Kill them all
Annihilation kills pests and mold using a proprietary technology to
unleash unparalleled effectiveness out of all-natural active ingredients.
Eradication instructions
Dilution Ratios
Maximum
4oz. (120 mL) per 1 gallon of water
Use for: Aphids, thrips, caterpillars, and other larger insects. Higher concentrations are useful for insects with enough size to pull away from pesticide contact. As this concentration is almost always overkill, please try at lower concentrations first.
General Kill
2oz. (60 mL) per 1 gallon of water
Use for: All insects. If using on clones or young plants without an adequate root base, it is recommended to rinse the treated plants with water within an hour of the time that the initial pesticide application has dried.
Maintenence/Powder Mold
1 oz. (30 mL) per 1 gallon of water
Use for: Powder mold and any other fungal contamination. Also as a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly maintenance spray. Maintenance sprays are intended to catch pests and fungus issues before they become a problem.
Root Drench
0.5 oz. (15 mL) per 1 gallon of water
Use for: Insects (Root aphids) and fungal problems in the root zone. Always use on a test plant before applying on the entire crop. Plants that are already severely damaged or that have weakened genetics, can be damaged with application. After application, rinse the root zone with water an hour after application to remove any excess pesticide. By its nature, pesticide harms beneficial biology while killing infestation. Rinsing will minimize this side effect.
Application
Application
Pre-Spray
The foundation of a successful pesticide application begins before actually treating the plants. Understanding the pesticides effectiveness and how it behaves when applied is key to tailoring your dilution ratios, application method, and frequency of application.
Looking Closer
We highly recommend purchasing a digital microscope, though the common handheld magnifiers will work as well. Digital microscopes are easy to find and affordable, many will even connect to your phone.
Set up your microscope or magnifier on a flat surface with good light, and select a leaf from an infested plant to examine. Use something with a white background, ideally a Petri dish on top of some white paper, or one of those too-small white plates that you have in abundance in your kitchen. If possible, tape the edges of the leaf down to prevent curling as it dries out.
When you have a leaf that is crawling with bugs in view, it is time to apply pesticide. Spraying pesticide on a small sample will often times wash the insects off the leaf and ruin the show. Instead, use an eye dropper or syringe. You can also just dip a small rod into pesticide and surface tension will keep a small drop of pesticide on the rod that can be deposited on the insects gently enough not to displace them.
Next, watch what happens. You will see firsthand what the pesticide you are using actually does. With Annihilation, you will see the insects thrash about and spasm before becoming still. This is known as the “knockdown phase”, and even plain water or ineffective pesticides will have some knockdown power. The key is to keep watching. After several hours you will see what actually dies. What isn’t killed will be moving around again before too long. Annihilation generally kills during the knockdown phase. Larger insects like aphids may spasm and twitch for a while, but eventually they go still.
This technique will not only allow you to experience the killing power of Annihilation in a way that will eliminate any doubt, but will also allow you to fine tune how much Annihilation you actually need to get the job done. Our “General Kill” dilution is approximately a 60:1 dilution ratio. If that ratio is killing the pests, try 75:1, 100:1, or simply the Maintenance\Powder Mold dilution ratio of 1 oz.\gallon water. Finding the sufficient dilution ratio for your specific problem can potentially save you significant money.
Timing
Ambient temperature is critical
The hotter it is, the faster the pesticide dries. It is thus particularly important to spray in the early morning or in the evening. The morning is best though as this is also the time of day that the plants internal temperature is also at its lowest. Contact killing pesticides stop killing when they dry, so maximizing the time befor the pestidide dries is key. every little bit helps.
Most natural pesticides, Annihilation included, will tell you not to spray in direct sunlight in the instructions. With other pesticides, there is also the fact that conventional essential oils can burn the plant if they are on the leaf in direct sunlight. (Or sprayed too often.) This is not the case with Annihilation as our essential oils are far from conventional. The only concern for spraying in direct light or during the hot part of the day is the strain it will put on your wallet and mental state by being inefficient with your pesticide and time spent. Your plants will be fine though.
Frequency of Application
Complete coverage is impossible with one spray.
Surface tension is no joke. Both leaf and insect are evolved to create little pockets of air when blasted with liquid. Hairs on the underside of a leaf create dry spaces even when the whole leaf is submerged. Insects can trap air under their bodies and even coordinate when they are close enough together to create even larger safe spaces. Mothers will even perch atop their eggs or young to shield them. We estimate that approximately 15-20% of a plant is dry even after a professional level spray.
Before Annihilation there was no solution for this, and this issue is the main reason we now talk “pest maintenance” instead of “pest eradication”. If, after every spray 15-20% of your crop is untreated, is it any surprise that you need to spray again a few days later when the plant can handle the treatment without burning, or risk a near certain spiral to infestation?
Annihilation alone can be sprayed 2-3 times in one 24 hour period without damaging the plant. (Actually, it seems to stimulate the plant.) This means that repeated sprays can be made in a short window to ensure everything is covered. Repeated sprays in the same day are the ONLY way to ensure complete coverage, and Annihilation is the ONLY pesticide you can use to do this with.
