Common Pests of Hemp and Cannabis Plants

The cannabis industry has steadily grown over the years, and with that expansion comes a remarkably diverse set of insects that want a piece of your crop. Some studies have reported over 250 insect, mite, and mollusk species that live on cannabis. While not every species living on the plant eats cannabis, there are several of them that can cause damage and negatively affect your yields. 

Sap-sucking pests

Well-camouflaged aphids

Some of the most common pests in hemp and cannabis feed by piercing plant tissues and extracting sap. This feeding weakens plants and can spread pathogens.

Aphids – Aphids can be challenging for many cannabis growers as there are several species that can cause damage, including cotton aphids (Aphis gossypii), potato aphids (Macrosiphum euphorbiae), green peach aphids (Myzus persicae), and the cannabis aphid (Phorodon cannabis). Heavy infestations can spread viral diseases and cause sticky honeydew buildup, which encourages sooty mold growth.

Spider mite infestation

Spider mites - These tiny arachnids feed on leaf cells, producing yellow speckling and eventually bronzing or leaf drop. Under hot, dry conditions populations can explode quickly and severely damage plants. 

Thrips – These small, slender insects scrape plant tissue and feed on plant fluids. Species include western flower thrips (Frankliniella occidentalis), onion thrips (Thrips tabaci), and impatiens thrips (Echinothrips americanus). Thrips cause leaf and flower deformities. 

Hemp russett mite damage

 Mites that target cannabis

Mites are especially concerning because of their small size. You may not even notice you have an infestation until you look at the plant with a hand lens. 

Hemp russet mite – Tiny mite that causes leaf curling, bronzing, and stunted growth. 

Broad mite – These mites are extremely small and usually go unnoticed without magnification. The symptoms of their damage can often resemble nutrient deficiency or herbicide damage.

                     Chewing pests

Several chewing insects can also damage hemp and cannabis crops. They are much easier to detect than mites and can cause considerable damage if left unchecked. 

A very hungry caterpillar

Leaf miners – Leaf miners chew between the layers of the leaf in a serpentine pattern. Keep an eye out for tomato leaf miners (Liriomyza bryoniae), pea leaf miners (Liriomyza huidobrensis), and American serpentine leaf miners (Liriomyza trifolii).

Caterpillars - Hemp moth (Grapholita delineana) and the Beet armyworm (Spodoptera exigua) and other budworms feed on flower buds and developing seeds, tunneling into plant tissues and leaving behind frass and damaged buds. 

Borers - The European corn borer (Ostrinia nubilalis) or Eurasian hemp borer (Grapholita delineana) may tunnel into stems, weakening plants and disrupting nutrient flow.

Indoor vs outdoor pest pressure

The types of pests you meet often depend on the growing environment. Indoor and greenhouse hemp production tends to see higher pressure from mites, aphids, thrips, and fungus gnats. Outdoor crops are more likely to be affected by caterpillars, beetles, grasshoppers, and stink bugs. 

Because hemp is a relatively new commercial crop, growers have fewer pesticide options than growers of many other agricultural crops. That makes prevention, monitoring, and biological control especially important.

Conclusion

The best strategy for controlling damaging pests is to start early. Consistent scouting, careful monitoring of leaves and buds, and the use of beneficial insects can help prevent small pest populations from turning into serious infestations.

Luckily, ARBICO offers a wide variety of pest control solutions aimed at the cannabis market. We have everything from beneficial insects to fungicides, nutritional supplements, neem oil, fertilizers, beneficial organisms and much more to help your grow. Check out our dedicated Hemp/Cannabis page here.

 

Snow & Gardens

The winter of 2025-2026 may well be remembered as The Winter of Snow. In the U.S., one potent storm after another hit and dropped copious quantities of the white stuff. In the Far East of Russia, Kamchatka (no stranger to snow) experienced the largest snowfall in 60 years, which left snowdrifts of up to 40 feet. (Here’s a short video.) As impressive as these snowfalls may have been, they are by nature transient. Eventually the snow will be gone and what is underneath will be revealed. If it’s your garden that’s revealed, you may have concerns over whether the snow damaged it or how the snow affected the soil. First of all, snow is not the menace to a garden that you may fear it is. In fact, there are benefits to a snow-covered garden. And getting a garden back in fighting shape requires only a few simple steps.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, snow can provide some clear benefits to your garden:

It can add nutrients – Snow is sometimes called “The Poor Man’s Fertilizer” because snowflakes attract nitrogen and sulfur compounds as they fall through the atmosphere. It is then slowly released into the soil as the snow melts.

