Brother Sweetleaf
Well-Known Member
Yeah, this'll be good experience for you, I think. There's lots of info on Roll It Up about all this stuff, but I'll drop a few thought-bombs your way, because bud-rot has left me with a permanent twitch, & I can maybe offer a helpful tip or 2, Brother...
1st, if there's any question that it may be bud-rot, 90%+ of the time, it is bud-rot.
2nd, reddish brown is a natural color to parts of the plant, but when that color is excessive & you can sorta imagine a grayish tinge in there, it's likely mold.
3rd, even though healthy buds are soft & somewhat delicate, moldy buds are extraordinarily fragile & easy to mush & crumble... It's (not quite, but) almost as if the bud itself could disintigrate into dust like our heroes did in Avengers Infinity War/Endgame... Almost like that... Almost.
4th, Spores, spores, spores... If it's mold, anyways. (Sometimes, bud-rot is actually a disease called Botrytis, which is oftentimes caused by caterpillar poop on the buds & the effects of those caterpillar worms burrowing into your plant stems. Oftentimes, you will find a dark, round circle/oval in the stalk near a rotted bud. This is where the worm burrowed into the branch & tunneled itself up through the plant itself. Plus the silken strands you'll see magnified with a glass or microscope... It's all gross.) Anyways, you can be conservative & keep parts of the infected bud that appear unaffected, but spores are invisible, they spread, and the beginning of mold is invisible to the naked eye (as it grows & expands it becomes more visible), so I personally get rid of the entire bud, plus maybe one or 2 nodes above & below the visibly affected bud. Bud-lovers here will argue with this bold move, calling it wasteful. I completely understand that it looks wasteful to "throw away" bud infected with something invisible & odorless. But this isn't the Dark Ages, and mankind has learned that mold spreads invisibly. The alternative is to keep mold in your garden, invisible, until it destroys the other currently healthy plants. IMO, Killian123, you did well getting rid of the plant. ALWAYS err on the side of caution. I recon that most any grower who has ever gotten mold in their crop has learned to "rule" their garden "with a heavy hand", and has had to willfully choose a painfully difficult sacrifice in order to save the crop & still get something for all their efforts.
(Thanos??)
5th, Caterpillar Worms must be avoided early on. I used insect netting around my girls since mid-veg, and was fortunate to avoid a problem with worms this year. Sadly, I did actually discover 2 of the little bastards on my plant a day or 2 after treating it for Spidermites with Azamax (concentrated Neem-seed oil insecticide). I killed 'em, & if I missed any others then I'm sure the Azamax took care of 'em.
6th, Vornado fans frickin rock at really moving the air around, minimizing stagnant "pockets" of still air. Watch a video on how they circulate the air room-wide differently than a standard fan. I use a small, $45 table-top model that I can even lay down face-up, aiming at the ceiling above. When used with moisture-absorbing desiccant, it helped to cut-down on the moisture in my own ghetto-ass hoophouse last year (The Outside itself is obviously a constant cloud of moisture spanning the damn landscape, but stacking together all these little things does make a difference). The most important factor here-- to make my Vornado-fan/desiccant idea work-- is to have the hoophouse/room as draft-free as possible. Vornado really circulates the air room-wide, so ample drafts will "leak-away" the circulating effect from occurring. When the damp air is properly circulated, the moisture-absorbing pellets of desiccant actually reduce the humidity of the room a bit. I put mesh-bags of the stuff around & even between branches of my plants, placing it where it was most-needed. The effect was minimal, but significant, and every little bit helps when fighting & preventing bud-rot! (My own hoophouse was a quarter-hoop, attached to the outside shed-wall, & I didn't feel safe leaving a de-humidifier on, unguarded, out in the damp hoophouse at the mercy of the weather & the elements.)
Looks like you're doing well following good advice. I hope this helps. These are all things I've thought through & implemented myself with moderate success. The biggest thing is draft-proofing as best you can for proper air-circulation with moisture-absorbents and/or de-humidifiers.
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