How to prevent mold in drying room?

[Phate008]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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. :(

So depressing

 

[Phate008]

I still have 2 nice plants to look forward to but this beauty went down the drain

 

[Phate008]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.