I’d like to share what I do for IPM and how I can intentionally infest my grow rooms during stress testing with mites, aphids, and thrips and immediately neutralize the problem before the next cycle goes in clean.
Now, I’ve been telling people this long enough to know some of you simply won’t believe me that I intentionally infest my grow rooms… so please just save it if that’s your opinion. I’m tired of hearing people try to tell me I’m a liar.
What I do is take veg plants and place them in the forest for a week. I’ve got some spots that over the years, at the right time of year, I can guaranteed get mites, aphids and thrips of varying types on my plants. Then the veg plant that’s infected gets put in with the other plants going into stress testing and after a few weeks of the environment setting adjusted for insect breeding… the population will explode and I’ll have the entire crop affected. Works great and shows me which cultivars are naturally resistant and which ones aren’t. Very helpful info to pass on to growers in my opinion and worth the nightmares I went through learning how to handle all of this properly.
So to “clean” all my plants and grow rooms I use Azamax and Dr. Zymes, switching back and forth between the two as needed. Azamax is used mostly for preflower and the first 2 weeks of flowering. Dr Zymes can be used all the way through harvest, even to wash the buds in the end before they’re hung up to dry. Empty rooms get bleach and water only, to sanitize them.
If I spray Dr. Zymes every 3 days, at lights off, with a proper underside and topside coating (dripping wet), and then I spray Azamax once a week (after several zymes applications) to prevent further feeding on the leaves… it wipes out anything and everything within 2 weeks max.
Dr Zymes kills on contact like acid, eating the bugs alive. It also kills their eggs the same way, but it must contact to work. Using it every 3 days interrupts the breeding cycle of pests and using it for a full 2 weeks should kill everything in the room except your plants. Azamax gets used more as a preventative foliar spray, but I noticed that using it in conjunction with the zymes it made wiping out pest colonies 100% effective where in the past using only Dr zymes meant I had to constantly use it. Now I use it only after my stress test runs, and once a week during the summer months for IPM. Winter months get cold enough that I don’t have to IPM unless PM may be a problem (Dr. Zymes kills PM too).
If Dr. Zymes is too expensive for you… you can make your own at home I’ve heard. 