Your goal is to stop pests and diseases, and one of the best ways of doing that is by not letting them into your home or grow room at all.
When you grow cannabis outdoors, even if you use major poisons or a greenhouse, you won’t be able to stop all pests and diseases.
But if you grow marijuana indoors, and you pay attention to this article, you can protect your valuable plants.
Start by looking at your grow room as a fortress. What can get in there, and how does it get in?
Pests and diseases come in through the air, through water, through soil, through clones, and on you, anyone who visits your room, including pets (especially dogs).
Think of your grow room as a bank vault that has contents that could be ruined by microbes or bugs. You want to minimize all ways that anything can get into that vault.
Whether it’s a reverse osmosis system that filters all junk out of your water, or micronized filers on your air intakes, do everything in your power to prevent microbes, fungi spores, spider mites, thrips, root aphids, and other problems from ever getting inside.
Another thing to do is physically and closely examine your marijuana plants every day. Check every part of the plant. Even feel around the base of the main stalk. Push the plant around a little and see if it’s solidly rooted.
Get your magnifying glass and look at the upside and bottom of the leaves, and look at the root zone.
That’s how you see a mite, aphid, thrip, or fungus gnat problem and use the proper methods and materials to stop it early before it wrecks your cannabis season.
It’s a good idea to remove dead or dying leaves and to trim or thin your marijuana plants enough to allow strong air flow through their canopy.
There are various sprays and root drenches that control specific problems. You can find other articles here on BigBudsMag that’ll key you into those, just check using our site search feature.
But one thing to realize is that you might have to fight an ongoing battle if a pest, mold, or fungi have gotten into your marijuana grow room.
For example, to control fungus gnats you could use predatory nematodes in the soil, set out sticky insect traps, and spray an organic pesticide right on the soil.
For other pests, such as root aphids, you might have to use a repeated application of soil drench. The reason is that one application of a pest-killer could kill adults, but not eggs.
Or, the application might not be thorough enough to kill everything. If you haven’t closed off all vector access, the pests might be re-infesting even as you try to kill them.
One thing we always emphasize: please don’t use chemical poisons like Avid or Eagle. Those poisons will stay in your crops and harm you and anyone else who smokes your weed.
There are plenty of organic interventions like Azamax and Physan 20 that protect your cannabis plants without harming them or you.
Another non-toxic intervention is to spray your plants with Rhino Skin…a potassium silicate product that armors plants against pests and diseases, and is also a nutrient that strengthens resin glands.
I just talked to my other marijuana grower friends in the office here about what they think are the top pest and disease problems happening in cannabis grow ops right now, and they put root aphids and diseases coming in from externally-sourced clones as their biggest concern.
Just remember that your marijuana plants are the most valuable plants on the planet, so guard them like you’d guard a bank vault full of gold.
