Aphids wreak havoc on gardens all over the world by gnawing holes in leaves and ruining crops. In cannabis farming, there’s one predaceous insect that slays them in a way that conjures images of the movie “Alien.” A parasitoid (aphidius colemani) lays its eggs inside the bodies of aphids. When they hatch, the parasitoid ruptures the aphid, killing it on the spot, and the new babies begin a life cycle that involves seeking and destroying aphids as part of its reproductive process.
This scenario plays out time and again under the cannabis canopies at greenhouse farms throughout Carpinteria Valley. Not all beneficial insects go about their work in as graphic a fashion as the parasitoid, but the millions of beneficial insects applied to the plants serve as the front lines on an endless microscopic battlefield
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