Hot melt glue, dabs, wood, paint and powertools.
1 Like
I would be hunting down the source of the powdery mildew contamination. Shit’s nasty! I suspect it came in on the host plant. Grow On!
2 Likes
Also…stay away from the organics. Symbiosis doesn’t exist in deep water culture. heh heh there’s all the tips I can think of for now after reading the thread!
2 Likes
Well the source is indeed always the question but I share your suspicion. Now unfortunately my place is set up such that my cabinet runs in a room that is difficult to sterilize to my ideal standard. I run HEPA filters on my intakes but ultimately I open the doors into in imperfect environment. Working to improve that situation bit by bit but it takes time. When I finally get to build my forever garden I plan to enter through a bathroom/changeroom. Gotta clean them apes before they come inside.
So airborn entry cannot be ruled out, but I’ve had some issues with it on my Diamond kush line in the past. Generally she’s fine, unless I do something dumb and let environmental go out of whack hard late in flower. Pretty much everytime it’s jumped up suddenly like this it’s been the result if a pump or human failure causing a hard dry out for 12 to 24hrs. The plants bounce back, sometimes I’d even swear the Diamond likes it she comes back swinging like nothing happened, growth wise. But then it appears, the PM.
So it may be that its latent in my Diamond Kush at this point, which sucks because she’s a keeper for me medicine wise. Makes my brain work right for getting things done so can’t let her go.
That being said, for those of intrepid nerdiness there are ways to solve even that problem… 
6 Likes
fuck yah, spray all plant material twice in veg with sulfur mixed in water - it’s extinction for PM. When the power goes out on my system there is a 24 hour clock ticking before the power has to come back on OR, I have to go back down there and stir the water for a bit to dissolve more oxygen. Only had to do that once after a huge natural disaster took the power out for 24 hours. If you want, I can go on a huge rant about how PM lives. Definitely analyze and try and eliminate any problem areas with the operation of the system. Any failure points must be continuously monitored and eliminated if possible. LOL that’s just generally good advice for anyone.
6 Likes
Heya, hope all is well. Would love an update on the UFO if you have a few spare minutes 
1 Like
I’m curious to see if @Ginger_Rick can wipe out the powdery mildew. Lots of people can’t handle it. Which is strange? Here’s my story:
a long…assed time ago. in a galaxy far far away I was growing my weed I got this berlin clone from someone it was infested with powdery mildew. One of my strains was resistant, but eventually it ripped through everything I had even cut off all the lower leaves, applied class IV poison. Shit was invincible, I thought. So I had to go to buddy’s place to buy a sack of weed. He says to me “hey fucker, did you sell all your weed and now you’re using that money to buy my weed? Cause that’s not good.” I said “no man, fucking powdery mildew got my crop!” He says “get some sulfur, from any source, even if you have to grind up pellets, dissolve it in water, then spray it on in veg. Soak em good then 2 weeks later do it again, you’ll never see mildew ever again.” So I did that, except I used safers defender, so I didn’t need to grind anything up. I swear to fuck that was 20 years ago and the demon never resurfaced.
6 Likes
Oh I’m not gone, just been a very busy boy these last few weeks here. As is on brand for this wretched year of 2020 life has somewhat exploded in some unexpected ways for me of late. Had some things to get sorted away from the garden, but I’ll get an update done in the next few days here. I have actually been quite the busy little beaver on the homefront as well, getting things ready for winter.
On the powdery mildew front, @JoeCrowe, yes, I am actually usually a fan of the sulphur treatment in veg, and I have done it in the past. I had lapsed for some dumb reason probably just got busy with life again. But I’m gonna beat it, and if bringing back the regular sulphur treatment as part of my veg IPM cycle doesn’t do it… well… there are EXTREME means of getting out ahead of almost any systemic plant disease. Extreme nerdiness that I’ve become deeply fascinated with of late and yeah, I’m taking the plunge. I’m going full super nerd over here, I’m taking up Tissue Culture.
If you take your explant from the very freshest apical growing tips it is actually possible to get clean cuttings off of plants that have caught horrible shit like fusarium. Ever lost a batch to fusarium wilt?? Its horrible, it’s like kids with terminal illnesses, you can’t do anything but watch things die, just hopeless. Well with tissue culture you can get ahead of the spread of the infection through the plant tissues, and actually save a strain that’s basically terminal. Not to mention the whole suspended animation infinite clone army in tubes thing.
So yeah, gotta do some updates soon… 
8 Likes
I’ve been looking at tissue culture for a while as I also do a little mycology as well and am very familiar with the sterile techniques and working with agar. Looking forward to seeing what you do with it.
3 Likes
Tissue culture seems a little intimidating honestly. Without a ;sterile environment it would be hopeless and not sure I could create that in a home.
That said I would have thought I needed to have a clean room for changing the bearings on a 3600 rpm screw air compressor but did that without and outside as well. it was still running 18 months later last I saw …so I suppose it could be done.
4 Likes
You can generally create a good enough sterile environment using an air box and good technique. I do my mycology on my kitchen table with an air box set up and I’ve got it to the point that my agar very rarely has contamination these days.
7 Likes
good good. Even in the real world I start to wonder sometimes. How often have I said something then like…want to facepalm to the persons response.
1 Like
Yeah, what with my tendency to, as @Gpaw put it, “cannonball into the deep end” I have already started on my build for a DIY ghetto fabulous laminar flow hood. My math says it’ll work fine even if the general consensus seems to be that you can’t do it the way I’m trying. Whatever, I’ve got parts sitting around so it’s worth a shot.
8 Likes
Psh, where there’s a will there’s a way.
4 Likes
personally I recommend a glove box with a bottle of bleach inside.
3 Likes
Right? Everyone says you need to spend $400 on your hepa filter element or it’ll never work. But none of these people seem to have bothered trying a cheaper approach. It’s like there’s no possible middle ground between a still air box and a $1000 home built hood.
Then I found one video from a guy whor pretty much taped a $50 hepa replacement to the back of a tote and put a computer fan against it. He was doing myco transfers in it sitting on his filthy couch and getting good cultures. A little too janky for me though…
So I’m building a hood with an extraction fan I already have on hand. I’m going to use two consumer air cleaner 99.97% filters in a row and use a 16"x25" MERV 13 elite allergen filter to produce laminar flow at the end. Once the air passes through the first HEPA there should only be 0.03% of what we want to filter remaining. After the second filter I should get 99.97% of that, leaving me with 0.000009% remaining. The MERV 13 at the end should cut that in half.
So yeah, I think its gonna work just fine, all with hardware store parts. There will of course still be a liberal usage of bleach and alcohol. Soon we shall see if my madness is going to work!
8 Likes
I’ve encountered an uncomfortably large number of people who do things the way they do things because that’s how they were taught - not because they understand why they’re doing what they’re doing.
Those are the people that are telling you one kind of HEPA filter is ok to use, but another kind isn’t.
6 Likes
I’ve seen so much of that attitude over the years, some of th he worst of it out of growers. This is how I was taught when buddy set me up, so this is the way its done. Never bother understanding why, and so they never improve. Seems weird to me, but I always want to know why.
9 Likes
Then make it better. Or make a Frankenstein-ian system that’s not better but is more fun.
3 Likes
careful…why isn’t an invalid question, the real question is how…
3 Likes