It protects plants – Snow provides excellent insulation for over-wintering plants and soil. It can also protect plants from temperature fluctuations that are common in the spring, can regulate the temperature of soil, prevent soil heaving, and can aid in water retention.

It can increase fruit and flower yields – Many plants that produce fruit and flowers require a good freeze in the winter. If the winter is cold enough to produce snow, the plants will respond by gearing up their production. In addition, snow can provide a buffer that keeps buds from popping out too early.

It provides excellent hydration – Plants and soil can suffer from the dryness of winter, especially when the ground is too frozen for watering. A blanket of snow will naturally water the soil as it melts, without needing additional watering.

While snow has its good points, you will need to wait until it’s melted before turning your attention to gardening. The same rule applies to ice. Once the ice and snow are gone, the following steps should lead you to a successful garden.

Clean-up – Gently brush off any snow remaining on plants and discard it away from the garden area. Remove any standing branches, leaves and random litter. Thoroughly dispose of any salt or other deicing agents as they can be deadly to plants.

Assess – Once you have cleaned the area, get in there and assess the condition of your plants. Inspect the leaves and pluck off any dead ones – look for those with mushy texture, or whose color has darkened. If possible, carefully check roots as well. These steps are for winter vegetables as well as other garden plants. For dormant perennials, check the plant crowns for healthy-looking growth.

Trees – To get a proper, full assessment of your trees you’ll have to wait for spring growth to appear. Until then, you can trim up broken branches with a quick clip, but do not prune heavily. At this stage, there is a danger of inadvertently removing live tissue that the tree needs to recover.

Soil – This is the time to get your soil right. The weight of snow can compact your soil, so you will want to aerate it well. Additionally, snow melt can cause soil to become saturated, so make sure you have good drainage. You may want to test your soil at this point – here are some test kit choices for you. Depending on your test results, you may want to add a soil amendment or two (we have an extensive selection here).At the very least, add some microbes - they are an advantage for any soil. Hold off on fertilizing until it’s time to plant. Lastly, you should add a fresh layer of mulch to hold onto moisture and ensure a consistent soil temperature.

Now that you have cleaned, assessed, trimmed, amended, and mulched, all you need to do is wait until the temperature is right for you to plant. Exactly when that is depends on what you are planting and where you live. There are seemingly endless articles and opinions on this topic; you will have to decide for yourself what advice to follow.(Here is a short article on when to plant.) Consulting your local Cooperative Extension Office is always a smart move (Find yours here.) But no matter when you plant, you’ll want to have a soil thermometer – they are on the same page as the soil test kits (here).

Enjoy! 

 Pam

Great New Products From A Long-Time ARBICO Partner.

Here at ARBICO Organics, we would not be able to provide consistently excellent products to our customers without the support of our trusted vendor partners. Of all these partners, BioWorks® is one of our most trusted. For 20 years now, we have been working with their knowledgeable, innovative, and professional staff to bring you a line of exceptional products that help create extraordinary plants. We have continuously carried their tried-and-true products, like SuffOil-X, MilStop SP, and Molt-X, and eagerly embrace their new products as they come along. Right now, we have two great new products to offer – Principle™ WP and EpiShield® O. Keep reading to hear more on these two, and when you get a chance, go to our vendor page for BioWorks and see the whole line of their products. One more thing: we have two additional BioWorks products in the pipeline. They will be presented here in our blog in the not-too-distant future. 

                PRINCIPLE™ WP           

            

Although this is a new BioWorks product, its active ingredient is one that has been used for some time now - Beauveria bassiana (Strain BW149). This live fungus has been used for decades and its best-in-class efficacy in controlling some of the most damaging crop pests is undisputed. What makes organic Principle WP a novel product is its wettable powder formulation – it improves mixability, dissolves quickly in water, is low dust, has minimal leaf residue, no phytotoxicity, and is resistance-free. OMRI-listed Principle WP controls multiple life stages of aphids, beetles, cabbage loopers, grasshoppers, diamondback moths, mealybugs, psyllids, thrips, weevils, whiteflies, and more. It can be used in fields, landscapes, nurseries, and greenhouses. Sold in a 1 lb. size (SKU#1342000) or as a case of 12 - 1 lb. sizes (#SKU1342005).

