Greetings listeners from around the world. Jordan River here back with more. Grow cast, true or false. Today we got Matthew gates on the line. We're here. We're doing a true or false quiz. It's all about IPM and bugs. I know you guys are gonna love this one. We got a Pesta Palooza master class coming up July 13 and 14th. You can find more at growcast podcast.com and use code growcast to save 20 bucks. The goodie bag is worth more than the price of admission. Come on down. Everybody cannot wait to see you. July 13 at next level, Garden Supply, Rockford and July 14 at all. Sip nursery, Frankfurt, Illinois. Shout out to the Midwest growers. Shout out to all the listeners, all the members, all over the world. I appreciate you all. Before we get into it with Matthew gates, quick shout out to AC infinity. That's right. AC infinity.com they're doing a big new product drop. Do you know what it is? We'll see very, very soon. You can go to acfinity.com. Use code grow cast one five for the biggest savings on the best grow fans in the game, all in one, grow kits that have tents, light spots, everything you need to get growing. And a whole bunch of accessories. Guys go and grab some of those garden sleeves. We just did a q&a for the members, people talking about hash rash and how bad their garden makes their skin react. Mary Beth actually said, you know, the serration of leaves contributes to that a little bit, just the tiniest bit, kind of scraping on your skin and getting those molecules in there and causing that allergic reaction. No more. Go get some glasses from AC infinity to protect your eyes, and some farming sleeves. Get yourself scissors, get yourself ratchets, whatever you need. It's there at AC infinity.com. They do a bunch of cool stuff. Now. They got heaters, they got dehumidifiers. They got everything you need to grow and to deck out your tent, the best quality. They started with the best fans. Now they're doing everything. Acinity.com. Always use code growcast One five, it helps us, it helps them, and we appreciate you helping keep the lights here on at growcast AC infinity.com. Code, grow, cast one five, that's the one go and use it. Thank you to everybody using code, grow, cast one five at AC infinity. Alright, let's get into it. Matthew gates, thank you for listening and enjoy this show. You Jordan, 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 share this show. Turn a grower on to grow cast, turn a smoke around to growing. It's the best thing that you can do to help us on our mission of overgrow. Make sure you're subscribed. Follow us, do all the things and hit up growcast podcast.com for all the action there, you'll find the seeds and the membership, the classes and all of that. Quick shout out to the grand fino hunters. We did sell out our fino hunt boxes. Thank you everybody. Thank you to all the members and quick announcement here at the beginning. Big thank you to hygrezyme for being the official sponsor of the grand fino hunt. That's right, they stepped in. Sponsored the hunt. They're putting up the prize money for you guys because they love supporting the community. So shout out to igrazyme, and shout out to all the grand fino hunters out there. Speaking of the website and classes, we have our next instructor on the line with us, of course, coming to Illinois for pesto police. Pesta Palooza, July 13 and 14th. None other than, I mean, I already gave it away with the Pesta palooza. None other than Matthew gates is on the line. What's up? Matthew, how you doing? Man, I'm doing. Well, good to hear you. Good to get you back on the show. Man, excited for our class in Illinois. It's going to be fun.
Yeah, I'm really excited for this area, because I've been reading and researching Illinois and a lot of the Corn Belt lately too. So I'm, I'm all up to snuff.
Yes, exactly the corn pests. You know, you do like to study up on the regional areas that we go to. I do like that. It does seem to be, you know, that's got to be a hard part of your job. It does seem to be so specific to locations, right? The different pressures that people face, and I believe that was one of your like, IPM tips was, become familiar with your area. I think that's really good advice. Matthew,
yeah, no, I appreciate and it is hard for most of human history we would only have, like, regional pockets of information. But nowadays it's easier than ever to get, like, environmental information. Have extension agencies that their whole job is to figure this out, and people like myself as well. I want to make sure that's high value for people, for every location we go to. Yeah, that's awesome,
man. I love it. For those who haven't heard Matthew's old episodes, go back and listen like I said, I think the last one was like, top IPM tips or mistakes. That was a cool list episode. We have a bit of a list episode today, or, more specifically, a true or false episode. This was an idea that I had kicking around in my head. I get asked questions topics come up, you know, in the growcast community. And I want to cue Matthew up in this kind of true or false quiz kind of way, and pick his brain, you know, see how we can answer these questions, and then go deeper and extrapolate on them and teach the listeners some new IPM information. Does that sound good, Matthew? We're going to get into some true or false I know you weren't ready for a quiz, but. It is a grow cast quiz on this episode, we'll go true or false, though,
so it's easy. I'm ready.
