really, really cool stuff. Man, that's a cool video. I'll look out for it. Any other aphid facts or scale facts before we get into the meat of today's episode, How

about the one that we learned at Pesta Palooza, which is that a lot of people know that aphids have telescoping generations. That is, they're born pregnant. They're actually born pregnant when they're born. So it's actually two generations down, and aphids is born with already kind of developing, I should say, and mothers will take in like information, what they see, what they feel, temperature and all that, and they will have an influence on how their progeny live. It's like getting a software patch, like they download this info, so when they get born, they hit the ground running, and they're going to be more adaptive than their mothers were in in niche ways, in like, myriad niche ways that'll make them more effective. And this is an unbroken line for hundreds of millions of years of aphids that have done this very thing. So yeah, that's what you're dealing with. Aphids? Yeah, that's

what I love about Pesta palooza. Though, I had heard that aphids are born pregnant, right? But then there's always, like, a more interesting sub layer. I didn't know that they were born double pregnant, is what you're saying two generations, and that they're actually transmitting information about their environment, about what they're feeding on, and getting them ready. Like you said, like, Oh, we're feeding on cannabis. Like, be extra ready produce these enzymes, or maybe even have like, slight changes in morphology to aid you in whatever we're feasting on That's fucking wild and that in more in depth stuff, you never forget it. Man, that's why I love what you what you teach at pest to palooza. It's so fucking cool. Join the order of cultivation our membership program at growcast podcast.com/membership marvel at the hundreds of hours of bonus content. Cash in on all the discounts, like discounts on grow cast, seeds, Dino Michael, rain science, grow backs. 25% off all of our classes. That's right, 25% off the Pesta Palooza, our members get massive discounts. They get so much bonus content, and they get personal access to our member discord. I'm in there. I'm hanging out in the voice chat. Come and smoke with us. Come and post in there. Get in on the Grow challenges. We are a happy family over at the order of cultivation, grow cast podcast.com/membership, jump in for the free seven day trial. Watch all the Grow cast TV you want. I know you're gonna love it, and I would love to see you in our family, the order of cultivation. I'll see you there. Everybody come and grow along with us. We would love to support you. You can be amongst positive, like minded growers and connect with grow mes in your area. The order of cultivation, we're doing it big, and we are collectively achieving our mission of overgrow. I'll see you there. Grow. Podcast.com/membership

let's get into the the meat and potatoes of today's episode. I wanted to talk to you about beneficial insects. This is something, again, that we do cover in the class, but we need to cover on air here, man, because there's a lot of questions around beneficial insects. Which ones do I choose? Who eats? What is it useful to do it indoors at all? Is that a waste of time? How do you keep beneficials alive indoors? How do you attract beneficials outdoors? These are all the questions that I want to cover today and give people an overview and an understanding of applying these beneficial insects into their gardens. Does

that sound good? Absolutely. I love talking about this. I want to start

with a bit of a power ranking here. I would just love to hear your top three recommended predatory insects to apply to a cannabis garden. What do you like to see people apply that's really good to have in their garden, and how do these insects behave? What do they eat? And why do we

want them in our gardens? Well, I would give, I would give the caveat that a lot of bio control usage has to be contextual. A lot of bio controls are specialists. But in spite of that, that is why there are some bio controls that are generalists. I love so much. If you have a certain kind of pet, a lot of times, a specialist will do better than generalist for a lot of I think obvious reasons. They're just more evolved into dealing with them. But if we're talking about things that you could buy that will affect, like, more than a couple of different species. My favorite would be, I think, Buber siana, which is a fungus that's probably number one. That's the one I like to talk about the most. And it's an ensemble pathogenic fungus, which means that it colonizes insects, and there's some research that shows that they can feed on or parasitize two spots spider mites, for example, but and also some of the microscopic mites, like russet mites and broad mites, but generally, they're insect pathogens, and they'll feed on things like white fly. They'll still colonize. I use them for rice root aphids. I use them. You can use them against scale insects, like we were just talking about. You can use them against some beetles. You can use them to some caterpillars, especially ones that feed on the outside, on the foliage, and not inside your bud, like bud worm. So there's all kinds of herbivorous insects that you can use the fungus on, both in the phylosphere and in the rhizosphere. So that's my number one, because it's such a broad spectrum, such a wide application. Yeah, it's naturally found in many soils, cosmopolitan pollittenly, in the in the earth. And despite all of that, though, I will say, you know, always be careful when you're applying products. It doesn't mean you should apply anything willy nilly or without thinking about anything. I think that is not the best way, not the best approach, but generally speaking, it's pretty harmless, absolutely, it's not super disruptive, and I really value that in a bio control

