🕷️Microscopic Mites, PESTAPALOOZA, and Predator Insects, with Matthew Gates

10:19AM Jan 29, 2025

Speakers:

Jordan River

Matthew Gates

Keywords:

russet mites

microscopic pests

cannabis IPM

Pesta Palooza

predator insects

scouting techniques

broad mites

damage identification

life cycle

predator mites

sulfur treatment

biosecurity practices

threat modeling

pest management

grow cast podcast

Greetings cultivators from around the world. Jordan River here. Back at you with more. Growcast, they finally let me out of the quarantine tent. Today we have Matthew gates on the line cannabis IPM specialist and new instructor for the Pesta Palooza grow cast grow class. You'll hear more about that. I'm super excited for today's episode, Matthew is here to talk about russet mites, microscopic, insidious pests that will destroy your garden if you're not prepared. So I know you're gonna love today's deep, deep dive into the great and powerful yet harmful russet mite. Before we get into it with Matthew, though, shout out to AC infinity, the best grow gear in the game. Code grow, cast one five saves you 15% and AC infinity.com. They've got the thick, sturdy tents with the thick canvas and the thick tent poles, the best tents in the game. They've got the fans that you need, the inline fans, the cloud Ray oscillating fans, now again. Code, grow, cast one five for 15% off the best quality grow gear you can find. They've also got lights and scissors and pots and hangers and so much more. But when it comes to the fans and the tents, there's no one else out there that does it better. The inline fans, the cloud Line series are fantastic. The S series is the simple series still comes with a 10 speed fan controller, and the T series comes with a controller that lets you automatically dial in your temperature and humidity. AC infinity.com, code grow, cast one five for 15% off. They even have grow kits that come with everything you need to expand. Get that second veg tent. Get that second flower tent you've been thinking about save with the kit and use code, grow, cast one five, which now works on those kits, saving you extra money with the best gear in the game. Acinity.com, they've been our partners for years. We brought these guys along. A long time ago. They've really, really expanded and done a great job. AC infinity.com, code grow. Cast one five. All right, let's get into it with Matthew. Thank you for listening and enjoy the show. You Jordan, hello, podcast listeners, you are now listening to grow cast. I'm your host, Jordan River, and I want to thank you for tuning in yet again today for another episode. Before we get started, as always, I urge you to share this show. Tell a grower, if you got friends who aren't growing, get them into growing. What are you doing? And then turn them on to grow cast. Thank you for spreading the show. It really does help us out. I appreciate you all. And if you want to keep up to date on everything that I'm doing, everything that team grow cast is doing, go to grow cast podcast.com, forward slash action. There you'll see all the action, the classes, like the pest class, the seeds, the membership, everything today, speaking of pests and pests class, we have good friend of the show, Matthew gates, back on the line. What's up? Matthew, how you doing? Man, I'm doing well, I'm glad to be here. Hell yeah, man, it's been a minute. I'm very excited today to talk about russet mites. A bit of a deep dive. You know, I like my deep dive. So we're going into russet mites today. We're gonna learn all about Russ mites from the great Matthew gates. But first, what have you been up to? Matthew, For the past year or so? You've been teaching, doing shows, doing your thing? Yeah,

I took the majority of last year and also the year before, to really expand and try to get as much information out to people in ways that are digestible and easy to sort of look over. So I made a lot of video content, or prepared to make a lot of video content, and now I'm executing a lot of that. Not only doing things with different podcasts and presentations and and such, I'm also writing a lot. I recently was, uh, asked to write about cannabis IPM for a professor that I know in Uttar Pradesh in India. Wow. And also another individual asked me, Dr Angel Fernandez, to help him with a chapter on cannabis IPM as well. And I also worked with the other previous Professor before to write, help write a book about cannabis virology. So I've been really steeped into the esoteric pest information for cannabis. I'm excited to talk more. Sounds

like even kicking butt. Man, it's such a niche subject that people are so interested in. I think people are often, are often a little undereducated. I know I am like there's so much that go into so many different facets of cannabis and pests and insects specifically can be relegated to kind of a niche subject, but every time I do an episode with you, I get great feedback, and people want to know more. Speaking of which, I am happy to announce the one and only Matthew gates and grow cast collaboration. Pesta palooza. You guys asked for it, and now we got it IPM class on the back of a learn and burn and a fully catered after party. Matthew, Pesta Palooza, man, you ready for this? Thank you so much for collabing and agreeing to do this.

I'm extremely ready, and I'll tell you one of the. Biggest reasons for this is because you, I really respect man, I really don't. I don't pick the partners that I make lightly and the people that I want to collaborate with lightly. I take a very serious approach to it, because ultimately, it's important that the information is conveyed in a responsible way and a way that is helpful for people, and I think that you have that, and I've watched you do it, and I really mean it. And so thank you very excited. That's highly motivated.

I really appreciate that, man. And this is, I mean, listen, we've been doing classes for a few years now, and they've been slowly getting bigger and bigger, and we've been expanding out now, now doing all sorts of different curriculums and people want an IPM class with Matthew gates, this is something that's been asked of me, so I'm very, very excited to be doing this with you. And the other reason that I like working with you just real quick before we get into Russ, it's is you want to over deliver right? What I've learned from doing these classes is people want more they want more time after the class to hang out and talk to us and get specific advice, and also just chill and smoke and ask us all the questions, right? And they also want more goodies. The more goodies and prizes that we bring to these things, the better. So Pesta Palooza is going beyond just an educational class now and turning into kind of like a pest fest. You have the core class, but then you've got this long Q and A learn and burn to get all your questions answered. You got a fully catered after party to hang with me and Matthew gates and make sure that you get all your topics addressed. And then finally, we're going to hook up a goodie bag. And the idea of this goodie bag is we want it to be worth more than the admission. So you're going to get a bunch of good shit in there, IPM stuff and scouting stuff and microbes and seeds, and it's going to be a lot of fun. So, so yeah, I don't, I don't want to linger on this, but I do want to say, Matthew, I'm super, super excited. And Pesta Palooza is live grow cast podcast.com/classes, I'll see you in Long Island. Matthew, yes, you will. I look forward to it as nuts, man, yeah, shout out li hydro and shout out mighty hydro and San Diego, our first two spots. So check it out. Everybody very excited, very excited. We have to, we have to educate the people like you said, I am going through a pest battle right now, and it is one of the worst things to have to deal with. Man, depending on the pest you get, especially the ones that we're talking about today, you talk about avoiding total crop loss, right? This is the worst case scenario, essentially, as a home grower in a legal state. And you know what I mean that sort of thing is, is you work really hard on these plants, and then you get some sort of pest infestation where it completely ruins your grow. And not all pests are going to do that, but God dang today we're talking about microscopic mites and russet mites, and they might fall into that category. Man, some of the worst stuff that you can get. Do you want to talk about that? Matthew, where they rank on the scale of the bad guys? What these microscopic mites are and what makes them so dang dangerous?

