Fungal disinfection

[Crusader Rabbit]

I'll never support mail order dirt and am routinely confused at the number of people that do.

Reminds me of when I used to work at a mountain resort and opening day of trout season was a big event every spring. Quite often the road had to be plowed to allow the hoards to access the lake. And if people caught fish we sold lots of ice for them to fill their ice chests with. Lots of $$$ made selling ice. And each and every time I was dumbfounded to watch people standing next to a big bank of clean white snow pour their dearly purchased bags of ice into their coolers.

We probably should have tried selling snow.

 

[FeltchWyzard]

Well I've Inoculated the teens with root shield, I'll be ordering the prestop so I get the trifecta. I'm going to go with replacing my plastics and pots, sprayng lights and everything else with erythromycin, physan, h202 and heavily inoculate new genetics with the trio and lock my fingers together permrnantly. I'll update on this thread as I think it's kind of important- sort of rare and tough disorder easy to mistake as other causes. It is to me at least. Also i haven't found anyone using erythromycin on equipment other than cloner, and that was successful. I'd make sure to wash it off thoroughly, don't want that shit in my pants. Thanks yall, can't believe how much knowledge you're willing to offer. Big life karma to yall!

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

Best of luck to you.

In my research on this I did read a comment by someone who had beaten it by two different methods. For one, he went with the thriving living soil strategy which has been discussed here. His second claimed success was by running a "dead reservoir" using a constant chlorine level. I really wanted to try and salvage my grow methods by going this way. It wouldn't work with coco because that is an organic medium with which the chlorine would react and squander its efficacy. Hoped to try lava rock as a medium using a dead res and flood and drain, but my lifestyle wouldn't allow it. I'm often gone away from home for a week or two at a time and my grow scene has to function while I'm away. Constant reservoir chlorine levels require regular monitoring which I could not provide in these circumstances.

If anyone wants to look into this, the monitoring of chlorine levels in maintaining a dead reservoir is addressed in one of Snype's tutorial threads.

 

[FeltchWyzard]

I have high hopes. I think whatever strain of fusarium or rhizoctonia this is isn't very strong. It tends to peter off in flower(perhaps certain hormonal changes affect it? Some strains will start to preflower in veg, maybe this is a defense response from the plant!).

I do end up with decent buds, just not good yield due to under developed roots. Also my roots don't stink or turn very slimy, just kinda tan, but I'll see new nice furry roots here and there, maybe 15%. I didn't sniff that brown pith but I'll cut open stalks as they complete and give them the smell test.

It's been so hard to diagnose and I overlooked the possibility of fungus because there are a lot of atypical symptoms or lack of. That's why I keep questioning diagnosis. I'll look into getting my soil tested, though I have a feeling finding the exact pathogen(s)- especially since my shit is so inoculated- would be difficult.

Thanks, CR. Do you think dead rez could work for rdwc? If not I will look into thriving living soil, as it seems my coco days are over. I can setup a makeshift veg room in the guest room and during outdoor season look into establishing some plants in my normal veg room that avert those kinds of fungus. Any thread recommends for that? I've learned a lot from snype, that's how I thought of using erythromycin to clean my room and tools. I'd also love to hear what RetroGrow has to say about this.

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

Snype was using RDWC I believe. I think the critical part would be not infecting the new young plants before they're placed into your set up. Once a plant is infected a chlorine bath won't cure anything, but it should help limit spreading to others.

... and during outdoor season look into establishing some plants in my normal veg room that avert those kinds of fungus. Any thread recommends for that?

Studies have shown that fusarium problems in seedless watermelons are greatly reduced, if first a winter-spring crop of hairy vetch is grown on the field and then plowed under before planting the watermelons. So you could sow hairy vetch seeds outside and grow a crop (it survives freezing) to harvest and add to the compost you're making for your soil.

Vetch is a legume and will fix atmospheric nitrogen if the seeds have been inoculated with the proper bacteria. So that's a plus as vetch then qualifies as a green manure because of its high nitrogen content. I overdid it in making my soil and actually ended up with plants showing signs of nitrogen toxicity in veg. I'm not aware of any companion plantings that help suppress fusarium.

Peaceful Valley Farm Supply (groworganic.com) will sell you vetch seeds and innoculants.

 

[Mikell]

Garlic comes to mind, though I'm unsure if there are results specific to fusarium.

Interesting comment on the problem alleviating later in flower. Pathogens tend to flourish at lower pH and many have noted a rise in substrate pH during flower.

 

[Easy7]

If it was mine, I would toss everything, bleach bleach bleach and start over. Don't even wear the same old dirty gardening gloves and jeans.

Had some rust once. Fungus gets nasty.

 

[Thcvhunter]

If it was mine, I would toss everything, bleach bleach bleach and start over. Don't even wear the same old dirty gardening gloves and jeans.

Had some rust once. Fungus gets nasty.

It comes down to biodiversity.
If a grower is culturing enough biodiversity in his garden then fungal pests dont become a problem.
If a grower is still working on biodiversity and keep a plant healthy at all stages then sterility becomes more important.

