Cleanse

¿What's Cleanse es Cleanse y para qué sirve?

Athena Cleanse is a product formuled from hypochlorous acid. This type of acid, mild and secur, is got from salt and an electrochemical treatment process.

The result? A safe product for plants with powerful oxidative properties, that will keep the root zone clean and free from organic mineral buildup.

Overstanding benefits of using Cleanse

• Works to descale attached buildups in irrigation systems walls.
• So effective during the flushing period of plants to remove and decompose organic matter in growing medium.
• It keeps the balance in-between minerals thanks to a very low TDS.
• Effective as final flush to clean the substrate.
• Keeps the irrigation system clean and ready for longer use.
• Reduces mineral buildup in growing medium and dripers and lines.

How and when should I use Cleanse in my garden: Grower's guide and dosages

Cleanse has multiple reasons to be used, bringing benefits in each type of application.

To maintain your irrigation system

One of the main uses of Cleanse is to keep your irrigation system in perfect state of use. We do know that those growers who use Cleanse on their regular basis keep their systems running properly for longer and more optimal.

What dose of Clean when using it in your daily irrigation

You can add 2-5 ml per Gallon of water for a daily use. This equals to 0,5-1,3 ml/L.

Dosages of Cleanse in case of severe buildups in reservoir or growing medium

Add 5-10 ml per Gallon of Water to remove hard buildups in reservoir or growing medium. This dosage equals to 1,3-2,5 ml/L.

Using Cleanse for cuttings improves rooting and health of clones

If you like producing your own cuttings, Athena Cleanse is one of the products you should always have in your shelf. Specially when working with cloners or bubblers, Cleanse takes care of keeping the system free from pathogen agents that could cause problems.

In addition, if you dip your cuttings in a solution with 10ml per Gallon (2,5 ml/L) you'll get an improvement of cell's health besides inmunity of clones.

Those cuttings and seedlings that have been treated with Cleans get more vigor and are more likely to grow stronger plants. Using Cleanse you will also notice how your roots look bright white with tiny feeder root hairs.

Application in Hydroponic systems and Recirculating Deep Water Culture (RDWC)

If you grow in recirculating water systems you know how important it is to keep your system clean between grow-cycles, and sometimes even in the middle of the current cycle.

According to this, not only prevents against buildup and removes organic matter attached, but it also reduces the risk of developing problems related to water excess, low oxygen levels or anaerobic microbial developement.

For your information, the use of Cleanse in DWC (Deep Water Culture) in which water recirculates, helps braking those materials with a lower solubility ratio, like those complex minerals that are no longer available for plants. Mineral buildup and lockout are the main cause of deficiencies and health problems of plants. If you have experienced these problems, the use of Athena Cleanse will make this to don't happen again.

Dosages of Cleanse to flush the growing medium during flushing stage before harvest

As we already explained, Cleanse is not only useful to keep your growing medium clean and your roots healthy. It is also suitable to flush your plants before harvest. In such important stage, a dosage of 1,3-2,5 ml/L reduces notoriously mineral buildup in substrate, so it boosts the flushing process.

These same dosages can be used during the growing cycle (both in vegetative stage and in flowering phase) if you notice unbalanced nutrients, or an unwanted buildup of them.

Dosages for foliar sprays and how to spray your plants

This type of application can be useful to improve plant's health. Apply a dose of 0,1 ml/L carefuly in an area of your garden to be sure the solution does not harm plants. Some strains can be more sensible to Clean foliar use. Be sure the dosages you apply are the correct.

Tip: Apply Cleanse in hour of low luminosity to avoid leaf burn.

How to clean a growroom with Athena Cleanse

To clean surfaces and treat grow areas, Athena recommends a dosage of 375 ml per Gallon of water (0,1 ml/L). We do recommend control your growing enviroment and clean it at least once per month, and specially to clean the facility from one growcycle to the next.

This type of hygiene will safe you many pest and mold issues derived from dirt, but will also enlarge the lifespan of some elements like irrigation system.

Characteristics of Athena Cleanse cleaner

Type: Root, growing medium and irrigation system cleaner.

To: Avoid nutrient buildup inside the irrigation lines and systems, to keep healthy roots, promote healthier rooting and boost flushing before harvest

Use: During all stages of growth, in irrigation, foliar or in eventual applications.

Dosages: 0,1-2,5 ml/L.

Why you should buy Cleanse: Final reviews

If you arrived to this point is probably because you've been in the field for some time, and you are trying to solve issues that sometimes occur. Focussing in the Athena Cleanse, it is suitable when growing in water recirculation systems, no matter if hydroponics, DWC, Ebb & Flow...

If it happens to exist a characteristic that groups all types of water recirculation systems is that nutrient solution ends up creating mineral buildups in some points of the system, that ussually turn into lockouts, nutrient-locks or even defficiencies that negatively affect your crop.

In this case we made three test to try this product and how useful it could be:

1. First we used it in a hydroponic system with clay, in which the nutrients used usually affect critical points of the irrigation system (dripers and lines with reduced diameter, besides plastic corners and unions). To be able to proceed with a complete test we let the system work for some weeks without varying a coma, nor adding a single drop of Cleanse.
   Once we notice the mineral buildup was begining we proceeded to add Clease to water and it quickly solved those cumulations, so we can afirm that it does the job in this aspect.
   From this moment and further we kept the use of Cleanse in the regular basis of the nutrient solution to check if also worked to prevent future buildups. Again, we can asure you that it also accomplish to prevent issues. There was no need of using higher dosages than recommended. The minimum dose was enough to prevent  and keep the system free from locks. 
2. Said this, we expose the second test we made with Cleanse: Growing medium cleaning. In this case we wanted to asure that the product properly cleanse the growing medium, so we decided to test it in soil (the substrate with higher index of nutrient retention). One thing has been clearly demonstrated: Cleanse works, and it does more than expected. After the whole grow cycle, we begin the flushing within Cleanse and just few days later plants show a total lack of nutrients with leaves starting to fade and showing the classic yellows you need to see before harvest. This fact demonstrates how Cleanse Boosts the flushing process, and reduces it from 15 to 10 days, but the important part is not those days you "win". What we really noticed is that we can not tell a single difference in terms of taste and aroma of flowers.
3. In the third place we tested Cleanse in cuttings and rooting process. In this case we decided to make a test applying Cleanse to a part of the cuttings done. At first place we did not detect any difference, but once the clones were rooted, and started the growth cycle, those clones treated resulted the ones that showed more growth vigor and higher final yields. We don't mean to tell you that this will always happen as this was only a one-and-only test so it's not enough, but we can tell this was the result got, so from here and further everyone can take own conclusions.

Explained our test let's go to the important part, the final review of the product, its price and why you should buy Cleanse. After the tests it is clear Cleanse works, and it does getting more than optimal results. In addition this is a highly cocentrated product, so the cost price per liter of nutrient solution is really cheap. It's true that depending on each type of use you may use higher or lower dosages, but in any case the dosages are low enough to percieve this is a budget-friendly product that guarantees solutions to severe problems like mineral buildup.

Who is this Athena Clean addressed to? To all those growers using automatic irrigation systems, or in RDWC systems, besides those looking to shorten stages to get more crops per year (so increase productivity). It is also useful when recycling the substrate (so common when working with coco), or even to disinfect your growroom. Well, as you can see what's rare is you don't want to use it. Try it and share your results!