Absolutely. And I want to just echo the point that you made, that I come from a background where, essentially you should murder board, your solutions to problems, you should really be looking with a fine tooth comb. What could I be doing better? Why does what I do work? And we'll go over all of that in our lectures at the Pesta Palooza, but here, with the rest of mites, this is exactly a perfect opportunity to look at that. What level of threat is it? I would say pretty high for a lot of people. Does it have some good solutions that you can implement early? Yeah, definitely. Does that mean that everyone's going to have the same response or situation? No, everyone's situation is different, and we'll get into some of those details, but I would consider it a pretty high threat for most people, probably because a lot of people aren't aware of it, or haven't dealt with it, but those who have know how damaging it can get. It can be really bad for a yield and kill the plant. And

that's what I see again, before we get into what these what these little critters are, and how they function, I see the mistake a lot of like, people will slack on their IPM, and then they'll, like, leave town. And so when you say they don't all respond the same, it really seems like a lot of these infestations as early as you can catch them. It's like when you get a sickness in the body, right? Depending on how far the disease has progressed, that's that's the prognosis at that point, that's the outcome. The predicted outcome is determined by how fast you caught it, so you have to scout. And the worst infestations, the ones that people can't come back from, are usually intents that have been neglected. So that Scouting is probably very important. I imagine Absolutely,

absolutely, you've definitely heard me talk about intent. It's true. It's true if you know what the situation is, if you know what you could get, and you have a bunch of solutions already figured out for them, for your particular grow, and you don't slack on your rapid response and early detection, then yeah, things are going to be a lot easier for you. But yeah, if you let it get really bad, and a quarter of your grow is infested with hundreds of 1000s of these russet mites, it's going to be more difficult. People to deal with. Let's put it that way,

terrible stuff. What are these microscopic mites? What are the difference between broads and russets? And again, why are they so freaking harmful, right? So,

yeah, so a lot of people have heard of the word broad mite and russet mite, but basically, they are both very small. They're about 200 micrometers in length or so broad, mites you can see, and rest of mites you can see with a naked eye if you know what you're looking at, and if you have good enough vision, it is possible, but it's very difficult, and you're not really going to see it. When you're crop scouting, you'll see their damage first. The reason why there's such a problem is because their damage causes the plant to sort of crinkle and gnarl and stunt. And if this happens in your bud sites, of course, this is going to be very problematic for the yield the product, the flower that you're going to get, whatever you're going to do with it afterwards, is going to be, you know, damaged or impaired. Broad mites have a when you look at them under a microscope, or even a magnification of like 25 or 30, I would say you can look at them under a microscope and get a better idea. But broad mites have like a ball shaped body, kind of like a sphere that's a little bit oblong, and there's like a little point at one part and a little point out of the other kind of tapers. And that's a broad mite. Rest of mites have like a worm like body. And unlike broad mites, which, like all arachnids, have eight legs as adults, breasted mites only have four legs as an adult. And they also, again, have this sort of worm or snake like appearance. So if you see that, then it's a rest of my if you see the other thing that is a broad mite. Broad mites also have a very conspicuous egg that has these things called tubercles, these little like protrusions that almost look like craters, but under a microscope it looks like polka dots. So if you see these like polka dot, like eggs that are a little bit, again, also sort of football shaped. Then you're probably looking at a broad mite infestation, but you'll likely see the other life stages around them, so that'll make it a little easier. Let's

talk about magnification here, because I when I was looking at Broad mites, what I believe to be broad mice on a leaf, also identified by by MBs. You're right there, there. When I was looking at them under 100x lighted microscope, they're still small, but I imagine that if you were sharp enough, you could see them. What about their eggs? Their eggs have to be tiny, tiny. How much magnification do we need? I

think at that point, the reason you're able to see them at all, even though they're so small, and if you have like, good vision, is because they're moving. It's because they're usually constantly moving. And rest of mites, too, sort of move a little bit. But broad mites, in particular, the eggs, because they're so small, I would not really expect it. I don't think I've ever seen the eggs themselves. Just the broad mites, because you can barely see high powered microscope, you just see the spec that's moving. So when they're stationary, I think it's very hard to pick them out underneath the Yeah, the background and all of that. The eggs are also clear, or they're really like, they tend to be translucent. They darken over time. So that could be another reason it's hard to see them. God

damn. These things are insidious. How do russet mites get into your grow? I know that when they're this small, it's hard to keep them out.

Rusted mites are really interesting, because the main way that they get into a crop, and there's 1000s, so we'll get into that later, but for the one that we're worried about in cannabis, ACULA cannabicola. It basically gets in through wind, through air travel, literally on the wind, or it gets into your place through fomites, basically carriers like clothing or other equipment or and people, right, and pets, perhaps. But also they can come in on cuttings, and that's the, probably the biggest way that they come in. There are several tests for which this is the most common way they come in on some sort of a cutting that isn't quarantined or looked at again, like you said, Being lax in your IPM strategy, your biosecurity, you might assume that your friend is fine, and maybe your friend thinks they're fine too, but they're not. And you know that can happen. It does happen, or in some cases, something has happened in transit. That has happened. In my experience, sometimes it's not the fault of the provider, or, I mean, depends on how this falls apart. But sometimes neither group had a problem, but the transporter did, and when they went, oh my god, transport their plants. Yeah, so don't always presume, you know, don't always presume that it's from the the producer, although it is more likely sometimes weird stuff happens.

Oh my goodness. Now they just hang out on the undersides of the leaves. Usually, right? Do they? Prefer the top and the bottom. Do they burrow into the stalk? Do they do anything weird like that?

