Brother Sweetleaf
Well-Known Member
I've been outdoor-growing one plant wonderfully, in a PVC "house" I built, wrapped in insect-netting, plus heavy plastic during the rainfalls, and all had been going surprisingly awesome, until unforeseen events beyond my control may have brought mold (or something like it), although to be honest I'm not 100% sure... It may just be natural brown wilting...
You see, I let my plants get thirsty before striking them for harvest. It decreases drying-time a bit, and who knows-- maybe the plant's thirst for a drink during it's final couple of days could have a similar effect as the constant darkness during a plant's final couple days, forcing it to increase resin-production a bit in desperation. At the very least, it seems to make drying a bit quicker. Anyways, I had a bit of Perfect Storm here, where the de-humidifyer and oscillating fan lost power-- unbeknownst to me-- and a couple days passed before I got inside the outdoor "tent" to discover it.
There are other elements to the story that make it quite interesting... For example, I experimented (again this year) by implementing my idea to wrap the small, outdoor, PVC-house with a roll of 20" plastic shrinkwrap, creating an even better barrier against the "outside" air, improving upon an idea I tried on last year's harvest. With pouches of desiccant, a reasonably powerful dehumidifier, an oscillating fan and a small Vornado, I was pretty confident this might actually work!
Well, the bottom line is this: My plant pretty much just about died on her own of thirst. The buds are still living-like, but every remaining leaf that I had not defoliated last week shriveled & turned fully-brown, past yellow. And about 1/3 to a 1/2 of the trichomes have gone from clear & milky white to a gorgeous amber. She looks spectacular... Or she looks screwed-up... I'm not really sure which.
I'm familiar with budrot, & this is not that. It doesn't necessarily look like mold, but it appears so BROWN. But then, when peeled back & defoliated further-- and (strangely) under a microscope-- the green really comes out-- almost sometimes that bright, yellowish green... And so it seems that the problem is dehydration & dead, dried leaves & such. But the "red hairs" are really quite dark brown, and the clear-white is now rich amber, and everything looks so--- IDK--- not right (although that's how it SHOULD look, considering.)
But having been "outside" during the rainiest it's been all year, wrapped in a plastic box WITHOUT de-humidification & good air-flow for a couple days, I just feel awful...
Honestly, I think when stuff like this happens, depression is the biggest problem... This sort of thing can sap the will right out of a grower. I have set-up a few plastic bins & buckets, lots of clean water, H2O2, lemon-juice, baking soda, & researched a butt-load of information on safely washing your pre-dried bud to clean it from bugs, dirt, debris, & some forms of mold. I've studied extensively on the subject, and although washing bud seems crazy, it's actually not. (Those who wish to debate the wisdom of washing bud & argue why they'd rather smoke dirty bud can do so on another thread please, and remain on-topic here).
So IDK... I want to try and save it, but I'm pretty much at the end of my tether with this. I cannot imagine doing all the work ahead of me for nothing, just to get nasty, moldy, over-ripe weed. (Plus I film everything for a future video-series, which just adds extra work to anything I do with my plant.)
The dichotomy is that I also cannot imagine mistakenly throwing away 4 months worth of primo amazing bud full of perfectly amber trichomes because I thought it looked "too brown", or because too many know-it-all nay-sayers on the forums here said it was moldy & bunk, when in fact it wasn't.
(First pic below was just before the weekend, the others are from this morning. Trash or Triumph???)
You see, I let my plants get thirsty before striking them for harvest. It decreases drying-time a bit, and who knows-- maybe the plant's thirst for a drink during it's final couple of days could have a similar effect as the constant darkness during a plant's final couple days, forcing it to increase resin-production a bit in desperation. At the very least, it seems to make drying a bit quicker. Anyways, I had a bit of Perfect Storm here, where the de-humidifyer and oscillating fan lost power-- unbeknownst to me-- and a couple days passed before I got inside the outdoor "tent" to discover it.
There are other elements to the story that make it quite interesting... For example, I experimented (again this year) by implementing my idea to wrap the small, outdoor, PVC-house with a roll of 20" plastic shrinkwrap, creating an even better barrier against the "outside" air, improving upon an idea I tried on last year's harvest. With pouches of desiccant, a reasonably powerful dehumidifier, an oscillating fan and a small Vornado, I was pretty confident this might actually work!
Well, the bottom line is this: My plant pretty much just about died on her own of thirst. The buds are still living-like, but every remaining leaf that I had not defoliated last week shriveled & turned fully-brown, past yellow. And about 1/3 to a 1/2 of the trichomes have gone from clear & milky white to a gorgeous amber. She looks spectacular... Or she looks screwed-up... I'm not really sure which.
I'm familiar with budrot, & this is not that. It doesn't necessarily look like mold, but it appears so BROWN. But then, when peeled back & defoliated further-- and (strangely) under a microscope-- the green really comes out-- almost sometimes that bright, yellowish green... And so it seems that the problem is dehydration & dead, dried leaves & such. But the "red hairs" are really quite dark brown, and the clear-white is now rich amber, and everything looks so--- IDK--- not right (although that's how it SHOULD look, considering.)
But having been "outside" during the rainiest it's been all year, wrapped in a plastic box WITHOUT de-humidification & good air-flow for a couple days, I just feel awful...
Honestly, I think when stuff like this happens, depression is the biggest problem... This sort of thing can sap the will right out of a grower. I have set-up a few plastic bins & buckets, lots of clean water, H2O2, lemon-juice, baking soda, & researched a butt-load of information on safely washing your pre-dried bud to clean it from bugs, dirt, debris, & some forms of mold. I've studied extensively on the subject, and although washing bud seems crazy, it's actually not. (Those who wish to debate the wisdom of washing bud & argue why they'd rather smoke dirty bud can do so on another thread please, and remain on-topic here).
So IDK... I want to try and save it, but I'm pretty much at the end of my tether with this. I cannot imagine doing all the work ahead of me for nothing, just to get nasty, moldy, over-ripe weed. (Plus I film everything for a future video-series, which just adds extra work to anything I do with my plant.)
The dichotomy is that I also cannot imagine mistakenly throwing away 4 months worth of primo amazing bud full of perfectly amber trichomes because I thought it looked "too brown", or because too many know-it-all nay-sayers on the forums here said it was moldy & bunk, when in fact it wasn't.
(First pic below was just before the weekend, the others are from this morning. Trash or Triumph???)
