Aphids are small, pear-shaped soft-bodied, and one of the most common pests or insects that can affect cannabis plants. Every cannabis grower may have dealt with aphids more than once in their lifetime. Cannabis growers are always alert for pests or insects that can harm their healthy cannabis plants in any possible way.
Therefore they must know that aphids are one of their worst enemies that tend to hinder the healthy development of cannabis plants. Aphids are basically, soft-bodied plants that can appear in various colors such as red, brown, white, green, yellow, and black. But it will depend on the phase of their life.
It is not much of a difficult task to identify the aphids that can affect cannabis plants or marijuana plants. Some so many people are using the cannabis plant or marijuana for medicinal purposes or self-satisfaction uses. Most people can get the addiction to cannabis plants as they are smoking them to get high.
So they find it a little bit expensive to purchase from the market or dealers as they need to use it more often. That is one of the reasons most people are trying to grow cannabis plants in their indoor gardens.
But if you want to grow a healthy and actively growing cannabis plant then you need to consider aphids as a frustrating obstacle to it. Aphids are almost widespread and they can be found almost anywhere in the world.
Well, you surely do not have to worry about anything at all if you do not have any clue about what aphids are or what they look like, or how you can get more control over them.
Because we are going to provide all the essential information we did mention above. You will just have to read this article thoroughly to get a more clear idea about the aphids and their removal from the cannabis plants. Let us begin with the basics.
What Are Aphids?
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Aphids, as we did mention earlier are small soft-bodied common pests that can tend to affect the cannabis plants. It is a group of small sap-sucking insects that most people are considering one of the major destructive pests or insects on plants that are cultivated. Aphids can be so small in size almost around 1 to 10 millimeters.
They can be easily found in a wide range of colors including red, green, black, brown, white, and yellow. But among all the kinds of aphids, there are more chances of finding green aphids in home gardens on cannabis plants.
They have the appearance of two whip-like antennas at the tip of their heads. It may seem like they are oppositely a pair of tube-like structures that are termed cornicles.
All cannabis growers must know that the winged female aphids usually hatch in the earlier spring. These female aphids will give birth to more female nymphs. Also, within only a few weeks, those newly born female nymphs will give birth to more female nymphs.
The exact process will be repeated several times within only a few months. So the number of aphids will increase dramatically and exponentially within a short period. By the end of summer, the aphids will be able to develop sexual forms (Males and Females) as they will mate to produce eggs.
Most nymphs or aphids do not need mating with other aphids to reproduce young nymphs, except in sexual forms. You must know that there are more than 4000 species of aphids that are found all over the world. Some species have wings while some do not but they all are dangerous.
How To Identify Cannabis Aphids?
The leaves and stems of the cannabis plants are where you can find aphids and nymphs. So it will be essential for any and every grower that is trying to grow healthy cannabis plants to ensure to get rid of aphids. But to get rid of aphids, you need to first be well aware of how you can identify the aphids.
It will not be beneficial for you to not have any idea about what cannabis aphids look like because you can not go rogue in spraying the aphids killer on every cannabis plant. But as we dd describe earlier, aphids are small soft-bodied pests that can have various colors that change with the life phase of aphids.
Well, it will be more difficult for you to locate green varieties of aphids on the cannabis plants. It is due to the green color of the cannabis plants themselves and that will result in aphids being better at hiding themselves.
As aphids feed by sucking sap from plants, your cannabis plants will get more damage from them. Aphids will leave behind a thick and sticky layer of a substance often referred to as honeydew.
It can surely promote and increase the growth rate of a black as well as sooty mold. It will be possible that the ants will attract due to the honeydew. But it will protect the aphids from any predatory insects and that will make the situation even more difficult.
So it will be easy to identify the aphids before you need to find a way to get rid of them for good. Let us now move to the information on how you can get more control over the growth of aphids on cannabis plants.
Control Cannabis Aphids
A small population of aphids will not be a problem unless it becomes a large mass of aphids. Also, it will not take much time for the aphids to grow a huge population and that will have a huge impact on the overall growth of the cannabis plant.
Aphids will indeed be a threat and they can hinder the development of the plant. It is possible that aphids can cause severe diseases affecting plants and spreading the disease to other plants that it will move to. Here are some methods to get more control over aphids.
Prune and Clean Infected Areas: Prune the infected area and dispose of them.
Introduce Predatory Insects: Attract the natural predators of aphids such as ladybugs, parasitic wasps, crab spiders, lacewings, etc.
Use Organic Insecticides: You can get rid of aphids using effective and efficient organic pesticides or insecticides.
Treat Aphids With Oils: Some essential oils like Neem Oil can be very much useful to treat the cannabis plants present in your beautiful home garden of aphids.