it's a benign thing to apply to your garden, right? When you look at the spectrum of products available all the way up to, you know, shit that's illegal in a lot of states, like pylon and Eagle 20 and this type of nonsense. I think Bavaria bastiana is a great first thing to reach for because a like you said it's natural. It's not super toxic in the sense that we really care about, you know, to the environment, to us, to our pets. And it does do a good job eliminating a wide variety of pests. Now, how does that work? It colonizes these pests. So basically, these pests are infected with a spore that kind of takes over their body. What is what is this? What does this Bavaria bassana Do to kill the insects that we don't like

Exactly? A lot of bio controls that are microbes like BT, for example, a lot of times they'll be invading the insect of choice through their mouth because they're eating some sort of material that the that the bio control is on. But with very bassana, the spores will adhere to the body outside externally, or it'll get eaten inside. Either way, it's going to be a bad time. But the fact that it also colonizes the exterior and will literally develop it'll produce enzymes and things that will let it break down and basically melt through the body and then colonize it. It's a type of cordyceps fungus. So for people who are familiar with the infamy that are the Cordyceps mushrooms, then you can understand how ferocious the Bucha bastiana pathogen

is. That is something straight out of Warhammer 40k It sounds like it infects you and kills you. The only thing left is to like, you know, reanimate your insect body. A zombie to do my bidding in my garden. That would be the only way it could get better, because that sounds like straight out of science fiction.

Man, yeah, that's a Necron. IPM, yes, you got

it. Got it. You nailed it. So listen, you have this and you apply to the soil, you spray it. That's all well and good. But what about something that patrols your garden, something living and flying. I guess you know fungi is living, but you know what? I'm talking about, a real beneficial insect. What else do you recommend for the garden, for a broad spectrum, beneficial

for a controller, for a broad spectrum, as broad as you can be, I like the five to see it might this will be like your ground forces, or maybe not flying around, although I have some examples for that. But the reason why, like, for example, the what are called the type three predatory mites, or the type three phyto CD, are the like SWIR, ski, eye, humerus. You know these mites. There are other ones that are more specialized for similar to the type one A, it's specialized only on two spots, spider mites. California kiss is people you know have said different things, but on the McMurtry scale, it's a type two, A to B, so it feeds on pollen, and it also feeds on spider mites, and also maybe strips and things like that, depending on a bunch of factors. So these Cocos, where CI these are type three. They feed on things like, maybe they'll feed on some spider mites, but generally they'll feed on thrips and white fly, mostly immature stages. So like eggs and larvae, they'll feed on those crawlers that scale insects produce, they'll feed on, sometimes even some moth eggs, for example, although, yes, yes, but I wouldn't count them on them purely, but yeah, that's like one example. If you're already applying them, you know, you might get a little bit of that knock on effect. But yeah, so I like them for this, for this reason that they go after a lot of common Oh, they also go after a lot of microscopic mites. How could I forget broad mite and russet mite, which is, of course, very relevant to cannabis cultivators, the

most important thing to keep away. Let's be honest, if you're going to, I'm we're going to get to indoor beneficial insects in a second. But if you're going to take the time to try to keep something like this alive in like any garden, especially like an indoor, controlled garden, though you want to keep alive something that's going to keep away the worst case scenario, that's just my thoughts, my opinion. You know what I mean. If I run into a thrip infestation or a spider mite infestation, I've got options. But if you run into a broad mite or russemite infestation, suddenly you're looking at a hard reset, you're looking at crop loss. It's a totally different situation. So I like the idea of a broad spectrum, kind of generalist eater. And I definitely like the idea of eating broad mites and russet mites, because those are the worst case scenario when it comes to an insect, in my opinion, those in root aphids.