The hemp breast, it might, to my knowledge, doesn't do something quite like that. Doesn't. It can't. Although there's been, I've heard people say things that they suspect, but nothing about the biology or physiology of a breast. It might, would really support this ability. But like some people have thought that maybe they can burrow into seeds. There's really no reason for that to be possible, because they lack anything mechanical to like, pierce the hard hole of a seed, sure. So, so yeah, so that's the case. And there are some rest of mites and other species that have been found that can, like, get into plant tissue. But he breasts Am I doesn't seem to do that. It doesn't seem to have, in my experience, a preference. I think what happens that the rest of mites will get onto somebody's clothes or something like that, and then they'll be distributed wherever they may and that might be at the top of the plant, it might be at the bottom, and maybe the colony starts there, and then, as it grows and grows, you know, it gets, it goes, expands upwards and downwards, and I think that's what we're actually seeing, rather than, like, a specific preference, like

an unlike the spider mite, for instance, that loves hanging out at the top of the canopy. You have to be scouting all over for these little fuckers.

Exactly. Yes, exactly. And like, specifically, the spider mites are more visible. And also, yeah, as their population gets more dense, they will tend to try to go up to the terminal ends of plants, because they want to get caught by the wind or get, you know, in other ways, moved onto a new plant. Like I heard. They

like it warm. They do. Oh, does, does raising the temperature increase, the breeding rates of all these mites that we're talking about

generally up into a point, I would say, yes, they generally do better in a warmer sort of situation than a colder one, because it's just like a lot of insects, they're exotherms, so the external environment dictates some of their metabolic processes. That

is so wild man, because I, I worry about running those warmer temperatures. If you have pests and they're just, you know, going crazy, but like you said, probably up into a point they're going to reproduce either way. So yeah, what else can you tell us about rough russet speaking of reproduction, what's their life cycle like? How fast are they reproducing once they're once they're in there?

Yeah. Yeah. So Russ at mites, they don't have it depends on the species, but they tend to not have a super long life, maybe a couple of weeks to maybe a month, depending on a lot of different factors, like how hot it is, for example, they'll cycle through their life, cycle faster at higher temperatures. This is generally true for a lot of insects and mites, just speaking generally, but, yeah, generally, a longer life cycle is correlated with a colder temperature or not getting enough food or some other sort of impairing effect, right?

That's fascinating. I wouldn't have thought that is right, they die faster too.

Yeah, exactly. They die faster too. That's actually one of the what some entomologists believe is the key reason why insects are so successful as a species. One of the biggest ones is that they don't stick around very long, and they reproduce constantly, so they can have multiple generations that will kind of hone their adaptation, right? They get more chances to adapt in a similar amount of time. And also, the adults, like in insects, the adults tend to have different food resources and requirements than their larval form, so they don't compete with each other. Wow,

that is fascinating. I didn't know they had different different food sources. There's a non compete between the adults and the young. That's fucking wild, yeah,

although with rest of mites, they are all competing. So getting back to them, they might a female. Rest of my might produce something around like a dozen or more eggs. They have this interesting physiology. They are what we know, we know as a Haplo diploid, which means a half two ploy. So you and I are diploid. Our parents contribute sets of chromosomes to each other, to with each other, to make offspring. But russet mites, well, females that are not fertilized, they'll just make males, and then they'll mate with those males, and then they'll make females. Oh, wow. So functionally, they only need one female to start a colony, right, right?

That's why it's so dangerous, where you have to get rid of every last one, because they can repopulate so well from one female,

exactly. And females also, they mate randomly, because males, they leave like, a external packet of genetic material, and the females would just come across it and go, okay, and they use that, and then they make eggs with it. So, like, there's not a whole lot of mate choice selection, and that has caused a lot of interest. Things for them as a as a species, basically arrested mites are actually they have what's called a reduced genome, and this is probably why they have, like, less legs than other arachnids and a bunch of other weird characteristics, because a long, long, long time ago, maybe like almost half a billion years or 500 or so million years ago. They are related to an offshoot of arachnids, of mites in particular, called the nemata lycody. And these mites are super elongated, and they still exist, and they live in the deep soil, and it's thought that those mites that Russ mites developed from, as some researchers have made it pretty clear, with a lot of supporting evidence to be the case that they they made the soil or helped make the soil what it is, back such a long time ago and over time, a small population seemed to associate more with plants, and perhaps this is how the first russet mice that feed on plants developed, and then, as plants diversified, they followed their hosts. And most russet mice are specialists. So they basically can only go after one or a couple of very related species. There's a couple of exceptions to this, but by and large, this is the case for russet mites. So it's a really interesting story, and I have a video coming out that will go over everything you ever wanted to know about russet mites.

Nice. Subscribe for the russet mites video, xenthanol on YouTube, right? That's right. Sentinel on YouTube. Go and subscribe. But you mentioned the specialization at the end there and earlier in the show, you also mentioned 1000s of different species. It's like powdery mildew. They don't hop plant to plant like there's a russet species for this plant, there's a russet species for basil, there's a russet species for the hemp russet mite. I didn't know that there were so many and that they were so specialized,

yeah, and for a long time, because they were so small, like humans, have probably experienced rest at nights for millennia, probably, but like their effects and all of that, haven't really been able to be looked at until, like we developed, you know, like The microscope, and even then, like a better microscope and genetic sequencing technology and that kind of stuff. So russet mites tend to be very difficult to identify. A lot of species will look pretty much like each other. There's not a whole lot there is some diversity, but there's not a whole lot of it, in some cases, between species that share the same genus or whatever were family sometimes. So it seems like you really got to know what host it was found on and some other geographic information to be certain about identification. So if I find a rest of my on a hemp plant on cannabis, I'm going to assume it's the

probably a pretty safe bet. Yeah,

it's probably not the tomato recipe. It's probably not the aloe or the, you know, peach or citrus or whatever, russet mite which do exist and cause extensive damage, whereas, and get this, here's the funniest thing. The worst thing about it is that rest of mites, a lot of them, are actually not even parasites, most of them, oh, well, I should say like this, they don't cause extensive damage to their host, really. Most rest of mites do not. They are basically what we call vagrants parasites. They just nice. They just kind of exist on the host. And

