Hi. Just thought it’d be useful to post a few useful gadgets I’ve encountered. Kinda oddball ones, but glad I stumbled into them. Here’s a light list: (And hey, maybe it’s not too late for gift ideas.)
Zzzzzzzzap!
First is a rather gimmicky-looking bug zapper. Running organic no-till living soil in the PNW (my garden isn’t even sealed) fungus gnats are kinda just a thing. I used to get super stressed about them when I started growing. Now I know they’re a minor nuissance and only neglect lets their numbers go crazy. I bought this bug zapper to see how it worked in a 10’x14’ garden space. It vaporizes gnats into nothingness (like, they literally disappear), but the gnats are so small they rarely hit the grid. In truth, it’s less effective than yellow sticky strips. But I discovered something–it’s a magnet for aphids and leaf hoppers! Yes, the UV bulbs attract aphids and leafhoppers very well, and with the lights-off, it even fluoresces their bodies on nearby foliage. I brought in several outdoor plants this fall season and with them came aphids. I was running over 120+ autoflowers in 1-gallon pots and decided to just let the autos and summer crop finish up and do a garden reset. So this light was in a large 10’x14’ room, and I’d clean it before lights off, and next morning there would be seriously hundreds of aphids–it seemed like every single aphid with wings was B-Lining it straight to this thing. I didn’t spray anything, and this one light made a sizeable impact on their rate of reproduction. Instead of the flying ones going off through the room to reproduce on plants while an exponential infestation takeover occurs, they just kamikaze into the light. Also, a shelf of clones near the light had some light PM which cleared up. The wattage of these fluorescent tubes is much too low to supplement UV for your flowering plants. But they hang, and I could definitely see keeping one of these inside a 4x4 tent or smaller. It runs at a low wattage and I get a kick out of it every time I see a new weird flying corpse fried to the grate. Works great on house flies.
While on the topic of fungus gnats, I’ve found that the yellow fly strips work well for controlling them. But instead of buying the roll-out ones from the dollar store, or overpriced pre-cut shapes from gardening stores, I found a great bulk option for a very low cost:
When you buy the large sheets, they come in 20-50 sheets per pack, for as little as $10-15. When you add up all the square footage compared to all other yellow sticky trap products, these large 8"x10" sheets kick ass. I found a great strategy is to put a large full-size one into each corner of the grow room–many crawling insects will naturally walk toward a wall, then follow alongside that wall; when they reach the corner, a congregation of corpses awaits.
Party Time!
These things are the wrong spectrum–395nm which is UVa. But for about $50 you can get a UV LED light bar. These are some of the applications of having this gimmicky home gardener’s tool:
Now, in the rose and orchid industries, they have guys walk down the aisleways with big carts loaded up with dozens of UV flourescent tubes. That’s their primary control measure for PM, and if you grow commercial organic cannabis in a greenhouse or indoors, look into assembling one of these commercial grade rolling thingamajigs. Because you can get an employee to walk down the rows with it for a couple hours once a day in mid-late flower and beat PM and botrytis like it was nothing. Plus evokes the protective trichome response; the predominant theory being that UV radiation exposure may damage genetic information within a seed; thus the plants that could better protect their seeds from UV were able to survive until today; trichomes filter out harmful UVb and UVc radiation, and trichomes are most concentrated around the seed bract, where the trichomes can protect a growing seed. UV is a powerful sterilization tool–even e. coli is eliminated within 2 minutes of constant exposure. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4qrnMlhbpE)
Here are the professional grade models for UV treatments: (a decent quality Netherlands manufacturer)
The one in the photo I linked was advertised as UVb 385nm so I bought it. But it was actually 395nm UVa. So I’m playing around with it anyways, waiting for Samsung or whoever to start producing an affordable UVb 385nm diode, see those wavelengths start being available in small consumer-level light strips. In the mean time, I used this UV 395nm LED Blacklight for two gardening applications:
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I hooked it up to a 100ft extension cord and went for a walk in the greenhouse at night. Lights up any insect SUPER brightly. Tons of them fluoresce, like I was mentioning with the leaf hoppers and aphids. So if you want to do an IPM sweep in the middle of the night, which is the only time when some pests are visible, (like say strawberry root weevils, come out to chew jagged sawtooth patterns on your leaves) having one of these could be a fun and effective means of discovering your hidden night time compatriots in the garden.
