what are your preventative maintenance routines?

To prevent powdery milder, aphids, fungus gnats and spider mites?

I plan on monthly mosquito dunks and bi monthly foliar sprays of avid. Is there something more effective/less costly?

Immunox or eagel20 for PM.

Hot water for Gnats in my hydro...i just love to hear em scream

plants get a quarentine and sprayed with plutoium 235 coming in and going out so no mites survive...

so far i've been lucky. pm and mold are my main concerns since my rooms are in my basement and i'm just off the lake so i tend to get water coming up through my floors when the lawn gets waterlogged either from melting snow or hard rain. installed a drain system along my wall that empties into a sump pit in my flower room. so far so good. lots of airflow and ventilation too. as for bugs, just been too damn cold for em' but i have pest strips and neem oil i use when its warmer neem oil only in the first 2 weeks of veg. just make sure to maintain clean rooms and quarrantine any clones you may be introducing to your garden.

When it comes to PM, the best prevention is just making sure your environment is right. In flower i try to never let my humidity go over 40% with loss of air flow. In Michigan a dehumidifier is a MUST have IMO. The one time i did have PM green cure worked decently, but it only kept it at bay and didn't get rid of it. If you're serious about prevention, I'd look into burning sulfur periodically.

As far as the other pests go, I've had good luck with azamax, a neem/silica mix, and pyrethtin based sprays. I only use the pyrethrins on clones, I don't like to use anything that's not organic after that just in case it lingers.

Clean, Clean, bleach it clean again and then clean it more. that plus some mighty wash if its the summer when I run the Ice strain (I only ever seen a mite on that evil little bitch). cleanliness is next to skydaddiness or godliness if that's your thing.

I crack from beans and I have no problems. If I get clones from a grower who is careless that's where the problems come in.

My grow is in the basement too. My humid the last few weeks has been like 38% and temps around 70. No problems really. Now in the summer the humid can pump up to 70% if I don't watch it close.

PM has only got me when I've brought clones in from others or when I run purps. Don't ask me why purps cuz I don't know. Purps sucks with yield and it is prone for problems so after this run I won't be running it again.

I have a Purple OG that is a great yielder. I also grew Da Purps b4 and had good yields off that... Just don't get much of a buzz of purple anything IMO..

And light!!!! I am up to about 80 watts a sq ft. Healthy plants don't attract pests or problems as easily as unhealthy ones do.

i use a 3% hyrogen peroxide mix for mold, neem/karanja oil/silica/yucca mix for bugs and soil fungus, this new stuff to me Quantum Apocolypse from entomo419.com (works great so far) sometimes sns 217 but not as much because of price

HomeLessBeans said:

And light!!!! I am up to about 80 watts a sq ft. Healthy plants don't attract pests or problems as easily as unhealthy ones do.

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HomeLessBeans can you come explain that to my ladies, they wont listen.

budsMI said:

I have a Purple OG that is a great yielder. I also grew Da Purps b4 and had good yields off that... Just don't get much of a buzz of purple anything IMO..

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i always thought the same, not sure why, but they do look and taste good. i thought i was just my bud back when, but all my friends were decent growers and i felt the same about theirs.

Bleaching the entire room and all equipment before grow. Sticky fly strips. Keeping the environment as perfect as can be for growing to eliminate issue's with mold, excessive heat/cold and never bringing anything into the grow room that has not been bleached or completely cleaned.

Indoors I don't have pm or mold ...outdoors I use 9 parts water to one part milk.

Neem n azamax n mighty wash ....had a gnat problem n fly strips took em out...the kind u unroll n hang.

clean and clean and clean and more clean never have probs only tasty meds

HomeLessBeans said:

Immunox or eagel20 for PM.

Hot water for Gnats in my hydro...i just love to hear em scream

plants get a quarentine and sprayed with plutoium 235 coming in and going out so no mites survive...

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Sounds very medicinal...

The things some people call medicine...

Fighting cancer with carcinogens?

Rising Moon said:

Sounds very medicinal...

The things some people call medicine...

Fighting cancer with carcinogens?

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its only active for less than 30 days. after that you could eat pounds of it..........nice try.

you must grow and care for every single ingredient of every single thing you eat, plants and animals then, right? No? Oh, then you're ingesting much worse..........and I hope you wear a mask all day, and don't breathe the air, since you'd be breathing much worse too.

man, you might be really fucked? bummer.

Im gonna use a systemic called SNS 203 every other week and azamax/neemoil/avid foliar spray every three weeks (1 spray a week rotating products). Plan on bleach washing the entire veg room tonight and put down new white poly floor. I had heard that AVID stays in the plant for 16 weeks and has DEET in it, can anyone confirm this?

Does the above routine sound okay?

bowlfullofbliss said:

its only active for less than 30 days. after that you could eat pounds of it..........nice try.

you must grow and care for every single ingredient of every single thing you eat, plants and animals then, right? No? Oh, then you're ingesting much worse..........and I hope you wear a mask all day, and don't breathe the air, since you'd be breathing much worse too.

man, you might be really fucked? bummer.

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Your missing the point. In fact. I do grow ALLOT of my own food, and raise chickens for eggs, buy meat, milk, cheese and REAL food from farmers who raise the animals and FOR SURE dont believe that government funded propagandized chemical safety bullshit you cling to like grim death.

Get a clue and realize chemicals, poisons and known toxins have no buisness in food, medicine or the air/water.

Real farmers don't spray poisions. They cultivate life and balance.

Pesticide facts: "The latest estimate by a WHO task group indicates that there may be 1 million serious unintentional poisonings each year and in addition 2 million people hospitalized for suicide attempts with pesticides."

I bet the corperations who make those chemicals claim they are safe on the label. And you'll believe them...

i seen a couple neem/azamax combo's up there, is there any reason you run both? imo azamax is far inferior to neem oil. depending on the source of the neem, it should be cold processed or cold pressed, however they label it now, and it contains tons of beneficial things for all life, and should contain a lot more of the (1) main spider mite 'killer' azadirachtin that azamax uses. i forget how many different things in neem discourage and kill mites etc., an easy search though. id just increase my neem oil concentrates in replacement for that expensive GH stuff. clean all rooms top to bottom with some kind of cleaner, theres some good natural organic cleaners on the market if thats your thing. sometimes you may even have to take 2 weeks off, then turn a small light on 12/12 for a day or two to give any dormant ones a chance to react. then kill/clean again. may seem extreme, but so are they. they can go two weeks without food or light, maybe more idk