yep, that's wild. So why do they? Why do they fuck with cannabis so bad? Yeah,

it's a good question. It's a question that a lot of rest, that might researchers, are still trying to figure out, because the ones that cause damage, like the broad mite, they share a common trait, and that trait is that they have something in their saliva? Is it a microbe? Is it proteins or other compounds? Perhaps it's both, in some cases, but they have something in their saliva, and it manipulates the plant physiology in such a way that in some cases, it causes blistering or it causes an inflammatory response to create these very intricate and bizarre looking galls. You've probably seen them. Anyone who like hikes have probably seen some of these on different trees. There are wasps out there that cause a similar sort of galling and in our case with cannabis, we get the worst one. We get the one that causes like all the stunting and like crippling and the crinkling of the leaves and all this nasty damage that doesn't go away as soon you know after you treat the damage does not revert. It basically has reshaped how the plant is going to develop, and we think that basically it triggers a bunch of hormonal responses you. And there's other insects out there that can do things like this. So it's not outside the realm of possibility. It's just not quite understood yet. And some russet mites, like the rose russet mite, which I have personal experience with, cause a lot of damage at a place that I went to and their nursery in 2015 it, it, it produces the or carries the amarovirus called the rose rosette disease, or that causes rose rosette disease and others will vector microbial pathogens that probably help them colonize the plant. So, whoa, they have all these kinds of techniques at their disposal. No

shit. Is that why I have heard okay, there's a couple things I want to go into that's that's really interesting. First, the the galling. I want to talk about this. When you talk about the galling, I know exactly what you mean. You're talking about those like bubbles that form all over the leaf, right? They look like, it looks like somebody pushed through small balloons all over the backside of the leaf,

exactly? Yeah. Sometimes they're smooth, sometimes they have a weird, like, elongated shape. Sometimes they're spiky, yeah, exactly, wow. They're very fascinating. Yeah,

that is fucking wild. So that's how you can identify russet mite damage. Some

russets caused this on some plants, but not on cannabis. You won't

see that on cannabis, yeah, because I was gonna say I see that on a lot of other plants, but I haven't seen that on the cannabis leaf before.

Yeah. So we get the worst one. We get the we get the rest of my that doesn't cause, like, a pretty but otherwise not problematic at all, right? You know, we get the one that causes stunting and all this other terrible damage, unfortunately, and for that matter, you know, I don't remember if there's a hop res night, but hopping cannabis diverge from a common ancestor. So it's interesting to think that presumably there was a russet mite that was on the ancestral population and then just didn't go with the hop when it diverged, or maybe died off, or something, I don't know, very interesting now that you make me think of that nice

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you're looking for leaves that have become sort of corrugated, like steel, corrugated metal, or crinkling or puckering. There's a bunch of adjectives I could throw at you, but basically you want to look at it for like gnarled, twisted leaves. There are leaves out there that can, you know, the infamous, like claw right that people like to describe, or taco me. And that can happen too. Usually, you might also see because they reproduce very quickly. You might also see like, this is why they get the name rust mite, sometimes, because they look like a bunch of like filings of rust, of metal shavings on your plants. And it might ride a little bit, which is kind of gross. So think about I have definitely seen it, and I have seen it come up like, very quickly, even for me, even as the person who says, you know, don't let it get bad, right? Like, I've seen it get bad very quickly in some context. And I honestly couldn't account for it, to be quite honest. So wow, yeah, I don't know. Maybe they brought in some new plants and they didn't tell their supervisor, or whatever, but yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's basically the most telltale sign. You will see the damage way before you see the rest of mites. And that's really it. And this is also similar damage to broad mites. So you can. Fuse the two. That's why it's important to take a look at what they look like. And there are some, like, I said earlier, nutritive or physical damages that can cause, right, like clawing or gnarling or crinkling. So always as an IPM strategy, you know, just always do that differential diagnosis and be like, Well, what is this specifically causing it for something there? Is there? Not something there? Yeah.

And does it make sense? So, like, obviously you should be scoping, but you're right. So let's, let's take a look at some of those symptoms. And I also want to run by you what I've seen, and you tell me if this is good advice or bad advice. So, like, a lot of things cause leaves to warp right? If I'm seeing a warping leaf, is it like? Well, is there a fan blowing on it? Sometimes wind burn can look like twisted, mutated growth. Other times, plants just grow a little bit funky. In that case, but when I've noticed it, one of the things that I've seen when I got broads bad, this was a telltale sign, and you tell me is a healthy fan leaf that's otherwise praying, but one of the fingers is curled down or cupping or twisting and cork screwing over, just happening to one of the fingers, which wouldn't happen if there was a fan blowing on it. Is that something you've seen in infestations? Yeah,

now that I think about it and how you describe it. I have seen some things like that, and especially if you're looking at these plants constantly, and if it's some conspicuous leaf that you've seen before, you know growers, you know what I'm talking about. Like, if you you're like, oh, that's that big leaf that I keep looking at staring me in the face. And then one day, there's a leaflet, and it looks all weird. Something happened. And if you know you didn't spray anything, and like you say, you know there's no wind, you know, buffeting it in a bad way, then something happened. Maybe it's nutritional, maybe it's whatever. So then you would look, you would focus on that, and then you would try to confirm scope it, are there little organisms or not on it? Scope

that leaf. Exactly same goes for the clawing. Nitrogen toxicity can cause clawing. Phosphorus deficiency can cause clawing. Cold can cause droop. That kind of looks like clawing. But if none of those things are applicable, you should be saying, Why is this leaf clawing? Turn that over and hit it with the microscope, and you'll know when you see it's not uniform, like those other things. When deficiencies happen, the plant has those things in a uniform manner. When you start to see these weird leaf mutations and there's nothing else to account for it, and they're like, scattered, that's when you really got to worry and make sure that you scope double hard. So that's just, that's my experience, having had the fuckers and and, yeah, you tell me, Matthew, though I don't know, I don't know what other tips you have as far as scouting, or we can move on to IDing,

I think that there's an another important thing to say about scouting, which is basically what you do upon reacting to this information, maybe you see the damage and you're like, Oh, this is what rest of my damage looked like before, it looked exactly the same. And then you confirm it, yep, that's it. Well, then what do you do? Well, here's what you should do, maybe is make a decision. Does it make more sense? Is it more cost effective? Your context is always going to be unique to you. But does it make sense to just get rid of that plant or just get rid of that branch, like, how localized is this presence? And also you have to think to yourself, Well, how did they get there? Well, it probably came in on a person or on a cutting, if you didn't bring any cuttings recently, and you're in a closed space, well, it was probably you or something else that went inside. So then you have to consider that if it's if I'm seeing the damage on one plant, it very well could have spread to it could have been others to look at. So then you should take measures to treat not just that single plant, but other plants as well. And also, if you're in a commercial setting, you probably want to figure out if other people have been through these plans, because they probably are distributing it actively in other places. So right, your operations should change in relation to this new information, and your IPM strategy should already be articulated, so you have a plan for that.

