Dealing With Pests Indoors After Harvest Or Preventative With New Mediums

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velocity

velocity

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Pests the list is long of what we do not want in our grows. The reality is all of us at 1 time have all delt with pests problems. This is not what to do during a crop growing pest issue but rather what to do when you have a issue after harvest OR to reduce bugs coming into your grow because your using materials that are new to you. This involves no chems, special sauces, reading tea leaves or any other mumbo jumbo. This is a page from mushroom growers methods.

The secret method is to cook the medium. Thats right cook the medium and kill everything off. Your not taking the medium high enough and long enough to make it sterile but for sure high enough that any bug, bacteria, and fungi will die off. Any good grower uses a TEA of some sort and were all good growers and know how to make a living thriving medium with a TEA. Cooking the material is not a big thing to do, we can put back into the medium what we want for bacteria and for fungi. We can have what we want and have a better control of the medium for use because you know what bacteria and fungi are presant after this is done.

Going to do 3 parts soil, coir and the grow area.

Soil type mediums - What we need to do is pasturize the medium. We need to get the medium wet, place in turkey bags, they work stellar for the volume because there cheap do not melt, and oven can hold alot of the bags standing up. You can do this in your oven at home. Granted its going to take several times to get the amount you want proboly, its not a 1 time am done deal unless your growing a handfull of plants. If you do this after harvest its just less to work with at a time, or bringing in new material to top off with.


You need to put the medium in a tote and add a little water to it till damp. DO NOT SOAK IT!!!! DO NOT MAKE MUD!!!!!!!!! What you want to do is add a bit of water mix it around, add a little bit more water. When you are done is when you can grab a handfull of medium and a drop or 2 of water falls from your hand. If you have more than a drop or 2 of water then just squeeze it until you do have a drop or 2. When you have this moisture level then place in a turkey bag, fill the turkey bag with medium. How many bags you fill is up to you. Like I said this is going to take a couple times of cooking.

If you have bugs and just chopped your plants its best way to end pest issue right damn meow without using any products of any sort. You should use a BT or BTI bacteria regaurdless in a TEA, they are your personal army. Not trying to plug Capps products but it has the bacteria you need for pest and other benificial bacteria.You can buy mycorrhizal fungi and ad them back during the resting period before the medium is used for growing.

Take the racks out of your oven, put 1 rack in the lowest you can in the oven. Place your turkey bags upright with the top open and stack your bags in there side by side. Turn your oven on to 160F, if your oven cant go 160F then put it on the lowest setting. All were trying to do is be in a temp range of 140F to 180F. Do not let the bags touch the oven itself the side walls keep a lil bit or air space between the bag and the oven metal wall.

TIME- Wait 2 hours, open the oven and pull the center bag out off of the rack. Place it on the counter top and close the oven. Take large cooking spoon dig a hole down the center of the medium until you are in the center of the bag. Put the medium in a bowl you are taking out. Place a meat thermometer in the medium. The temp has to be atleast 140F. Place the medium back in the bag put it back in the oven.

If the temp is 130F wait 1 hour. If it is 140F then let it cook for 8 more hours. If the temp is over 140F your fine it will get to 160F after couple hours. 140F is the starting point temp for pasturizing. If the medium ends up at 160F its fine, aslong as its between 140 and 180 at the end you are perfect.This will kill anything biological DEAD. Eggs, bugs, microbes, fungi. The medium is not steralized it is pasturized there is a differance. Once your 8 hours is over with, turn the oven off and let it cool down. If you want to crack it open that is fine, or can leave it in the oven and cool itself.

I normally do this when come home from work eat super. Then get the medium to right moisture content, put in the oven about 8 pm and let it cook. When I leave for work in the am right before I walk out the door I turn the oven off. I come home that nite and its cool enough to handle with the oven door cracked open. IF you do not want to mess with checking the temp like I mentioned just cook it 12 hours. I know for me it takes about 2 hours to heat up to atleast 140F but it does vary an hour roughly. If you just go 12 hours its not going to hurt anything at all. I grow mushrooms this way using straw compost and works every time.

Once you cook the soil place it in a tote. Apply undiluted TEA mix the soil with your hands, adding small amounts of tea is better than just dumping in alot of liquid and end up with mud, dont want mud just want it wet. Once you have it what you comfy with place a seed mat in the center of the pile and cover it. Place the lid on the tote give it a week of resting. When you plant your seedling or your clone in this medium first couple waterings use undiluted TEA instead of water. This will get your medium living again before use, and also help it increasing bacteria and fungi when use it. After the first week then go back to your normal routine as you do with your plants.

