Southern ag garden friendly fungicide FAQ

Who else is using it?

Whats your recipes..?
Soil.= N/a
Hydro. =2ml/gal
Foliar. =1ml/gal

How often do you use it..?
-Every res change once a week.

Do you keep it in the fridge ?
I do.

In canada where do you buy it?
Ebay from usa

Do you use it in combination with other bennies?
I use great white in soil and dip clones in it .

What does it help with?
Slime, root rot, you can get away with a little warmer temps, it gives you a coushon of being able to be out of optimal range without totally losing everything .

Do you need it??
No if you are very good about cleaning every little part of your system regularly including hoses and inside of pump impellors. . And keeping optimal temps all the time . And blockout light... Youll probably go a long time befor running into slimes and root rot .... But you will one day and its easier to use this as a prevenitive.

What if i get root rot ?
Cut off the slimey fucked up looking roots and get a pump sprayer bottle and get ph'd res water and blast the res of the slime off the roots .

To combat. R. R.
Use 4ml/gal..
For clones 1ml/gal maitinence...
Regular growing 2ml/gal..


Anyone have any information they can add for people looking to get into bennies in hydro?

@Jypsy Dog @Cold$moke

.

Bump

Edit . Dilute 1/20
Then use 2m/gal

I make 5 mls /100 mls water so i dont waste much.

I’ve tried it. It always seem to slow down branching on roots and never was able to keep the roots white. I just switched back to just hydroguard for simplicity sake, plus I’m about to start using water chillers. I just buy in gallon increments off amazon about to buy a 2.5 gallon.
I run stand alone dwc and use Heisenberg tea and haven’t had a root rot problem in years it’s just a pain cleaning airstones and preping 2 days ahead of use.

AG fungicide, like Hydroguard, will not cure a pythium infection.

I like Recharge. It has some carbs and can be bubbled prior to use.

That being said, I've never cured root rot without using a worm casting tea and that's not a 100% guarantee.

Prevention starts at the clone/seed stage. Use bennies in the clone stage. Make sure growing equipment is well sanitized. If using hydro cloner and having issues, falling back on rockwool or better, something like Root Riot plugs until you're having success with the hydro cloner. I soak the cubes in a recharge solution. Recharge is fairly basic so PH will need to be adjusted.

I've observed Azos promoting roots faster than Recharge, but it's also more expensive.

With humidity dome and heating mat with thermostat, plugs will root just about as fast as a hydro cloner.

At any rate, starting out clean and using bennies will give the best chance of starting the grow with nice white roots.

If you start a grow with white roots and add some bennies to the media in a sanitized system your chance of getting root rot will be very very low.

If you have an infected system - first clean it with bleach - next fill with plain water and add bennies (I used Recharge and then PH water). Let it run warm (Pythium grows best at 65 degrees) and empty (no plants until system is clean). Repeat steps 2-3 days later. After the second cycle pythium spore count should be at or near zero. The system is ready for clean plants.

If plants are inoculated (during clone stage and/or when transfered to grow media) they should require no further inoculation. Clean roots with a single dose of bennies will tend to stay clean an entire grow. Using it once a week is mostly good for the manufacturer.

A few more things regarding bennies and pythium.

I remember reading a report that tested various liquid bennies and found that they were all below count, with some of them having almost no viable spores. I'm thinking maybe, un-refrigerated long hauls might get hot. Spores can survive heat dry but it's not ideal when in liquid form. Then there's the use by date if there is one. Better than room temp but refrigerated spores slowly loose viability. At 6 months there should be a notable change in viability. If the bottle has been sitting on the store shelf or storage for 6 months, it's borderline garbage. How do you know how old it is?

That's why I prefer Recharge, Azos, Great White, etc. any powder should be top quality for at least a year from purchase if the bag is kept sealed.

What you say about not needing bennies is true. I know someone who does a thorough bleach scrub between grows. Keeps the elbows but discards the tubing. Gravity fed so no water pumps. Discards the air stones and air tubing after each grow as well. He could probably get by with soap. He's literally scrubbing the system clean and replacing everything he can't scrub. Works well but... bleach, even in high concentration won't kill all spores unless you're doing extended soaks. Spores are survivors.

Weak disinfectants may help with prevention, but pythium will laugh at those products once established. Not just the spores but live colonies will be protected by the root mass they've burrowed into. They also generally laugh at bennies at common suggested usage rates. When brewing worm tea you're literally making bacteria soup that's fully activated and probably with a higher microbe count than the store product in concentrate. Then you're dumping it in by the cup full.

When trying to fight an infection and at that crucial stage where the tea is added, might be a good idea to do a changeout using a low N solution. High N can inhibit a plants natural defenses.

People will often want to fight the root rot, and while it's possible it's also worth considering to just ditch those plants, get some new ones started and use that time to throughly clean the system and run bennies with no nutes for a week so the system is clean and ready for new plants. That's not what people want to hear, but if they fight the rot and loose that's just that much more time before the system is up and running again.

Regarding the temperature, running cold as a protection against pythium (90% of root rot cases) may be a myth. Pythium (some strains) will experience strongest growth at 65F. If it gets in the system at any reasonable temp and there's no competition it will colonize the roots. That being said, water cultures are going to be growing something it's just a matter of what. Not all microbes are capable of defending themselves from rot pathogens.

-Just did a little research and some species of pythium grow best in the high 70s, but for others it's mid 60s. Pythium is like a box of chocolates.