So I think that when it comes to bailing on the run, like you said, it is like everything and growing, it's grower dependent. It's up to your values, your goals and your needs. Now that being said, I think the best time you can discover them is late in flower, right limp through the rest of the run, and your yields will be a little bit reduced, and then you can do a reset. I'm sure that would be the best case scenario. What would you say? Worst case scenario is like early flower, like you just flip the lights and you have this whole, you know, seven plus weeks ahead of you is that when you're most likely to kill the crops and maybe start over?

I like the way that you put this, because I. Think you're right that that is probably the worst case. The best case scenario is like, just at the very end, whatever I'm basically done, and the plants, the flowers, were able to plump up and didn't really have the effects of the stunting that normally affects them, right? And, yeah, I think the worst case scenario is probably right, right? When you switch the flower, I was going to say the worst case scenario, from some perspectives, might be, if they're more valuable the seedlings, if they get infested with russet mites, they don't have a lot of resources to handle that. And if, for whatever reason, like in a lot of cases, the pests are just going to be more egregious. They're going to set you back more they might even lose those

genetics. Good call. That's a good Exactly. Precious clones get wrecked. But no, but like

you say, if you're not worried about that exact situation, then yeah, I think it is third to your set to your worst, because you didn't invest all that time and energy and resources to get them up to flower, right? So yeah, I think that that's probably the worst. I like that logistical thinking. It's very, very accurate. But

here's the hard part. You mentioned something really interesting, which is, do you care about these genetics? Because, okay, let's say you're in veg. And traditionally, when you get an infestation in veg, let's say you get thrips, right? The idea is, well, hold them in veg and then knock out the thrips and then move on to flower. Easy peasy. But man, with these microscopic mites, they can really take hold, and they can go dormant, and all these things where I think you really have to weigh Can I just kill all my genetics and do a deep clean maybe I'm just traumatized. You gotta tell me if you think that's an over reaction, but that's, that's my understanding, is that you really need to do, like a hard reset at it's not like knocking out a spider mite infestation where you really don't even need to break your stride. I've been told that you have to clean all the surfaces, like there could be a tiny little dormant egg lying on your grow room floor or the carpet outside your tent that's gonna repopulate and that's what I was told. Do you agree with that? Like, how necessary is a hard reset. I

think that it can be totally necessary. And you know that is a certain nominally, something that you could do, especially if you didn't have much to lose from it, comparatively, absolutely, absolutely, as far as dormancy is concerned, though, I don't think that a lot of people, at least people growing cannabis and dealing with their specific russet mite. I don't think a lot of people are dealing with dormant populations, particularly because unless they are so like an indoor facility, it probably doesn't get hot or cold enough for them to produce their overwintering Oh, form. Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about rest of my physiology, and I promise I won't be too garrulous. So basically, they have an egg stage, a pre larva stage, larva stage, and they have three nymphal stage, a pro to nymph, a dutonymph and a tritonymph than an adult, but the adult has two forms, technically three, a male phenotype, a female phenotype, and a special over wintering female type. And that is the duo gain. And so that means two who are second female, right? So this special stage is the one that door that basically becomes dormant, and depending on the species and its relationship with its host, it might do so in like a gall right for the gall forming species, it might hang out in some crevice or bark or something like that. But it has to. It has to, like a lot of overwintering insects and other organisms, they have to feel the environmental effects that would signal to them that they should change into this form or produce females that changed in this form, I should say more accurately, wow. So, like, that's the Yeah, so that's really the case, and you might not realize that if you didn't have that, you know, esoteric knowledge of deep rust at my physiology, but that's why I'm here, right?

That makes a lot of sense, dude. I like that a lot, absolutely. And you're saying you need hot enough or cold enough temperatures to trigger that which aren't really achieved in my grow tent, in my house with with central air,

exactly, but if you're outdoor, I think that's more likely, right? So, so it does change, depending on your situation, and I think that perhaps in some places, people are experiencing it, but probably not as much indoor.

Now, does that apply to broad mites, too? All of that that you just said, Broad mites

do over winter in nature, but I don't, I don't think, yeah, they don't have a special over wintering female form. I think they just go into what's called diapause. A lot of insects and other organisms have such a torque. And basically, long story short is things like, like we said, temperature can affect this. For some insects, the light will affect them. Like when it changes seasons, the light that they get, the specific wavelength, but also the amount of it, just like with plants like that photo periodicity, periodicity that can cause them to enter diapause. And in fact, there are some predatory insects like Orias, the minute pirate bug, which have been bred in such a way that they don't enter diapause when the season changes, because that makes them less effective. Oh,

God, damn man. I know you mentioned getting them under a microscope and visually identifying their shape. Is that the best way to realize that you definitely have rusted mites if you don't see that, that Telltale rust that you mentioned,

I think so. I think so. I would say that it's pretty easy to do. You don't have to have like an observational microscope. You can see it with a maybe 20 or 30 times magnification, like lens, like a hand lens, or a or a head lens, that you might use many exist out there. And we'll have some at the pest of producer so and you can see them, you can definitely take a look at them, and you can say, oh, yeah, you know, those look like Russ mites. And if you want, you can go under an observational microscope, maybe bump it up to 60 magnification or something. And yeah, you'll see a worm like body, and that's a Russ mite. They're very unique. They don't look like any other mites. So as long as you know that basic knowledge, you can tell it's a russet mite. All

right, so what else can you tell us? Man, what are some interesting facts about these creatures? You study these, these mites and all of these insects, so in depth. So tell me about russet mites. Tell me some interesting facts about them. Yeah.

So russet mites, like I said earlier, they have a very reduced genome compared to their brethren, other mites, like spider mites and tarsinemid tarsanimide D is the family of the broad mites, and so they're very different from all these mites, because probably they have diversified, and they broke off from a very early diverging lineage anyways, and then subsequently diversified in such a way that they've specialized very, very specifically on different species as they themselves speciated from their ancestors. So ancestors there, it makes 10 different species, right? And then those make 10 different species, as they, you know, expand and change, and the rest of my along for the ride. And they specialize at that population over evolutionary time. That happens. So they tend to have, well, a very, very sort of a different set of traits that they need. They don't need the same tools that a generalist like spider mites would need. Spider mites are way more impressive in the number of compounds they can diffuse, detoxify, that they can overcome. They also tend to have, well, they tend to have more tools in the toolbox for disrupting the immune system of their host, because there's so many different kinds of hosts with so many different unique capabilities. But rest of mice do not have this. So they tend to have not a whole lot of sensory ability. You know, this the things that they're sensitive to is different and much reduced. The things they can deal with is much reduced. And although there are exceptions, like with the tomato recipient, I think the peach russet mite, they tend to also not be very good at resisting pesticides. And I'm not talking about noxious ones, although those do happen, and that has happened in some species, the DDT adjacent dico for or zyn Eb, which nobody uses anymore. Or should you know, those are really noxious and some rest of mites have, like in Egypt, in 1985 there was a species that was found only after like three or four applications, seasonally, it developed a resistance. So it

does have a super bug. Great, fantastic. Another thing is that

they've also been used as bio controls. Yes, bio controls. And I know there's this very pernicious myth that I'm going to squash here. Do you know what I'm gonna say? What

are they? Are they releasing the russet mites to kill cannabis? What is this bio control?