Yeah, it's I completely agree. Like, I'm constantly telling people, like, in a professional capacity, like with clients, like, people ask a similar question, like, what bio controls I want to get into bio controls? And a lot of cases, people can't spray, or don't want to spray, or it's this really onerous process if they want to get something approved, or they had a plan, I think I've changed their plan. So I I'm a huge supporter. And one thing that is really important to note that these generalists, they eat pollen as well as bugs, and that's critical. Not all of these predators or biocontrols we're talking about are going to have what's called an alternative food source. Yeah. And so that means that you can, you can keep them alive in your crop if you feed them pollen, or you have a banker plant that produces pollen, which we can get into, like ornamental peppers and things like that. I have a video on my channel that talks about research going on about ornamental pepper plants and how their flowers lasted longer and they produced more pollen or more flowers, so the mites like coumarists were able to keep around for a lot longer, you'd have to reapply more than you would normally. And, you know, I think countered. I talked to people, you know, I love the bio control area of industry. I'm a huge fan, a big supporter. But, you know, I understand that their business models that they they supply people with bio controls. And so sometimes I've gotten pushed back from people in that space that like, oh, well, if you see them a bunch of pollen, they won't go after the test. But when you look at the research, actually, they are way more reproductive on pollen. In my experience with presence, absence, crop scouting, we found the population of observable events quintuple times five when we applied cattail pollen. And on top of that, that's because the females don't have to go and hunt to make their eggs. They can just feed on the pollen. The proteins are important for. Egg creation, and they lay a bunch of eggs, and when they encounter the thrifts or broad mites, in this case, was the big one. We were fighting this in Gerbera daisies. They they did really well, and they would retard a population before it was able to go up. So we would have, we had, like, a year of data where we didn't do this, and a year of data where we didn't where we did, and the same seasonal outbursts we get with broad mice, we had like a graphical interface that would show us our scouting data, and it was obvious we looked at all the information we would usually get them, like week 30 week 31 where it's really hot and the population would shoot up and it would crash after we applied bio controls, but we had the squirty already there. At this level, the population was little blip, and it didn't go high,

yeah, that is wild. So the again, these, this is the power of the generalist type three. Might the swarsky eye, the cucumberris, you talked about a couple in that category. I want to get into all those details and get your third top three pests. But where are we ordering these mites? I know this is a question. I get a lot. Do you have a recommended dealer?

I think that in general, people, a lot of these bio control companies are are really good, but I think that it's really important sometimes you can't be delivered to. Sometimes where you are, they don't have, they don't have a good logistical network for you. So I think it's important to be a little bit agnostic with bio control companies in general. That being said, what you really want to look for is, if you have somebody on the phone and you're not sure, you know, find out if they're a distributor or if they're like an infectory. If you're actually calling an infectory that where they produce the bio controls, not just for the predatory mites, but for others. Because if they're generating them at house in house there, the quality is likely to be much higher. It's going

to be fresher. The thing about bio controls is it's like coffee. The fresher you can get it, the better it's going to be every time this is a this is a living thing that you're dealing with. So if it's just a middle man, you're going to suffer, versus someone who produces the stuff that that's absolutely right. That being said, I've had some good success, like you said, with, you know, the one that delivers the fastest or the closest, right? Yeah, yeah. It depends. It all depends. I know the beneficial and sectory was one that I was dealing with, but I think they might have sold. I don't know if they sold or not.

They were acquired. You were right. Beneficial. Factory was acquired. That's correct. Okay, buy bio, best I

believe. Okay, but they produce the bugs still. Okay. So that's, that's one, that's one option. But you say, when you say, you know, when you say, remain agnostic, you're probably talking about go with one. That's what close to you?

I would say this, if you've already if you've got a selection, and you already know all of them are primary producers, then, just as Jordan adroitly articulate, you should then use other factors to tell which ones you want. Was one of them going to be quicker? It's when I'm going to give you a deal. Is the price better? Right? I don't feel like one company over another generally has like and sometimes they license the cultures to each other, or maybe one only has the license to have one and then allows others to use them. There's a bunch of interesting things in the bio control spaces, very highly regulated.

There's only a few, like, top producers for some of these things I've heard too.

Yeah, you can't just, like, do it in your garage.

Do you know that from experience? Yeah,

people, so, like, what do I need to, like, cut out the bio control people and have, like, $5 million like the biotech startup, I don't know what to tell you. You have to have technical experience and know how, and there's great professionalism in the industry, so I have great respect for it. Well, I understand

that. But also, shouldn't you be able to breed these in your How come I can't? How come I can't breed these in my garage and sell them to my members? Is that a really bad idea? Is something going to happen, like bad?

