How to prevent mold in drying room?

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Phate008

Phate008

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I had to early harvest my outdoor because of caterpillar damage. Cut off the rot that I could see and then did a bud wash. Hung the buds on hangers on a clothing rack. Kept the room 70 degrees and between 50-60 humidity. There is central air in the room and there was a fan blowing on high to circulate the air. After 5 days it felt dry and when I took them down to dry trim I could see that they had tons of mold and they were turning brown. I am not sure what went wrong. Maybe I didn't dry them enough after the bud wash, or maybe any of the bud rot I missed spread?

I now have about 2lbs of moldy weed that I have no idea what to do with.

I have 2 more outdoor plants that are free of mold and pests. I want to use the same room, but I am not sure if this is sanitary or what I can do to ready it to use. I also would like to prevent mold at any cost this time so any advice is appreciated.
 
Ponky

Ponky

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Get rid of the gross moldy poo. Clean the room. If you can ozone and peroxide the space. And make sure you have adequate air flow. The bugs didn't help. You need a good amount of air flow to replace the air in the room frequently.
 
mysticepipedon

mysticepipedon

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Low humidity and air flow are key.

If you hung them right after being wet down with a bud wash, that could have been it. In some humid environments you have to do a wet trim to avoid mold.
 
Phate008

Phate008

53
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Is it wide to just put a dehumidifier in the room. It hasn't been incredibly humid here the last couple weeks. I was worried that the humidity would be too low but after adding the plants it jumped up to around 60%. I thought that was a good to have it at 60%. One thing though is that I had buds on a screen on the other side of the room that were not washed, but these turned brown too.

Is there nothing that can be done to save these buds? No extractions or anything. It hurts my soul to throw 2+ lbs in the garbage for all the work, money, and time these cost me this year.
 
Madbud

Madbud

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Bad news, its trash. Retrim what you can salvage and next year use neem oil and spinosad, then btk for cats. If you have one cat, theres fifty and they never sleep, just chomp chomp chomp, poop poop poop.
 
Ponky

Ponky

3,941
263
Is it wide to just put a dehumidifier in the room. It hasn't been incredibly humid here the last couple weeks. I was worried that the humidity would be too low but after adding the plants it jumped up to around 60%. I thought that was a good to have it at 60%. One thing though is that I had buds on a screen on the other side of the room that were not washed, but these turned brown too.

Is there nothing that can be done to save these buds? No extractions or anything. It hurts my soul to throw 2+ lbs in the garbage for all the work, money, and time these cost me this year.
Caterpillars poop too much. Plus fungus. Would have to make distillate. Need a lab. Nothing you can do. Making oil would be fungus and poop oil. :(
 
Phate008

Phate008

53
8
I still have 2 nice plants to look forward to but this beauty went down the drain
PXL 20210922 184133120MP copy 1512x2016
 
Phate008

Phate008

53
8
Bad news, its trash. Retrim what you can salvage and next year use neem oil and spinosad, then btk for cats. If you have one cat, theres fifty and they never sleep, just chomp chomp chomp, poop poop poop.
I have btk now. I have grown for 15 years outside and never had a cat problem until this year. Next year I will be treating the plants with it once a week. What is spinosad for? Neem oil shouldn't be applied during flower though right?
 
freezeland2

freezeland2

3,421
263
So depressing
Sorry to see you lose that grow. I’m drying an outdoor grow right now and worry very much to have the same thing happen. So far so good. I didn’t wash. One of them I was fighting rot on and it’s why I chopped. They were close enough to finish so I didn’t feel to bad about that.
 
Madbud

Madbud

3,906
263
I have btk now. I have grown for 15 years outside and never had a cat problem until this year. Next year I will be treating the plants with it once a week. What is spinosad for? Neem oil shouldn't be applied during flower though right?
I alternate neem and spinosad in veg then btk weekly in flower. Spinosad is an iorganic pesticide. There are others but these work well.
 
Glassdub

Glassdub

1,293
163
Low humidity and air flow are key.

If you hung them right after being wet down with a bud wash, that could have been it. In some humid environments you have to do a wet trim to avoid mold.
I had both & still rot on the kolas, I suspect it was there unseen prior to cut but had to progress during hang, no bud wash & half trimmed, Nebula is a very gummy strain but even with this all plants ended up being a bit too dry, now in jars at 54-55% RH so you have to be careful not to go TOO low room RH &/or trim & bottle ASAP, which with my busy schedule is not very easy. 🤷‍♂️
 
Narsbars

Narsbars

114
28
I had both & still rot on the kolas, I suspect it was there unseen prior to cut but had to progress during hang, no bud wash & half trimmed, Nebula is a very gummy strain but even with this all plants ended up being a bit too dry, now in jars at 54-55% RH so you have to be careful not to go TOO low room RH &/or trim & bottle ASAP, which with my busy schedule is not very easy. 🤷‍♂️
You can wash in Hydrogen Peroxide for preventive or extremely light issues. Be sure to skim the peroxide solution several times to get rid of floating spores. Then blow dry as much as possible and dry faster than required by a regular cure.
 
J

Jakez

1
1
Ok listen, I realize this thread is from last year, but I just came across it in a Google search and I'm terrified another desperate grower might find it one day also and end up ruining their crop too with all the air flying around in here!

First of all, besides the obvious Caterpillar damage, this mans bud all turned brown because he was drying too fast. When you have air blowing around trying to dry quicker to avoid mold what you end up doing is quickly crisping out the outer layer of the buds while the inner moisture remains and now you've got all kinds of micro little specs of plant matter (and probably spores) flying off everything and being blown around the room any time this crispy outer layer moves the slightest bit especially if touched!

Leaving the leaves on is going to do a lot to preserve all of the things that make this plant great by shielding/protecting from any spores landing on your buds and help prevent them from drying the outside too quickly.

If you wet trim you can basically guarantee to see this brown/red tinge develop on the outside of all your buds if you have any kind of constant airflow going on. Set a dehumidifier on 65 maybe 60%. I do 70%, and the COUPLE mold spots I might get (bastard catarpillars, could easily be prevented if I was more consistent with the BT spray) do not spread anywhere beyond where they are, because the only airflow I have is when the dehumidifier kicks on in low fan mode for a minute (I do spin my [like 1ft long] branches in a bucket with holes using a drill after bud washing, but you could just gently wide-swing the water off each one with your arms instead, just don't shake them violently you will lose/damage trichomes). You have to envision the pathway of any airflow a fan is going to make and direct it so it is taking the longest path possible before contacting any bud, this is crucial. If you want some extra protection from too much airflow and/or airborne spores grab a handful of yards of very thin very see-through fabric from a crafts store or department and lightly drape it over hanging branches or buds on a screen. My theory is this kind of makes the perfect little balanced atmosphere closely surrounding each branch or bud so that it can't dry out too quickly from air movement hitting it but also still allows air to flow through freely and also does good at stopping spores from landing on anything OR leaving anything.

Bleh I feel like I could go on for days about all kinds of little shit that happens and how to avoid it. One if those small little handheld pocket microscopes are the absolute best 20 bucks you can spend as far as being able to really watch and troubleshoot what is going on with your bud while it's going through stages drying. Get one if you dont believe me that the nasty brown look on your buds are from too much airflow hitting them. You'll see that all your trichomes and terpenes have either fallen off or evaporated because that brown color is everything on the outer layer all dried and shriveled up and looks like a mangled and rusted out coat hanger under the microscope!

"The only source of knowledge is experience!" -- Albert Einstein
 

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