⚠️Four BIG Problems in Your Grow, and How to Fix Them- with Marybeth Sanchez

9:47AM Jan 29, 2025

Speakers:

Jordan River

Marybeth Sanchez

Keywords:

magnesium deficiency

potassium deficiency

septoria fungus

root aphids

nutrient deficiencies

soil issues

plant symptoms

root inspection

beneficial bacteria

fungal diseases

root rot

pest control

plant health

nutrient solutions

preventative measures

Greetings growers from around the world. Jordan River here back with more grow cast and I got 99 problems in the biodome today. Mary Beth Sanchez is back on the line. You know her. You love her. She's a member of our community, almost exclusively at this point. And boy, she's just taught me so much about gardening. We're covering four big plant problems today, and we're gonna tell you how to solve them really, really fast and how to identify them. Most importantly, before we get into it with Mary Beth Sanchez, though, shout out to AC infinity, baby. AC infinity.com, code growcast One five to get your savings and keep the lights on. Here at growcast, we appreciate your support, and we love AC infinity. They make the best grow tents around extra thick poles. They've got nice, durable, thick siding. Now they have the new side ports. People have been asking for those and AC infinity lists. And plus, they've got everything else you need to grow. They've got lights and pots and fans, and they're oscillating fans the cloud Ray system. Check out their humidifiers. The cloud Forge. How nice is your humidifier? Maybe it's time to replace that. The cloud rays are my favorite oscillators on the market. And of course, their cloud Line series, what they got it all started with all those years ago when we were partners with AC infinity, all they made were those inline fans, and they're the best in the game. So shout out to the entire AC infinity suite. They've got everything you need to get growing from fans to tents to lights. Code growcast One five works at AC infinity.com. You support us, and you're getting some badass, durable grow gear while you're doing it. So thank you to all you listeners using code growcast One five, and thank you to AC infinity. Okay, let's get into it with Mary Beth. Thank you for listening and enjoy the show. Hello, podcast listeners who are now listening to grow cast. I'm your host, Jordan River, and I want to thank you for tuning in again today. Before we get started as always, I urge you to turn someone on to grow cast. It's the best way you can help this show. Show someone the show. Turn them on to growing and see everything we're doing at growcast. Podcast, podcast.com forward slash action. There you'll see the upcoming classes like Pesta Palooza, the seeds, the membership and everything. I can't wait to see you inside membership. Speaking of membership, our lovely guest today is hanging out almost exclusively in our server, answering all sorts of grow questions. What an amazing model in the industry she is. She's a regenerative farming specialist, IPM specialist, grow Cast team member, and so much more. Mary Beth, Sanchez is back on the line. What's up? Mary Beth, well,

hello, and how do you do Howdy, lovely day, California.

It's been raining. Now you're in Trinity, and it's raining. We got to get the obligatory weather check. It

is, it is. But you know what we're having, off and on, sunshine. So it's all quite lovely. It's not gloomy as as as it doesn't last all day. You know? It's almost like having Florida in the North Pacific.

I love that Trinity weather. It's so nice when it's what you just described. The clouds roll in, and then it rains a little bit, and then it clears up, and then it's sunny, and then, yeah, that Trinity weather is something special.

Oh, the plants are loving it. Boy, they just jumping up. Oh, my God, I spend the other half of the day pulling weeds because they're real happy. Gotta

get out there and weed, let me tell you,

to cover the earth. You know, I gotta quit. I quit hating them because they're just trying to cover the soil, but I still keep having to pull them up because I don't want certain weeds are extremely obnoxious, and others I can live with easily, but if they have stickers,

you got to get rid of them. That's right, they're so prolific, those weeds and our plant, our weed is pretty prolific as well, the cannabis plant, but we tend to challenge ourselves because as growers, Mary Beth, we don't want to see a single problem throughout the whole run. We don't want to see one little speck. We don't want to see one little speck, one little burn, nothing. We don't we want it to be perfect the whole way through. That's the only way that I'll consider a run successful in my obsessive compulsive brain. Well,

I've noticed on the discord when people are asking questions, I'm surprised sometimes if the little things that they notice on their plants, because they are really obsessively looking like, Okay, well, this is good. This is heightened awareness. They

care. I mean, that's for sure. You can't say they don't care exactly,

because if you're not paying attention, troubles can't sneak up on you. You've seen those pictures too. Oh

yeah. I mean, that is a good point. You know, today's episode, it's all about four big plant problems. Mary Beth solves the plant problems for all the members. It's one of the amazing things about you're in there every single day. It's like being on call for for insurance and people's grows. It's amazing

to call on someone sometime for help. I

mean, listen, it happens, but we see these four problems frequently. Pretty frequently. Yeah, and one of them less frequently, but it's a devastating problem. But these first three problems, man, you see it a lot. You see it a lot, a lot. And you can really, like you said, if you're on top of it and you catch it early and you take the correct steps, you can really make a difference in your grow and course correct, whereas if you don't, you're going to end up with a diminished harvest. You're going to end up with a diminished quality, yeah? So yeah, that's, that's what I'm super excited about today. And you do this all day, every day. I can't thank you enough for being part of the order of cultivation. It is a pleasure. I love the group. Yeah? I mean, it's an honor having you on the team, but you are so dedicated that, honestly, you just continue to impress me all the time.

It's an honor to be here.