Coir- Coir is the easier medium to pasterize. I use trays, but can do this in bath tub if you have a fine hair strainer. Just silicone the strainer to the drain. When done can remove the strainer and get the silicone off easy if it has not been couple days.

Turn hot water heater up as high as it can go. Wait atleast 4 hours. Hook a garden hose up to the bottom of the hot water tank so you can fill a tray full of coir. Fill the tray with hot water all the way up. Wait 45 minutes and drain the hot water. Repeat this cycle for 8 hours.

Once you have completed the use hot water soak, apply undiluted TEA for a 3X3 would go with 5 gallons, add 1/4 strength veg nute, and full strength cal/mag. If you want to mix the nute in a res with cal/mag its the easy way and fill the tray to the top with water and let it sit 24 hours.. Wait 24 hours drain the tray and use to plant.

Grow room- When you encounter a bug problem when that harvest is chopped down you need to clean the room or tent. If you are using the same room to grow in or tent you got to seprate the plants. You cannot in no way put plants back in this room because they will proboly have bugs aswell, so you just have to wait until they grow and deal with that area then. This will allow you to have a clean room to start veg and clone in and break the bug cycle once the other plants finish growing.

You need to take out all the equiment, everything. Once room is empty use a 5 gallon bucket with hot water as hot as you can take and wipe every surface down with a wash rag. When you make a stroke with the wet wash cloth you need to dip it in the water and rinse it out. I dont use chems, I just use pressure pushing the wash cloth hard down into what I am wiping. Change the water often it needs to stay hot. I use pressure hard so anything I pass over gets ground up and smashed.

You need to wipe ceiling, floor, every crack, every crevice you can and equipment. If you need to use putty knife with the wash cloth over it to get into areas so be it. 1 time wiping the room down is not going to cut it. More than likely theres eggs all over everything. If you know the pest you have, you need to look up how many days it takes for eggs to hatch. What ever that time frame is you need to wipe the room down every day plus 3 days. Say its 5 days as example. You cleared the room and cleared it on the 5th and did first cleaning. You clean the room daily until the 10th, and I would highly advise you clean for 3 more days daily to be sure if anything is in there it has hatched. So you would clean for 8 days. After the 3rd day place a food item in the room over nite check it to see if bugs are presant. It varys with what bug so find out, as example is a potatoe. It just depends of what it is.

If it is warm outside not cold winter, place you equipment in black contractor trash bags. Not all in 1 bag, but if can 1 hood, then another would be the ballast and the cord ect. Wrap the top shut so nothing can get in, place a zip tie on the wound up area to keep it shut. Place it outside in the full sun and leave it there. Yes you may want to move it daily so you dont kill the grass, but let it get as much sun as you can. What will happen is you will either kill the eggs with heat or the bugs themselves. If its a dehuyer or a ac unit like a mini split you can keep it in the room and place a heater in there and get the temp to 120 and let it stay there for the hatch duration. You may beable to use a garage to heat, what ever best fits your situation. The goal is to get the equipment hot to kill the eggs and keep it hot past the hatch days to be sure they are dead.

These steps will take care of 1 room and equipment. Now granted you will have to wait for the plants that are growing and what every they are using go through this again. I am not against pesticides when needed but the thing is you have eggs to deal with and those can be harder than the bug to deal with. This is why I use heat to try and kill the hatch.

When I buy a new bag of medium I pasturize it before it is brought into the grow. Trust me I have delt with bugs and its a pain in the ass. You have the issue when dealing with a grow and once the grow is over with then you got to take care of the room. You got to keep the grows seprate and take care of the issue twice, the grow that just finished and the 1 coming up. I know it sucks every grower has delt with it. This sounds like work and it is.

The deal is if you do this once the plants finish it puts you back on the path to not having any bugs. I do not want to do this over again so I shower before I go in my grow put on clean clothes. I do not let any animal in my grow wether its a house cat or not. If you think about the time it takes to just pasterize the new medium is nothing compared to dealing with a room. I limit chances of something happening and the time of pasturizing new bags is nothing compared to the alternative.
 
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velocity

velocity

123
43
EDIT- When checking moisture level of soil you need to squeeze a handfull of soil, once handfull is squeezed hold it squeezed until 1 or 2 drops falls from your hand. Then place in turkey bag to cook. I just wanted to make this change to better word it. This is the KEY to preparing for heating the material is the moisture content. To wet will not get to temp correctly, to dry damages the cell walls of the material.