Yeah, exactly. It's exactly that myth. People think that Caltrans, oh, yeah, I didn't hear this one, yeah,

that the state of California wanted to fuck up the cannabis growers by releasing russet mites. Exactly.

No, it has to be true. I read it on the internet. Yeah, let me walk you through why that would be just so difficult. So, like I just said, and this is the thing. This is. Here it is. This is the reason why I take the time to make this information available to people. Because if you knew everything we just talked about rest of my biology. You would know why that doesn't make sense, because in order for them to make a bunch of rest of mites, they would have to grow a bunch of cannabis, tons. They would have to devote a bunch of resources, millions of dollars of resources, into growing cannabis and then growing the rest of mine on the cannabis, and then somehow keeping them in some sort of way that you could transport them, and then transporting them and like distributing them somehow, yes, in a way that would allow them to get into everyone's surreptitious cannabis grow. It just, it just doesn't make sense. Doesn't add up. People cite this one report from 2006 where they're where they use the russet mite for Russian star thistle. This is the SAL solo mite, a serious Sal soli, and it said russet mite, and it said bio, control of plants and maybe weed. And then suddenly people are like, I grow weed. And, you know, there it is. That's that's how it happened, I guess. But no, this does not make any sense. However, we have used various other reset mites for bio control. Of like I said, tumbleweed, Russian star thistle, which is incredibly pernicious and bad, the USA has sent populations to the USSR back when they were around to help them with some weeds that they had some invasive species of plants that's wild, it is, right. And then one last thing which is relevant, also the cannabis growers and other agriculturalists that deal with these is that we found that with when we use these species for bio control, certain sub populations performed better in different places. So like, there was a Greek strain of a species that was used for some some plant de weeding, and it didn't work very well in the USA, whereas a different strain worked better. And so this would seem to support the idea that within a species, you can have sub populations, like in other insects and mites, where they do better in different environments or on different maybe host populations. So who's ready for cannabis specific strains of or like super cannabis strains of breasts, of mites? Certainly not me, but let's you know, let's be aware of that possibility moving forward.

Hey, man, we were talking off air Starship Troopers. It's upon us. The pests are coming. You have to arm yourself with the knowledge,

yeah, gonna get overrun if you don't. I'm from San Diego, and I say, kill them all.

I was gonna say this is war at the end of the day. It's, it's, it's genocide to the highest order every time you go in there. But I'm not about to lose my crop. Okay? I think it's the reason that I could never be a Buddhist. I'm sorry. I just I am going to go in there. I'm gonna spray, not nothing noxious or harmful to the environment, but sure as fuck, something harmful to these mites. I'm sorry, it's this is war, kill them all, and

killing them in your crop. You know, there's so many, and they reproduce so prodigiously. You know, they're going to be okay. They're going to be okay as a population, right? There's a lot of right? I don't think there's a lot of endangered russet mite species, just saying. So, yeah, exactly

right, endangered species maybe one day, but they're endangering my species of crops, damn it, and it's them or us. And to me, these plants are very important, so I have to kill them all, and gotta kill them. And what are we using here? Now, like you said, we've come a long way, man, like I remember the old school, Humboldt days, all sorts of nasty shit available. I don't even know where a grower would get their hands on that stuff. Maybe I'm just out of the loop of chemical pesticides. But there's so many good products now marketed to cannabis growers that are oil based sprays, that are just horticultural oils, or they're enzyme based sprays, where they don't even really leave a residue at all. They're just surfactants. How are we going after these little buggers, the russet mites, specifically, how do we kill them with sprays?

My favorite option, and probably there are people who are already aware of this, but I love micronized or wettable sulfur. That's one of my favorite ways. It's not always appropriate. Wouldn't recommend applying it like, you know, into flour, for example. You might have some problems later on, but it's one of the most effective and oldest pesticides that you know isn't just systemic or anything like that. And I know people are reticent to use wetable sulfur. They might be afraid of it affecting the microbiome, if not in the foliage, then in the soil, like if it drifts down, or something like that. I wouldn't be too concerned about this, mostly because if you have, like, like a living soil system, or if you have a system where you have a very rich and dense or you assume it to be the case, anyways, microbiome, there's going to be. More than, like, whatever, pockets of a few sulfur, drops of diluted sulfur, going to affect, you know what I'm saying, absolutely. So it's probably not, you know, unless you're like, spreadsheet directly into your substrate, you're probably not going to have that problem. Yeah,

the sulfur is great. Good call. It's that's kind of that to me. That's, like, the heavy duty stuff, and the plants love it. So, yeah, you're absolutely right. If you're concerned about the phyllosphere, maybe just re inoculate after you get to wash off my sulfur with Dr zymes. So it's nice and Instagram ready again, because if you post your plants after spraying sulfur, people are going to be like, You got powdery mildew all over your plants. No, it's just sulfur. Don't worry that that stuff is just sulfur. And that's why it works really well too, is that it hangs around right? Like, like, insects don't like hanging out on that leaf when there's that sulfur dust just kind of chill in there, I bet.

Yeah, no, it's not a great day for them, certainly. And it's also, not only is it mitocidal, it's also insecticidal and fungicidal. So if you happen to have, like a powdery mildew recipient combo, where you can kill two birds with one stone by doing so. So, you know, it's a good tool in the toolbox for certain scenarios, but you know, there are limitations, like everything. That's why IPM is about integrating different pest management strategies. Yes,

exactly. So yeah, I like the sulfur. That's a great it's a great move in veg. Like you said, how Hardy are these bastards? When I'm in flower, I use a combination of the aforementioned Doctor zymes at their pest strength. So it's just like an enzyme product. It's not the strongest pesticide, but again, it leaves no residue. So it's the only thing that I'll spray on my flowers. The only other thing I might add in there is, like just a drop of Dr Bronner's soap to help as a surfactant. Is that going to kill a russet mite, or is that not going to do the job?