 

[FeltchWyzard]

Well I'm glad I looked into it- erythromycin isn't good with fungus, just bacteria. Looks like I'll mostly be using bleach, then physan, then h202 on everything I don't replace.

 

[Thcvhunter]

Imo/ime, 33% H2O2 diluted with 3% h202 will lyse everything.
No need to buy other products.
Too bad the ABCs wont let us make our own.

 

[bigshrimp]

It's all about your moms. If you have healthy moms and can prevent clones from becoming infected you will be ok. Back off bubble or aero cloners, and go to something like single cell perlite containers for rooting. Be very careful with tools, sterilize or use disposables. Media that had infected plants should not be reused. If i was to use something like eagle-20 it would be on mother plants only, though i haven't heard of anyone successfully "clearing" and infection.

 

[Easy7]

It comes down to biodiversity.
If a grower is culturing enough biodiversity in his garden then fungal pests dont become a problem.
If a grower is still working on biodiversity and keep a plant healthy at all stages then sterility becomes more important.

I am not so sure, I would need more reading to back that claim. We aren't talking about vagina here but even if we were, infection and infestation isn't going to be balanced by beneficials....not more than a little.

 

[Thcvhunter]

Im just going by my encounter, and helping friends' gardens that got it.
Fusarium does its work in the soil. There are many 'bad' microbes in the soil, but they can all be defeated by another, specific, microbe. For example, one could culture a microbe to keep anaorobic water/conditions from culturing anaerobic pests.
Fusarium sucks, but it is not divine.

 

[FeltchWyzard]

Just wanted to post an update, the Rootshield took about 10 days to show any improvement at all but now there is substantially faster growth and no leaf retardation on new foliage. I tested one plant with zone and it doesn't seem to have made much of an impact.

I'm just about to move plants over and start sterilizing. I'm going to use bleach, physan,h202 and something I found while looking for good chemicals to destroy spores, didecyl dimethyl ammonium chloride. It disrupts molecular interactions and separates lipid layers. Definitely will be suitting up heavy for that. Then wash with h202, put new panda on the walls, new ducting, new pots, and trichoderma and streptomyces. Found this article written in broken English on how to pull trichoderma out of your soil using coconuts http://agriculture90.blogspot.com/2015/09/how-to-make-microbial-trichoderma-sp.html?m=1

Not sure how legit it is, but worth a try! My buddy said trichoderma will also spawn on orange peels. Thinking I could set up coconut in the hole and then l add orange peels and have basically a trichoderma "well". Anyone think this could be legit?

I also found some blog post about pigeon peas and how their roots release an avid that deters fusarium, but I couldn't find any substantial backing. Was thinking maybe I could start my pots with them and then transplant my girls into that.

 

[Weird]

When you integrate bacteria into a sterile system you are using transitional methodology, I found than when I did this I never needed any other IPM, nor any reactionary treatments.

When I got a fungal infection in my plants and LOS containers I did not nuke the microbiology I used mycostop, problem went away. Didn't do much more than that.

 

[Thcvhunter]

No they arent soil borne, yet they do like to hibernate when food is scarce.

 

[FeltchWyzard]

Good to hear, Weird! I got some in the mail today as well as pre stop. Do you use Actinovate? Do you find myco stop that much more effective?

 

[Weird]

No I do not use activonate, it pales in comparison to mycostop, mycostop also has a much longer window of efficiency.

 

[FeltchWyzard]

I want to provide as much info on what I have, regardless of how embarrassing. Hopefully this may help prevent a long struggle for someone else. Get ready for a real horror show.

Here are some pictures of a mass in my root crown. The picture with the shears is after I cut down the plant and simply pulled the piece of stalk off the root crown; it just came apart. I couldn't believe the brown color in there, so I shore into it. Sure enough the brown was not simply a surface stain but looks to be sclerotia, does anyone agree?



The black in the very middle was curious but I think oddly enough it is secondary on this particular plant(it was an orphan). This one got hit pretty hard by pm. I have heard that pm can create black sclerotia in the stems where they attach to the stalk, like this low stem I peeled off. Any knowledge on that? Regardless it was shocking to see.


Sorry for the horrible backdrop, I wasnt thinking of photo quality, kind of a state of shock and I immediately threw that shit in the fire.

Also check out my side by side of Zone (left) and Rootshield (right). I'll put them in the next post as I'm limited to 8 pictures. Go trichoderma! these are both Wifi#3. I doubt either one will fully recover. By the looks of the new growth even on the Rootshield one, it might be slipping back, but I 'm feeling more confident with the restart as long as I keep up on the soil mikes. The difference is pretty clear.

Please anyone correct me where I'm wrong, I always appreciate it. Also disregard my nasty floor. It's a temporary fix and I spilled a bunch of flush water the night before. Already swapped out.

Also I'm in contact with the head of my state's department of Agriculture plant pathology clinic and am going to get a sample in just trying to figure out what tests would be appropriate.

 

[FeltchWyzard]

Zone is left, Rootshield right.