Okay, so let's see. I guess we should just jump right into this. Let's start with the first of our four big plant problems. Mary Beth, I put this one at the top because I see it a lot. This is the classic magnesium deficiency. I see you calling this out sometimes in our plant problems channel, you say, you say, show me a picture of the whole plant. You usually, usually ask if someone has a leaf, you'll be like, Where was this leaf? And then sometimes you say it's magnesium. Tell us how to identify, sure, fire, magnesium. Fire,

well, it's going to be basically revealing itself at the bottom of the plant. So you if it is a magnesium deficiency, it'll go slowly up the plant, the worse it gets. But it basically attacks the bottom first, but it'll be a kind of an all over yellowing, and it'll start to develop kind of brownish little patches where it seems like it's even worse. And as it progresses, it just seems to just start to look real ugly, kind of brown and yellow at the bottom, they

start to die away. Yeah,

not in the same way as it does when it's getting old. It's like, it's too early for that to be happening. And you know, something's wrong, and probably magnesium, particularly because of the fact that so often people add their calcium and magnesium together, and that's the only magnesium they had, not realizing that magnesium actually leaches from the soil much more quickly than calcium. So you may be short of it and not realize because you thought you had plenty of calcium, you may not be showing any calcium deficiency at the same time. So it could be that it was just the magnesium that was short.

And I think people know what you're talking about when you describe that. It's like an early yellowing from the bottom up, those lower fan leaves get that like real, even deep, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yeah. And then there's those brown burning spots, Yep, yeah.

But they're usually not real, super distinct spots at first, they're more, you know, just kind of blurry grounds.

Yeah, really, really good description. I think people have noticed that now, for me, I probably was over watering my plant in soil, because when you're in a soil system and all your nutrition is in that pot, like you said, going to full runoff in soil, not a good idea. You're going to push out that magnesium, and then, you know, on the other side of the coin, if you're a synthetic grower, your magnesium is probably coming in the form of your calm mag, which is fine, but like you said, that may cause issues when it comes to runoff or not having enough of the magnesium, depending on how your line is dosed. So Right?

And particularly if you're growing in pots indoors, because you have a much smaller growing medium there, so things can get leached out much more easily than, say, if you're going outdoors, in the soil, in the ground, or in a really large pot, where you can mimic that condition a little better. And

again, I think if you correct this early on, you're going to have a healthier plant that even green all the way through, you'll have more vigorous growth. There was a great episode with Nick on the importance of magnesium and all of the plants botanical functions as it's, you know, taking up water, taking up nutrients, producing terpenes, all these things. So, so don't sleep on it. If you can green up that plant and not have that magnesium deficiency through through mid veg, you'll probably end up with a better run overall.

Yeah, because any any nutrient deficiency that way, is going to rob your plant a little bit. And you can always tell something's going wrong, and stuff starts turning yellow. Almost all of the nutrients are involved in chlorovirus production, so almost all of the nutrient deficiencies will have some yellowing involved somewhere along the line. Gotta find out whatever you can get on top of those things, yeah, the happier your plants can be. Now,

if you find yourself with magnesium deficiency, you can certainly increase whatever it is that you're feeding with magnesium in it, but you got to be careful, right? So let's say your magnesium is tied to that cow mag. Well, feeding more calcium. Plants eat a lot of calcium, but be careful. A lot of those cow mags will have nitrogen in it. You don't want to start blasting it with a 4% nitrogen input right to cure magnesium deficiency and in excess

of calcium will lock up nutrients too, as well as excessive magnesium. So be careful. You know, sometimes you might not need that extra calcium because you're already at your maximum level. So. You don't necessarily want to add more calcium. You might take just some sort of a magnesium sulfate, or something to that effect, where you can add magnesium without think magnesium citrate is another option. You can buy these things, and they're just elements. They're not going to

hurt your plants. Magnesium citrate, I like that. But the first one you said magnesium sulfate Epsom salts. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Unscented from the store. They're all the same, magnesium sulfate heptah hydrate. You can find it freaking anywhere, any CVS, any Walgreens, any Walmart, get the unscented stuff. And I know some people talk about like, oh, Epsom, do this or do that. To me, they seem so gentle. I've added them to every, virtually every setup that I've that I've run, and they seem to really, really work cleanly and well,

they're pretty safe, you know what I mean, unless you're putting stupid dosages, which sometimes people do. So that may have been part of where you know, their bad experience came from. Yeah, it is pretty easy to work with.

And that's the magnesium sulfate. Again, sulfur. Maybe your plant could gobble up some more sulfur anyway. So toss that in at one tablespoon to two tablespoons per gallon. You're always recommending that in the plant problems channel, because it covers two huge ones, the sulfur deficiency, which we've covered on the

show, reoccurs. Yeah. And then the magnesium, yeah, for those growing tips, if they look yellow, you could be sulfur, very likely. Could also be zinc. But the you know, other things happen zinc. Anyway, we're talking about magnesium, yeah,

well, you covered it. You really, you really crushed the magnesium, which is, you know, throw in a little bit of Epsom salt each time, or a heavy dose with that one to two tablespoons per gallon to to green it up. You notice your plant really green up. Now, I want to stop here, though, and before we go on to the next deficiency, talk about this idea of just adding something to cure a perceived, perceived deficiency, because you're going to want to eliminate a couple of other things. First,

probably, because there's probably something blocking it up too. So you never know. How is that deficiency occurring? Is it from right? A lockout because of something else? Sometimes it's from insect damage, where they're you know, a deficiency can be caused by insects biting into the plant and cutting off nutrients.