The good thing about pythium, it doesn't have an airborn stage. It can be kicked up in dust, so keep the floor clean. If possible, elevate cloners and other equipment so there's no access for a couple feet. Main point is, pythium isn't floating around in the air like mold spores. Keep stuff clean and it will tend to stay that way.

Rahz said:

A few more things regarding bennies and pythium.

I remember reading a report that tested various liquid bennies and found that they were all below count, with some of them having almost no viable spores. I'm thinking maybe, un-refrigerated long hauls might get hot. Spores can survive heat dry but it's not ideal when in liquid form. Then there's the use by date if there is one. Better than room temp but refrigerated spores slowly loose viability. At 6 months there should be a notable change in viability. If the bottle has been sitting on the store shelf or storage for 6 months, it's borderline garbage. How do you know how old it is?

That's why I prefer Recharge, Azos, Great White, etc. any powder should be top quality for at least a year from purchase if the bag is kept sealed.

What you say about not needing bennies is true. I know someone who does a thorough bleach scrub between grows. Keeps the elbows but discards the tubing. Gravity fed so no water pumps. Discards the air stones and air tubing after each grow as well. He could probably get by with soap. He's literally scrubbing the system clean and replacing everything he can't scrub. Works well but... bleach, even in high concentration won't kill all spores unless you're doing extended soaks. Spores are survivors.

Weak disinfectants may help with prevention, but pythium will laugh at those products once established. Not just the spores but live colonies will be protected by the root mass they've burrowed into. They also generally laugh at bennies at common suggested usage rates. When brewing worm tea you're literally making bacteria soup that's fully activated and probably with a higher microbe count than the store product in concentrate. Then you're dumping it in by the cup full.

When trying to fight an infection and at that crucial stage where the tea is added, might be a good idea to do a changeout using a low N solution. High N can inhibit a plants natural defenses.

People will often want to fight the root rot, and while it's possible it's also worth considering to just ditch those plants, get some new ones started and use that time to throughly clean the system and run bennies with no nutes for a week so the system is clean and ready for new plants. That's not what people want to hear, but if they fight the rot and loose that's just that much more time before the system is up and running again.

Regarding the temperature, running cold as a protection against pythium (90% of root rot cases) may be a myth. Pythium (some strains) will experience strongest growth at 65F. If it gets in the system at any reasonable temp and there's no competition it will colonize the roots. That being said, water cultures are going to be growing something it's just a matter of what. Not all microbes are capable of defending themselves from rot pathogens.

-Just did a little research and some species of pythium grow best in the high 70s, but for others it's mid 60s. Pythium is like a box of chocolates.

The good thing about pythium, it doesn't have an airborn stage. It can be kicked up in dust, so keep the floor clean. If possible, elevate cloners and other equipment so there's no access for a couple feet. Main point is, pythium isn't floating around in the air like mold spores. Keep stuff clean and it will tend to stay that way.

Click to expand...

Yeah, i said fuckit . Supersoil organic. Im tired.

projectinfo said:

Yeah, i said fuckit . Supersoil organic. Im tired.

Click to expand...

Same here. I got the rot. Figured out how to get the system clean and switched to grow cubes. Got clean clones, did a successful grow. Decided to try a soilless mix. Liked it. Kept doing it.

I could go back to hydro without fear but I like being able to pull the plants out and manicure. There are other benefits, but hydro has it's benefits too.

The best thing about the experience, learning about bennies and pythium, buying a couple heating mats and humidity domes, 100% success rate with clones now. Even if I went back to hydro I would keep my clone station the same.

I don't want to keep reliving post for nothing, but I believe that the information below is interesting for those who want to use this product in their crops, mainly DWC that requires a more exact dosage

Botanicare Hydroguard and Garden Friendly Bio Fungicide contain different concentrations of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens D747, and therefore it can be difficult to determine an optimal dilution factor to approximate the two products.

Botanicare Hydroguard contains a concentration of 1 billion CFU/g (colony forming units per gram) of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens D747, while Garden Friendly Bio Fungicide contains a concentration of 150 million CFU/ml (colony forming units per milliliter) of the same strain.

To try to approximate the concentrations of these two products, you can dilute Garden Friendly Bio Fungicide in a ratio of approximately 1:7, that is, dilute one part of the product in seven parts of water. This dilution can help increase the concentration of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens D747 in the Garden Friendly Bio Fungicide to approximately 1 billion CFU/ml, which is similar to the concentration in Botanicare Hydroguard.

However, it is important to remember that the effectiveness of the two products can vary depending on many factors such as the composition of the nutrient solution, temperature, pH and other environmental conditions. Therefore, it is always recommended to follow the manufacturer's instructions and adjust the dosage according to the specific needs of your crop.

Click to expand...

It’s not the same strain btw.

I've been using it and felt like in a cloner especially it was at least helping as a preventative. Or so I thought at least.

What got me started on it was that it's supposed to be the exact same strain as HydroGuard but at a much much higher concentration at far far lower price.

Lately when I run the cloner I clean it - but nowhere near what you'd consider "sterilized" levels of cleaning. Instead I use it by adding some to the cloner rez itself but I also use a mixture to spray the entire dome for initial humidity and the entire top surface. The pucks and the clones are then also ran through a little container of the mix. So everything is exposed to it and hopefully that inoculation would out compete anything else. Or in theory at least based on my limited understanding.

@Rurumo suggested I even use it in the organic soil occasionally & as a foliar for ipm. Neat stuff