The problem is that you don't know what you're looking at most of the time, because there's all these cryptic species, like a SWIR ski eye versus coumarist, they look identical visually. I'm going

to start mailing people two spotted spider mites on accident. I'm gonna give it to everybody. Yeah,

that also is like another consideration, Kidding, kidding. Atheists will come after us. A T, H, i s the, yeah, they're the organizational body that restricts that. Hold

on. Wait a second. Are you telling me that the organizational body is one letter away from aphids? You don't have aphids. APHIS, that's, that's right, that's pure. Comedy APHIS is up your ass because of your aphids. Jeez, man, this insect world is, is? It's its whole own thing. It's crazy. Oh, man, um, let's see here. What do we Okay, third insect. All right, give me your this is the third of the top three. What's your third recommendation? I think I know what you're gonna say. What do you think you're gonna say? Think you're gonna say parasitoid wasp?

Yeah, yes,

ding, ding, ding, got it. Are these things pretty common in nature? I found some tiny little what looked like mini wasps flying around my garden, and they were kind of hanging out by the plants that were having pest pressure, and tell me about these wasps, if that is what I was seeing, or what you apply in your garden. And what are they doing? What are they killing?

Yeah, so there's all kinds of birds to watch there. There's a quote out there that that goes something like because there's so many beetles out there that God must have an inordinate fondness for beetle and that comes from the fact that there's that for a long time, we thought the most, the most species group of insects, were the beetles, and there were more beetles and any other kind of insects. Now that's being challenged by people who have done the math and have come out say that there's actually more parasitoid wasp. That's how many there are. I'm trying to put this in the right frame of reference here. Yeah,

that's the nitty gritty, right there. We've done the beetle math. Okay, checks out, yeah. So,

so it seems like so there's so many, because a lot of them are super duper specialized, so you got to know which what you're targeting, and you can't just apply them for no reason. They're also kind of expensive, so you really don't want to do that. But a lot of the times, people are using parasitoid wasp or aphids. Is a big one. Scale insect is another one, like mealybug or some soft scale insects or Wi Fi is another one. There's some wasps for those, and there's wasps for caterpillars. So it depends, again, what you're looking for and which species and that kind of a thing, I would say the prime racing people are thinking of, are like a fidget ervi Or a Phidias colamani, which are common for different kinds of aphids and the aphidious group actually Irvine colabani. There are few others, but a lot of them go after not just one species, but a lot of really common aphid species. And when they do, it's a very funny process. It's very interesting. They deposit an egg in the aphid, and then they also deposit what's called a poly DNA virus in their venom, and essentially, this virus goes on to prep the physiology of the aphid and also suppress its immune system, so that when the larva comes out, the larva isn't going to get like, encapsulated and killed, and they can feed on the aphid. And essentially, the body will harden. We call these mummies. You might have seen these.

I've totally seen this. You see a bunch of like husks, aphid husks, all over a plant, exactly.

And the Wasp will pupate and become an adult, and then it will chew its way out. And you can tell when they've successfully left, because there'll be like a hole. But here's the second layer to that. There are hyper parasitic wasps out there, and hyper parasitoids, well, they go after parasitoid wasps, so they'll go and find one of these aphids that's already colonized, and they will colonize that pupa, and then they will come out. And in some places, actually, it's been found that they can cause a significant negative effect on parasitoid success for the grower, and that's something that the bio control companies don't like to talk about either, not to sound conspiratorial, but growing outdoor, yeah, you're growing outdoor. Just consider that possibility.

Man, that is pretty hardcore. I have to admit I could, I could see that like animated at scale with some heavy metal playing. That is insane. And you told me something interesting about parasitoid wasps, which is when you make their their killing pattern based around their reproduction, instead of their feeding their nutrition, suddenly you have a much more efficient killing machine, because a mite is going to eat until it's full, right? But these wasps just kill and kill and kill. They can use that Stinger over and over. No,

yeah, it's a different carrying, like, a different capacity, you're right. There are advantages and disadvantages with predators, you're right. They will eat until they're satiated, and they won't eat anymore until they get hungry again, which they have a very small body and a lot of metabolism. So it does happen quickly, quickly enough, but with reproduction, the parasitoid wasp. And other similar insects. They are so linked to the host that the host population goes up, the parasitic population goes up when the host population, or the or really the light, the stage of the life of the insect, goes down. So, like, maybe they only parasitize the larval stage, but once all those larvae become adults, there's no larvae, or there's less larvae, right? There's like a cycle, and they're tied to this cycle pretty intrinsically. And so it becomes really important that you're able to produce enough. Because you're right, they will do this over and over again, but they do have a limit, and so you want to make sure that you have enough out there that they're going to over match the host population.