Over watering. I've noticed with the sulfur and the magnesium over watering is like the number one thing where, if you just fix that, a lot of times the deficiency goes away, you know. And the

temperatures, well, sometimes people expect too much of a plant in too cold of a condition, and it really is too cold for the nutrients to be flowing yet, and sometimes all they have to do is heat up the room, and suddenly things start going happy again.

Okay, so that's a really good point. Mary Beth, I want to drill down on this for a second. We talk about the idea of transpiration, right? I like what Nick said, your plant kind of acts as a pump. It's pumping constantly. It's pulling up nutrients and water. It's bringing it up to the Trichome head factories. It's using it to build all these structures, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's going, it's releasing sugars and exudates back down into the roots. It's releasing CO two. It's a pump that's going, Yeah. Here's a super important thing to understand about the pump. The hotter the pump is, the harder it works, point blank, simple. When you slow down the pump with cold, that's exactly what's happening. It's not working as fast, it's not working as hard, it's not taking up as many minerals. So when you're an indoor grower, Mary Beth, and you're in the year 2023, and you buy a Grow Tent, you are given an LED light, a very cool light. It's, I mean, it is very cool, as in, not it does not put out a lot of heat. It's good for energy. But, yes, exactly. So you need to, especially if you're an old school grower that's just now getting back into the game. No more, H, I, D, S, which warmed up the whole half of the house. These LEDs, you better turn off. Here's two huge hacks. You better turn down your outtake fan. And I have a passive intake. I've eliminated my intake. That's just more power I'm saving to keep the ambient temperatures higher. Second hack, this is the big one. Shout out. Ryzo Rich, put your oscillating fan clipped to the ceiling, pointed down at your bar style, LED light and put it on oscillate so it's blowing warm wind down onto the tops of plants. It's a fucking game changer. Thank me. Thank

you. Later. So oh yeah, thank you and rise though. Oh no,

thank you. Mary Beth, you nailed it heat. So sorry.

Tip, though, yeah, that's great too,

but it's getting too cold. That's, I mean, you might just be able to fix your deficiency by warming it up. That's a really great point. Yes,

yeah, yeah, because you might just start adding nutrients that you don't really need, and you'd still be just chin because it's still too cold. Yes, then you've got an excess, and that's good.

Nutrient burn. Yeah, that's a really, really good point. So before you go adding more minerals, I think we did a whole episode on this a while ago, make sure that you eliminate all those other possibilities, environment, over watering, pest pressure, all of these things, and then go and add some nutrition.

That is what I would suggest. Because, yeah, very often when you do suggest it seems to people, light bulb will go off in their head now. Oh yeah, you're right. I was doing that. Okay, cool. We fixed that problem. So,

oh God, the biodome tent is looking so good, and I got that fan up at the top. So thank you for coming up. All right. Problem number two, we got this. This one, speaking of adding more nutrients. This is something I see a lot, a lot, and it's probably robbing growers of some yield. But you tell me, Can we do a little role playing? Mary Beth, do you mind? Sure. Okay, here we go. I just jumped into plant problems channel in the in the Grow cast membership discord.

How

I just jumped into the plant problems channel, and I say, Mary Beth, I have some sort of burning on my plants. My plants are burning up. I don't know what's going on here. Let me show you a picture of a leaf, and they post a picture of a leaf, and you're looking at the five finger fan leaf. And there's some sort of burning, but it's occurring on just the edges of the leaves, the margins of the leaves, like someone took a highlighter and highlighted the outside of the leaf. But it's burning. It's yellowing. It might be curling up a little bit. And they say it's happening everywhere on the plant. It's happening to the top leaves. It's happening to the bottom leaves. It's just setting in. What's your

initial thought? Well, if it's potassium, oh, okay, so you'll notice the efficiency at the bottom of a plant if it's mobile, because a mobile nutrient is going to spend all this energy at the top, you know, feeding the things at the top and neglecting the things at the bottom when there's a shortage. So if there's a shortage, you'll see it at the bottom, where they say, Screw the bottom. I'm going to the top, because I'm mobile. That's

interesting, because I usually, I guess I do see it lower on the plant, but I feel like I usually see potassium deficiencies in like, the middle leaves. That's okay.

But what you're seeing, if you if you look at it carefully, it's not really that it's lower on the plant. It those are the older leaves, because you know how they kind of grow in a rosette out of every stem. So, you know, a kind of an elongated, stretched out rosette. So the older leaves on that stem will be getting it, the bigger leaves will be getting those symptoms before the younger, for sure,

that you just blew my mind. I've never put this together, because cannabis growers prune their leaves all the time, and sometimes they'll leave some of the older leaves. They'll pull some of the and then you have new families old families. You're saying higher and lower, but also consider older and younger. I've never thought of that before,

yeah, because you'd see how, the way it grows out, and how, you know, the older leaves, they just start getting bigger and bigger, but they're not necessarily so much lower on the plant is further down the branch, say, further down the stem, because, yeah, the growing tip is always the smallest part. But then it kind of, well, you know what the structure the flowers, as the leaves get bigger, then you start seeing that marginal scorching.

And that's the telltale sign. I see it every time it happens in flower. What is it about potassium and the bulking of flowers, or the building of flowers? Oh,

they just want so much more of it then. Yeah, it is really important during flowering stage to increase that if you can, otherwise, you will see these little signs of, I wish I had more. Plant will be telling you, I could sure use me some

more. It is certainly demanded in high dosages, because I see it all the time, and like, bulking and, you know, starts to scorch up, and I think you could get more yield by, yeah, and it's

really important to the production of the residents. So if you don't have much potassium, you're not going to have much goo. If you like the goo you want that potassium level, that's your max.

