Ahh, well, they’re kind of an ongoing thing, they don’t get everything, they die off or leave before the whole job is done, so I ended up in a cycle of buying them, keeping the spidermites from totally fouling the process, but never getting rid of them entirely. If Thrips are your problem, Spinosad is your solution, end of sentence.

I never spray, just adding to your watering can in the correct amount does it.

Mites are a different matter though, Spinosad doesn’t do those I don’t think. When I got mites I killed everything, sanitized, let it sit for a few months, before starting again. They’re the bedbugs of indoor growing.

What you want is called Spinosad. It’s marketed under other names, but it will deal with them immediately and decisively. Can be hard to find, when I needed it there was a local grow shop aimed at weed growers that sold it in small bottles, only a small amount added to your watering can is needed.

Kills every stage of life, which is the downfall of many bug killers - gets the adults but not the eggs. This stuff is a thrip nuclear option.

Hi Trey. Stop punching down.

My Ass Generates A-bombs

When you can play songs and your rhythm is confident.

If you’re looking at this from just starting out, you need less than you think. If anything, it is easier in a band, because you can rely on other people to hold the thing together, if you take a momentary breather. I spent years mentally flagellating myself because I couldn’t play a lot of Grateful Dead tunes the way you hear them on record, and it should have been obvious but was not that that is because there’s two guitar players. A lot of Garcia’s lead bits would sound weird and not quite musical, without Bobby under there keeping the rhythm going.

Mostly depends what music you wanna play, but in nearly every genre there are the complementary talents of leads/shredding and chords/rhythm. Ideally you have both, but the band sounds best if everyone is aware of what everyone else is doing in the song. If you like Blues, find another Blues player, and get together to jam, in which you pick a riff/progression, and trade off between soloing and rhythm/chords. Middle step between a full band.

I have a Godin with HSH - it still quacks, but not like a real strat. Coil tapping can get you there, with the right pickups.

The best Strat I ever had was wired with a Dimarzio HS-3 in the bridge, which is a stacked humbucker famously used by Yngwie, and two stock Strat pups - using a Superswitch I was able to make it extremely quiet, while always having two single coils in the notch positions. I was even able to add the HS3’s silent coil to the neck pickup, which wasn’t quite like a normal neck, but pretty close with no buzz.

Learn a lot of Bluegrass songs and you’ll get a feel for what chords go together - Bluegrass does not tend to use a lot of Jazz chords, but you will need a capo.

Look at the white keys on a piano, starting at C (white key next to the two black keys rather than three). The intervals between those white keys are TTSTTTS (tones and semitones). If you play C-E-G, you get a Cmajor chord. Now, if you take those three fingers and work your way up the keys, always skipping one key, the chords you will get are C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, Bdim, and back to C.

If you start at any note on the keyboard, and figure out the TTSTTTS pattern from there (G is an easy one, the notes of the G Diatonic Scale are G-A-B-C-D-E-F# and back to G - the farther away you get from C in the circle of fifths, the more Flats or Sharps (Accidentals) will be in the scale),

Anyways, you can follow that same pattern and you’ll that same sequence of Maj-Min-Min-Maj-Maj-Min-Dim, which are called Diatonic Chords. Basically, all these chords fit together beautifully with each other, in various combinations, with the most common set being the I-IV-V, which in C corresponds to C, F and G - the roman numerals refer to the chord you find at a given step in the diatonic chord scale. So for the G scale, your chords would be G-Am-Bm-C-D-Em-F#dim.

But there are all kinds of ways to mess with that basic harmonious formula, that I will not get into here, but find yourself a good theory course and go all the way through it. But mostly, learn those Bluegrass classics, and realize just how many are mostly I-IV-Vs with some tricky little bits thrown in here and there - it’s not Jazz and never tries to be, though there is virtuosity everywhere.

Cheap street food that everyone can afford to enjoy. That’s the purpose of a frankfurter.