socaljoe
Cocaine Cowboy
If you don't mind sharing....what state do you live in? If you're far enough north, you may not have to deal with them. I talked with some Wisconsin growers and was told they don't really have to deal with caterpillars there.Can’t wait u til I have to deal with those! What are the signs? I’ve noticed a lot slugs out here
If you do get budworms in your area, you'll see medium-sized (quarter-sized) white/cream colored moths flying around and landing on your plants where they lay eggs, which then hatch and the caterpillar burrows inside the bud and starts to eat (and shit).
The best way to prevent them is to keep the moths from being able to land on the plants, my suggestion would be a screenhouse...that would be a greenhouse frame covered in shade cloth material, reasoning being if they can't land then they can't lay eggs. BT (bacillus thuringiensis) spray will work, but it doesn't work well enough to be 100% reliable as they have to ingest the active bacteria. The problem with using BT is that most of what they eat is inside the flower cluster, the BT spray mostly goes on the leaves and outside of the buds.