Yeah, that's absolutely right. It is a critical flowering nutrient, and you recommend if you're low on potassium, of course, there are like these PK boosters that are oftentimes supplying the potassium. But the problem with those are they're so high in phosphorus, you know, sometimes they have twice the amount of phosphorus as the potassium. So I like what you recommend, which is adding something like soluble seaweed powder, which has no nitrogen, no phosphorus. It's got some micronutrients, and it's got, you know, 12% plus potassium,

yeah. And sometimes you can find it with even higher levels of potassium, but you know, it says to be constantly retested. And you can find, I found a bottle of nutrient before that was a 00, 20, which I thought was real good, if you Let's go find anything else that's a safe level. I wouldn't really. Want to go higher than 20. I've seen higher than 20, but I think any nutrient, when you're going higher than 20% on your on your levels, it's kind of your thorough playing with fire. Sure, it's not quite too crazy, but you know, you know how people do, they buy the Chi Ching and

Well, speaking of Cha Ching, that's why I like having the Epsom salts on hand and the soluble seaweed powder. These are cheap, you guys. These are cheap. You go ahead and you buy a bag of Epsom salt for, I don't know, 599 maybe. And you can go and order from Amazon, even just order for off the internet, or your favorite, you know, down to earth, Peaceful Valley type website, get some soluble seaweed powder. How much is it? It's like 12 bucks. It's like

17, yeah, compared to the resin boosters that you can buy that are small fortune. And, you know, just because they're advertised as a resin booster, not advertised as, you know, potassium,

yeah, exactly. And the dosages vary, but it's, about like a teaspoon per gallon, or a half teaspoon per gallon on a lot of these

soluble seeds. So it lasts very small, very small dosage. Yeah,

crazy, super, super crazy. I like that you're recommending those two things a lot because they fix so many things between the magnesium sulfate, which is, you know, magnesium deficiency, sulfur deficiency, the potassium deficiency, with the soluble seaweed, and it even helps with your micronutrient deficiencies, if you're if you're low on the micros like iron and zinc and shit like that, iodine. Pretty interesting.

I know some people are a little nervous about, well, what is in the ocean that they got the seaweed from? But normally it's all harvested up in Norway and clean water, and things are in the North Pacific, and clean water, it's not in I really haven't heard of any sources that are in some toxic wasteland around the United States. At least I just, I wouldn't be so super overly concerned about that, I'm sure so like I say, if you are, God bless. You. Go out of your way to find a place where you think of the source is good. But I don't have any troubles, you know, with the plants that I've used these things on,

I think that you nailed it, which is apparently the highest quality kelps and seaweeds come from the North Atlantic.

North seas. Yes, they're there. They're particularly the Norwegian. Yeah,

I want to say that the process is cold water harvest. I could be wrong about that. And, oh yeah, it's something like cold water harvest, cold pressed. And it's Norwegian, like you said. And they, they tested these things, and they were super, super low. And everything you're worried about, like, the heavy metals,

correct? Yeah, they don't still have that much pollution up in the North Sea. Yeah,

that makes sense. And when you look at these products, they're almost always from that. The ones that I've seen cannabis facing, like, for instance, maxi crop, they're not a partner. They're, I don't know anything about them, other than the fact that they're a big one, and they're from there, for instance, exactly.

And it's affordable, yeah, especially when you realize it's long lasting. I mean, it's a dry powder you put on your shelf for years and years, it's not going to expire, you know, you're not going to be wasting your money with it, because it really little bit goes a long way, and it is effective, yes, quickly, because it's super soluble, right in the name, I just

don't see a fuck ton, forgive me, of nitrogen deficiency running at least through our server. You know, when you're using a good soil or a good bottle nutrient line or phosphorus deficiency, I like the idea of having magnesium on hand. I like the idea of having sulfur and potassium on hand between the soluble seaweed powder, the Epsom salts and my demeters Destiny, which is like a liquid bone meal. It's like a calcium and a tiny bit of phosphorus. I mean, anytime I run into a cultivar that's a little bit picky, I'm reaching for one of those products. Yeah, you know what I'm saying.

Oh, I used to use the liquid bone meal, and it reminded me of Pepto Bismol.

Smell like Pepto Bismol?

Yeah, the calcium chloride in, it's probably really

the same ingredients, you know, because they'd want to steal acid with calcium when they we just don't know what they're putting in that,

yeah? Or is it calcium chloride, or is it, yeah, it is bone meal, it's gypsum, it's drywall, or is it a calcium bicarbonate? I think it's calcium bicarbonate, I believe. Yeah, that's interesting. Now, you said something a long time ago. I'm going to bring up again on this show, because it's really, really cool. It's always stuck with me, which is the general rule of thumb that the suffix a te like calcium phosphate or magnesium sulfate, lends to the idea that it's probably uptakeable by a plant that is so

cool, a plant and a mammal that is wild.

Uh huh. I mean, it makes sense. Eight, it's easy to remember, but

I ate it and I lived.

