Caterpillars and rushed harvest?

This forum has been such a great resource. Thank you all for participating and sharing your knowledge. It’s really helped me in this first grow.

So, yesterday I learned that I have a caterpillar problem. I’ve probably picked 10 off of 3-4 of my plants. There’s a lot of wild milkweed in the area where I keep my plants. I should have seen that problem coming. I’m at 71 days on my oldest WW Autos. Is there any saving the buds the caterpillars have seemed to get into? Should I harvest early and just see what happens? I assume that otherwise I need to cut off the affected buds?

Here are the pics of the damage and the current state of the trichomes.

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I deal with them.

As a preventative you should be spraying with Monterey BT, the young caterpillars eat the treated tissue and die. Once they get to be larger, not so much.

I would suggest cutting out the affected areas and removing all caterpillars you find and let the plant finish.

You might want to do a bud rinse after harvest. I use this method and it works quite well. I heard a Podcast and they said it hurt the quality, but I have done side by side comparisons with no issues.

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Mold is already developing. You should try to cut out the affected parts from buds, try to be clean and careful. Than just keep observation until the harvest.

You are not so far :wink: :crossed_fingers:

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Thanks for the advice. I’ve cut out the affected parts, but I’m still picking off caterpillars. It feels like they will destroy the entire plants if I don’t harvest. I just don’t know how early I am. This is definitely more stressful than I expected. No more sticking the plants where the milkweed is in the summer.

Sorry, that’s a judgement call you need to make.

Good luck.