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I threw it in a 18"x36" mini tent together with a Mars Hydro SP150 (which has no UV diodes) and the Sundae Driver #3 clone’s PM cleared up next day. Meanwhile, the other Sundae Driver #3 was under the Mars Hydro SP250, which technically has a few UV diodes in the array, but Apogee meters don’t detect enough to show up on readings; youtube.com/watch?v=lcitvJHtnBU. And of course, the UV contribution from the SP250 wasn’t strong enough to benefit the plant’s immune system. Meanwhile, the lightbar pictured above with 18 3-watt 395nm UV diodes produced enough UV to have a relevant impact on the plant below it. Far from scientific, and it’s worth noting that the environment of the 18"x36" tent is about 10% lower humidity than my 14’10’ grow space.
So, affordable UV LED bars aren’t there yet. Shane from Migro has a great video series on UV, where he reviews all available UV horticulture products he could find. He found flourescents are still king for output and investment cost. But keep an eye out for when some good UV diodes are affordable–for as little as $50 you could buy a substantial UV supplemental light for your home garden space, which was originally intended for something like parties or curing fingernail polish or checking counterfeit bills or inspecting for bodily fluids.
For now, though, the best option for supplementing UV light in a small space seems to be:
Moral of the story: a lot of cool gadgets are release adjacent to the horticulture industry, but are applicable. Stay creative and keep an eye out for something our growing community can adopt from another industry.
One great example is Chikamasas–originally floral pruning snips used by florists, now widely adopted as one of the best hand-trimming snips. Vivosun also had the bright idea of re-labeling small-office dehumidifiers as “grow tent dehumidifiers” and now offers tiny tent-sized units. And “Regalia” is a cheap knotweed extract used by poinsettia growers, but re-bottled and dilluted and the price jacked up ten-fold because it’s marketed as a “certified organic cannabis” spray. Same thing with fabric pots–used widely in the tree nursery industry for years before SmartPots (or whoever) transitioned them to the cannabis growing industry and demanded a premium. Heck–the plumber billed our hemp farm $4500 for about $20 in parts and 40 minutes labour, and his work exploded everywhere same day he left. People see “cannabis industry” and see a lot of under educated people with excess capital to prey on. There’s a huge whack of products that were sold for pennies on the dollar before being marketed to cannabis growers.
Here’s one that’s still cheap, and will save you hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars: (And how great is their website name?) https://highnozzles.com/
Okay, so here’s the setup:
- Variety pack of nozzles for each greenhouse or grow room that’s sprayed
- Tall narrow dedicated tank for foliar spray mixtures
- Agitation in tank; airstones or recirculating pump
- Sub pump to hose to long gardener’s wand (48")
- Nozzles on end of wand
You mix up your spray resevoir, throw in the dedicated 100ft flexible contractor’s hose and sub pump, go through the place and BLAST everything in no time at all. Has all sorts of different nozzle sizes.
Recommend:
Super Superfine 1/4 GPM: for well emulsified essential oils, warm to tepid water. seedling/clones. (ie. rosemary, peppermint, garlic, clove). This nozzle may clog with oils in cold temperatures.
Superfine 1/2 GPM: for thicker more viscious oils (ie. neem) and spraying in colder temperatures.
Fine Volume 1GPM: best coverage ratios. hits a huge spread quickly while the tank lasts a long time. recommended for doing individual plants, hot spots, or smaller gardens under 1000sq ft. Works great with every input; oils, KNF extracts, compost teas, etc.
Low Volume 2GPM: slightly better coverage, job is accomplished about 10% quicker, but consumes spray mixture twice as fast. recommended for doing large rooms of mature plants quickly. this is my go-to working setting in 120’x32’ greenhouses.
High Volume 4GPM: a torrential downpour, too much overspray to control indoors and in greenhouses. but for just soap+water mixtures, if you want to spray down some big plants outside, this will do well.