I've been looking at vitamin bottles since you've said that, and I've been like, Oh, this one I could crush up and put in my fucking pot. If I wanted to, yes,

you can. So because they if you're in a pinch and you need some zinc, now, you might have it in your comfort. And you usually like you don't need much in your body either. Does your plant need much? But it's in that really soluble form, just, I would say, I always say, dissolve it in a thing of water, maybe one tablet per plant. If you only have a tiny plant, maybe half a tablet, something like that. But you know, you can get away with stuff like that. So cool,

very, very cool. And there you go. The first two problems you might run into, both related to nutrient deficiencies. Again, make sure that everything else is taken care of before you go adding minerals. But equally, make sure you've got some Epsom salts on hand and some soluble seaweed powder. It's like 20 bucks at the end of the day, probably between those two things, and you're gonna have your bases covered for a quick fix when you're running into a deficiency. Thefoop.com we got limited deals going on. Everybody grow cast 20. That's 20% off@thefoop.com only for the rest of June. You got a few days left, plus free shipping. I think it's on orders over $50 you get free shipping, 20% off with code grow cast 20, go and enjoy the deals at the foop.com certified organic nutrients. I use them on my garden, indoor and out those aquatic microbes that fish poop, bringing out that popping flavor. I really, really like what it does to my plants. I really like what it does to how they express their aroma, the sweetener making the microbes go crazy in my indoor and outdoor garden, I'm pouring this stuff directly on my worms in my living soil bed. No problems out there. You guys know it. You love it, the foop.com and don't sleep on their foop mist and their clone gel. Maybe you're a hydro grower, we'll hit them with that foop mist. Get that biology going above the medium, above ground. Your plants will love it, covering that phyllosphere in a variety of nutrients, micronutrients, macronutrients and a butt load of biology. That's right the foop.com code, growcast 20 only active for the rest of June and free shipping. So go and grab it. You won't regret it. Be healthy. Go organic. Use food. So let's continue on here. Mary Beth, away from the land of deficiencies and into the land of pests and pathogens. I like this next one. I like this next one. The reason I like this next one is because there's a dead giveaway with this one. I love diagnoses with dead giveaways because we can go really, you know what I mean, we can like, have people walking away with a really good piece of knowledge that's applicable. So okay, I'm gonna set the stage for this one as well. Some more role playing. Mary Beth. Mary Beth, help me. I'm in the plant problems channel. Can you help me? Okay, all right. Well, my plants all fucked up. It's, it's all it's shits all fucked up, and it's got these brown spots on the leaves. But I noticed something about these brown spots. They're dark, nasty. They almost look like they're rotting, but they've got this yellow ring around them. It's not just a dark spot. There's a, there's a, almost like a halo

around it. Yes, it's the hellish halo of death.

The Grim Reaper has visited your plan. It's a common

take you down. Well, yes, indeed, it is true. It is it is fungus trying to kill your plants. So you do have to get it is a powerful, strong, fast fungus. It's a fast moving, fast spread and killing. You've got to get on that one hard

is it called? Name, don't Voldemort syndrome, oh,

septoria.

It does sound like, you know, what does sound like? Voldemort's arch nemesis, I think he was part of house septoria. Actually remember correctly,

septoria from Mars. Oh, it's, that's nasty. It

is quite harmful. It is quite fast moving, like you said, and it is easy

to spread with water droplets, very easy to spread, especially outdoors if you've had a wet winter. But if you you'd like if you got your soil from outdoors where it got infected with it, and brought it indoors, and you know, even then you'll have it indoors, when things start splashing, it'll start growing up the plan. Oh,

okay, so let's talk about how it progresses, and all of that, but, but first, like we said, you know, the dead giveaway is you're looking at these leaves. Mary Beth, you taught me to look for the veins when you're dealing with these fungal, bacterial, nasty pathogens. Yeah, the damage occurs. Information

that if you're having a fungal issue, it's going to be destroying the veins. In fact, it often emanates from the veins,

every little spot, like starts or its worst in those veins, versus a lot of the deficiencies you'll see skipping those veins, which is right,

right? Like they'll go right up to them, but they won't cross that line, right,

right? And then so with the septoria, you're seeing the damage. You're seeing it on the veins. And then you're seeing these. Weird little yellow halos, spots,

Yeah, boy. They just are really telltale, you know, and sometimes that they're usually more yellow, sometimes people see them as white. And there's a few different fungal diseases that'll attack your leaves in a really similar way. But you know, they are all going to move real quickly and be spotty like that, and they'll be pretty, you know, starting off really round spots, but as they grow together, then they'll become weird shape because they're growing together.

That's exactly right. They kind of conglomerate and turn into these huge, nasty patches and destroy your plant. Your plant looks really unhappy when it has septoria, yes. And it's, it's, you know, I've seen it knocked out quickly, but then I've also seen people really struggle with it. So, oh

yeah, well, you have to be so hard and vision with trying to eradicate that it can be so strong. And like I said, it is a hard one to kill. You could have really and all the cures for fungal diseases are not necessarily cheap. It can be quite challenging.

So let's talk about this. Does it comes in on the soil, you said, and then what you're watering with your watering can, and it works its way out of the plant tissue. Is that? What

happens? Yeah, well, normally it's like, it's latent in the soil all the time that the conditions are right, it gets stimulated and comes up, you know, like when you had too much water for too long and too cold for too long. Or, you know, different strains, probably, you know, have different conditions that allow them to just suddenly go off. But yes, normally, when people are watering certain amount of splashing going on, these spores will start to go up into the plant. Well, wherever the spores are germinating and on the plant, these just sort of spew forth their spores. And so they land on the other parts of the plant, and they germinate there, and they continue to go up the plant that way. By just once they've colonized a certain spot in the leaf, they very quickly get some more spores and goes pew further up the plant. And the sooner you can stop those spores from spreading, the better off you're going to be. You've just got to be so quick with your treatments. So

is this one of the reasons you might not recommend people when they transplant, for instance, they'll have those lower fan leaves that kind of hang down into the soil. I've been told, I've been told, to clean those up, because things like Victoria might climb right

in exactly and if it isn't Victoria, something else just it's too much contact with soil that you really don't need they're definitely too low to be helping you much with photosynthesizing. So let them

go. Okay, that's great. That's great. So you you brought this in on your soil. If you're in a bed, you're really concerned, because it's affecting everything in that bed, right? But either way, it's going to spew forth those spores, like you said, so you have good ventilation, and suddenly that's that's working against you. So let's say you find this damage. What do we do? Do we do a double attack on the foliage, because it has the spores being produced and the roots, because the soil is where it lives?