Thank you sea maiden for the sticky. I hope this can help people with a pest issue break the cycle now, or prevent a pest issue later.

I know its human nature to blame a product maker for bugs, when its from how it was stored up to the time you used it that allowed the pest in.

Its alot easier to take new material and pasturize it vs a room. If pests are in a room then this is easist way to break the cycle. Pest control is not so much about the pest but the eggs they lay. If you can break the hatch cycle then you can end the pest cycle. You have to kill the eggs and most chems dont because they are meant for already hatched stage of life of a pest.
 
ShroomKing

ShroomKing

Best of luck. Peace
3,127
263
Good stuff.
I just started using a boiling water drench to sterilize bags of soil.
Thanks.
 
Apollo13

Apollo13

430
63
First i sprayed plant with water to wash mites, webs, and mite poop off as much as possible whIle still in ground. Then next day after it mostly dried out, i cut it and tried putting a very small light at the stem side of hanging plants while drying with spidermites. I do believe most followed the light and climbed to the top ( bottom) of plants and away from in colas. I hate hearing them pop in a doobie. Gross. Was not scientific like it should have been, so I maybe wrong.
 
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Apollo13

Apollo13

430
63
If u sterilize soil, you hopefully are a ewc tea brewer.
 
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Apollo13

Apollo13

430
63
U probably could sterilize soil like bed bugs, in a black tote or garage can with lid in the sun for a few days. Or maybe in a tote with ozone pumping. Stay away from stores that store soil outside.
 
ShroomKing

ShroomKing

Best of luck. Peace
3,127
263
U probably could sterilize soil like bed bugs, in a black tote or garage can with lid in the sun for a few days. Or maybe in a tote with ozone pumping. Stay away from stores that store soil outside.
It's not the stores you should worry about. The companies making and wholesaling the soil all store it outside.

Put your bag of soil in a pillow case then cut open top of bag. Pour 3-4 gallons of boiling water through your soil. Keep soil stored in pillowcase untill use. This kills bugs and won't promote bad bacteria growth like sealing your soil in can will.
 
Seamaiden

Seamaiden

Living dead girl
23,596
638
I think the solar heating option may work here, too.
First i sprayed plant with water to wash mites, webs, and mite poop off as much as possible whIle still in ground. Then next day after it mostly dried out, i cut it and tried putting a very small light at the stem side of hanging plants while drying with spidermites. I do believe most followed the light and climbed to the top ( bottom) of plants and away from in colas. I hate hearing them pop in a doobie. Gross. Was not scientific like it should have been, so I maybe wrong.
Next time, just hang the plant. Mites tend to migrate upwards no matter what.
 
Apollo13

Apollo13

430
63
I'm aware. But I feel the lil light helped. Probably not. I'm my mind all bugs go towards the light. Lol I also think that they only can migrate while moisture is still high, light was to speed migration. But, I'm not the smartest guy(or girl) in the room I know..
 
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Apollo13

Apollo13

430
63
And I have hung many times with mites from outside. I was looking for improvement in a bad situation.
 
StonedBlue

StonedBlue

Disabled Vet
Supporter
270
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In the old days I remember reading an article that suggested baking soil from outside if you couldn't buy any potting soil. I don't miss the lack of info but I sure miss my first plant. A single under 1000 MH. Thought I was all that cuz I had Co2.
 
J

JahLaw

19
3
Keep your rooms clean and don't invite mites (friends) to come see your room! Don't use pesticides, it's the opposite of what we should be doing! Too much mite spray companies making a killing off our bad growing habits. throw your old soil out if you can afford another batch...most soil has mites in it unless the company can prove it by test results. Peace:fire:
 
Twistedtreez

Twistedtreez

40
18
after watching a guy on you tube go to his 5 week flowering grow room with a chainsaw and hedge trimmers , and say that was the only way to get rid of mites, and another grower that killed all the plants he had with foxtails thinking they were hermie bananas, I realize the enternet is fucking it up for everybody! Go to lowes buy "no pest strip" add two to your grow room replace every two weeks for two months, ok once you do that then go cut off all affected leaves and spray with dr. Zyme eliminator, or flying skull nuke em, add a sticker/ penetrative (lol dawn works, spray the shit out of them for three days in a row and then every three days, buy a product called tanglefoot and make a band around your stem to trap mites traveling up, keep pest strips in there permenitly , some are gonna say no pest strips are harmful but if you go to your local grocery the keep them under the display case where you buy fruit and that's been goin on forever I've been using them 10+ years I'm fine everyone else is fine and what you don't know don't hurt you and what you do know is a lil bit of poison is worth it's eight in no mites, (they ruin your life) don't let them
 
RudyClosGrow

RudyClosGrow

23
3
Pests the list is long of what we do not want in our grows. The reality is all of us at 1 time have all delt with pests problems. This is not what to do during a crop growing pest issue but rather what to do when you have a issue after harvest OR to reduce bugs coming into your grow because your using materials that are new to you. This involves no chems, special sauces, reading tea leaves or any other mumbo jumbo. This is a page from mushroom growers methods.

