Post by maskedsonnet on Apr 16, 2021 18:08:03 GMT -5
Thank you! Every day I fall more in love with hydroponics, especially AG!
Soon it'll be consistently warm enough at night that I can move all my potted plants outdoors. When that happens I'm going to do a total over-haul of that room, re-arrange everything and make it purely hydroponic. I'm more and more convinced the potting mix is where my seemingly unending bug problem came from. Amazing how what would be a no-big-deal pest problem outdoors becomes such a major one indoors! Closed environment with no predators really encourages the little turds.
It's gotten a lot better, and the plants all look much healthier for it, but I still find some to squish every time I go in there! Being able to vacuum the plants has helped a LOT, both in getting the bugs off and providing me a very quick and easy way to remove dead plant matter, giving bugs fewer places to hide and breed. I'm also planning to leave AGs empty as projects come to an end, and once they're all done giving it an additional month at least before I start anything new, in the hopes that all the bugs starve and all the eggs die.
The Harvest pequin is the only project I've ended so far, I actually sanitized that machine and moved it to the kitchen to start my outdoor seedlings in. I've been obsessively checking for bugs/bug damage on it and the other two AGs I've got in the kitchen with it. So far so good there!
And once winter rolls around again, the potted plants I overwinter inside for sentimental reasons are going into the garage where they can't infect anything!! I recently cleaned and re-organized out there, so there's a nice little nook for them to go into near an outlet so I can hang grow lights. It stays reasonably warm in there during the winter, and I have a nice radiant heater to warm it up even more if I feel the need.
Hopefully all this boils down to never having to battle bugs again!! I think I've got a couple months at least before I pull the trigger on ending all my projects, and I'm going to be saving this one for last. I've got a lot of peppers and tomatoes I want to ripen up first. And I'm definitely starting strawberries again once I reset everything!
Soon it'll be consistently warm enough at night that I can move all my potted plants outdoors. When that happens I'm going to do a total over-haul of that room, re-arrange everything and make it purely hydroponic. I'm more and more convinced the potting mix is where my seemingly unending bug problem came from. Amazing how what would be a no-big-deal pest problem outdoors becomes such a major one indoors! Closed environment with no predators really encourages the little turds.
It's gotten a lot better, and the plants all look much healthier for it, but I still find some to squish every time I go in there! Being able to vacuum the plants has helped a LOT, both in getting the bugs off and providing me a very quick and easy way to remove dead plant matter, giving bugs fewer places to hide and breed. I'm also planning to leave AGs empty as projects come to an end, and once they're all done giving it an additional month at least before I start anything new, in the hopes that all the bugs starve and all the eggs die.
The Harvest pequin is the only project I've ended so far, I actually sanitized that machine and moved it to the kitchen to start my outdoor seedlings in. I've been obsessively checking for bugs/bug damage on it and the other two AGs I've got in the kitchen with it. So far so good there!
And once winter rolls around again, the potted plants I overwinter inside for sentimental reasons are going into the garage where they can't infect anything!! I recently cleaned and re-organized out there, so there's a nice little nook for them to go into near an outlet so I can hang grow lights. It stays reasonably warm in there during the winter, and I have a nice radiant heater to warm it up even more if I feel the need.
Hopefully all this boils down to never having to battle bugs again!! I think I've got a couple months at least before I pull the trigger on ending all my projects, and I'm going to be saving this one for last. I've got a lot of peppers and tomatoes I want to ripen up first. And I'm definitely starting strawberries again once I reset everything!
