Growing your own cannabis is a lucrative endeavor and it could be the sort of business that if run properly, could create incredible income for someone interested in creating and maintain strains for the medical marijuana industry.
While there is some red tape to get through, those who are early into the industry in states that newly approve of medical marijuana will the ones who make the most money, provided that they do things right.
One of the things you are going to be doing is growing your own strains of marijuana and while your initially going to start plants from seed, you’ll quickly want to choose your healthiest plants and make them mother plants from which you can cut new clones from.
This is the fastest way to create more plants as you can obtain new clones every few weeks and in a year, you could have close to 9000 cuttings from a single healthy mother bonsai. As you may imagine, this is hugely profitable so you do not want to risk anything happening to your plants. They’re worth gold to you.
Taking Care of Your Clones
You should make every effort to keep your growing room clean and sanitary. Do not use the same scalpel to take cuttings from all of your plants. If you have a diseased plant, you’ll spread it to all of them and wipe your entire business out in weeks.
Change blades, use clean water, choose organic soil for growing your babies and learn about the potential diseases and health risks to your plants. Here, we are choosing to talk about root rot because it is one of the more common threats and you’ll want to learn how to identify it and what to do about it if you have this issue.
Root rot is a problem that is directly related to care and the amount of water in the soil. You can do things to prevent it from happening and you can also stop it in its tracks if you see signs of it
What is Root Rot?
Root rot is caused by a fungus, parasitic in nature, which invades the roots of the marijuana plants. This will definitely damage and potentially kill cannabis plants. One of the ways this fungus gets started is if the plants have become stressed or weakened. It is very important that you provide proper nutrients to your soil, water at the right times, keep the humidity at the correct levels and make sure that your plants are well-cared for and checked daily.
Root rot will begin, as the name implies, at the root of the plant and indications will be at the soil line of the stem. A grayish looking fungus becomes visible. Root rot tends to attack seeds, seedlings and new cuttings or young plants. Root rot travels in the soil from one plant to another. You can avoid the spread by never reusing your soil between plants and potting your plants separately.
Because it travels underground, in the soil via the water that travels, it is very difficult to spot root rot until it has weakened your plant and caused health issues already.
You’ll notice the plant looking unhealthy and withered perhaps but it will not be until you inspect the roots themselves that you’ll be able to see the grayish, soft, watery roots that tell you they are unhealthy. Your plant’s leaves will begin turning yellow and withering and falling off. This is the clue that you’d better inspect the roots.
Sometimes you can tell by the smell if you have root rot. It will smell like mold or mildew if you do. Healthy roots will be white or cream colored. Grayish or brown roots is likely root rot. Prevention of root rot is the only real way to combat it.
Preventing Root Rot before It Starts is Optimal
Keep air temps below 70 degrees and keep humidity fairly low. Root rot thrives in high temps with high humidity. Bugs and root rot go together; sometimes one starts before the other or vice versa. Keep bugs at bay and you can also use root systems that are designed to prevent infestations from starting.
Copper treatments are popular and so are sprays made using coriander, sesame oil, and clove. Above all, do not overwater your plants. This is the fastest way to start root rot, by having them sit in constantly wet soil. They need the chance to dry out in loose soil in order to thrive and grow.
The best policy, once a plant has root rot, is to discard it and start over. As you can see, this is a very important reason to not share soil between plants and to keep disinfected work spaces and scalpels. If you have a system with shared soil, root rot will be carried by water from one plant to the next. If you are using hydroponics, root rot is possible and will also spread to all plants that are sharing the water system.
Root rot can easily cause you to lose all of your plants and thousands of dollars if you aren’t careful in how you plant, set your systems up, and if you don’t keep a watchful eye on your plants. Stop root rot before it starts by checking roots and monitoring the environment of your plants constantly.