I've had people do this, and it wasn't something that I necessarily recommended, but they had efficacy doing it, so I wouldn't say that it's outside the realm of possibility. I honestly wish that there was a lot more. There is some research on the use of anti recipient products, and there's other ones that have been looked at for other pests, and we're seeing more of this research in cannabis, so I am excited to see more of it, sort of empirically trialed. I would say that another thing that you could use, besides a spray like that, a safe chemistry like you're describing, would be like predatory mites. You wouldn't be able to use something like sulfur and flour. Or predatory mites could be used as well, and you might want to knock down with something like you're talking about, which is going to be way less harsh also. The other thing to keep in mind is just the effect that it might have on, like, your trichomes, right on the end product, and not just the residual nature, but just like, you know, is the spray just going to, like, kind of mess up your bud in that way. But of course, it's more important to feel the rest of mice,

but the Matthew will, will, will do a little taste trial. But yes, you're right. You're absolutely right. There are a lot of growers who don't want to spray their flowers with anything, and that's when they would turn to, that's when they would turn to, like, a predator mite. What would you recommend, like? What is your top mercenary to call in at this point? If there's russets, specifically,

there is a lot of research on using predatory mites for other recipe mites, and I've used some of that to guide me. Of course, different recipes are different, and different crops are different, and there are there's nuance to this, but I have a lot of great success using SWIR ski eye or cucumber is and generally cucumber is, mites are more cheap. They tend to be a lot easier to acquire, although both species have their own environmental and horticultural peculiarities, generally, I think they're pretty synonymous. You can use one or the other in a lot of cases for cannabis, so I tend to recommend that people use cucumbers mites, and they're pretty voracious predators. But they'll also go after like thrips. They'll go after whitefly, for example. And so they'll also go after pollen. They'll eat pollen too. So if you have a source of pollen, or if you apply like cattail pollen, or something, which there's product out there that you can use very light dusting, and the population will go through the roof, and you'll have a whole ton of them at your disposal. You won't have to buy as many mites, which, of course, the mite producers don't want you to do, but I think it works really well. Personally.

Might hack. Love the mite hacks, man. So you say sulfur, your top spray, pick in veg and then in flower, you're going to opt for some predator insects. I think that's a good call. Now, what about afterwards? What do we need to make sure to like, do these things wander all over your tent? Am I changing out my medium? Am. I changing out my pots. How deep are you going to go? For the for the reset, clean,

russet mites that aren't over wintering do require food pretty much all the time. This is true for a lot of herbivorous insects. They can't go long periods of time without food, so if you leave your plants fallow, by which I mean there's no are there your fields fallow? So there's no plants growing, they will starve. They will die. So to be honest, if you're sure that your plants or that your your situation has not caused there to be an overwintering population, which is probably likely an indoor but I think you could be pretty reasonably sure that if you discard all the plants and there's no other plants, so see, this is very important. If you have like another tent with like Beijing clones or something like that, then obviously that's a potential threat vector that you've got to target, you've got to account for, right? Because you might incidentally bring them to this area, but if you have nothing, no other plant that they could be on, and remember their specialists, then, yeah, just leave it for maybe three to four weeks, and you could expect them to have all starved at that point. Ooh,

okay, so that, I mean, that's not a super short period of time. That's a long time to go without food, but it'll be worth it to to make sure that they're all dead. They can't stick around unless they go dormant through that process you described earlier. So deprive them of food, is what you're saying,

exactly. It's a hard strategy, but very effective. I

like that. Okay, okay. On that note, we kind of covered it a minute ago, but on the reset, it's like, do I keep any plants around, sort of thing? And what you just described is a great way to deprive them of that food. And my suggestion would be, if you're going to try to keep genetics, I would take cuttings from those genetics, remove them from the space. Do a full blown clone dip, like a so a sulfur dip, or some sort of wash that will kill anything on there. And then keep those in a totally separate space while you figure out and reset your main growing space. That would be my suggestion, if you have to keep genetics for the next run, do you feel that's that's a good way to make sure, because that way, if they're living on the the plant at all, you give it the dip, and then you just handle it carefully and get it out of the space in hopes that you can then go clean and reset and starve out anything in the in the main space.

Absolutely, I agree with you, and I don't want anyone to get the impression that you shouldn't be ambitious, or that it's, you know, unrealistic to assume that people would, as you say, need to keep genetics for various reasons, residential, home, grow or commercial, all of it, right? So that's why the IPM strategy is important, because you're going to have to do things under duress and under threat, right? And so you could play it safe every time, but maybe you can't this time. That's fine that you have to make that cost benefit analysis. And in those situations, what you said, I think, is a great example of understanding their weakness and then exploiting it as best as possible. So the sulfur dunk to kill them, right? And perhaps put them in some sort of a quarantine, right, and then visually check them, right? So then it doesn't stop, the crop scouting doesn't stop. And then if you have signs of russets, well then you know it wasn't effective. And then you hit them again, or you use the predatory mites or something this passive control measure. And yeah, that's basically what you would want to do. Yeah, I think that's totally valid. I love it.

This is another question I wanted to ask earlier, uh, just kind of, kind of off topic, but you mentioned pests carrying pathogens, and, you know, them being a vector, obviously, for for all sorts of different pathogens and harmful microbes. I have heard that microscopic mites, like broad mites and russet mites, often go hand in hand with powdery mildew or fungal pathogens. Is that because of that vector carrying phenomenon and follow up question, Is that something you've observed, or could it just be coincidence?

I think it's a good question. There is absolutely research that supports the idea that some russet mites, and I haven't seen anything for cannabis, but, of course, for obvious reasons, not a lot of research into it for that particular mite, but in other mites, yeah, there are mites that will vector, or that have been shown to vector, these pathogens, so and also viruses like I mentioned earlier. As far as powdery mildew is concerned, I think it gets around pretty fine without the vector necessity. I don't know how incidental or non incidental that might be, but since a lot of powdery mildews are also kind of specialized, or they have really weird bedfellows, where, like they call an. As cannabis, but also like raspberry over here and sunflower over there. The taxonomy for powdery mildew as genetic phylogeny is super complicated, even from experts. So, you know, sometimes we're not sure if a species that we documented like 20 years ago is even the same species now that we look at it genetically so. But there could be, I would not be

surprised. It maybe lowers its immune system, or whatever it may be, but, but the actual vectoring is a thing documented, you say. And do you think that like, passes through to the next generation? Is it just like, how does that work? Oh,

yeah, that's a good question. I suspect that it probably isn't a like a symbiont that exists like endogenously inside them and then just passed like Metro linearly when they're born. There are other microbes that are like this and also that play a very important role in the sex dynamics of various insects and mites actually called one of the most famous one is Wolbachia. And in some populations of not rest of mice, but other organisms of their insects, they can and other mites actually, they can cause the they could cause the reproduction to be biased for almost all females and no males. That's pretty that's a pretty common way that it manifests. Yeah. And so when you're Haplo diploid, that doesn't, that doesn't matter, right? You can just keep making, you just keep making females, and that's going to be a problem for a cultivator, right?