Sounds serious. Now, I'm sure some of these are going to have qualifiers, right? I'm sure it's going to be partially true, partially false, things like that, which I guess if it's partially true, then it has to be partially false. But let's hop right into it. Man with the pest true or false quiz with Matthew gates, part one,
little teaser there. So here we go. Here's the first true or false question.
Aphids cannot spread from one family of plants to another. I guess it's a statement true or false. Aphids cannot spread to one family of plants from a different
family of plants. No, I
like, I like how you're asking this question, because it's the kind of question that you get very often. Like phrase in this way, and you're right. There's a qualifier, generally, aphids are specialists, so they go after sometimes a specific species or a few species in the group higher than that which is a genus. So a lot of times, this is not going to be true, and that's a good thing, because it means that a lot of aphids aren't going to be a threat to your particular crop potentially. But there are some estimates are about like, maybe like, almost as much as like, 80 to 20, or maybe 90 to 10 for aphids that have this capability. But some are like generalists that maybe have a few families that they can feed on. And then some are super generalists, like model aphids, like the B aphid or the P aphid, and they might be able to feed on all kinds of plants, but maybe not at the same intensity. Maybe they do really good on some and you might consider those primary hosts, and then they might be able to eke out an existence on other ones too. I've seen bean aphids on cannabis, for example, but they've almost never been a real, really huge problem for people, despite the fact that other aphids, like root aphids, rice root aphid and specialist cannabis aphid, are the oshts, way, much more problem.
Oh, interesting. See, I'm learning something new right away. I did understand that the rice root aphid is the exception there, right the the generalist especial, as you said, like meaning it'll attack anything. It can hop from any plants, basically just feeds on roots, tech, anything in the world. Now, I thought that all canopy aphids were basically specialists, but you're saying it's a little bit more blended than that. It's a little bit of a gray area. Some might be able to feed a little bit or sustain themselves, like you said, but not cause a huge problem. See, I did not know that the 8020, 9010, kind of ratio does make sense, so it seems like a good general rule, but I did not know that, for instance, the being aphid could survive on cannabis. That's new to me, for
example, because they like basically clone each other. You basically get populations that don't deviate that much, but mutations do happen. We didn't know about this until we were able to, like sequence genomes and stuff. But basically, there's even populations of aphids where to us visually, without like, the aid of, like, really powerful microscopy or whatever, they look identical, but genetically they're very different. So you get, like, populations that might get far away from the core population, and maybe they're able to feed on different plants, and then, over time, they adapt, and they get better and better and better, and then you have a new species. So that's how that specialization happens, oftentimes, not always, wow, but it does make sense. Yeah, it's
funny. I just saw an example of this. I was with a member down on his farm in Oklahoma. He was growing wheat or some sort of grain in his greenhouse, and he was going to harvest that grain and use it for something else on the farm, and then he was going to grow his cannabis there. And he already had some cannabis in the same greenhouse, but most of it was this grain, right? It was like wheat or something, and it got infested with aphids, bad, like they were everywhere. And the only thing separating the bed of wheat from the cannabis plant was just a walkway, like three feet of walkway. And he was all freaked out when he had me over, and I was like, Dude, look, they're literally all concentrated on the wheat. Not a single one transferred across the greenhouse. There's video in our Patreon of this. I mean, I had heard about it, right? Like you had told me this. I had heard this in Pesta Palooza, but it was eye opening to see it in real time. There was nothing to separate those cannabis plants from the wheat plants. And none of the aphids came over. I assume, because they were specialists, they must not have had the capability to feed on that plant, right? Yeah, a really
popular one that people use as like bio control, attractants. See what you can do is you can grow like, what's called the bird cherry oat aphid. And it's actually very closely related to the rice root aphid, but it only feeds on like grasses for the most part, like rye and barley so or wheat grass. So you can, like, grow them, grow them as a crop. Ops, so to speak, on the on this alternative host, they will attack your cannabis and many other plants as well, and then you will attract parasitoid wasps that will come and parasitize them. And those wasps might be generalists, even if the aphids are more specialized, or at least, they won't go after the things that you care about. You could have those like, kind of concentrate there, and then they passively, kind of scope your location, you know. So it might look very intimidating to see, like, I know, mustard plants are really, like, there's popping off springtime, summertime. They were here in California, we get those mustard aphids, and they're often, like, waxy, and if you have, like, a bunch of them on your on that, like fledgling mustard plant somewhere around, like it can look like it'll kill everything else, but that's not the case, yeah?
