Living in central Florida we are a mecca for hawk moths and horn worms. We treat with both systemic and contact spraying during growth which does a good job of keeping them under control. However at the end of harvest we suspend treatment 30+ days out.
The issue becomes by the time were harvesting our leaves are usually egg laden and we're loosing an enormous amounts of leaf post hanging for air cure. This year has just been particularly bad for them.
Having a target crop of 200 plus plants were spending a lot of time picking through leaves daily to pull these horrid creatures. This morning I've kinda gotten fed up with the situation after finding another 10 in under 5 minutes and another 8-10 24+ inch leaves leaves totally gone.
We're done for this seasons harvest but I'm trying to game out our next planting that were seeding this week.
I'm thinking about trying to toss our leaves into a curing chamber for 24 hours at 130F before hanging them up to actually cure. The idea being is these guys don't survive at temperatures over 120F so in theory this would kill off any eggs or larva.
However what I don't know is what this would do to our leaves in flash heating and removal... Any takers on that?
To say it in advance, a curing cabinet large enough to handle our whole harvest wouldn't be in the cards, that's a building!!! We only get away with what we grow because we can air dry and cure in our environment.
The issue becomes by the time were harvesting our leaves are usually egg laden and we're loosing an enormous amounts of leaf post hanging for air cure. This year has just been particularly bad for them.
Having a target crop of 200 plus plants were spending a lot of time picking through leaves daily to pull these horrid creatures. This morning I've kinda gotten fed up with the situation after finding another 10 in under 5 minutes and another 8-10 24+ inch leaves leaves totally gone.
We're done for this seasons harvest but I'm trying to game out our next planting that were seeding this week.
I'm thinking about trying to toss our leaves into a curing chamber for 24 hours at 130F before hanging them up to actually cure. The idea being is these guys don't survive at temperatures over 120F so in theory this would kill off any eggs or larva.
However what I don't know is what this would do to our leaves in flash heating and removal... Any takers on that?
To say it in advance, a curing cabinet large enough to handle our whole harvest wouldn't be in the cards, that's a building!!! We only get away with what we grow because we can air dry and cure in our environment.