In-line option: These can be set up along a permanent central line in a raised garden bed, with quad-directional misting nozzle situated beneath every plant in the bed. This is an irrigation setup you can achieve. You can put it on a timer and have your plants dosed with a foliar feed every 15 minutes. Just like the insane growth you see with aeroponics systems, if you foliar feed your plants a constant light solution the growth is insane. Running living soils permanent raised garden beds in-ground with this setup in a greenhouse with full environmental controls and supplemental lighting was the fastest growth rates I’ve ever seen. Micro-dosing foliar feeds at frequent intervals not only pushes growth, but also the humidity swings make the environment inhospitable for pests–all of them.
I came up with this interval misting foliar system idea after working for a grower who used to hose down his entire grow room twice a week–he went through with a hose and sprayed the crap out of every single plant until they flopped all over, like an indoor hurricaine swept through. Twice a week he’d take out all his 1000w SE HPS bulbs, then soak everything. Then he’d put the lights back up, kick on his dehues to max, and the humidity would swing from 95%+ first thing in the morning to like 35% an hour later. I worked for him 10 months and he never used sulfur or chemical sprays once–just plain tap water sprayed very aggressively. Craziest thing was he recycles all his soil (runs botanicare), and regularly bought mited-out clones to start every grow, but the mites would just get wiped out from these huge humidity swings through veg. And then I saw an aerponics cloner with rooting hormone in it. And I thought about grocery store produce misting stations. I realized it’s cheap and easy enough to install, and both benefits can be had: foliar microdosing for rapid growth rates and huge environmental stressors that eliminate all pests. Just don’t want it going off in flower.
Ultra-craziest option:
Yes, you are seeing that right. I haven’t bought this yet because I have the Fogg-It Misting Nozzles, and I know this big bad beast is just waaaay overkill for my applications. But if I were in Mendo with 8’x8’ bushes growing by June, I’d have this badass 6-nozzle wand hooked up to a 100ft hose. You could do a monster bush in like one pass. If I wanted to, I could spend the next ten years trying to shade out my neighbour’s property: I could get this hooked up and start foliar feeding the 100’+ tall maples bordering our properties; the ones on my side would grow faster and shade his out, winning the long fought Tree War which has raged since before we were both born.
The last spraying option I want you to be aware of is the granddaddy of all handheld pump sprayers: Longray
I’ve tried every brand of pump sprayer there is, from backpack size and smaller. Chapin is absolute shit, even their $200 industrial models. But Longray is the only one who makes a solid life-long pump sprayer. All that’ll need replacing is the rubber gasket and the hose every 5-10 years.
(I am ignoring atmoizers because of their detriment to microbial life; I see that as a tool, atomizers are inflexible compared to other sprayers which can better preserve life through delivery. They are also too expensive, require too much servicing, and often are cumbersome and difficult to use in the garden–especially at scale. I also fear that the particle size in combination with some horticultural oils and chemical products presents a significant hazard for greater accidental inhalation damage than a misting-type sprayer. I’m against atomizers.)
Now let’s talk organization; plant labels, yay! First thing’s first–stop buying Sharpie! Yeah a box of Sharpie is pretty cheap, they work out to like 50 cents each or something. But the ink fades in 4 months of summer sun, period. And that’s just not acceptable for staying organized in an outdoor photoperiod grow. It’s not often, but there have been times where the faded ink of a sharpie label has made my cultivar indiscernible to me. Considering I’ve grown about 700-800 seeds/year for the past few years, it can get confusing. I still don’t know if these gorgeous ripe seeds beside me are Alien Louie or Alien Hands–the label faded by harvest. Which means they go into the randoms box, and I cannot sell them or breed with them =(
What you want is the Milwaukee Inkzall Black Fine Point Marker, my friends. It’s $2 and it lasts forever. And I mean like 6 months in full sunlight and still boldly legible.
