Quick update to those following along.
After clearing the facility earlier this week of all plant material we underwent a thorough decontamination and sterilization regimen, including the following:
1) Eradication of all plant material.
2) Full cleaning of the entire 10,000 square feet. This was not a minor undertaking. Several people for 6 days including the following:
3) First we went nuclear and bug bombed the entire facility (no plants present.) While this situation was not related to a pest infestation, we took this opportunity of no plants being present to do a full decontamination.
4) Following that all walls and ceilings were washed, all floors swept and mopped. With 6 large rooms in a 10K sq ft facility... Washing all walls, ceilings, and floors is not something I'd wish on my worst enemy. That sucked nasty donkey wang.
5) Next came full spraying of the entire facility with an airborne dessicant via an electric fogger (used green cure.)
6) Next came disassembly and sterilization with a bleach solution of all drain tables, irrigation lines, and reservoirs. That was more than a little time consuming.
7) All pots, humidity domes, tools, and trays were washed in a bleach solution.
8) Changing of all air filters.
9) Decontamination of entire facility via multiple high level doses of ozone via an ozone generator.
10) Reassembly of all systems, followed by a thorough purge with RO to remove any traces of chloramines and other contaminants from the sterilization process.
11) Repopulation of the veg room with ten small clones sourced from a known healthy facility. All ten plants inspected in minute detail prior to being imported to the facility, and all ten treated with Green Cure and a mild neem solution prior to importation. I am typically against the use of neem based products, but in this case I relented and used a mild foliar application.
That's where we sit currently, and all ten new plants have now been in the facility for two days. All ten continue to look healthy and vibrant, and are growing rapidly (see attached pic.) Provided no signs of contamination are present by the end of the week, we will repopulate.
Given the magnitude of the undertaking this week I haven't had an opportunity to further diagnose the underlying condition. I do have some plant material stored under strict quarantine for future analysis if such becomes possible.
The overall dollar impact is staggering. Lost plants, lost labor expenses and time, lost materials (cloth pots and growing media), hundreds of dollars in just cleaning supplies... and more importantly the lost time to harvest. All in all it's a six figure impact.
I don't ever want to experience anything like this again.
In the future, I will be much more gun shy when I identify plants with strange growth characteristics. Immediate removal of anything suspect upon the slightest indication of abnormality will now be the norm.
This whole experience has been humbling. I'm certainly not the cannabis expert of the world, but I'm more knowledgeable than most. I'm usually the guy that people come to for help when they have issues. It's been a long time since I reached out for help from anyone with a problem of my own. I suppose the fact that none of the many experts I contacted were able to offer efficacious solutions I hadn't tried is at least somewhat vindicating and blunts the blow a little.
In retrospect, if I had acted just a few days sooner in eradication suspect plants I likely could have saved a significant portion of the loss. It's kind of eerie going through this process of viral eradication at the same time that most of the world is on lockdown due to viral contamination among the human populace.
I sure hope similar measures to what I've had to do here are not required where covid-19 is concerned!
