It’s not a Pixar movie, though it could be. Natural pest control for cannabis sometimes feels like a scene straight out of Pokémon. Ladybugs, wasps, centipedes, mantises. Tiny creatures with one big mission: protect your weed.
While conventional agriculture relies on chemicals to fight pests, those poisons trash biodiversity and can leave behind nasties that end up in your lungs. Gross.
Luckily, there’s a better option. It’s called biological control. Or, if you prefer, hiring bugs to do your dirty work.
Forget pesticides. Let nature handle nature.
How It Works
María José Ramírez, PhD in Agricultural Sciences and entomologist, broke it down. Biological pest control is all about introducing good bugs that eat the bad ones.
These beneficial arthropods are released into your garden to act as natural enemies of common cannabis pests. Sometimes this happens preventatively, with just a few bugs keeping balance early on. Other times, it’s all-out war, dumping in an army to crush an existing infestation.
No toxins, no residue, no stressing over mystery chemicals. These critters work naturally, and they don’t cause resistance the way pesticides do.
Nature’s Little Assassins
Instead of spraying chemicals, you unleash killers. Predators hunt and eat pests. Parasitoids lay eggs inside their victims. Those eggs hatch, the larvae feed, and eventually an adult emerges like something out of a sci-fi movie.
Ramírez mentions two heavy hitters for cannabis grows: Heterorhabditis bacteriophora (a nematode) and Amblyseius swirskii (a mite).
Crab spider // Photo by Antonio Luis Kuzic
Nematodes are tiny but brutal. They take down ants, fleas, moths, beetles, flies, and weevils. They crawl inside pests through any available opening (mouth, butt, breathing holes) and start snacking.
To reproduce, they release bacteria that multiply fast, killing the host. Then they use the corpse as a nursery …
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Author: Nicolás José Rodriguez / High Times
