Letters to Rev, Cannabis Issues, Deer and Caterpillars

Hey now good peeps! I’m the Rev, and I have been growing and breeding cannabis for over 50 years now. I often get emails/texts asking me questions about growing cannabis, mostly like when peeps are having cannabis issues, so in my ‘Letters to Rev’ series I answer those questions to help out. It may help you as well. Let’s roll…

Cannabis Issues with Backyard Growing, Question

FROM: David K. Fallbrook, CA

“Hello Rev. This year I tried growing some weed in my backyard since it’s legal now, so I grew 4 plants and they were beautiful! Until, the beginning of September. Then I noticed some of my buds with weird looking gray leaves. When I explored these flowers I found caterpillars deep in the buds all rotted out on the inside. This happened to about 25% of my best and biggest buds.

Then, about halfway through September I came out one morning and saw that deer had ravaged my plants pretty badly. They didn’t kill them, but it really f’d them up. I had been using urine (bobcat) and it seemed to be working well until then. What can I do about this stuff Rev? Thanks man.

Rev’s Answer

Howdy David. Yeah, these two problems are old nemeses of mine as well. Let’s take them one at a time here, caterpillars, and then deer, and let me tell you what I have done in the past that works to defeat, or at least impede them. Remember those gray bud leaves my man, those are a red flag you can see when the bud rot is still halfway mild and can often be “surgically” cut out of buds and saving a lot of your yields/harvest.

Cannabis Issues—Caterpillars

Here’s the thing about caterpillars. They begin as eggs laid on your plants in the early springtime—at night—by moths. Tiny caterpillars go basically unnoticed for a long time as they munch on the leaves. They tend to hide during the day and come out and eat at night. They are camouflaged and look like stems, or sometimes they stay on the underside of leaves. However … as flowers develop on your plant they offer the (now medium sized) caterpillars a much better place to hang out in during the day and stay hidden. The flower basically grows around them, and all their poop and munching inside the flower cause it to mold up super bad and rot like a cavity from the inside out. It’s hideous.

This is a horrible end for many buds that appear/look awesome, until you break them open—eww. A product like the one pictured below, an OMRI rated BT (Bacillus Thuringiensis) product designed for killing caterpillars works well. Just be careful with this product regarding your native creatures like butterflies and moths, because BT kills any caterpillars of any type. Please Read all instructions and Warnings thoroughly and you’ll get what I mean. It’s all safe to humans, plants, and animals. Still, me being me, I would wear a mask, heh heh.

Mother Nature’s Caterpillar Countermeasures

This will sound weird to many of you no doubt, but, as long as you remain calm and non threatening, hornets and wasps can become used to your presence and not attack you. I have accomplished this many times in the past. Don’t ever approach any nest directly on purpose, but if there are a lot of them buzzing around where your plants and you are, that’s actually a good thing as far as caterpillar countermeasures go. They (wasps/hornets) love them some caterpillars and I have seen with my own eyes Yellow Jackets pull caterpillars out of early developing flowers—Yup—also, never blow air at a bee/hornet/wasp to try and get it away from you. “Push” them away slowly with hands, no swatting them. The CO₂ from your breath will piss them off sometimes, it seems to me.

Spiders are your bestest line of defense supplied by Mother Nature naturally, and if you have these Orb Web Weaving spiders around (see photo below) then let them be. Moths come out at night. Orb Web Weaving spiders hunt at night—bing, bang, boom. Long ago we would import these types of spiders, catching them all over the area and releasing them directly onto various cannabis plants in our gardens. This greatly reduced our caterpillar damage having a lot of these spiders around the plants. It’s startling to get a face full of spiderweb, LoL, but not a dealbreaker.

Cannabis Issues—Deer

This is short, and sweet my green friends. Many urine based products, even pepper based products, often work very well against deer—until—the deer get hungrier as summertime wanes. In my experience NOTHING stops extremely hungry deer except chicken wire type (or better) fencing about 6 foot in height, per plant or around entire plot, period, full stop. So, do that or potentially pay big time.

See Also

Should You Grow Cannabis with Coco Coir?

After Hours with The Rev

Wanna check out more Rev? Check out this article: Simple Organic Growing with Rev. Also, keep in mind that Kingdom Organic Seeds (KOS) has a new (2025) location: KOS at JBC Seeds! So, bookmark that bad boy. Just hit up JB there if you don’t see the KOS variety you are looking for. We’ll get it there for ya. It gets restocked at intervals throughout the year. You can go there to read up on any KOS gear as well. Thanks for the support.

I’m on a bit of a hiatus from My YouTubes Channel lately due to health stuffs—I need some surgery, but I’ll be alright again soon—but, go ahead and subscribe if ya wanna; so you get to see when I start up my vids again. I just babble about all natural (True Living Organics) style growing in my videos, you may dig on it, no AI for sure, in anything I produce. 1 Caveat, I do create an image occasionally like the main article image in this article. That’s the limit of any AI I ever use—LoL.

A Tad of Bad News, and Some Good News

My publisher just went bankrupt so no more of my TLO (True Living Organics) book royalties for me, ugh. Sad, and a sign of the times for reals. Still available on Amazon for now. Anyways, I am gonna do a whole series of growing guides on KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) books, electronic and paperback versions. Specific guides mostly “just the facts m’am” type of dynamic in the writing style. Just the good stuffs. I’ll keep you updated. I’m halfway through my first book titled: Backyard Organic Cannabis Growing. It’s about growing outdoors In containers, raised beds, or in the ground. I’ll give ya’ll a heads up when I publish it by Jan next year (2026) I would think, at the latest. If you are more of a Facebook peep here is My Facebook Page. I’m not there a lot but I do update stuff from time to time, so if ya wanna.

I’m Michael Paige on YouTubes and Facebook FYI. Until next we meet my friends. I’m outty for now but I shall return in a week, or two—maybe three, this time. Any inquires you can email me at tlodruidsguide@gmail.com and I never (ever) use FB messenger, yeah? Okay then, hope you enjoyed the article about two common cannabis issues and got something good from it. L8r G8rs…

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