Plant Pests

In indoor gardening you will from time to time come up against unwanted plant pests in your grow room. When we talk about pests they are usually always one of the following three offenders:

Spider Mites (two spotted spider mites, red spider mites)

Spider Mites are by far the worst plant pest to come up against for the indoor gardener. The first signs of infestation are what to the naked eye looks like black dots on the undersides of your leaves, as their numbers increase you will see webs on the leaves, when out of control your flowers and heads of your plants will be covered in webs and large numbers of mites will be clearly visable. Spider Mites are prolific breeders, cause real damage to your plants and are hard to eliminate. at the first signs of an infestation you need to wage unrelenting war on these horrible little beasts.

Thrips

Thrips are a very common pest both in outdoor and indoor plant growing. Thrips have an elongated shape like a grain of rice and should be clearly visible on leaves and stems, they can be quite energetic when agitated so if you shake or hit a leaf you may see them hopping about. Thrips are very hard to eliminate as they live on your plants, in your growing medium and on the surface of water sources. The good news is that thrips aren't a devastating pest, although they can achieve quite high numbers they generally stay on the lower areas of plants and feed randomly on leaf matter, you may see damage to leaves and silvery snail trails where thrips have been but they will not significantly harm yields so long as your plants are generally healthy and vigorous.

Fungus Gnats (aka: black flies, scariad flies)

Fungus gnats are more of an annoyance than a damaging plant pest. The point where they can cause damage is when they are a larval worm, at this stage of growth they feed on your plant roots, if your plants are very small rooted cuttings you could have some problems but in most cases your plants root growth will outstrip the ability of the larvae to do any real damage. Fungus Gnats or Black Flies aren't a real problem for your plants either as they don't feed on them they just get caught in your grow room and prove an annoyance to you. Fungus gnats are most common when growing in pots with soil, clay pebbles and COCO.

A few thoughts on Prevention

Try to have a wash and change out of your work clothes before going into your grow room. Plant pests are prolific in nature so if you spend any sort of time around outdoor plants or animals of a day you will probably pick up a few pests which you could transfer to your grow room. 

I shouldn't need to say this next one as grow rooms are no place for them but keep your pets out of your grow room as animal coats can pick up a lot of unwanted pests when they play outside.

Try and seal your room as best you can when you initially set it up so unwanted beasts can't just saunter in and make themselves at home with ease.

If you get your plants in off a 'friend' always check them for bugs first and if you're not sure put them into quarantine until you can thoroughly check them out.