Wow. And that's a microbe that's passed down to generation to generation. That's, that's wild, yes, that's wild stuff, man,

yeah, right. I don't think that we have to worry about it here with rest of mites. But, yeah, it's one of those things where, like, they, I would not be surprised if a specialist also had a relationship with other specialists, or, as you adroitly mentioned, that they simply just have to really mess up the immune profile of the plant locally, like it's probably all kinds of wonkiness, you know, with the hormonal triggering and all of that, that's probably going to make things easier for other other organisms that might just incidentally, coincidentally be there.

That's so true, and that's why these, these infestations suck, is you'll see all sorts of stuff. If your plant starts getting deficient, and you know what I mean, after it worsens and worsens, and worsens, the plant just looks sick. It's sick in every sense of the word. So you got to stay safe out there, everybody. You've got to stay up on your IPM spraying, I spray twice weekly preventative and not not being careless with, you know, going in and out of other people's gardens, bringing in and out genetics, freely, bringing home house plants from Home Depot. Watch those vectors always be be conscious of what could be carrying these things and and, yeah, any other, any other last minute tips or thoughts before we wrap it up? Matthew,

absolutely, threat model. Threat model. That's what an IPM strategy is. It's a threat model. You're modeling all the different possible problems, you should always be asking yourself two questions. The first question is, what's the most likely thing to happen? The second question is, what's the worst thing that could happen? And that'll really help you kind of key in on your situation, and it's going to be predicated on what you know about the pest and what you know about its ecology and all that stuff, which is why I talk about it so extensively, but those little bits of information will let you know, and those are all great examples as well, to keep things from becoming a vector and an issue for yourself in the future, I would also just want to say that your good biosecurity practices help the community by being secure. You are helping your friends who you might also grow with, not get a rest of my infestation or some other really nefarious stuff, and then they, in turn, don't pass it to other people. And I feel like it's very much a rising waters lift all ships situation, and it's why I take so much time and effort to make that information available to people. So I'm very excited again that I get to have the opportunity to talk about it with yourself, Jordan, with other people who will be seeing us in New York and San Diego and elsewhere, and also on my various social media, on YouTube and on Instagram, other places. So thanks again for having me. And I think this is full of great information for people to reference, and I'm always excited to contribute more of this information.

Hell yeah, man. Awesome stuff as usual. We always love having you. This episode was absolutely jam packed, and we love, we love learning from you and working with you. Matthew, so So stay tuned, everybody. Pesta Palooza is on, like Matthew said, and that's grow cast podcast.com/classes, where can people find you? Matthew? Shout out the the YouTube page and the Patreon and all the things. For professional

inquiries. If this was impressive to you and you want to learn more, you can find me@zenthanol.com you can also find a lot of the information that I make available for people for free on my YouTube channel, zenthan. You can also find it on my Instagram, at sync Angel that's S, Y, n, C, H, like synchronize and a N, G, l, like the mythical creature. And you can also find me on Twitter with that same handle. And you can also join my patreon, which, if you join at the cultivator tier, at $10 per month, you will get an exclusive pass code for the upcoming PESA palooza. If not, you can also just use my the Grow cast tag for some money off the tickets. And in that Patreon, I have a discord where we love to talk about IPM, and there's about 130 140 people currently who all ask their various questions. So if you want a pocket IPM expert, you know, consider joining because it's very reasonable, and I think that there's a lot of good information to be had there at your disposal.

I fucking love it. That is badass. And yes, use code gates for $20 off for your Pesta Palooza tickets. Where do you guys want to see us again? This is going to be a full blown pest fest, and you're going to leave with a massive goodie bag along with some world class education and free dinner, it's gonna be a ton of fun, Matthew, I thank you so much for your service to the community. I know we held you extra long today, so I appreciate your time, buddy, and we'll see you soon. Thank you for everything, Matthew.

I look forward to our mutual success, Jordan, thank you for having me Awesome. Thank

you everybody, and stay tuned. We'll see you next time. That is all for now. This is Matthew gates and Jordan River signing off, saying, Be safe out there and grow smarter. That is our show, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you to Matthew gates. Stay tuned, of course, for Pesta Palooza and see all of our events at growcast podcast.com/classes, now up There you'll also find the community cup here in Oklahoma. This is an awesome event we have going down May 7 here in Oklahoma City and the public farmers market, it's going to be huge. You guys. Three things going down at the Oklahoma community cup. First is the day of education to stacked lineup of speakers, Brandon rust, OK, call x Farmer John, touched by cannabis. So many more incredible speakers are going to be there. Do not miss this event. We've got early bird pricing on general admission for 20 bucks, or you can grab a judge's kit for $99 The second thing that's going down at the community cup is the People's Choice cup, so you can be a judge for the white market. Cannabis cultivators that are the craft cultivators here in Oklahoma, try a flight of 14 samples. Vote for the best and who will be crowned the community cup, People's Choice champion. You decide out there, everybody. And then finally, we have the home growers showcase. Bring your own home grown flower, and our speakers will go around the home grow showcase table and give out accolades to you, home growers. That's right, anyone can enter the home grow showcase for free, even with general admission tickets, but you need a medical card in Oklahoma to be a judge or enter the home growers showcase. So if you have a medical card in your state, come on down travel and get yourself a temporary ok card. And even if you don't have a medical card, come on up for the day of education. You're not going to want to want to miss it. Early bird pricing is only $20 you can grab that now at growcast podcast.com/community, cup. Cannot wait to see you all there. Thank you so much, guys, stay tuned. Be extra safe and don't touch that. Dial bye, bye, everyone.

You so Who's ready for cannabis specific strains of or like super cannabis strains of breastmites? Certainly not me. I.