When complete coverage is acheived, it can be a month or more until an infestation returns.
Eradication vs Maintenance
Eradication vs Maintenance
There is a serious disconnect from what a natural pesticide manufacturer will claim regarding their product’s effectiveness, and the reality the farmer will experience in the field. This is why the term, “Pest Maintenance”, has become so widely used. Farmers know one pesticide won’t ever do the job, and they usually rely on a rotation of several brands of pesticide alongside a healthy dose of prayer and preventative sprays to manage pest problems. Success is usually defined by an ability to “manage” rather than “eradicate” infestation.
There are exactly two reasons this is true:
The first is biological. In general, a natural pesticide is made from common, easy to register for use ingredients that have been used in some cases for thousands of years for pest control. While these ingredients have serious pest killing properties, the problem is that insects adapt. Something that works, works. For a time. Every insect that is susceptible to a widely used ingredient will be killed, and years may go by before that ingredient stops working. The problem is that not every insect is killed, and the ones that remain have a mutation that made them immune or resistant to the specific active ingredient, and pretty soon those mutated insects are the only ones reproducing. Evolution is a crafty beast. The result is that a natural pesticides ability to kill is always unpredictable, leaving diligence and Voodoo as the themes of any success.
The second reason is physical. Just about every natural pesticide is a contact killer. This means the pesticide must come in direct physical contact with the insect for it to have any effect. This is easier said than done. Both insects and plants have evolved to deal with water falling from the sky. Surviving the rain is a rather important ability for any organism on our planet with few exceptions. Air pockets formed by plant structure or insect positioning will always leave areas dry and untreated. This can be confirmed easily yourself. Pluck a leaf off a plant and hold it under water until you are sure its soaked. Then use a magnifying glass to look closely at the leaf and you will see 15-20% of the surface is still dry. These dry areas leave insects and eggs untreated and ensure repeated sprays will be required. This is especially true since 3-5 days between sprays is the industry standard for most products in order to avoid excessive damage to the plant.
Annihilation Concentrate is unique in the market because these two problems, biological and physical, are problems it can avoid or accommodate to bring the word eradication back into circulation. Epoch Scientific has learned to manipulate and control every single molecule we sell in our pesticide concentrate. When this care is used in the creation of a pesticide, total eradication becomes the measure of success once again. Biologically, the formula avoids the ability for a species of insect to develop resistance by simply killing them all, mutated or not. Annihilation Concentrate completely sidesteps an insect’s evolutionary defense. Physically, the fact that our pesticide kills with a fraction of the active ingredients other pesticides need, means that the window between sprays is nonexistent. As soon as the next spray dries a second can be applied, though we recommend waiting a few hours. This means that the fact that the most thorough spraying leaves untreated areas does not matter. It is Chaos Theory that governs what stays dry. Thus the areas that stay dry are different each time a plant is sprayed, and a second or third spray ensures the final untreated areas are as close to zero as possible. The Laws of Physics dictate that the ability to spray 2-3 times in a 24 hour period without harming the plant is the only path to complete eradication.
Cost Analysis
Without question, the sticker price on a bottle of Annihilation will be the highest of your available options. Despite this, it will be the cheapest pesticide you use.
First of all, you will use less product. Due to the simple fact that Annihilation actually kills insects, you will spray it less. This means less pesticide purchased over the season, as well as countless, expensive hours of labor applying products that don’t work over and over again. Annihilation Concentrate is not a product you use as a preventative either. Products that recommend preventative sprays are products that understand they don’t work. Having their customers spray a preventative helps minimize outbreaks that those products cant contain, and also pass the blame for the problem onto the customer. Lack of prevention can be blamed for any outbreak, and proper prevention is the customers responsibility. With Annihilation Concentrate, however, do not spray until you notice insects. Then, spray 2-3 times in a 24 hour period and eradicate your problem. Most users will find they buy themselves 4-6 weeks before insects are noticed again, or even longer depending on variable factors like cross contamination and quarantine procedures.
Second, its helpful to think of virtually every pesticide, natural or not, as a form of chemotherapy, distasteful of a metaphor as that is. You see, both compounds can harm their target. Unfortunately, they also inflict collateral damage on the host while doing so. This is why pesticides recommend waiting 3-5 days between treatments on the label. The plant needs at least that long to recover from the damage caused by the initial spray, and a spray earlier would seriously burn or harm the plant. The struggle is clearly visible to the naked eye. The plants droop and grow less, and the result of a season of continuous spraying is a plant that produces less of a yield, and a suboptimal quality harvest compared to the plants actual genetic potential. With Annihilation Concentrate, the opposite happens. After a spray, the plants thrive. The leaves perk up like they just received a wonderful fertilizer or compost tea, and growth and product quality continue unimpeded. After all, isn’t the most satisfying and easy way to increase a profit margin simply growing more of a higher quality crop without spending more money to do so?
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