Exactly that's you've got to get hyper vigilant with that one. In fact, I would spray every surface around you know, if you're inside a tent, leave nothing untouched, to maybe take your lights out and get your thing really disinfected, good health. It is such an insidious, nasty little thing, and it is one of the tougher ones to kill. Now,

for the soil, there's all sorts of good beneficials that we can add that would help, right? I'm sure all sorts of bacillus and labs, all sorts of things like that, maybe trichoderma and all these types of things. Another good one. But there's also, are there not bacteria that specifically antagonize things like septoria? I'm thinking of the bacteria Streptomyces, which is really effective and kind of kind of designed to fuck up things like septoria, right? Or does it not? Yeah, I'm

thinking you'd like the ACT innovate. Maybe armory also has armor, is what I was gonna bring. Yeah, yeah, and yeah that there are some really good strains for this, Streptomyces, liticus, like I was gonna say, lyticus, and there's another one. There's a chromium thing. But anyway, yeah, the names escape me. It's too much Latin. I

am not Latin. What do I look like? Ancient Roman? Can't

they just call it Fred?

George. Fred is really good at killing septoria much easier. I like armory because it contains a bunch of those things that we just mentioned. Yeah, I might recommend that otherwise, just straight Streptomyces. Mycostop is great. Trichoderma

horizon comes many brand names, but it is very good for this kind of thing too, and especially if you want to do long term prevention. I can't remember the exact name of the bacteria that does the microstop. It's escaping my brain again now too. I thought it was streptomycies. So

it could be wrong.

Thing could be wrong. Oh, it's like

that microstop, though. It helped when I had a horrible that's another thing you should probably have on your shelf, because things like septoria or, you know, even more aggressive pathogens, they work really, really fast, and you don't want to wait for this thing about

micro stuff too, is, yeah, you want to refrigerate that stuff, if you're not using it, put it in your freezer because it is alive and it does need to be refrigerated or frozen for long term

storage. Okay, good to know my my armor is just sitting on my biodome shelf. Maybe I should throw your armory.

Might be okay, but, you know, I would be tempted to at least

in there, yeah, why not? Right? Yeah, might as well better safe than sorry, rack or something, yeah, yeah, put it exactly. Maybe I'll fucking colonize it, and then I'll have some super strain of cheesy strip strep to mice cheese.

Hey, you know, we'll look at Blue cheese. It's all what kind of selling

Okay, okay, so avoid the septoria. Yes, on the blue cheese, no on the septoria. How do we how do we prevent you get some beneficials in there. You don't over water, right? You said, don't let it get too cool. I thought that was interesting. Yeah,

temperature and humidity, how much moisture you have. If there's any way to improve drainage in that soil, that'll help with those issues. But you know, not knowing where you live and what you're dealing with, that's easy for me to say, but more air drainage will help. Yes, more air circulation. Septoria doesn't like that air and yeah, invite more of that beneficial bacteria or biology to live there. You know, incorporate those things, whether you think you need them or not, as preventative. You may never need to add them again. At the most, you have to add them maybe every few years, maybe every two or three, four years. With trichoderma, you shouldn't need to add it more than every five years. Shouldn't need to assuming if you did it right the first time. And that's

a good point. You know, you try to occupy this space with the microbes that are a beneficial to your plant and be aggressive, you know, very, very pervasive.

Yeah, they, you know, are able to multiply on their own for quite some time, at least, you know, until conditions become untenable for them. But normally, that's quite sometimes. It's not like, it's not like a nutrient, where you're going to use it all up in a two weeks, you got to put on some more. Or the other thing you know, which you're applying pests as pests and predators. You have to apply predators a lot frequently, but yeah, hopefully they'll start, they'll start living and multiplying in your systems, and then you don't have to apply them as frequently in the future. Hopefully

this does point to the importance of having a quality, thriving compost in your living soil. Amen, we have a resource coming out for the members, so we'll probably end up releasing that is all about composting. Mary Beth, you're very passionate about composting, and that's where a whole host, a consortium of these beneficial microbes can come from and protect you. So stay tuned for that stay tuned for that composting resource. It's going to be a fun one. Yes. Well, listen, let's wrap it up with the worst of the worst. We saved the best for last, and we are dealing with something that I've dealt with before, something that is devastating. I've seen it shut down, grows permanently. It's a terrible, terrible thing that I would only wish on my worst enemy. I'm going to do another role play, because I just can't stop myself and go, you know, Mary Beth, my plants just look sad. They look fucked up. They're droopy. I've been running this room for so long. I have everything dialed in. It makes no sense. The plants are stressing clearly and and here's the crazy part, I check my IPM. I look at under the leaves. I check my room every day. I'm in there, usually I've got it dialed in. I just can't figure out what's going on. Everything above ground looks great. What? What do you recommend that I do?

You just gave it away there. It's below ground.

Oh, no,

you know that. You must check the roots. You must see what's going on in your root zone. You're probably being attacked by a pathogen in the root zone would be fungal, or it could be insect.