But you're saying it'll invite predators, right? If you have all this food, it'll invite predators, like you said, probably other insects, birds, even maybe don't, doesn't attract birds to have a bunch of aphids,
yeah? Some insect, diverse birds, for sure. Yeah,
that's cool. I'd never thought of it. Thought of it like that. And when you do garden with that more, especially when people are outdoors, like mimicking nature style, right? Like inviting in microbes, inviting in predators, inviting in wildlife, I do think you
start to see benefits from that. I definitely, I think it's important to be realistic about the what you expect to gain, but I also feel like it's really important in order to do that, you have to kind of understand what the dynamics are. And if you take nothing else away from from this, it's that you can for the aphid parasitoids and predators like cover fly larvae and things like that. Look for examples of these new bugs, become familiar with them, and try to attract them with, like, a bunch of plants that have little, small florets, like sweet lism, does mint plants have this, that kind of thing. And then also, don't be afraid to let the aphids kind of exist on these plants, and learn what those aphids are and what they look like, because they can look kind of distinctive, and you can get a good sense of it's really not that different. Oh
yeah, it's something that we actually go over extensively in some of our other content. Look for the butt tail pipes now. So what you're saying is aphids cannot spread from a family of plants to a different family of plants. Generally true, partially true, let's say, but not a hard and fast rule. Guess the answer is kind of no. If you include the rice root aphid, like you said,
yeah, and there's, there's a few other ones that are, like, really good. But then we find out that, you know, is it the same species, or is it like a bunch of different, like, subspecies that may or may not be able to reproduce, because aphids really sexually reproduce. So then you get into this, like, weird thing called a ring species where, like, you know, if you have a mountain, maybe you have an organism lives at the top the peak, and then it can mate with the species right next to it down on the mountain, and then that one can mate with the one above it and below it. But then the one on the top and the one to score down are reproductively isolated. This kind of stuff happens a lot in nature, so it creates for us a really hard time sometimes of knowing what's in front of us actually,
just on the subject of aphids and Attack of the Clones, how they reproduce clonally. Are there a lot of pests that do that, or is that kind of like a special ability of the aphid when it comes to pests that we fight,
there are other insects and and mites that can kind of be clonal, or kind of semi clonal, like I've we've mentioned before many times on Pesta Palooza and other places that, like the two spot spider, might you have to watch out for, because you only need one female. If you have a male, it's not going to work out. But if one female, it will produce eggs that are all males, and then it will mate with those sons and then produce females through a sexual reproduction. So all you need is one, two spot Spider Man fat to happen for aphids, usually they're only female. You rarely see males, and they'll just part them genetically reproduce. So they're just constantly going to asexually reproduce. And then some might have males sometimes, and others are just completely like this the entire time. And they might post switch from so you get some that are like what I was saying before, where they'll move from grassy, herbaceous kind of plants to Woody tree like plants in the Ottoman winter. So rice root aphid does that, for example. But because it's from East Asia, when it comes to like North America and Europe, it'll change its behavior too. So it's complicated.
That's crazy, man, that's super crazy, and that is a nasty pest. I'll tell you what you can tell just you know, by the way you're describing it. So versatile, so resistant. Yeah, nasty pest, definitely not one that you want, the rice root aphid. Okay, so let's move on to our second true or false in this quiz, this one is has to do with pest control. True or false, adding a bit of unscented dish soap to a spray can increase. Killing power versus certain
insects. Talk to me about that. There are some products
out there that can work this way, where, where you would have, like a small surfactant, but dish soap, you know, got to be careful. I think there are some products out there that where people have found that you can kind of substitute that sort of thing. But you have to be careful about, like, label and those kinds of dynamics. Generally speaking, people do a lot of testing to make sure things work really well. You might damage equipment or something if you don't, you know, follow the instructions,
or some low quality ass
soap, yeah, yeah. And sometimes you don't even know, like you might have, like, done it before, and it worked out, and then maybe they changed the formula on you, you know, because that does happen over time. So that's, that's a thing to consider, but the the logic to it kind of makes sense that, you know, if you know how, understand how surfactants work, soaps can work this way, where they basically make the the Water Wetter, and it will glom onto surfaces better, which makes the coverage better, which means that lot of times, it will enhance the likelihood of contact with the like microbe or toxin that's being applied.
That is exactly what I've heard in the past, and even so much that, like, if you're dealing with microscopic pests, you really want that lower surface tension in the water and that better coverage, because they are microscopic and sometimes harder to affect. That's what you just said, is literally why I was told to add a wetting agent. Now, what about soap from a killing perspective? I know they even sell, like, safer is a brand that sells Insect Killing Soap. Is there also a mode of action where they're dying from
the soap?
