Common Grow Room Pests
Every farmer has to deal with pests. Whether growing indoors or outdoors, your plants will be susceptible to all manner of predators including bacteria, fungus, mold, and various insects.
Luckily, there are a number of easy solutions to your pest problems. This article will teach you how to identify and deal with a number of common grow room pests.
Grow Room Pest Prevention Tips
The best way to fight grow room pests is to prevent grow room pests. No matter how careful you are, it is highly unlikely that you will grow a pest-free crop, but there are steps that you can take to protect your crops before you start to grow and throughout the grow process.
Control your airflow
Seal off your grow room to outside air exchanges, especially those that you do not control. The only way that air should enter or exit your grow room is through your air circulation system. Be sure to use a hepa filter to really ensure top air quality.
Keep The Grow Room Clean!
You must sweep, mop, and wipe down the walls and wall covers in your grow room regularly. Never leave standing water on floors and tables. Dead leaves, and soil are perfect places for pests to hang out.
Keep yourself clean
Along with washing and sterilizing your hands every time you enter your grow room or handle your plants, be sure to also remove your shoes and set aside a shirt or pair of coveralls that you wear only inside your grow room.
Recognizing and Removing Pests
Paramount to getting rid of your grow room pests is recognizing what exactly you’re dealing with. The first distinction you need to make is whether or not you’re dealing with microscopic pests or macroscopic pests.
Microscopic pests
Fungus, mold, and bacteria are constant airborne threats that you need to be aware of. In the case of infestation by fungus and mold, after a certain point you will be able to see the fungus or mold growing on your plants; bacteria is harder to spot. To spot a bacterial infection early, pay attention to the health of your plants’ stalks. Watch for drooping stalks or leaves and a loss or change in color.
If you believe you are dealing with a microscopic infestation, magnify a portion of an afflicted plant up to 30x to try to figure out what exactly you’re dealing with. To curb the spread of microscopic infestations in your grow room, consider your grow environment and conditions. Among the conditions you might want to adjust:
- humidity
- air circulation
- air filtration
- soil aeration
You can also consider the use of UV or Ozone clean air generators to help zap microscopic pests, but be sure not to use these devices during the flowering or drying stages of your grow cycle.
To remove fungus and mold by hand, you can use store-bought organic anti-fungals or homemade hydrogen peroxide (H202) solutions. If you can’t use organic treatments, be sure to return to your grow space 24 hours after spraying to wipe your plants down with purified water.
Macroscopic
Insects are another consistent threat to indoor grow operations. Among the bugs you’ll have to worry about are:
- slugs
- spider mites
- beetles
- spiders
- caterpillars
There are two simple solutions to deal with small-scale insect infestations: neem oil and predatory bugs.
Neem oil will get rid of pests that will eat your plants while preserving beneficial bugs like honeybees or ladybugs. Predator bugs, like ladybugs, fungus gnat predators, aphid parasites, and green lacewing larvae will also help keep your grow room clear of pests like spider mites and plant lice.
Last Resorts
As a last resort, if you have a catastrophic infestation of either bugs or mildews and molds, bug bombs and sulfur bombs (respectively) will eliminate pests with minimal harm to your plants.
However, if you’re going to bomb, make sure that your grow room is properly ventilated and the chemicals you use will not be harmful to your plants or the people who will handle them.
