powdery mildew, YAY!

[johnnyballbag]

What's up fmb folks? Found a lil problem in my grow room, and don't know if i should be freaking out or packing another bowl.... I think i may have powdery mildew. I've never ever had pm in the 10 yrs i've been growing, but i guess there's a first for everything right? Anyways, i cut away anything with even the slightest bit of shit on it, so i don't have any pics. It was just a white fuzzy mold on the bottom of some cuts i just got, it was mostly on the leaves but some spots had it on the stems too. I had the cuts in a lil 2'x4' hydro hut (which is inside my fucking flowering room!!) for about 3 days, and have been meaning to add a small fan in there but haven't found one yet. So i gotta admit that the air circulation in there could've def been better. So i guess my question is, what does pm look like, and am i fucked? What can i do to prevent it from spreading further? I've got some flowering plants in the same room, about 25 days in. I scanned through them last night to see if there was any of the mold/pm on the flowering plants, and thankfully there wasn't. I know PM can at times be prevalent on the west coast, so i'm hoping someone here can help with first hand knowledge. Please tell me my flowering plants aren't fucked! :pray:

[Razz]

, yeah, sounds like pm to me, dehumidifier to make your humidity at 50%, air filter to remove spores, or better yet get rid of those damn clones! and sanitize everything.

[Razz]

make sure your intake isn't coming directly from an outside source and usually it happens when the air is moist and cool during the dark cycle.

[LostCoaster]

There is a great product by SaferGro called "Milder Cure" and it will knock out the PM. You need to raise the temps and lower humidity somehow to discourage any new spore growth to keep it from coming right back.

[YukonBikerGuy]

Ya, PM sucks dude. Usually it appears as a dry white powdery substance stuck on the top sides of leaves and on stems, in some extreme cases I have seen it on the underside of leaves as well (not in my grow). The first time I saw it I thot my girls were getting extra frosty, but that PM is dry to the touch, not sticky like trichs, and you can clearly see the mycelium under magnification. Here is a blurb I gave in a thread elsewhere:

http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1353

Its the low temps and high humidity during the dark period that really fosters PM....
The clones might be ok with a dip if you NEED to save them.... if you don't need to, best to chuck 'em.

Additionally to the suggestions in the above thread, I have also used 150ml of skim milk and 3-4 drops of dishsoap per liter of water as a spray treatment. The milk spray does make things smell like a bit of sour milk for a few days after, and can leave a bit of a dried milky residue on walls, tables, ect when it dries. The Neem oil spray makes things smell faintly of garlic for a few days, and can leave a little bit of an oily residue on things. It all wipes up with soap and water in any case.

Man I'z blathering on... the drugs are comming into full effect. Puff puff pass.

[johnnyballbag]

Thanks everyone. Yeah i'm thinking i need to stuff a hygrometer in the hydro hut, but the room it's in has been around 30% humidity (so i haven't had to run my dehumdifier), with temps ranging anywhere from down to maybe 67 during lights off, to at most 80 during lights on. But the hydro hut itself is being lit 24/7 as i'm using it for mothers. This is fucking bullshit! I live in the middle of nowhere, finally got me some west coast flavor in the form of Chemdog, and now i have to chuck it? Fuck!! And i don't know if this matters, but i know i've heard ppl say that PM looks more like white dots, but this looked like mold. I mean it was hairy like a mold, not like just spots of powder-looking shit. Any ideas on that? Thanks again ya'll. I used to pride myself in the fact that i've never had PM. I've always been anal about my environment. 10 years was a good run though i think!

[Razz]

that's pm dude!

[eastghost]

its chemdog? Fuuuuuck that sucks. Had a battle with PM myself last year, i ended up tossing everything and cleaning thoroughly, and it hasn't been back, knock on wood. Like whoever else that was, I found some foliar spray(the brand name escapes me currently) for fruit trees at my local farm and garden store that was pyrethrin + neem oil and some other extraneous ingredients, definitely worked better than pure neem. GL man

[LostCoaster]

It's definitely nothing to chuck plants over, pm comes and goes and that mildew cure product works like a champ, 12 bucks a quart. It works way better than milk, or h202 or neem oil. I am not sure how it interacts with sulfur because it has some oil in it, but neem will burn your plants if you burn sulfur and have sprayed it within the last month. Sulfur at night is a great preventative.

Don't freak out just get the Mildew Cure (might be called GC3) and maybe some silica product as a preventative. On a scale of problems PM is like a 2 and mites would be a 10.

[johnnyballbag]

Alright fuck it. I mean if it's gonna take over, it's going to happen. All i know is that i have 30 flowering plants about 5 feet from the hut and there isn't a speck on them. I'll check that shit out LC. And those cuts are looking so good too man! We'll see what's up. If that spray works i'll let ya'll know for your own info. Thanks all.

[LostCoaster]

Start vaping/burning sulfur during the dark period for 6-8 hours in the room with the flowering plants. Just as a pre-emptive cover your ass thing.

Get a cheap light fixture, or a socket that you can mount to a scrap of wood. Put a normal 60-80 watt light bulb in the socket. Take a soda can and cut off the top where you drink froom, and slide the soda can upside down over the light bulb. Seal the bottom with aluminum ducting tape or electrical tape, or even silicone caulking so that the light bulb doesn't shine light outside the can.

You now have a stable base with a light bulb and a lightproof metal sleeve with a shallow dish on top (the concave bottom of the can)

Plug it into a timer, to go on when the lights are off. Make sure it stops 4 hours before the lights come on to give plenty of time for airing out. Even one tenth of a second of HID lights with sulfur vapor on the plants will fry them hardcore.

Put like 1 or 2 tablespoons of sulfur powder in the dish, powdered sulfur is available in any garden center very inexpensively. That should last a day or two. If it is burning more than melting, use a lower wattage bulb.