Yeah, I think so. I think sometimes for certain products, I think it's a little bit hard to like, say, well, like, what's like the main killing factor, and that can also become contentious about whether or not you would want to use one product over another. That might be cheaper or more expensive, potentially, depending on the formulation. But yeah, the soap itself can also be a factor unto that, because, because of that, like wrap around effect that you're talking about, that increased coverage because, like a lot of insects and mites, they either breathe through spiracles passively, so through holes in their body, or sometimes they'll breathe like passively through their skin, especially for the really small ones. So by creating this like thick enough meniscus around the body, this film is gonna stop that diffusion of oxygen, and that's gonna be a big problem,
suffocate the insects, essentially, with soap, exactly the same stuff that the oil is doing, right? I mean, I imagine the oil has more like, repellent power, because it's got, like, you know, botanical terpenes and
stuff. The oil can be oily too, and that's kind of what I mean, it's hard to separate, like, the soap versus the oil, right? Like both of them can be having kind of a similar effect. That's my selfishness.
Okay, yeah, no, absolutely, yeah. Now these spiracles, as you called them. Am I pronouncing that correctly? Spiracles? Yeah, these are breathe holes. Is this like, are these in the sides of the insects, like the outtakes on a jet engine, like they don't have lungs, right? They're just breathing through these side holes.
Yeah, so they don't have they don't have lungs. In general, Arthropods are pass they breathe passively. Some like, arachnids have, like, what are called Book lungs, and things like that. But I won't get into that. Basically, the insects, they have holes, and oxygen just moves through them, and for the most part, they're not facilitated. Wow. So in the middle of an insect's body is basically a sack of flesh called the hemolymph and or the hemo cell. Essentially the casing of the body is just like fleshy and liquidy. It's like a big a big liquid bag, and the body just squeezes itself. It does a lot of muscular contractions, and that pushes the oxygen around the body, essentially. So you might have seen like bees or wasps when it's really hot outside, and many other insects you might see their abdomen like shakes or like and it elongates and then retracts really rapidly. And you might think, oh, it looks like angry or upset, or maybe it's going to use, like a stinger for really, yeah, it's just breathing, basically. And there's a lot of energy to, like, fly,
off. Yeah, it looks intimidating. Yeah, totally, it's
flexing, is what it's doing. But you're saying it's just breathing so fascinating, and the passive breathing is also fascinating. I guess that's why a lot of the goopy or oily or soapy or IPMs are effective. So I guess we can go with the true there, at least, like a myth buster style, plausible. Yeah. Yeah, possible drop the license plate. Okay, this is great, dude. I want to make sure we get through all these. So let's move on to the next one. I hear this one a lot, man. I hear people talking about it rather true
or false. Lady bugs are an effective broad spectrum predatory insect, true or false? I would say false, oh, where's the buzzer?
Talk to me about this, because they're like the they're like the mascot of predatory insects. But no one really uses them. I feel like,
well, it's good to hear that, because a lot of people use it in a way that's, well, they don't maybe understand so, so lady beetles, they're attractive, they look brilliant. They have the the color, the red color, and so they're so for people, they're very eye catching, or, like a lot of things, though, but most lady beetles feed on aphids, primarily. There are other lady beetles that don't look like the traditional lady beetle, like del fastest Catalina is a white fly feeding specifically lady beetle. It's very it's much smaller, and it's totally black, colored and shiny, whereas crypto lamest Montrose is the mealy bug destroyer. It's got a like a an orange, usually what it's called. I'm sorry, destroyer. Yeah, I thought
that was like a nickname you gave to it. That's a real mealy bug destroyer. They call it. That's the best title in entomology that I've ever heard. Yeah,
wow. Well, that's the common name. That's the common
namely, bug destroyer. Does it really destroy me? Bugs? It's really good, but it just destroys mealy bugs. Well, it primarily
feeds on mealy bugs. There are examples in research where it's gone after aphids, other things, but like, the thing is, is that it's, it was actually a very potent bio control, and it was used against, like, I think, cotton, a cushion scale, and a few other like citrus. Mealy bug in California is very famous, and now it's everywhere because of it feeding on on the mealybugs. And it's one of the one of the species that has some fame attached to it because of this success, like a long time ago, sure. And so, yeah, so, so it's definitely got a reason for that name, but it's a lady beetle too. People might forget or not realize, and the larvae look like mealy bugs, a little bit of cryptic military you
might not think of that as a ladybug when we just see like the red classic Ladybug with the white collar. I know they do come in a lot of different shapes and sizes. So why do they not make a good predator insect? Then too specialized?