I’ve worked with many kinds of labels; copper and tin and stainless steel permanent perennial garden bed markers, 4" and 6" plastic white labels that stick into the dirt, masking tape on pots/branches for labeling, wooden popsickle sticks, hand-made wood carved signs, painted stones, dedicated row maps, etc. And the best that I’ve found for breeding seeds is definitely these:
You can cinch them pretty tight around a branch without it going anywhere or restricting anything. They last all season. They are very easy to see from a distance. Which means color coding your cultivars can pay off huge in many situations. Such as with saving time with hired labour: you can tell them, “the row with pink tags is Pink Kush” and know they won’t spend ten minutes lost, or in the wrong spot. Or when moving potted plants between locations with multiple employees: suddenly everything is way more organized, despite how stoned everyone may be (my personal experience working with some disorganized operations). These tags are also interchangable between branch-breeding tags and whole-plant tags: I wrap them around the main stalk of the first and lowest node to denote the cultivar of the plant; then the tags on individual branches mean those branches were selectively pollinated with the information which corresponds to the tag. And because the tags are color coded, I can have very complex situations: Like White Widow mother plant with a white tag around her trunk, a grafted branch of Pink Kush identified by a pink tag, and seeded branch pollinated by Cat Piss and tagged with a yellow tag. Color coding + individual branch marking allows for creative low tech solutions to stay organized. And if you can simplify it (ie. you only run 5 strains and only have 5 tag colors), you don’t even have to invest any time writing out identifiers on the tags–there will be devoted colors, and the tags will be re-usable indefinitely.
Most importantly: You can see the plant cultivar from FAR away. No more walking all the way to the end or middle of the row to check where the demarcation point is (where the strains change within a row); it’s easily visible from afar and you can count-out the stalks or containers for plant counts.
Also most importantly: The tag comes WITH the plant. I have worked at sooo many commercial grows where the plants are nicely labeled in the rooms, whether on the pots or with tags in the soil, or by using a grid and map system, and the head grower knows what every single plant is… but the employees working today have mixed them up. It’s so infuriating to see this happen when a grower keeps things organized and the harvest team gets confused or makes a mistake. Having these brightly colored tags on the outter-most branches of the plant makes it impossible to lose track (for whole plant harvesting styles; typically SoGs in 10gals or less).
Breeding
size number 000 paintbrushes in a 60 pack for $20. These paintbrushes are so fine they can lift a single grain of pollen to a single pistil. Very cool, and if you’re playing with pollen, these will make it stretch–which means more seeds =)
For Rope Ratchets I’ve tried a ton of brands and I recently found one that is surprisingly high high quality:
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07NQDPGR8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I only buy the 1/4" rope ratchets because I don’t trust the 1/8" ratchets with my body weight. I once lost my balance in the garden and was able to grab a 1/4" rope ratchet (bears 300lbs) and catch myself before falling and causing any damage to the plants. If it were a 1/8" rope ratchet (bears 150lbs) and I instinctually grabbed for it as I fell, I could have fucked shit up. Now I only use the steel mechanisms with 1/4" ropes and high load capacity–I like that I can support my whole body weight from it. And I’ve tried about six Chinese brands of these 1/4" rope ratchets, and ALL of them have been this shitty nylon glossy rope that frays hardcore. But I recently found “Tebery” some Chinese company that sells these ratchets affordably and with a way higher quality of build than I have seen anywhere else. This rope is extremely durable and will not fray, the barrings and gears are sufficient. And if I ever need my grow room pullies for hoisting something, I have an increased load capacity. I bought twice as many as I need so I have the right quality I want for future garden expansions.
There are tons of tent fans on the market. If you grow in a tent, you may prefer one which has a clamp that has been specifically designed to grasp fimly a tent pole. They work great with 18"x48" chrome wire shelving units also. Other models have flat clamps that are good for attaching to the side of a flood table. I really like the newest design of these fans by Vivosun.
There are a lot of plant ties out there. Most suck. The ones from Grower’s Edge are extremely soft and hold perfectly in place. They’re also pretty durable and decently priced. Not all green padded ties are the same. (I’m hungry for Green Pad Thai now.)
Radicle Bags from a few years ago are alright. Great growth rates, but the sides dry out so fast I’ve found it reduces my functional root space. For example, once soil goes dry it’s three months before potassium starts getting solubilized again (in the soil areas where the dryouts occurred). Plus hydrophobic problems. If the sides of your pot dry too fast, essentially there’s a soil-strip around your main soil area which is “dead” due to severe environmental fluctuations; often if this happens, your roots end up air-pruning themselves within this dry-soil strip along the outside of the bag, instead of living in that soil and only air-pruning once the radicle leaves the pot and pokes out into the air. Radicle Bags let their patent pending expire and have ramped down production and marketing efforts, looks like they’re on the way out. (Mr. Soul uses them and likes them.) I recommend these mesh style bags for mothers. And Radicle Bags specifically have a version with velcro seams which transplant very well. If you are going to be transplanting from your pots, I recommend Radicle Bags.
