The Woes of a Dusty Environment
Your plants don’t like a dusty environment – it clogs the CO2 pores in the foliage, making the plant work harder for the necessary stuff of green life. Green is good. A good way to keep the dust down is some simple dusting (your area, not the plant).
Use unperfumed soap and water and a good thick rag. I’ve found that unperfumed dish detergent works great - normal soap kills most cooties that will pop up. If you want complete protection, some like to use anti-bacterial soap and that works great, too. Wipe down everything, including whatever gardening utensils you use.
Keeping your growing area dust free will minimize the chances of mold or fungus growing in your environment. A dust free area also lends itself to preventing insect infestations, since most insect eggs are small and light enough to be carried around as dust.
Whatever machinery you’re using, such as fans or pumps, will also last longer if they’re clean. Dust gets into everything, and most things used in a hydroponic environment have many moving parts. Get those parts dirty and they’ll stop working eventually. This is something you absolutely don’t want to happen in the middle of a growing session! Think preventative maintenance, people.
In every environment on earth, there are insects. Some are good. Most are bad. They can live pretty much anywhere - this sadly includes your growing area. The first step in keeping your growing area free of infestations is a tightly controlled air intake. If you take air from the outside (or from another room), make sure it is filtered. A run of the mill furnace air filter works great. They’re usually pretty big, but you don’t have to use the whole thing – you can cut it to the size you need. Stick it over the intake hole with some good old fashioned duct tape.
All it takes is one aphid to start an infestation, and aphids breed in terms of hundreds of offspring or even thousands. Once started it is only going to get worse, so jump on it. If you see one little winged critter in your growing area, get the insecticide. Now a lot of people will poo-poo you on using insecticides, but the fact remains that you have to use them sometimes. You simply don’t have a choice because one aphid can mean the death of your entire crop in a matter of days. The chemicals in off the shelf department store insecticides such as RAID have been cleared for human use, so you’re not dealing with a life threatening entity here. And it doesn’t take a lot, a spray of a second or two will do the trick.
Whatever machinery you’re using, such as fans or pumps, will also last longer if they’re clean. Dust gets into everything, and most things used in a hydroponic environment have many moving parts. Get those parts dirty and they’ll stop working eventually. This is something you absolutely don’t want to happen in the middle of a growing session! Think preventative maintenance, people.
In every environment on earth, there are insects. Some are good. Most are bad. They can live pretty much anywhere - this sadly includes your growing area. The first step in keeping your growing area free of infestations is a tightly controlled air intake. If you take air from the outside (or from another room), make sure it is filtered. A run of the mill furnace air filter works great. They’re usually pretty big, but you don’t have to use the whole thing – you can cut it to the size you need. Stick it over the intake hole with some good old fashioned duct tape.
All it takes is one aphid to start an infestation, and aphids breed in terms of hundreds of offspring or even thousands. Once started it is only going to get worse, so jump on it. If you see one little winged critter in your growing area, get the insecticide. Now a lot of people will poo-poo you on using insecticides, but the fact remains that you have to use them sometimes. You simply don’t have a choice because one aphid can mean the death of your entire crop in a matter of days. The chemicals in off the shelf department store insecticides such as RAID have been cleared for human use, so you’re not dealing with a life threatening entity here. And it doesn’t take a lot, a spray of a second or two will do the trick.
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Soft Secrets