It sounds like a good application for, like an outdoor, massive scale type thing. Like you said, if you have a massive aphid infestation, you just need to kind of release these things into your crop, it sounds like it would be an ideal specialist for a large scale infestation of that family.

I feel like they do the best, as you say. And also, when the crop is like perennial, I feel like is best. Now, cannabis is not usually perennial. We can manipulate it so that it grows for many years, the same client individually, but yeah, they generally, they flower, and then they s afterwards. And if the population of the pest, the target pest, is low, it might be a lot more worth it than if it's like, really, like high, like, I wouldn't it happens sometimes with people will get, like, a ton of aphids, and because they weren't cross scouting or something, and they look up like, well, what's a good aphid predator? Oh, these parasit was okay. I'll buy the Well, I feel like, when you have like, hundreds per plant, the like, you're going to have to buy some, right? That, like, it's, it's kind of not worth it, right? Yeah,

less for knockdown in general, these beneficial insects, is my understanding, right? They weren't good as preventatives. And, like you said, maybe a small scale type infestation, but when it's really, really heavy pest pressure, I don't know what you can just release in your garden and expect to take care of that. That's, that's a spray type situation. Usually is what I'm thinking. I

agree. And even then, I mean, I probably wouldn't necessarily use like predators. But again, if you had like this in between space, where it's like a lot, but not too many. And that's kind of a contextual question. It's a doctrinal question, I suppose. But yeah, like, there are cases where I would use like lace wing larvae, which are super voracious over like a parasitic wasp, but if you had the budget for it, you know, they have different advantages. So it's, it is valid to use both at the same time, and they don't really negatively affect each other too much, really. The lar, the lace and larvae can't really feed on on an eight that they get hardened over and all that kind of stuff. But, yeah, that's definitely an important logistical point. Okay,

so let's get into some of the nuances here. I love those top three. I love the Bavaria bastiana For just like a general all purpose fungal control the type three mites. Love the distinguishing between those. We're going to get into more in depth on on feeding them and all of that. And then the parasitoid Wasp, nice little curve ball. There three very, very cool insects, again, that we cover deep in the class. But let's talk about attracting these beneficials to our gardens. Let's talk about indoor uses and using them in conjunction with other IPM strategies. I think I want to start with indoor because we touched on it a little bit there, and I want to go a little bit deeper. I want to start with just an honest Matthew gates opinion. I know you've personally worked with a lot of gardens out there, so I'm just going to ask you straight up. Do you see people keeping beneficial insects around indoors successfully, very often. Do you see people using them and applying them indoors with success. Do you even recommend someone who's a home grower listening to this show with a tent? You know, maybe he's got a five by 510, he's got a lot of plants in there. Should they even think about this beneficial stuff, or should they just not even bother?

It's absolutely valid. It is definitely possible. Is useful even to use bio controls indoor but a lot of people, I think the cultural conscious, when I when they think bio control, they think of like praying mantises, yeah, for sure, that would be lady beetles, yeah. Well, they have their place, but there's generally not the most of the pests that people are dealing with are not really going to be phased by fantas won't go after spider mites. They're too small. A lot of the bad guys are really small. And the lady beetles, they typically go after a says, Yes, but, like a lot of people have found, you know, I think that's where that comes from. Like, they're like, Oh, I just released lady beetles and just got torn up by the fans. Or, you know, or. I bought them and I didn't know that they were, like, expired or, you know what I mean, so, like, that's why it's so important to set yourself up for success.