           

                           EPISHIELD® O                       

Omri-listed EpiShield O is a botanical insecticide and miticide made from a proprietary blend of peppermint and clove essential oils. This new formulation has been developed to provide ease of use for growers, high mortality rates of targeted insects, low application rates, no risk of resistance or residue tolerance, and various modes of action. EpiShield O has a relatively low oil content, which offers less chance of phytotoxicity and more flexibility with applications. This concentrated product can be used indoors or outdoors on a wide range of agricultural and commercial crops and is effective against aphids, mealybugs, mites, spider mites, thrips, whiteflies and more. Exempt from REI & PHI. Sold in a 36 oz. size (SKU# 1332786), a 2.5 gallon size (SKU# 1332788), a case of 6 - 32 oz. sizes (SKU# 1332787), and a case of 2 - 2.5 gallon sizes (SKU# 1332789).

                    Submitted by Pam

Being Thankful at ARBICO

Here at ARBICO Organics we have a lot to be proud of – and thankful for. We are a small, family-owned company that has grown and prospered thanks to our committed staff of insectary workers, biocontrol consultants, shipping and warehouse personnel, bug wranglers and administrative specialists. There is a lot of talent here for a less than 50 employees! We are certain that our success is linked to our small number of experts. When you call us you get a real person, when you purchase a product from us, you can be assured that it has been vetted by a person in our building, and when you order bugs, you can be certain that your order has been handled by a knowledgeable bug wrangler that inspects it personally and packages it in the best possible way. In other words, our business philosophy is the opposite of Amazon’s – instead of super-large volume shipments handled by robots, we have a high volume of shipments that have been touched by dedicated individuals all the way through.

Our tight group of employees is not only the secret to our success but is also a big part of what makes us thankful. It is easy to build long-standing relationships with your co-workers when you work side-by-side. Not only do we work closely together to get our customers their products, but we are also dealing in products that we can be proud of. A commitment to provide clean, sustainable alternatives to toxic products runs through all of us and we will strive to give you what works for you. We are grateful to have this opportunity. And, of course, we are always thankful for our wonderful customers!

If you ever have questions, just call us (800-827-2847), you will find a real person on the other end of the call. For more information on us, check out our “About Us” page - https://www.arbico-organics.com/category/about-arbico. If you need more reasons to choose us, you can go to our “Why ARBICO Organics?” page - https://www.arbico-organics.com/category/why-choose-arbico-organics. 

                                 Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

How to Protect Your Home from an Ant Invasion

Have you ever gotten ants in your house? 

If you have, you probably just felt yourself involuntarily grimace. An ant infestation can seem infinite, especially if your house is not properly protected against ants and is possibly even actively inviting them inside. This article will provide a brief overview of the three most common nuisance ants in the USA (odorous house ant, carpenter ant, pavement ant), determine what prompts each type of ant to invade a home, and offer some tips for getting rid of an ant—including when it is time to throw in the towel and call a professional.

 

Odorous House Ant

 

Goodbye Cupcake! 

Unsurprisingly, a creature with “odorous” in its name gives off a rather pungent smell. However, living house ants do not have a particular smell. When an odorous house ant is crushed and killed, that’s when the odor is released. What it smells like tends to vary from person to person, though all of the reported scents are rather unpleasant. Bleu cheese and rotting coconut tend to be common scent descriptors, but other people report the smell as highly chemical, likening it to nail polish remover. If a colony establishes itself in your home, you run the risk of every step turning into a very stinky surprise. 

 

Odorous house ants tend to invade homes due to resource scarcity or due to rain destroying their outdoor nests. Due to rain being a motivating factor, spring and summer are primarily when house ants mount assaults on human residences. They’re very crafty and will alert members of their colony whenever a small entrance is found. This can be something like a crack in your home’s foundation or a grab in a window, but damaged utility piping can also provide an odorous house ant colony with an express line into your home. 

 

House ants are also strongly food oriented. In the wild, they primarily seek out honeydew, which is secreted primarily by aphids. If the honeydew production in an area cannot support all of the currently existing colonies, one or more colonies will be forced to leave in search of other food sources. Unfortunately, many of the processed sugars found in human pantries and fridges are very attractive to ants. 

 

Carpenter Ant

 

Carpenter ants have many things in common with the odorous house ant (they’re both ants after all), but there are some key differences. First, carpenter ants do not scent bomb you when they die, which is a welcome relief. They’re also much larger than house ants, which restricts the amount of feasible entry points into a home. 

Habitat motivation is the primary reason for a carpenter ant colony to invade a home. When carpenter ants are outdoors, they live in logs or hollow trees, and they love dead and rotting wood. Wet weather can cause wood rot in homes, which inevitably attracts carpenter ants. Even if the wood does not rot, it can soften, which then makes it easier for carpenter ants to excavate. 

