My plants are covered in sawdust!

[Phenotype7]

It's a long and unfortunate story, but my idiot roommate was doing an idiot project in the basement involving a belt sander and spanning three or four days. The basement is fully covered in sawdust and, since he was doing this two feet away from my grow room, enough sawdust came in through the airholes to cover the plants and every surface with a thin coating.

What do I do? My plants are five weeks into flowering and covered with trichomes, so I'm thinking dousing them with water is going to do more harm than good at this point. Besides that, I'm running a hydro system and I'm thinking that the sawdust is gonna runoff into the roots and res, and cause more problems. I've also heard mixed things about using canned air to blow the dust off--the cold temp and the nitrogen might hurt the ladies, and I'm wondering whether a lot of the dust isn't trapped in the sticky trichomes and buds.

The only solution I'm seeing is to watercure, which is gonna kill my final weight, but I'm hoping it'll get rid of most of the sawdust over a week?

Any advice, here? I'm not willing to throw this crop away so far along, but I'm not sure how to get the best harvest despite this bullshit.

Thanks!

 

[Frozenguy]

Um.. Yeah man that sucks pretty hard to tell you the truth. Trichs are sticky as hell, really not sure there is much you can do.. You dont know anyone or cant rent a portable air compressor today/tomorrow? Because as far as I know it, new material covers the old material eventually, so that sawdust is going to be embedded more and more very day.

You could make some bubble hash with it I'm sure.
What kind of wood was this? Treated lumber?

 

[compost]

Insanely nice plants from outside get watered almost everyday in wet environments. I have had some hermie problems with my one strain that reveged. I give them a water spray once a week to neutralize any pollen and don't seem to have any negative reactions. However I have a good dehumidifier and air movement so the water doesn't sit on the buds for long.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Phenotype7]

Fuck, I didn't even think about that. This shit happened a week ago, actually, and I'd just about decided to wait till harvest and watercure. Can anyone else weigh in on this? Is there a chance water curing won't work as well as I'm hoping, if I wait another month?

 

[ddrew]

Blow off as much as you can, and don't worry about the rest.
Maybe it will give it a nice wood roast flavor.

I've had the same thing a few times now with plaster and wood dust, just blow it off and keep going like normal.

 

[High Country]

I have a vacuum cleaner which can decrease or increase the power. I would use one of these on a low setting if you can get one. I use it to get rid of dead leaves too.

 

[compost]

One important piece of information would be was that treated wood or untreated? If that was treated wood I would go the extra mile to get that stuff off.

 

[Phenotype7]

Untreated wood, thankfully. No paint speckles or other chemicals on my buds.

I'm seeing a pretty clear consensus that getting an air compressor might be the way to go. No one's talked about water curing, though, which was my original plan. If there's still an unfortunate amount of dust after I rent an air compressor, will the water cure take care of it?

 

[ddrew]

You go at them with an air compressor and you will be ripping stuff off with the force of the air.

If you really want to do more then just blow the dust off manually, then I would suggest getting a hairdryer(blowdryer) with settings, put it on low with no heat, and blow away, should be perfect, and cheaper then renting a compressor.

 

[foomar]

If they were in soil i would turn them upside down and give them a damn good shake , worked for me with cement dust once.

Too messy/impossible in hydro , so moderate air jet from a variety of sources with some shakeing should suffice.

Would not be too concerned with a little clean wood dust as a contaminant , plenty of similar woody material in a bud anyway , could lower pH a little and take nitrogen from the resevoir but i doubt enougth to notice.

 

[whodair]

pump wand sprayer, blast with water...or take them to the shower for a shpritz

 

[dread]

pump wand sprayer, blast with water...or take them to the shower for a shpritz

i was gonna say the same thing....u beat me whodair

 

[Tr33]

I'd be pissed.
Depending on how bad the dust layer is, the crop could be ruined.

 

[medmaker420]

I would wash them off but as far as a "Water cure". I can't stand water cured bud personally and would rather try the washin them off deal and seeing what all ends up on em but before that the ol shake the branches can get some off as well

but before all of this I would

1. beat my buddies ass for being a dumb ass
2. have him FIX IT OR ELSE!

lol

 

[HippyJohnny]

Not good

Not good

Sux big time! I would toss'em.
Don't want to smoke lumber. Its in the bud structure and new growth will cover it up. Water cure will not be able to dig that out.

They sound ruined for smoking, take cuttings and move on.

 

[GoozMan]

BHO! Or cook with it. You can still get everything out of your plants, maybe just not in the form of flowers to smoke.

 

[argoagro]

i was gonna say the same thing....u beat me whodair

You both beat me to it.

Watercure won't do shit, that's only helpful for stuff that is water soluble, like certain molecules or elements or some shit (Chemistry is clearly not my strong point ) Washing the buds off now is the move, you could try compressed air first.

I wouldn't sweat it much btw, you can probably rinse most off, and it's just dead plant cells.

 

[kmk420kali]

You should be able to rinse them off-- Trichs are not water soluble, and while wet, just like any other resin, is not as sticky--
A li'l sawdust should not hurt you, as long as it wasn't redwood or mahogany--

 

[Otto Flour]

Make some edibles with it. Eating wood cant be nearly as bad as smoking it. Plus I bet some fast food places cut their ground beef with sawdust anyways.

 

[Freedom Fighter]

i would do a combination of things.... try the Hair dryer on a No-Heat setting, then put them in the shower with 70* water (Fahrenheit) ,

and if that doesn't solve your problems:

BHO! Or cook with it. You can still get everything out of your plants, maybe just not in the form of flowers to smoke.

best of luck man.

i had this happen with SAND all over some lowryder2 a few years ago..... i still smoked it.