The secret method is to cook the medium. Thats right cook the medium and kill everything off. Your not taking the medium high enough and long enough to make it sterile but for sure high enough that any bug, bacteria, and fungi will die off. Any good grower uses a TEA of some sort and were all good growers and know how to make a living thriving medium with a TEA. Cooking the material is not a big thing to do, we can put back into the medium what we want for bacteria and for fungi. We can have what we want and have a better control of the medium for use because you know what bacteria and fungi are presant after this is done.

Going to do 3 parts soil, coir and the grow area.

Soil type mediums - What we need to do is pasturize the medium. We need to get the medium wet, place in turkey bags, they work stellar for the volume because there cheap do not melt, and oven can hold alot of the bags standing up. You can do this in your oven at home. Granted its going to take several times to get the amount you want proboly, its not a 1 time am done deal unless your growing a handfull of plants. If you do this after harvest its just less to work with at a time, or bringing in new material to top off with.


You need to put the medium in a tote and add a little water to it till damp. DO NOT SOAK IT!!!! DO NOT MAKE MUD!!!!!!!!! What you want to do is add a bit of water mix it around, add a little bit more water. When you are done is when you can grab a handfull of medium and a drop or 2 of water falls from your hand. If you have more than a drop or 2 of water then just squeeze it until you do have a drop or 2. When you have this moisture level then place in a turkey bag, fill the turkey bag with medium. How many bags you fill is up to you. Like I said this is going to take a couple times of cooking.

If you have bugs and just chopped your plants its best way to end pest issue right damn meow without using any products of any sort. You should use a BT or BTI bacteria regaurdless in a TEA, they are your personal army. Not trying to plug Capps products but it has the bacteria you need for pest and other benificial bacteria.You can buy mycorrhizal fungi and ad them back during the resting period before the medium is used for growing.

Take the racks out of your oven, put 1 rack in the lowest you can in the oven. Place your turkey bags upright with the top open and stack your bags in there side by side. Turn your oven on to 160F, if your oven cant go 160F then put it on the lowest setting. All were trying to do is be in a temp range of 140F to 180F. Do not let the bags touch the oven itself the side walls keep a lil bit or air space between the bag and the oven metal wall.

TIME- Wait 2 hours, open the oven and pull the center bag out off of the rack. Place it on the counter top and close the oven. Take large cooking spoon dig a hole down the center of the medium until you are in the center of the bag. Put the medium in a bowl you are taking out. Place a meat thermometer in the medium. The temp has to be atleast 140F. Place the medium back in the bag put it back in the oven.

If the temp is 130F wait 1 hour. If it is 140F then let it cook for 8 more hours. If the temp is over 140F your fine it will get to 160F after couple hours. 140F is the starting point temp for pasturizing. If the medium ends up at 160F its fine, aslong as its between 140 and 180 at the end you are perfect.This will kill anything biological DEAD. Eggs, bugs, microbes, fungi. The medium is not steralized it is pasturized there is a differance. Once your 8 hours is over with, turn the oven off and let it cool down. If you want to crack it open that is fine, or can leave it in the oven and cool itself.

I normally do this when come home from work eat super. Then get the medium to right moisture content, put in the oven about 8 pm and let it cook. When I leave for work in the am right before I walk out the door I turn the oven off. I come home that nite and its cool enough to handle with the oven door cracked open. IF you do not want to mess with checking the temp like I mentioned just cook it 12 hours. I know for me it takes about 2 hours to heat up to atleast 140F but it does vary an hour roughly. If you just go 12 hours its not going to hurt anything at all. I grow mushrooms this way using straw compost and works every time.

Once you cook the soil place it in a tote. Apply undiluted TEA mix the soil with your hands, adding small amounts of tea is better than just dumping in alot of liquid and end up with mud, dont want mud just want it wet. Once you have it what you comfy with place a seed mat in the center of the pile and cover it. Place the lid on the tote give it a week of resting. When you plant your seedling or your clone in this medium first couple waterings use undiluted TEA instead of water. This will get your medium living again before use, and also help it increasing bacteria and fungi when use it. After the first week then go back to your normal routine as you do with your plants.