Yeah, you couldn't just use one. You'd have to know which one to use. But then if you select the right you know species, that's a totally different thing. They're the thing about the a lot of the lady beetles people use for aphids is that, you know, they're either harvested destructively, like we've talked about before. Oh yeah, you did mention that. Yeah, they're harvested destructively, and also they're often harvested when they're hibernating. So and they keep them cold to extend that, but then their their Behavioral Ecology is such that when they are exposed to the sunlight, they want to move and they want to fly a great distance, so that doesn't really help you out.
Yeah, that's right. They end up buzzing all over your room, right? And then they also only eat until they're full. Didn't you once make a distinction on my show that like a predator wasp is going to sting and kill for the thrill of it. I believe that's your exact words, whereas, like things like aphids, eat until they're full. Is that true, or am I making it up?
I think you were remembering when I was talking about vitamin D glyphos, which is a wasp that goes after leaf, minor larvae. And what was interesting was that the females, they have to they have to make a the wasp. They have to make a choice, do I put a female egg or a male egg on a larva that's smaller or bigger? If it's a bigger larva, there's more nutrients, and the female needs more supplies, because it's going to be a reproductive and make eggs and stuff. Wow. But the what was found is that if you don't starve them, if you give them like flowers and banker plants and things for them to feed on, the nectar and water resources, they will they will kill more larvae than they have eggs for so that works out nicely, wow, because they sing the leaf minor larva that's inside the leaf margin and paralyze it before they deposit the egg right next to it and not inside it, like a aphid parasitoid does. Oh, wow. Yeah,
the predator was, that's right. I don't know if I misspoke and said predator aphid earlier. No, that's very interesting. And whereas the ones that eat, well, they're gonna have to wait until they're hungry again to go kill it, yeah,
they have a, what's called a Type Two response, so they they will eat and they. Can't, like, carry food with them, like a like a monkey can, or something like that. So and like, while they're searching, so they kind of, like, they're either searching for food, reproducing, or they're eating. So it's a numbers game. And also, you the larvae are trying to develop. The adults are already developed. They need lar they need food to eat and make eggs. But besides that, the larvae are the ones that are way more voracious. So you would want the larvae anyways, not the adults, which are usually harvested.
Ah, that's right, that's right. Crazy. Okay, great. So, I mean, listen, you probably don't want to go for the ladybugs. There's so many other good options. Do you want to throw out some of your favorite predator insects just really quickly? I know you've talked about them before, but just like your favorites for broad spectrum control,
for sure, well, I want to say that if you're going to use a lady beetle for meal bugs, get that meal bug destroyer for white fly, get the delphas. I will say those are really. Those have really been effective for me. But if you want to go a different route for aphids, I like green lacewing larvae. I think they're really great. If you're in a country like in Europe, there's some hoverfly larvae you can buy commercially. This might be the case in North America in the future, I don't know, but attracting hoverflies and their larvae, which look them up, find what they look like, that's really great, because even if you can't buy them, the larvae will eat all the aphids. And you can see these hoverflies kind of moving. They look kind of like wasps. Sometimes they're coloration, and they like move like hummingbirds do. And you'll probably notice them, but didn't realize it before. So if you're growing outdoors, especially, you can attract them, and that's really great.
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True or False. I
think that's generally true, but there is some caveat, ooh, talk to me about that. So like a lot of commercial bio controls, they only are used because research has shown that they can be very effective as a control agent. So just because a predator eats a pest insect or a pessimite or whatever, it doesn't make it automatically a good choice. So a lot of research and development goes into finding out if it's going to work in many different crops, many different conditions, or which ones, what are the limitations? And a lot of times it's based on how voracious it is and whether it can feed on a particular host, that's a huge problem. Generally, they're going to have to, like, either feed on the prey itself, and they don't have any alternative food source, so they have to kind of be applied, like, right before you have a problem, expecting and anticipating it to happen. A lot of people can anticipate that because they know when they're a problem, seasonally, or they can be applied very quickly after being ordered. But there are some predators, like certain predatory mites, like swirus, they feed on pollen, and they feed on their their various insect prey and mite prey.
Now what if they were just to feed on that pollen? Is that sustainable? You think, in, like, the long, long term?
Now you would think it wouldn't be. That's a great question. But the actually is the reverse, because, like first source can coumars, it's been found that females that feed on pollen exclusively actually reproduce like, I think, as as far as. Like maybe four or five times as fast, or as much, I should say. And the reason for this is because the pollen is very proteinaceous, and so that's what they need to make eggs. Now they actually do better when they have a mix of both, but they do really, really well on just a pollen diet. And so some people, some people might think, Oh, well, should I not use the pollen Baker plan, right? But actually, it's not, not really a problem, because they do seek out prey. The thing is that the prey fights back a little bit like on a on a very minute scale. It's like watching, like a lion take down a wildebeest, right? But, like micro scale, sometimes
the line gets kicked, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Or, like you people might not realize, but a lot of a lot of bio controls they might feed on, like the egg and the larval stages, but they may not be able to quite tussle with the fully adult stage of certain pest insects, you know, for that reason.