Would you also say in that vein? Do you think, and don't let me put words in your mouth, but do you think that maybe cultivation style might influence one way or another, where, if you're a living soil grower who's already capable and already growing other plants that maybe you're going to have a better style than if you're just in straight Coco trying to keep these things around you tell me yes or no. I

think in a lot of cases, it doesn't matter. A lot of cases, I think that what matters the most is that, well, this is maybe cultivation style. If you're spraying all the time, you're going to have to accommodate for that. Yeah, and depending on what you're applying, I don't think that would work. You definitely have to accommodate the bio controls carefully. You could do like a knock down spray of something that's not too noxious, something that's safe, something that's like a contact that like, like pyrethrum, or something maybe that degrades very quickly into things that are also safe, that you don't worry about, because if you're spraying all the time, you're going to disrupt the bio controls and probably kill them, and you're not going to reap the full benefits that you could have otherwise.

Right? That does make sense. It's kind of one or the other, but looking at this in the context of, I have to keep these beneficial insects alive. Now I the only reason I was thinking maybe a bed is like, you know, get those ornamental peppers going. I guess you could throw them in cocoa pots as well, but you're gonna have to feed these things for a long time, right? Although you did tell me once about a product you can buy that's like pollen bricks to feed your Were you the one who told me about that? Yeah, in the bottle the cattail pollen? Yes, okay, that's what you were mentioning earlier. That cattail pollen, you can just buy that on its own, is what you're saying.

That's true. You could. But like your point about ornamental peppers, I think that I guess. What I want to say is that, fundamentally, you can make it work, whether you're living soil or not however. You know, there might be a mild positive that you might not get with indoor if you have it set up like you're saying, in proximity. So for example, I once worked with somebody who was trying to they really wanted to do banker plans, but they didn't know how they want to implement them. And they've heard other people, maybe peers and colleagues, that people are even aware of, of mine, that that maybe are not for bio control so much they think that they're not implementable. But I don't think that's true. And one of the things that we came up with was growing the ornamental peppers from the research report. We grew them in a pot in soil, and then we grew and then we put it on a like a wheeled carrier, so they can just move it around wherever they had a hot spot, damn. So it was kind of like a massive battalion of predatory mice that you could just move to wherever the enemies were. That was kind of cool. That is too funny. And I think that, I think that there's ways that a clever person could implement them creatively and have really good effects. And indeed, they did, but if you had the ornamental peppers like introgressed in your your bed, all the more better, because the leaves are Bush are are bunching up on each other. If there's a little bit of that, you know, then the mites can travel directly from the flowers to the leaves to the other plants. And I think that could be like a highway. That's

cool. I like that idea a lot. And those ornamental peppers are badass to grow. They look really great. I mean, there you go. They're ornamental. Looks like a firework going off in your garden. I really like those ornamental peppers. What about edible peppers? I guess some pepper plants attract pests. You can do edible Do you? Do you worry about attracting pests or no? So that's

the other thing with bankers. Definitely. It's like, it's it's not a panacea, right? It's not like you apply the bankers and they don't get pests ever, like peppers get pests, right? And some of those pests. Some of those pests are shared with cannabis. Some of them are not so so you have to really know what you're looking at, like clover. You know, a lot of people like to apply clover. You can get Clover mites, which are a spider mite that spins no silk, actually, and they're a very mild nuisance, but you can get them, and they can totally feel like cannabis, and I got certain aphids that,

yeah, that happened to me. That's why I do emulsion doors instead of a living crop, which I would definitely do outdoors. I mean, it really depends you guys. I like your honesty about the not the mutual exclusiveness of spraying versus applying benefits. Insects, but being conscious of that, right? Like, if you're trying to do the outdoor permaculture thing, you're going to approach spraying way different than in a tent, where it's just really easy to mix up a super gentle natural pesticide. We have so many good spray options now, you know what I mean. Yeah, exactly. There's, there's so many great natural, pet, safe, human, safe insecticides out there that I think it does make a lot of sense indoors. But that being said, this is grow cast like you. I also like Matthew gates, you share this opinion. I want whoever's listening this to garden the way they want to garden. If they want to turn their fucking tent into a permaculture if they wanted, you know, build it into the biodome or whatever, then I'm here to help them succeed. And it sounds like you're saying it's doable. It's not too far out of the realm of possibility. You just got to plan for it, get something for them to feed on in there, maybe reapply every so often, and, and, yeah, there you go. There's your your 24/7 security guards for your grow tent.

