Recognizing and Dealing with Powdery Mildew

Written by: Daniel Enking, Everflux Technologies Founder & CEO Bran Wachsman

One of the most frustrating things a cannabis/hemp farmer goes through when cultivating their crops is the unforeseen risks that can creep up on a new farm. One of the most disheartening of those issues that creep up is known as Powdery Mildew.

Powdery Mildew is the name for the horrific pathogenic fungus that attacks cannabis plants – amongst many other highly valuable plant species. It can affect both indoor and outdoor cannabis crops – particularly in wet months such as late September and into October. Once the fungus punctures the cell wall, the cannabis should be cut down, chopped up, and recycled using vermicomposting. No consumption of this flowered material should be consumed as it can cause serious health issues, especially in the lungs.

Powdery Mildew first appears as a thin layer of white mold on the fan leaves of your cannabis plant, before the fungus begins spreading across the entire grow. This GREATLY diminishes photosynthesis, slowly causing your cannabis crop to die from lack of energy. Your leaves will start to shrivel, turn yellow and begin to die, causing DRAMATIC crop loss!

Powdery Mildew can sometimes be detected early on as small bumps appearing on infected fan leaves. Heavily developed Powdery Mildew produces little black spores in its advanced stages, which can easily be carried by air movement to other parts of the grow room.

How To Distinguish Powdery Mildew?

Here are the standard processes cannabis plants undergo when they become infected with Powdery Mildew:

The white color of the powder spots becomes more vibrant, and the overall size of the infection begins to swell.  The sun-facing side of the leaves develops small, translucent white powder spots, generally at the bottom of the cannabis plant.

 The newly developed fungus reaches the stems and then the flower bud sites. Once the spores of the fungus colonize the cannabis flower, it is no longer fit for consumption.

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How to Treat Powdery Mildew Effectively?

To treat powdery Mildew effectively, it is essential to detect it at an early stage. Be alert when the first symptoms begin to show as early detection can make the difference between active and effective treatment or a completely ruined flip. The more time that elapses from the start of the infection, the more the fungus will begin to spread, and the more difficult it will be to eradicate this flip as well as future flips!

Organic Fungicides To Use For Heavy Infections

Obviously, being proactive and keeping a prevention mindset is the most effective way to keep your cannabis farm investments safe. It makes more sense to take some extra early safety measures and monitor the overall health of your growing environment. Otherwise, you are going to face an uphill battle to try and actually cure an outbreak of this fungal infection.

Three conditions need to be met for Powdery Mildew to take hold. These are:

• Wet & Humid Conditions

• Cool Temperatures

• Stagnant Air

Make sure you have invested in a decent ventilation system set up to ensure constant air movement for your cannabis plants. Thinking proactively, we inhibit the overcrowding of cannabis plants that hinder a healthy airflow in your rooms. Forward-thinking farmers should also be able to control the humidity of their grow rooms using a small dehumidifier to ensure you are keeping your area at the correct humidity level.

Outdoors is a little trickier. A lack of breeze, cold nights, and rain can all stack the odds against you and help Powdery Mildew set in. As such, it is crucial to choose your grow site with care, ensuring there is ALWAYS good airflow. Some growers will erect a tent-like structure over their bud if they know heavy rain is on the way. Proactive farmers take the time to shake their cannabis plants after a heavy rain to shake out any excess water that may have the potential to penetrate fan leaves and buds.

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When it comes to these fungal diseases, PREVENTION is the MINDSET.

Image Source: Pixabay

We here at Everflux Technologies compiled a specific list of organic fungicides you can use for prevention and eradication.  

• Propolis: A unique, organic fungicide made by bees to protect their hive against bacteria, viruses, and fungi.

• Trichoderma Harzianum: Inoculate this beneficial fungus in the soil to prevent the occurrence of Powdery Mildew. Organic Fungicides: Oidioprot is an example of a product available on the market you can use to treat Powdery Mildew.

• Horsetail: This unique plant is used both for preventing and fighting several fungal diseases in cannabis and other vegetable crops. You can find horsetail along wet, marshy areas easily.

Preparation Method For Horsetail:

Step 1) Place a small amount of horsetail in a pot containing a quarter gallon of water and let that soak for 12 hours. (Preferably Overnight)

Step 2) Heat your newly soaked horsetail assortment over the stove with low heat for 15 minutes and then begin to squeeze out the liquid

Step 3) Spray the leaves at a ratio of (1 horsetail cup per 3 cups of water)

***Use this recipe once a week for prevention and every 2 days for eradication.

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What If  Powdery Mildew Occurs During Late Flower?

• Mist your infected areas with HIGH pH water (8- 8.5pH) is recommended and begin to repeat the process every 3-4 days.

• Mist with a water and milk solution (90% water and 10% milk)

• You can also mist a solution of water with a MINIMAL amount of hydrogen peroxide.

What Products Should A Conscious Farmer Avoid?

Sulfur: Even though spraying your plants with sulfur is a reasonably comprehensive protocol against Powdery Mildew, we DO NOT recommend it for cannabis cultivation, as the flowers would preserve the flavor and bouquet of the chemical.  Bicarbonate: Spraying your cannabis plants with bicarbonate dissolved in water might be effective against Powdery Mildew. Again we are AGAINST these protocols. Bicarbonates leave visible remnants on the plant material and flowering bud sites.  Chemical products: There are systemic fungicides that can effectively fight Powdery Mildew. We DO NOT recommend that you, a consciousminded farmer, use non-organic methods.

These methods are harmful to the overall health of you, your employees, and your customers.

We would like to thank Everflux for sharing this invaluable insights and information to us.