Coir- Coir is the easier medium to pasterize. I use trays, but can do this in bath tub if you have a fine hair strainer. Just silicone the strainer to the drain. When done can remove the strainer and get the silicone off easy if it has not been couple days.

Turn hot water heater up as high as it can go. Wait atleast 4 hours. Hook a garden hose up to the bottom of the hot water tank so you can fill a tray full of coir. Fill the tray with hot water all the way up. Wait 45 minutes and drain the hot water. Repeat this cycle for 8 hours.

Once you have completed the use hot water soak, apply undiluted TEA for a 3X3 would go with 5 gallons, add 1/4 strength veg nute, and full strength cal/mag. If you want to mix the nute in a res with cal/mag its the easy way and fill the tray to the top with water and let it sit 24 hours.. Wait 24 hours drain the tray and use to plant.

Grow room- When you encounter a bug problem when that harvest is chopped down you need to clean the room or tent. If you are using the same room to grow in or tent you got to seprate the plants. You cannot in no way put plants back in this room because they will proboly have bugs aswell, so you just have to wait until they grow and deal with that area then. This will allow you to have a clean room to start veg and clone in and break the bug cycle once the other plants finish growing.

You need to take out all the equiment, everything. Once room is empty use a 5 gallon bucket with hot water as hot as you can take and wipe every surface down with a wash rag. When you make a stroke with the wet wash cloth you need to dip it in the water and rinse it out. I dont use chems, I just use pressure pushing the wash cloth hard down into what I am wiping. Change the water often it needs to stay hot. I use pressure hard so anything I pass over gets ground up and smashed.

You need to wipe ceiling, floor, every crack, every crevice you can and equipment. If you need to use putty knife with the wash cloth over it to get into areas so be it. 1 time wiping the room down is not going to cut it. More than likely theres eggs all over everything. If you know the pest you have, you need to look up how many days it takes for eggs to hatch. What ever that time frame is you need to wipe the room down every day plus 3 days. Say its 5 days as example. You cleared the room and cleared it on the 5th and did first cleaning. You clean the room daily until the 10th, and I would highly advise you clean for 3 more days daily to be sure if anything is in there it has hatched. So you would clean for 8 days. After the 3rd day place a food item in the room over nite check it to see if bugs are presant. It varys with what bug so find out, as example is a potatoe. It just depends of what it is.

If it is warm outside not cold winter, place you equipment in black contractor trash bags. Not all in 1 bag, but if can 1 hood, then another would be the ballast and the cord ect. Wrap the top shut so nothing can get in, place a zip tie on the wound up area to keep it shut. Place it outside in the full sun and leave it there. Yes you may want to move it daily so you dont kill the grass, but let it get as much sun as you can. What will happen is you will either kill the eggs with heat or the bugs themselves. If its a dehuyer or a ac unit like a mini split you can keep it in the room and place a heater in there and get the temp to 120 and let it stay there for the hatch duration. You may beable to use a garage to heat, what ever best fits your situation. The goal is to get the equipment hot to kill the eggs and keep it hot past the hatch days to be sure they are dead.

These steps will take care of 1 room and equipment. Now granted you will have to wait for the plants that are growing and what every they are using go through this again. I am not against pesticides when needed but the thing is you have eggs to deal with and those can be harder than the bug to deal with. This is why I use heat to try and kill the hatch.

When I buy a new bag of medium I pasturize it before it is brought into the grow. Trust me I have delt with bugs and its a pain in the ass. You have the issue when dealing with a grow and once the grow is over with then you got to take care of the room. You got to keep the grows seprate and take care of the issue twice, the grow that just finished and the 1 coming up. I know it sucks every grower has delt with it. This sounds like work and it is.

The deal is if you do this once the plants finish it puts you back on the path to not having any bugs. I do not want to do this over again so I shower before I go in my grow put on clean clothes. I do not let any animal in my grow wether its a house cat or not. If you think about the time it takes to just pasterize the new medium is nothing compared to dealing with a room. I limit chances of something happening and the time of pasturizing new bags is nothing compared to the alternative.
Quality advice with one caveat, knowing the particular bug is key to solving the problem. You can use all the mighty wash you want and never fully solve the problem with a leaf miner. Especially true when having two grows at once!
 
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