I agree. It's, it is a case where you can, you can render advantages, and you can play the string like you're saying regenerative or, you know, growing in a raised bed versus growing in cocoa versus growing in any other kind of substrate, growing outdoors, directly into the soil versus growing in, you know, pots and containers. You know, there's advantages and disadvantages to these, and there's a bunch of other factors to consider. But I think that it's, it is the case that if you're growing like, if you're growing outdoor and you have a lot of land, make a banker like, make a bank of plants. That's where the term comes from a lot of times people will grow like sweet alyssum, which has all these nectarist florets. They're white. They come in white and yellow and all these other colors. You've probably seen them before, and like at like a store or something. They're great for the parasitic wasp, because the the wasps as adults, they feed on, like sugary nectar, because that keeps them going, right?

It keeps them going, baby, that's their Monster energy drink.

Yeah, exactly. And they're at their last stage of life. This is their dispersal stage. This is how they keep going as a life form, you know, making their eggs into their hosts and continuing the cycle. So they don't need the proteins, the things from aphids, they need the sugar. So if you provide your bio controls with the supplements, all kinds of research shows how well this improves their efficacy, improves their ability to hunt, improves how many successful parasitations happen. What improves improve their longevity. So you're

telling me that I need to, I need to grow out these these plants to attract these wasps, and then what hit them with some extra sugary some extra food sweetener to to get that sugar level up, to boost up my wasps into super soldiers. I just want to make sure I'm hearing this correctly. Correct me if I'm wrong. Well, I wouldn't spray with sugar, but if you No, no, not spray, but feed the soil, right? Yeah, yeah, increase. Get those bricks. Levels up,

yeah, if you had a way to make the, I mean, I'm not sure how you would confirm it, but yes, if you had a, if you had a reliable way to increase the sugar content, because nectaries get depleted, but then they get refilled.

So that's that production. It's like some plants have that gut, Asian, really heavy, you know? And it just, I've had some cultivars that just spit out that SAP. If you, if you get that SAP going, it's going to increase the ability of your wasps to protect your garden.

Yeah, that's wild. And the same thing with the protein of the pollen on the ornamental plants. You know, you could plant one or two, or you can plant, you know, a bunch in, like an outdoor field and have this, like, massive bank of beneficials. You'll have other things coming in and but you have to scout those two, and you have to, you know, you'll have to control for pests that might be there as well. So you gotta treat it as one thing. You can't treat them as separate entities, as a composite super organist.

What do you recommend, as far as kind of just good plants to have in your outdoor garden to support these types of insects and attract these types of insects?

I like I already mentioned the suite of wisdom. That's one that you'll hear a lot of people talk about. And if you're interested and curious, there's also a ton of research. People have looked into this for decades, and there's a lot of really great information about it. And it's sort of, it's sort of unfortunate that I feel like it gets, you know, not ignored, but people aren't aware of it. So I definitely want to recommend people to look up more stuff. I have stuff on my YouTube channel as well, but sweet a list of is a big one. I already mentioned, the the ornamental pepper plants. You could also use edible pepper plants. The reason the ornamentals are better is because the flowers last longer, because. They're not there for the fruit. They're there for the flowers. So all those floral characteristics of longevity and having more flowers means it's better for your mindset. You pollen. But other ones, if you have as like a general rule, just like these are going to be resources for the insect itself. So and usually it's the adult. So like, if you have hover flies, which are these sometimes called Flower flies, they look a little bit like wasps. They can hover in place like a hummingbird, yeah, that's not a wasp. That's a fly, and it's larvae. Kind of looks like a caterpillar, and they will feed on aphids a lot of times, and the adults will feed on pollen and nectar. So if you have, like, I don't know, some sort of plant that has a bunch of small little flowers with nectaries, they'll love that stuff. There's a lot of different plants that will kind of be in that realm. Like mustard plants are like this. And also it would be nice with mustard plants is that if you get a mustard plant, let's say or wheat grass, is very popular. You can cultivate aces that won't feed on cannabis because they're a specialist, unlike, for example, mustard or wheat grass, like the bird cherry oat aphid. And then you can release those parasitoid wasps, talking about and basically have this continuous generator Wow, of parasitoid Wasp, yeah. Because if you get a big enough colony, it'll take them, it'll take them a little while, like it was saying earlier, to go through them. Meanwhile, the rest of them will be patrolling elsewhere.

