11/30/2025
Howdy fellas! Really got our share of Spider mites here for the first time. Never really seen these little spartans in action before. They managed to almost destroy everything while I was treating for fungus. Diatomaceous Earth slurry somehow didn't stop them. Seems it caused them to finally use visible webbing to retreat on from it instead. Either did the bronners with peppermint, or the cinnamon or vinegar... However there is no worry of any fungus.
Back to an old remedy with to***co I have used before just by making a tea with a cigarette. This worked for fungus gnats prior to flowering where you could use pricey nematodes, but just regular cinnamon sprinkle on the soil helped also. You wont want to use ni****ne on flower as the ni****ne leaves a harsh and effective residue for patients.
So I looked into products like Organishield and it's competitors which are only available in the US, and they use "sucrose octanoate esters" as their main ingredient, which are approved and widely used for flowering stage and medical patients. Their sucrose octanoate esters is not actually made in an organic way you could say, but is tested and approved for organic cannabis use in flower.
You can actually derive it naturally and easily from the to***co plant leaves, prior to them maturing into the crocodile yellow stages, where you find more ni****ne rather than the sucrose octanoate esters. They are sticky Trichomes just like cannabis, and are soluble in water just like you would make bubble hash, you could also possibly scrape it off the top side off the leaves to collect concentrate to save, but a live plant would be just as convenient. A warm water tea should be best to extract it from the younger non mature leaves into the water along with ni****ne if you want to use a mature leaf as well.
When in flower avoid the ni****ne and use a cold water extraction and scrape the trichomes off the leaves into the water for best extraction, avoiding heat and older leaves to exclude any ni****ne, for a clean effective pest and fungal control.
This is why the To***co plant is so resilient to fungal and pest infections and a superior underestimated medicine for plants and people alike.