Okay, so that's let's pause this role play, and for the first big takeaway, Mary Beth. People don't check their roots as part of their IPM protocol. I'm guilty of this. Yeah, check the leaves, and you scope and, yeah, oh, and you spray, and then you don't, you never fucking crack open and look and see what's going on in that root zone. It's it's so important, it can

be so sad and scary when you see those little things infesting your root zone. Thankfully, it doesn't happen often. It's one of the rarer issues. But when it does occur, it's like you said, because it's in, you know, below ground, and you're not seeing it usually gets way out of hand before, yes, but there are the preventative measures that you can take to try to ensure that it never does happen.

Well, I want to say first, before we get to our deadly problem. You know, another thing is, when you're checking out that roots, if they look dark and they stink, that's a big no, no. There's a root rot issue, right? Red blood, right? And that's, that's not what we're talking about right now. That is another reason to scope your roots, I don't know, once a week. I mean, just, just get in there gently and check them out. But back to the role play scenario. I crack open my root ball and I see insects crawling all over my all over my roots. Still not quite time to panic, but if you couple that with sick plants and everything else is okay, you might be in you're probably in trouble. You're probably in

trouble, yeah,

particularly if they look like little brown and gray, fat armor covered. Aphids, yeah, really, really in trouble, fat

bodied, sometimes winged, if it's gotten far enough. Aphids, rude. Aphids, mine were dark. Yeah,

they come in different colors, kind of, you know, ranging from blonde to create a black, you know, orange ish colors, the color of your dirt, usually, um, they so that makes them harder to see. But, yeah, man, they are little. I'm thankful I've only ever had to deal with them once, knocking on wood somewhere, and don't ever want to deal with them again, but they are tough and easy to miss because of the fact that they don't emerge from the soil until they are huge population in there and there are ready to move colonize another plant.

That's what happened to my room. You know, I saw the symptoms above ground, just wimpy, slow growing, sad plants didn't know what was going on. Meanwhile, they're breeding and feeding in the root zone. The poor plant. Yeah, they get far enough along, and then you start to see them flying around the room, and that's when you real trouble. Yeah, it's already too late, basically. And it's another one of those things you got to treat above ground and below ground. That's definitely what, what you're going to need to do. One

of your best preventative measures is if, if you get any new material before you put it out with anything else, not only quarantine it, but give it a preventative dunk in something like Dr Symes or some other kind of a pesticide makes it safe for your root system, maybe sulfur, maybe whatever it is that you're into using, but make sure to give it that good drenching dunk, just to be sure before you let it out. And besides, you know, taking out of whatever little containers, and to actually see if you can see the roots, how they look. See it, does it look like anything scrolling there? Or they look nice and white and bright, or do they look like holes are being tuned into them? Or what kind of condition are you seeing?

You are absolutely right. You know, we're worried about going to the grocery store and picking something up, or even something coming in our soil, which is definitely possible. But how you're going to get root aphids is taking in a cut. That's just statistically. If you look at the hard numbers, that's how you're gonna bring rude aphids into your room. Is through a fucking cut 100%

very, very, very often.

Yeah, I think it's pretty

likely. So that's that is a great point. The quarantine, the dunk the the drench the whole nine to prevent bringing in this little fucker. Because here's a little teaser that I learned from Pesta palooza. Of course, our next pest master class is july 29 in San Diego. Pesta paloozapalooza.com, use code, grow cast. It's really, really cool. It's great. Mary Beth, I want to do one up near you so you can attend. But, but one of the things that I learned is that aphids are generally, they are specialists. There's a cannabis aphid, there's a this aphid, of that aphid and their specialist, the rice root aphid, being an exception, this one affects a lot of different I never really put that together. That's why, you know it affects rice, but then it also affects cannabis, and boy, does it. Cannabis just devastates. It. Absolutely devastates it. Yeah,

yeah. And you will see it on a lot of different plants. When I thought it was on hydrangeas, was four potted hydrangeas at the nursery where I used to work flowers. But it wasn't on any it was in the roots, of course, of the hydrangea flowers. React flowering plant in pots. And it was only those hydrangeas that had it, those little four pots, and nothing else added. But when I did get into the soil and realize what was happening, every drainage I did, so many did. Insects came out of it, but they kept patching. You know more would come. And when you come, I did get rid of them after, you know, several junks, but I think by then, the plants were, like you said, too far gone. They had been damaged, too much. So

what do you recommend for the treatment? If you know your you scope your roots properly, but you see these things and you need to drench with something and spray with something. Dr zymes will work for both of those things. But I imagine there's more hardcore options.

Hopefully, you know, Bavaria vasianna would be a good option, especially if you're into biologicals. Met 52 is another similar product that would hopefully work really well to put in the soil for that. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it's another biological really similar to Bavaria bassian. It acts similarly, maybe a sulfur trench or something, you know, but you go strong. Don't wuss out on the sulfur.