 

Carpenter ants are not termites; they do not eat wood. Instead, they excavate it to build nests, discarding the wood they chew up and moving it out of the increasingly hollow nest. They have largely identical diets to odorous house ants, with a strong preference for sugars and proteins when scavenging in human kitchens. 

 

Pavement Ant

 

Pavement ants are similar in size to the odorous house ant, if not slightly bigger on average. Both species are substantially smaller than the carpenter ant. Their name comes from the pavement ants' preference to nest under cement, foundations, or stones. Because of this, pavement ant colonies can be prevalent pests around a home. 

 

Once a pavement ant colony has made its home under your home, they invade in a similar manner to odorous house ants due to their similar size. Foundation cracks are the equivalent of an all-access pass for a pavement ant; any small opening can be exploited. When pavement ants enter a house, they have a tendency to move in orderly trails along baseboards and siding, making them easy to spot. 

 

When it comes to raiding your kitchen, pavement ants love sugar just as much as the previous two species. Still, they’re much more omnivorous and will eat any type of food or food residue without much distinction, which makes them especially annoying to remove from a kitchen. 

 

Ant Control

So you’ve noticed ants in your house. What now? Thankfully, this is a common issue, and multiple products are on the market that can kill off invading ants. However, before you use any ant control products, take some measures to prevent another colony from invading in the future. 

 

-       Caulk entry points, especially for odorous house ants and pavement ants. 

-       For carpenter ants, check for damp wood. This can come from a leaky roof or plumbing system. 

-       Make sure that spills are promptly cleaned, especially sugary spills like juice. 

-       Regularly empty trash, especially if food scraps or waste are currently inside. 

 

 

Looking for a professional product? Check out ARBICO Organic’s selection of ant control products. Here’s to an ant-free home! - Robin @ARBICO Organics

 

ARBICO Organics was founded in 1979 in Arizona. Over 40 years later, ARBICO Organics continues to produce innovative means of natural biological pest control for a wide range of consumers. Their product lineup ranges from environmentally friendly solutions to common garden and home pests to biological powerhouses used in professional agriculture and at racetracks. 

Gardening Again After a Flood

2025 has been a banner year for floods, and their destruction has been almost unfathomable. Here in the U.S., we were shocked and saddened by the Central Texas floods and their devastating death toll, but ruinous flooding has been happening all over the world. Large swaths of Africa have been severely affected, and Brazil has had its worst-ever floods. Pakistan, India, and China are no strangers to flooding, but even they have had bigger, stronger, and more frequent floods.  While dealing with such natural disasters is a nearly impossible task, dealing with flooding in your garden is very manageable. 

Where to begin: 

The only actions that can be taken while the water is still present are diversion or pumping it out, both of which can be impractical at best in an active flood situation. It is best to stay out of floodwaters; they can be full of creatures as well as organic (think sewage) and non-organic contaminants. Fire Ants, for instance, form rafts of many thousands of individuals to escape floodwaters, and you do not want to bump into one of those! Watch them in action here.

Once the water is gone: 

If there is trash, tree, or plant debris, you will want to get that out of your space. If you have flood-
deposited soil, you’ll have to decide if it should be removed. Although as little as one inch of silt can kill a lawn and only a few inches can kill a tree, removing the silt may not be the best idea. Adding and removing soil can be very hard work, is quite costly, puts you in danger of handling contaminants, and is damaging to the soil (more on that below). It might be best to simply scrape residue away from some of the bigger plants and start all over.

Assess your soil: 

Whatever you do, do not work wet soil – it can cause serious damage to the soil structure. Wet soil can easily become compressed, which can lead to compaction and drainage issues when it dries. Wait at least several days to weeks before digging, and if you plan to rototill, the recommended wait time is 90 days. You will want to determine how your soil biology held up to all the water. Soil microbes are an essential part of a healthy soil, and they need oxygen. If the soil is submerged overly long, water displaces the oxygen in it, and beneficial microorganisms can suffocate and die. Anaerobic microbes, which do not need oxygen, may take their place. A foul-smelling soil is an excellent indicator that this has happened and that the soil needs to be brought back to a healthy balance before any planting is done.