So what do you recommend for the best pollen producers to
keep these bugs alive?
I did look through this a lot, and me and Russell pace of the cannabis horticultural Association, I've talked a lot about using ornamental pepper plants, so I'm very comfortable, and I've used them with clients before. And I think honestly, if you're a gardener, or whether you have a tent, or whether you have a greenhouse or a backyard grow, you could totally use, like, ornamental or regular pepper plants. There is a lot of research that sort of goes over that and then their efficacy, and you can just intersperse that with your plants, potentially, or you can make like a more contiguous row just depends on your setup.
Is there a specific species, or do you just go get any ornamental peppers? Well, there's
two cultivars. One of them is called exploding Ember, and the other one is called like firecracker, or something like this. I'm forgetting, but I have a video on my YouTube channel.
No, I remember we talked something like, I'm not
sure it was firecracker. It was something exploding. Ember and youtube.com/sentinel
right? Yes. Go follow,
go find it. Yeah. What a teaser. Find out. Teaser. Yeah.
I know the ones you're talking about. I know exactly what they look like. They look like a firework.
The reason I didn't commit it to memory for a long time now is because it's hard to get them and it's also hard to germinate them. Yeah, for some reason they're just really difficult, probably because they're ornamental and special, and probably a lot of people are not growing them from seed. They're just buying them from nurseries. Shout
out to all the people that are introducing these predators into their garden, keeping them alive. You know, in the outdoor scenarios, you can really invite these into your garden, invite birds into your garden, invite that wildlife. I think that's fantastic. And then even indoors, I see people doing it, man. I see people bringing nature inside. You know, keeping these bugs around. It's really cool to have to have little insect pals in your garden. Let's see here we have another one. Oh, this is the one I wanted to leave the most time for true or false. Matthew, microscopic mites can lay dormant in your grow for long periods of time and then wake up later on to reinfect your indoor grow, true or false?
That's kind of true. It can be true. Okay, talk to me. So I think that for people who are growing in a greenhouse or an indoor grow, or something where you're usually going to have, you know, keep at least room temperature a little bit warmer, you know, than that. You're probably not going to see this behavior, which is like when you say microscopic mites. I know that Jordan, you're usually meaning like russet mites and things, right? Generally
that that's just what I group those into. I don't know if that's like an official category, but yes, broad mites and russet mites are the tiny little ones I see infecting people's cannabis gardens. It's
actually not something I see people doing a lot myself, I feel like but actually I like that because they are, like the really microscopic. They're very similar in size. Their damage profile is kind of similar. They're not related too much, but
I just picked up that generalization from Mary Beth. Oh, nice,
nice. Yeah. So so broad mites and rusted mites, it's possible for them to overwinter. The thing is that for these mites and other insects, frankly, they have to be exposed to the right environment. And if they don't get exposed to like changes in light, for example, and especially temperature, then they don't start to make the preparations necessary.
So they have to be exposed to low temperature. Is what you're saying. Is. There any exception to that? I don't think so. No, wow, wow. See, that's that's important information, because I was always told, you know, they can come back. They're on your fan blades and things like that. And maybe it does get cold enough in some scenarios, but in an indoor grow room, if they're never kind of dropping to that low temperature, those people probably just aren't cleaning their room well enough, right? Are they subsisting on some scrap of you know how growers are? Man, the defoliation pile in the corner, or, you know what I mean, like, what would you attribute those reinfections to? Or is it just a whole new infestation, and it's our mind tricking us into thinking that it's the same one? See, those are
both really good examples of something very plausible. And I can tell that we've spoken many times, because those are, like the top two that come to my mind. First is you gotta kind of control your biases a little bit. Consider like, well, what if what you thought was true was false, or vice versa? What if something you thought was false is true, just like this question and
answer getting deep, yeah, absolutely.
You know, it's getting a little meta. So these mites, like Russ and mice, broad mites, they have to feed on living plant tissue. So they can't subsist on dead plant tissue. And a lot of times, they have a very small body and a very short lifetime, right? So that means that they will die pretty quickly without food.