But these “Rainscience” bags are very similar to the Radicle Bags from a few years ago. They’re in nicer colours, have tighter weaving (smaller pore space dries slower), are insanely durable, and you can get them with installed grommets. I recommend these (in place of the often unavailable Radicle Bags) for new growers and for those who like to grow autos and LST with plant ties. For a final container, they do well. But like most mesh and fabric pots (aside from Radicle Bag), they transplant horribly. Don’t use smaller sizes for rootbuilding like you traditionally would with plastic pots; you’re more likely to set the plant back during the transplant. These are containers for seed to harvest, or 10gals or 15gals that can be transplanted into.
With all mesh and fabric bags, I often put them into the next size plastic container, to control root pruning. For example, I will keep my 1gallon fabric pots inside 2gallon plastic pots. This adds rigidity and allows me to move 4 plants per hand, using the rims of the plastic pots to grip girmly. As well, it controls watering and directs it downward instead of exiting the sides. It slows dry-out, and with 1gal fabric pots running 120+ autos in a SOG, it can get annoying to play catch-up on watering. However, whenever I want I can just remove the fabric 1gal pots from their 2gal plastic shells and let a root pruning occur. Once the root tips die off and the response begins, I just return them to their hard shells. Also reduces accidental soil spillage. Similarily, I place my 3gal fabric/mesh pots inside 4gal fabric softpots for a perfect snug fit. In spring, the black plastic heats the root ball. By summer, I take the white radicle bags and white nonwoven fabric pots (bulk from China) out of their black plastic shells and let them breathe. If rains are coming and destined to over-saturate my root balls, I slip them back into their plastic soft pots, and tip them on their sides for the rainfall, to deflect most of the water.
From a performance perspective however, nothing beats the original Air Pot design:
The Air Pot:
- Has the least dry out and run off problems (less hydrophobia issues)
- Has the best rigidity
- Has the longest product life
- Has the easiest stress free transplanting mechanism
- Has taller narrower designs, ideal for cannabis/tomato growth
- Has precision root pruning applications–it’s very selective and the plant benefits from this moderation in root pruning. Fabric pots prune the ENTIRE side of the root ball and it’s relentless… thousands of root tips dying every day. But because the air pot funnels the roots to a pinpoint air-exposure location, the entire rest of that surface area is safe-haven for the roots–light can’t penetrate it, nor can those few inches of soil dry out at all.
But Air Pots, Radicle Bags, and Rainscience pots are all insanely expensive. Not suitable for most tightly budgeted commercial startups. Highly recommended for the passionate home grower looking to meet specific needs. The Air Pots used to come in a huge roll, and you could cut your own sizes. If you can find one of those rolls you’re stylin’. Also, pro tip: the half-gallon Air Pot is the most insane small pot in the world; you can grow monsters in it.
All the above pots are weak to fungus gnats’ entry on sides and bottoms. A tip from Grandmaster Level to fungus-gnat proof your pots, is to line the inside of them with landscaping fabric. The fabric is too fine for them to get through, so they end up laying their eggs on the outside of it and they dry out and die. Same concept as 3" of sand on top, but you don’t have to waste all that mulch and soil real estate. Great preventative measure for starting up a new grow–line your pots with landscape fabric if you’ve got gnats!
But overall, the Grassroots fabric beds are the best commercial option for living soils: (they have a plastic band around the center that prevents dry out on the sides, while having root pruning zones on the bottom still.)
I’ve also tried these Gro Pro pot elevators and I see value in them under several circumstances. For newer growers, anything like this is a good thing if it helps eliminate the potential for standing water and/or overwatering to contribute to fusarium conditions. It will also reduce incidence of crawling pests entering pots, just by having less surface area in-contact with the floor. And for fabric/mesh style bags, it accomplishes some hyperactive root pruning by allowing the bottom of the pot to facilitate root pruning responses.