To know more about this technology:

Growing Trial with Bioflux

To learn more about living soil cultivation:

Living Soil Cultivation by Everflux Technologies

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Healthy Living Soil

Why the Use of Healthy Living Soil

“As professional growers, we are constantly searching for new products, techniques and philosophies that will help simplify our processes. One of the keys to our ongoing success has been the implementation of a healthy, living soil. We take care of the soil, and the soil takes care of the plants.

We have learned that over time synthetic fertilizers and additives can initially provide good results, but over a short period of time it can deplete the soil of living biologics that are extremely beneficial. These biologics are meant to prepare food for the plant to feed efficiently. After use of synthetic fertilizers, these biologics can turn on the plant and become detrimental to the plant’s success simply because integral aspects of the living soil has been depleted by the synthetic fertilizers.

The Project has happier and more robust plants after switching to a complete living soil.”

Matt Calkins, Project Manager Global Hemp’s Scio Oregon Hemp Project

What Exemplifies a Healthy Living Soil

by Daniel Enking, Everflux Technologies Founder & CEO

The Healthy Living Soil

Living soil is the symbiotic relationship between organisms working together to break down organic matter in your soil, which, in turn, provides valuable nutrients to plants and the microbial world.  This style of cultivating allows the newly formed soil to function as its own ecological community, feeding the hemp plant roots itself.

The Soil Foodweb

This is known as growing with mother nature and was first called the "soil food web" by Dr. Elaine Ingham. The soil foodweb world consists of composting worms, beneficial nematodes, protozoa, bacteria, and fungi.

Living soil cultivation methods have proven time and time again to produce extremely high-quality hemp and cannabis. They generate these results by breaking down the organic matter that collects on the soil floor.  Then specific decomposers like red wiggler composting worms, roly polys, and white springtail mites break that organic matter down into carbon.  The ground that doesn't contain beneficial organisms is not living and should be considered DIRT. Dirt requires nutritional supplementation via fertilizers and compost teas just to produce mediocre medicine.

Red Wigglers and African Nightcrawlers will work in a symbiotic relationship with the microbial soil foodweb to help build dissolved oxygen channels, which allows newly formed roots to begin to grow a larger circumference.  This symbiotic relationship also helps to control dangerous pests and improve water retention, thus reducing the amount of attention needed to produce abundant, high quality hemp and cannabis yields.

Why Is This Style Called "Beyond Organic"?
USDA Certified Organic has come to mean any farmer that uses organically certified input materials. Many would argue that this is a very watered-down version of the original meaning.

Even focusing on “soil health” is not necessarily enough, because some farmers and growers get caught up on the chemistry of their soil, thinking that they need to add various mineral and chemical nutrients in order to balance their soil.  However, the focus of a truly organic farmer - or what we are now calling “beyond organic” or “regenerative,” is on biological soil health. When a farmer promotes the right microbes and the accumulation of organic matter in their soil, everything else will follow.

Tilling creates a Catch 22 for the organic farm: tilling speeds the breakdown process of organic matter but also dramatically minimizes the lifespan of the organisms living in the newly tilled soil. Essentially, excessive tilling kills off the microorganisms in the ground rather than nurturing them.

As a living soil farmer, learn to trust the process and let Mother Nature work synergistically with the microbial world by pulling down the organic matter. This organic matter becomes the living soil we are after and naturally boosts the amount of active organic matter that is bioavailable.  This entire microbial world operates on this life source for creating energy and receiving nutrition, improving its organic content. This is fantastic for achieving the full hemp genetic profiles we are after. A beyond organic farm will use little or no tilling.

In a Living Soil, a complex and high glomalin soil will begin to form. This kind of soil is drought resistant and has impressive water retention capabilities.

Increasing micro-diversity has many beneficial and long lasting effects that you can see all the way up the food chain, such as producing high-end hemp or cannabis flavor profiles that you enjoy smoking for their medicinal values.  There is a direct correlation between biodiversity in your soil and the complexities of taste and oil production in whatever you are growing.
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The Benefits of Growing Cannabis in Living Soil

When hemp is cultivated in a no-till/living soil system, it begins to emulate the more delicate complexities like that of aged fine wine.  A healthy microbiological ecosystem MUST be alive and thriving for you to achieve these same results building your living soil system. The full genetic profile of the plant relies directly upon the quality and level of microbiology in your soil system.  The higher bio-diversity increases over time and creates a healthy closed-loop system where more top quality microbial levels are achieved.

If you are looking to start cultivating your own THC/CBD medicine, then there is no better cultivation style.  Since the medicinal values of the plant are determined by the oil production, you will end up with a much more complex therapeutic profile, allowing for the actual medical potential of the plant to be achieved.  Your end product will be looked upon as high end and will have a far superior cannabinoid profile.

THC has become the most commonly known psychoactive compound in the cannabinoid family. When the levels of these other cannabinoids are raised, there seems to be a direct correlation to the medicinal value pulled from the compounds and their medical applications.

When grown in a diverse microbiological environment, cannabis becomes a much more potent and diverse medicine. Any increase in the levels and varieties of cannabinoids should be the goal when growing medical cannabis. Below are the most commonly known cannabinoids besides THC, and their effects:

• Cannabigerol (CBG): Mildly psychoactive, CBG boasts anti-inflammatory and antibacterial benefits.

• Cannabichromene (CBC): While it doesn't produce a high like THC can, folks like CBC because of its antibiotic and pain-relieving properties.

• Cannabinol (CBN): This mildly psychoactive cannabinoid can act as an antiemetic (meaning antinausea) and sleep aid. THC turns into CBN when exposed to prolonged UV light and air.

​Conclusion

If you’ve been considering making the switch to cultivating with true living soil, there’s no better time to do so. With the rapidly changing landscape of the hemp and cannabis industry, and new competition entering the growing game every day, there’s no better way to stand out.

To know more about this technology:

Growing Trial with Bioflux

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