Now, how, how much leeway is on that? Though, like I said, if I defoliate a healthy green leaf, and there's a whole pile of them, surely a mite could subsist off of that leaf for a little while after it's been it's not like the second it's defoliated, they can't feed off of it anymore. Is
it right? Exactly? So I think that, and this is just speculation at this point, but once the leaf loses a bunch of trigger pressure, I imagine that it'll be difficult for like russet mites and broad mites. I believe they both feed through their stylet so kind of like a almost like a needle, like proboscis kind of thing. They stick it into the individual cells and they suck out the contents, generally speaking. So that's how actually spider mites feed too, but they're bigger, but they do a similar kind of thing. You also see the breast of mites too, because their damage causes that gnarled tissue as well. So in a lot of ways that shelters them from like predators, and also shelters them from like inclement weather and in nature. What they'll do a lot of times is that they will be, they will like, fall off of like leaves and branches that naturally fall kind of like what you're talking about, or they might like rest themselves in in like branches or nooks and crannies of their particular host plants. So then when the winter go, if they're in temperate location, winter happens, and then hopefully some population survives for them, and then look like their seedlings for the next year are also growing around the same time, in case they're on an annual that died last year, and that's how
the cycle continues. Man,
I think that this subject is misunderstood as something, definitely something that I've misunderstood in the past. So we shouldn't be too worried about that. If we do a thorough clean we shouldn't be too worried about there being some sort of sleeping pest that's going to magically reawaken when plants are in the room again.
No, and I think that's like you said, something that can trick people up, and it can make people think that something's wrong about how they're growing, when it's not actually the case. It was more of a biosecurity issue or something.
Now, I think something you said about thrips on my show is interesting. I remember these things. Matthew got a good memory, and it's exactly what we were just talking about a second ago, which is thrips are so common. And speaking of generalists, they're such generalists. They're freaking everywhere. I saw you find thrips in a crack in the sidewalk when we were doing our New York class. And you said people get rid of thrips, and then they get brand new thrips, and they think it's the same infestation that they somehow didn't take care of. But in reality, they're all around us all the time. You just brought new ones in. So maybe that's where a lot of this misconception comes from. That's my guess.
I think so. And the problem is that you're relying on, like, a mental model that you have about what's going on. And sometimes it's really hard to keep all of that together. And you're oftentimes, if you're growing, if you're even growing with one other person, and you rely on them to, like, look for the bugs, or, like, look around, or keep looking for things, for signs. It can be hard for that to happen, especially in a home grow potentially where you know you have other life activities and things to tend to. So you might not realize that even though you did everything right, like, there might be an. Aren't thrips or something afoot like, especially if you're, like, really active, if you're bringing in fresh produce, I think we spoke last session about this, like raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, you can get thrips with them, even if you wash them, and that kind of stuff. That can be a problem as well, especially the common generalist like Western flower thrips and such.
And the larva are on the strawberry. And now all these tick tockers, like, they put them in water, and the larva like, hatch. And they're like, look, all blogs creepy. It's like, yeah, man, they're all over the place. They're everywhere. Yeah, you've probably
eaten thrifts before and not realized it like, that's the truth? And people, people find that, you know, like, really disturbing, I suppose, I guess I kind of understand that, but I don't find that very, you know,
just extra protein, right? There's bugs all over your skin all the time, you know,
Yeah, seriously, like, you know, try not to think about that. You know, it's
true. People don't like to be reminded of that. Now, just really quickly, you did mention the thrips singular. They said an errand thrips. What's the deal? Is thrips literally not, shouldn't I? So if thrips is singular, shouldn't I be saying thrips is
thrips the eye? So the etymology of the word thrips is that's Greek, and so the S is not a sibilant. In other words, when in English, we put an S on something to show plurality, so thrips is just, that's just the Greek wording, just how they pronounce it, because we're latinizing the Greek alphabet right into into uh Roman letters, long time ago. So it's a thrips. It means woodworm, apparently. Oh, interesting. So it's uh thrips, or many thrips, and that's just, that's just the way it is, the
way it is. Man thrips have been pissing off farmers since ancient Greece, 3000 years ago. Yeah,
and if you want to be if you want to sound impressive, you know, when it comes to, like naming these names, I have one other thing that you can mention to people to seem like the cool guy, or perhaps the incredibly not cool guy, oh,
that's exactly what I'm going for. Hit me.
So you might have noticed with like insect orders, a lot of them have the word Tara at the end, which means wing, like pterodactyl or pteridon. But if you're, if you're using the word pterodactyl and not pterodactyl, then you should not call it Lepidoptera. You can call it lepido Terra. Don't call it Hymenoptera. It's called Hyman otera. So you don't pronounce, or very slightly, very mildly pronounced the P and it totally changes the flow of the words. But like, it's not Hemiptera, it's Hemi Terra, right? It's not the pterodactyl. It's not the pterodactyl, for those who care, and as long as words look, witch is my favorite philosopher. And he would tell you, and he would tell me straight up, look, long as I communicated the message, yeah, that's kind of what matters. So it is that's what matters.
