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Quarantine - Preventing Invisible Invaders · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hi, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily with me, Dr. Russell Sharp.
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  And today we're talking about quarantining and quarantining your plants when
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  you bring them into your grow room or your greenhouse or anywhere else where
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  you're growing indoors.
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  That might sound like a bit of an overreaction and you might think you don't need to do that.
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  But I think there are situations where it's essential because especially when
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  you're bringing plants into a grow room or a greenhouse, they're basically a
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  Trojan horse for pest diseases.
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  And even some weeds and problems so particularly
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  the area where i think you need to really look
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  at quarantine is where you're bringing cuttings so not
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  seeds you're going into a grow room an
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  indoor grow room and where there's
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  no breaking cultivation so you're not cleaning everything out
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  and that's important because the cuttings and the soil
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  and the growing media will be places where pests can
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  hide easily a grow room is they're
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  great for keeping pests and diseases out but once they've got in they're
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  very difficult to eradicate and then then if there's no
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  break in the growing of the crop then
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  those pests and diseases will stick around
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  for ages so an example i
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  always like to state is i used to work at the lancaster environment
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  center in lancaster university and we had these
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  amazing new greenhouses installed and
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  the state-of-the-art at the time but all the researchers
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  just brought their old plants in from the greenhouses the old shabby old greenhouses
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  and so the greenhouses became infested with mildew and spider mites straight
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  away even though there was phytosanitary controls in place and it was ridiculous and.
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  That could have been easily prevented by quarantining the plants
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  and obviously in that situation there's no
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  way of stopping the growth because there was about 20-30 different
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  researchers all with their different plants so they couldn't
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  all just stop down tools kill everything and start again so
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  quarantining is essential even if you're a small
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  grower if you're bringing cuttings or cuts or clones
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  into your grow room then you need to be careful now if
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  you are so this can be as simple as just a smaller
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  grow tent or an area that's partitioned
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  with mesh to keep them away you
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  can go as complicated as having like airlocks and things like this but you need
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  to provide time for the dormant pests and disease to sort of develop and show
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  themselves on the plants so a few weeks at least and this is because things like spider mites.
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  Their eggs might be present, but you won't see the spider mites.
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  And the young mites are transparent.
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  It's only with the adults when the two spotted sections on their back,
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  which contain feces, they show up, they're easy to show, or when they turn red,
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  when the pigments from the plants make the spider mites turn red,
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  that's when you're going to see them. Same with thrips.
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  The pupa will be present in the soil or on the soil, or the growing media, the cocoa.
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  There might be a tiny tiny transparent thrip on the plant or the eggs might
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  the thing with thrips is they lay their eggs inside the leaf so you'll never
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  see the eggs if you're viewing them so,
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  cuttings may look clean and the person supplying them may think they're clean
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  because they might have sprayed them all with insecticide before they left their
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  facility but they actually can be infested.
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  Root aphids, they're another one that you really need to be careful of.
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  Vine weevils, nematodes, parasitic nematodes, these will be on the roots and
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  your plants will start to show effects after a few weeks.
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  I mean, you won't know that because if you've got a delicate young cutting,
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  you're not going to rip it out the ground and look at its roots, are you?
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  You're going to protect it and make sure you don't disturb any of those roots.
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  The same with viruses, There might be a virus infection that you won't see that for a number of weeks.
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  So if you can, check the root system directly.
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  And allow those to be in quarantine for a few weeks if you're buying cuttings.
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  So we think of quarantine as being something that you put dogs or animals in
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  in countries, but even plants go through quarantine in countries,
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  especially places like Australia, and you have phytosanitary certificates that
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  are basically the equivalent of a plant passport,
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  and plants have to be inspected before they are allowed into a country.
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  And then this is an advantage of growing from seed. So there are lots of disadvantages
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  of growing from seed. It takes longer.
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  You don't get particularly the same phenotype as the mother plant.
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  But a lot of the seed producers actually do struggle with diseases.
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  They won't talk about it, but we know from speaking to them and the sort of
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  products that some of the very, very large seed companies buy from us,
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  that they do struggle with pests and diseases.
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  So having the ability to take a seed
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  in and sterilize it with a sterilization chemical
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  or just you know soaking it in water or
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  things like that just get the disease off a bit of ethanol something
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  like that tiny part bit of peroxide that that's
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  a lot cleaner than bringing a cutting that's got growing
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  media that's been growing that could have been attacked by pest and disease
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  so i think the cutting suppliers
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  also they have a responsibility to the
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  other growers if you're supplying cuttings and
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  you've had a pest disease outbreak recently you shouldn't
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  be supplying cuttings even if you've sprayed everything with with insecticide
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  so i would advise anyone to get a small quarantine tent it could be the same
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  tent that you've used for propagation or it could be even sort of like a insect
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  rearing tent if you're if you're putting it in a greenhouse obviously you don't
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  need to have any lighting so you could have like an insect rearing tent that people who.
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  Keep insects as pets used so like a net
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  mesh around them so people who often keep praying mantis
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  and things like this so that's been hydroponics daily for today quarantining
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  if you think you've missed something then please leave a comment and if you
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  know somebody who's struggled with pest and disease from bringing in cuttings
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  then share this episode with them that would be fantastic thank you very much for listening.