Plant viability:

 How your plants are affected by flooding depends on many factors: the length of time they were
underwater, what kind of plants they are, where they are in their lifecycle, the time of year it is, and the type of water that flooded. Warm-weather flooding will affect plants more than flooding that occurs when plants are dormant in chilly weather. Salt water will be much more damaging to most plants than will fresh water. Determining the condition of your plants can be tricky, as symptoms can take weeks and even years to appear. Vegetables and flowering annuals will show symptoms before trees and shrubs. Damage caused by flooding mirrors common disease problems, so the root cause is often unclear. If you have questions, contact your local Cooperative Extension to get expert information on your specific area. Here is a link to find the one nearest to you.

Vegetable gardens:

 First off, any produce that has gone through a flood should not be eaten. This is an EPA
recommendation, and it makes good sense. With all the unknowns in floodwater, it is the only way to be sure you are not ingesting contaminants. With fruiting vegetables, any fruit on them during the flood needs to be discarded, but whatever grows later should be fine. If you wish to err on the side of caution, wash those fruits thoroughly and plant a non-edible crop for a season.

What to do before replanting: 

As with all planting, start with your soil. A soil test is highly recommended after flooding. Water is notoriously good at leaching nutrients from soil, so even a minor water issue can affect what you’re planting in. If a soil test is not for you, you should still amend your soil and lightly fertilize (no heavy fertilizer while the plant struggles to come back). You can’t go wrong with the following: Apply BioAct SD to chew through organic material; use products like ROOT, EM-1, SCD BioAg or Mikrobs to return to a healthy microbial balance; add Earthworm Castings and, when the new plants are in, fertilize with Arber Soil and Root Food or any of our other excellent fertilizers; see our full range here.

Bear in mind that fungal diseases are common after floods, and they are best controlled by applying proactively; so, plan to treat as soon as you can. Cease would be a top-notch choice for this job, or choose another of our fine products on our Fungicides page.

Submitted by Pam 

Now is Time to Transition to and Plant a Fall Garden!

Recent surveys show that approximately 40% of Americans grow their own fruits and vegetables. 

These surveys aren’t counting the massive farms and orchards that make sure you have sweet corn and apples. Instead, that statistic reflects an increasing number of hobby growers, which range from gardeners watching over a single tomato plant on their patio to individuals with a small greenhouse in their backyard. After the COVID-19 pandemic upended cultural norms and turned grocery shopping into an unexpected ordeal, many Americans looked into growing their own produce. And like the endless proliferation of Zoom calls in an office job, this uptick in home produce growing looks to be here to stay.

 

Many staple fruits and vegetables are harvested in the summer. Peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, and a whole gamut of berries are easy for hobby growers to nurture. But what happens once you’ve harvested your own strawberries and marveled at how fresh they taste? Do you just toss out the soil and tuck the pot into a corner of your garage? You could, but there’s still plenty of growing season left for some fall vegetables. Lettuce, carrots, cauliflower, and various other leafy greens and root vegetables do well and can tolerate cooling temperatures. While pumpkins are certainly associated with fall, they’re actually planted earlier in the summer (think May) as they take a minimum of 90 days to mature and are very sensitive to cold.

 

Once you’ve harvested your summer produce, remove the remaining plant from the soil. Take this time to thoroughly weed the area too. If you have a compost pile, you can add the leftover leaves, stems, and roots to it as long as they do not show signs of disease.

 

Interested in composting? Check out ARBICO Organics’ composting supplies for starters, supplies, and vermiculture.

 

The next step is to tend to the soil. Summer vegetables and fruits tend to take a lot of nutrients out of the soil, and those nutrients need to be replenished for fall vegetables to take root and thrive. Start by turning the top six inches of soil to ensure that it is properly aerated. If you have the aforementioned compost pile, dip into it and spread some on the newly turned soil now. Finally, add mulch to maintain moisture and to smooth out the turned soil.

When it comes to fall gardening, it is important to always be aware of the first frost date. Thankfully, this date is only a quick Google search away. Once you’ve established the first frost, check the “Days to Maturity” on your seed packets. If you have enough time until the first frost (I personally recommend adding an extra week or two as a buffer), now is the time to plant! Vegetables like spinach and

radishes tend to grow quickly, and Brussel sprouts actually sweeten after a patchy frost. It’s important to realize that as the days grow shorter, there is naturally less sunlight, which in turn causes plants to grow slower.

If you’re looking to get one last harvest in before winter brings snow and cold, August is the last realistic month for planting. Don’t dawdle and we wish you the best of harvests! - Robin @ ARBICO Organics

 

ARBICO Organics was founded in 1979 in Arizona. Over 40 years later, ARBICO Organics continues to produce innovative means of natural biological pest control, disease management, and organic grow supplements for hobbyists and professionals alike.