That is an incredible, I guess, not food source, like you're saying. It's more of a reproductive source, but that that's crazy, that you're like, providing that starter fuel for the colony, that's great, and you don't have to worry about the aphids transferring over. I would be scared, like, I know you're telling me they're specialists and they won't feed on the cannabis. But if I was seeing it in real time, I would be shocked. You know exactly,

and that's the kind of thing where there will be aphids that are, and most of them are specialists, but they're, they're aphids out there, like the tea aphid, and like the rice food aphid that we often deal with, is a generalist, and it feeds on a bunch of different plants, maybe not always very well, but they do. And so you got to be you got to learn this information. It does seem scary. It's like an aphid is an aphid, is an aphid, but they're not. And that's why learning that info, like in the aphid video I'm going to talk about in the future, once I've published it, I think that you guys will enjoy that, because it allows you to kind of understand, like, Is this really a threat? Let me consider this, what's the 3d chess, you know, situation? And I think it will allow you to perform better. But yeah, like when you just see them, you see an aphid, and you think, Oh, this is going to be a bad guy, but not for your cannabis.

That is a whole different way of looking at it, man. I mean, listen, we have a huge list here. We didn't even get to all of the things that I wanted to cover today. Matthew, You are a great bank of knowledge. You are a great banker, plant of knowledge. And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure to come and see us at Pesta palooza. We are doing this tour. We're in SoCal here at the end of the month, July, 29, and 30th. We are in Florida in October. Find all the dates at growcast podcast.com/classes and come and see us at this class. It's a two hour deep dive master class, a one hour Q A and an after party. You can hang out with me, hang out with Matthew. There's special guests at everyone you learn so so much. And like I said, it's just there's so much to cover that we left a whole hour for Q and A because we want to answer your questions. Matthew, that's what I struggle with the most, is there's too much out there. You could, you know, put together endless amounts of of content and courses. But if we go and we meet with these people and we ask them their questions at the end of our class, it really seems to spark some really good conversations and satisfy their thirst for knowledge. So so I'm excited, man, and thank you.

Matthew Jordan, I know that you love coffee, and I think that you know enough about the history of coffee to know that many intellectuals would come to cafes, yes, or their historical version, to talk and get stimulated more than one way and talk about all kinds of important things. And I feel like the Learn and burn is very much the same kind of thing. It's quickly becoming my favorite way to talk about heavy concepts, and last time in Long Island, a lot of great questions, a lot of great conversation even helps me. It was very cool, and I look forward to seeing more of that very soon.

Awesome, man, you rock. And great job at Pesta Palooza one, everybody out there, stay tuned for Pesta Palooza two. Oh, and did I mention you can attend via zoom everyone around the world. You can tune in for a lower ticket price. So grow cast podcast.com/classes, thank you for all you do. Matthew, you rock. We'll see you soon. Okay?

I look forward to our mutual success. Have a good one doing me too. All right, everybody.

You be safe out there, dear listener. We'll see you next time. Grow smart. Here, that's our show. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you to Matthew gates again. Stay tuned for Pesta palooza. See all our classes and events at growcast podcast.com/classes, that's right, you're going to want to join membership to get all the discounts and classes and seeds and hang out with me in the discord server grow cast podcast.com/membership, is where you can find that. And of course, you can visit grow cast, seed CO at grow cast podcast.com, forward slash, seed CO, find it all on the website. Everybody. We've got some big things planned. We are at Legacy Michigan. That's an event here, July 21 through the 23rd in Michigan. I'm going to be there. Grow Cast team is gonna be there. The moderators are gonna be there. Come and see us. We'll be passing out free seeds, always pushing forward on our mission of overgrow. So that's where you can find us. And stay tuned, because we're coming to a town near you. Breeder class is live. That's right. Breeder class again. Grow cast podcast.com/classes, we're in Virginia in September. So excited to see you. I hope you're doing amazing things in your garden. Stay tuned for more awesome content. I'm not gonna stop. I love bringing the education here. I appreciate you members, so so much, and all of you listeners as well. Thank you for tuning in to the show. You mean the world to me just by lending me your ears. It really does mean a lot to me, so I'll keep the content coming, and you keep on gardening. Bye, bye. Everybody.

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Yeah, you can't just like do it in your garage. You.