You got to go full measure on these fuckers. That's exactly right. I think the sulfur drench, some people might do a like a chrysanthemum extract type thing. Oh,

yeah, the pyrethrins can work on this. Pyrethrums, you know, isn't I think, well, sulfur too, can be really dangerous if you if you're careless with it depends something you

can kill with that chrysanthemum, that pyrethrin. Keep it away from your cats. It dissipates quickly mammals

and the fish and everything. So yeah, you have to be very careful with that. But it does affect you. It's very effective. So yeah, when you've got a real hardcore case, you might want to whip that out. Just be careful with it. Yeah,

I would say that it's time to go nuclear, and then the rice root aphid is a cross threshold of full reset. In my opinion, I'm not going to use

that soil. That soil definitely

full reset. No perpetual harvest. After this, you shut down your fucking room and you clean. Yeah, very clean. No, I'm so foul mouthed in this episode. I'm passionate about it. Okay? I've been there very I did a hardcore reset, and I was able to continue on now. Now before you go from this episode and you start freaking out every time you see a flying insect. I would like to leave you, dear listener, with a tip on distinguishing the difference between a fungus gnat and a root aphid. You don't need a microscope. You don't need to get up close to those roots. You will be able to spot from across the room if it's a fungus gnat or an aphid. Do you know what I'm gonna say? Mary Beth, are you talking about the flying adults? Yes, I talk about the flying adults. And I think you were the one who told me this.

Well, I know that on the the fungus gnats there, they hang their legs down. They got the long legs, they hang down, and they got that Y shaped vein on their leaves, and they hang out only in the canopy, really, yeah, yeah, on the leaves I'm calling their wings.

I mean, what are the what are the wings of insects other than their leaves? You know? Like, that's really exactly. I mean, God, leaves are just the wings of plants, if you think about it, yeah. Oh, bear with me. People. No, no, no, come on. Speaking of the senility, there's something you're missing here. I think you were the one who told me this. You don't have to even get up close. Remember their flight pattern? You told me that they fly differently. The fungus gnats fly like a mosquito. They go zigzag patterns. The aphids fly in a straight line like a fucking plane. Yeah, they're

on a different mission entirely. Yeah, they like the fungus nuts, just hanging around, dropping eggs, looking for some pollen and nectar, just Lolly gag of the day away. Not a care in the world.

Yeah, making no sense. It's not going anywhere.

Yeah, they got no place to go, nothing to do. What this that aphids are looking for a new colony. They're going I'm going to point B, I'm looking for a new home, start laying eggs immediately and populate New Earth.

That's exactly how I knew something was fucked up, because I walked in my room and it was a it was a grow room, and something flew across the room, and I had to turn my head to watch it goes all the way across the room. And I'm like, okay, that's not I'm not used to that a fungus gnat flies like a net. It's like a zigzag nose or in your eyeball, totally, just like trying to get at the carbon dioxide dumbness little scoop. Um, yeah, totally the P brain, the little pieces of All right, get rather aggressive on the nets. No, that is a dead as a dead giveaway is their flight pattern and,

well, I'm buying that story, though, yeah, sure. I thought you were the one who I'm saying they have, yeah, those aphids have purpose, whereas those fungus gnats are just killing time. Yep,

that's absolutely true. So, so there you go, dear listener, don't freak out just because you see a flyer. It's that fat body, the little insect that flies in a straight line that's going to be the one that worries you. And check those roots. Always check those roots. Yes,

particularly right around the stem is where those aphids are going to be. If you just can dig gently, gently down your stem a little ways in, if they're there, you will see them. They'll be crawling around and making you very unhappy.

Yes, that's exactly right. So this

was four big plant problems and how to solve them quickly. Thank you for going over these, of course, the magnesium deficiency, the potassium deficiency, the septoria and the rice root aphid. I hope you don't get any of these listener, but if you do now, you'll be able to identify them and fix them.

Yeah, is May you not receive any of these curses. Mary

Beth, thank you for always solving all of our problems. Big. You do, great. You do, fantastic. Where can people find you? I know you're not even on Instagram anymore. You're just solely in my community. Yeah, it's my greatest honor.

Life easy. I'm taking my life easy. You know what? I'm at that age right now, I can get away with it. So I'm just I am. I'm in discord because I like

it. Oh my gosh. You rock. You absolutely rock. We are making some big improvements, some big changes to membership. If you guys want to check it out, grow cast podcast.com/membership, come and hang with me and Wolf Man and Mary Beth and rich and everybody in there and and we'll see you there hanging. Mary Beth, will let you go. Thank you so

much, and we'll see you next time. Enjoy summertime, Jordan. Thank you. I

will take care. All right. Love you. Bye. All right. There you have it.

Mary Beth, Sanchez, the greatest. Stay tuned. Everybody. Stay tuned. We've got all sorts of stuff coming Pesta palooza. This is San Diego, July 29 go to Pesta palooza.com. We're also working for we're looking for a venue for LA on the 30th that might already be up by the time you're hearing this. So grow cast podcast.com/classes. To see all of our classes. We're in Virginia in September for the breeder class. Those tickets are live. We are in Florida in October for Pesta palooza. Those tickets are live. I'll see you there, everybody. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Stay tuned. I love each and every one of you. Be safe out there and grow smarter. That's our show. Thank you, Mary Beth and thank you for tuning in today. I hope your garden is thriving. If it's not, if you have any problems, join up at membership like you heard. Grow cast podcast.com/membership, will take care of you. Hundreds of hours of bonus content, members only, discounts, giveaways. Ask me anything, live streams and grow cast TV, the best show in cannabis. Like I said, We're in San Diego for Best of palooza. You just heard all the class dates. So other than that. Just stay tuned. Everybody, grow cast, podcast.com/seed, CO, if you need yourself, some of our lovely genetics rise. Oh, rich coming to Virginia, like I said. And otherwise, stay tuned. Got some good episodes coming, and I'm honored to be able to teach you a thing or two about gardening. All right, everyone. I'll see you next time bye.

Bye. If you like the goo you want the potassium level that's your max you.