But I do like to, I do like to know that, okay, the silent P and all of those prefixes and suffixes, right? It's, it's, it's surprising how much you can learn. You've talked about this before in Pesta Palooza, you're like, this means many winged and here's why, and here's where that came from. And you You remember it well. It helps you store that information. So I like that stuff, dude.
It does help me learn. It does help me remember this kind of thing, because usually there's a logic to it. Sometimes we learn that the logic was wrong, but we still have the same name. Yeah,
exactly, classic, especially in English. Great, dude. This was a dope little episode. I had fun chatting with you. Really good overview on the true or false I love the ladybug talk. That's fantastic. The specialist versus generalist talk, I'll talk about suffocation. That's what I'm into. So Matthew, tell me, YouTube, Patreon, where can everybody find you, and what are you working on in the near future?
Yeah, so I had a first smoke of the Day episode recently go out. That was I really liked the experience. That was fun. We talked about and expand about some of the topics we spoke here, in fact, about as well. And if you want to learn more about plant health and pests, and like a holistic approach to pest management, like the banker plant usage and learning about these various pests and their weaknesses and their strengths, then you can play to those advantages by going to my videos and checking them out on youtube.com Sentinel, you can also you have professional inquiries, you need some help with some pests. You have an idea about a speculative plan that you might have, and even if you want to help people understand why the plants and the product that you're growing is special and good because of the strategies that you're using in this way, you can check me out@sentinel.com as well. And I have a Patreon with over 140 people at this point, filled with people who are interested in IPM and talking about crop scouting and various techniques, that kind of thing. And so if you want for $1 a month, you can join my patreon, and you can have me in your back pocket if you have some quick questions, or the other people can respond as well. It's a nice little community. And
then, of course, Pesta Palooza, July 13 and 14th in Illinois. July 13, Rockford, Next Level Garden Supply. Shout out to next level Garden Supply, one of my favorite places to teach classes. We will be hanging out, but we got an after party. We'll be providing food. It's a great time. You get a huge goodie bag. It's worth the price of admission, plus a full blown master class in Q and A and then the next day, Sunday, July 14, we are at all SIP nursery in Frankfurt. Come on out to all SIP guys. I know that's a huge nursery down there. I would love to see you there if you're in the area. Come on down if you're gonna drive far. DM us for a special code for extra discounts if you're coming from out of state, or just use code grow cast for 20 bucks off. Now members get 25% off. So shout out to the members. You might want to check that out. It's worth it, because every Pesta Palooza is a blast, man. When you get the chance to pick Matthew Gates's brain long form, it's fantastic. And then we send you home with, like, a bunch of resources, a bunch of products, microbes, seeds. It's fun. It's a lot of fun. Matthew, I'm looking forward to this Illinois class, my home state, my stomping grounds.
Honestly, guys don't, don't sleep on the goody bag and the Learn and burn, because it's one of my favorite ways to to teach. That's one of my favorite ways to hang out with people. And you guys really do get a bunch of cool stuff. I'm not just saying that. Everyone's gonna say that for any any project they got, but Jordan's got it.
He really hooks it up.
Oh man, you do a great job. I'm really looking forward to it. Grab those tickets, guys, and I hope to see you there. And if not, just continue to listen to this show and subscribe to Matthew Gates's YouTube. We got plenty more content coming at you now. I am going to be switching to video format soon, so don't get too comfortable with these audio episodes every other week. Stay tuned for that. That's going to be big, but if you do listen on audio to this feed, nothing will change. I will still continue to release audio here for all you audio heads, but that's all for now. Thank you for tuning in, Matthew, thank you so much for coming on the show. Man, appreciate you. I love coming on. We'll have you back really soon. Stay tuned, everybody. That's all for now. Grow cast podcast.com, all the things up there, go and grab those Pesta Palooza tickets, and I'll see you guys on the next episode. Jordan River. Matthew gates, signing off, saying to you, be safe out there, everyone and grow smarter. That's our show. Thank you so much, everybody. I appreciate you. Thank you to Matthew gates. Has to Palooza, July 13 and 14th. Go to grow cast podcast.com/classes brings you right there. Code, grow cast for 20% off. Members, of course, getting 25% off. Come on into membership, guys, you won't regret it. I would love to see on the inside. And we are waiting to help boost your grow and spend time with you in the garden, nerd out about this amazing plant, right? That's what we're here for. Growcast podcast.com, thank you, everybody. Go there. I'll see you here in two weeks, like I said, video content coming soon. So stick around. Got some really cool stuff in the works. Don't touch that. Dial. Love you all be well out there. Bye, bye. You
