Bud rot or bud worm?

I grow in pots in my backyard. For the past week we have been getting increasingly concerned about bud rot. I've looked and looked, but have found no way to tell definitively that it is botrytis. We snipped and snipped but the brown/dead spots kept coming. I knew there were budworms, but I thought only a few, and since I didn't see chewed leaves I assumed it was bud rot.

Now, thanks to this site, I realize that I cut a bunch of branches too soon and that it's not fungus at all! They tell you to be ruthless but don't tell how to id fungus vs. worm damage. Now I have to decide if I should just leave the rest and harvest soon, or buy BT and wait a few weeks. This shit is hard. Hard hard hard. I'm impatient for standardized professional help!

imo, harvest and learn from the experience

Yes, Jesus, except that SOMEONE out there knows how to tell the difference. And knows shit from Shinola, you know? Where is that person? Where's an expert to tell me what the wisest thing to do is?

You cant stop the brown bud rot. Harvest it all and harvest fast. Remove all rot, every trace of it or it will keep moving through the plant while it drys. Run as many fans in the drying room as possible and run a dehu if you can. Get it dry fast. Or youll lose it all. You still may loose it as it drys so dont be disapointed if it happens.

Thank you Alienwidow. We ARE seeing some crunchy dried buds harvested earlier. I'm saying there are different treatments depending on if it's a fungus or a worm.

If you could show any pics, it would help...bud rot is one thing...worms are another.

Crunchy dry nugg usually is damage from a bud worm, rot is stringy and slimey.

You got pictures..? And any plants still out this late in the season should have some sort of cover over them to protect from moisture to prevent mold.

Hey, it's possible to have both rot and budworm and to have rot from budworm. Ask me how I know this. This year, my big, fat indica-dom plants both had major infestations rot, and I've seen only the odd damage here and there on my sativas. The only thing I could do with the indicas was harvest early, trim viciously and dry fast. It worked okay, probably not ideal for THC content and smoothness, but I don't much care for couch lock anyway. My losses were more than 50%, probably close to ⅔.

I rarely find budworm chewing on leaves. Here, they've come and gone. Do an autopsy. Any bud that shows a brown sugar leaf in the middle of the cola is suspect. Gently tear open a suspicious bud, away from your plants, obviously, under good light. For budworm, in many damaged buds I can find tiny, smaller than poppy seed sized yellowish blobs that, under a scope, look like manatees without the appendages. Sometimes you'll see dark frass. Sometimes you'll see drilled pathways through the bud.

Plain old botrytis blight looks a range from tannish when it starts to dark grey-brown. A clean, good bud, will look yellowish green on the inside. In the worst of cases, when you open the bud, you'll see a puff of what looks like dark dust, which may be fungal spores. If you think you're seeing botrytis, be sure to wash up and sanitize your cutting tool so you don't spread it around. People use alcohol on the mistaken belief that it's a good sanitizer (it is for human pathogens, but it isn't necessarily the best sanitizer for plant pathogens). A lot of the best sanitizers (like bleach and quats) are corrosive to fine secateurs, so I still stick with alcohol because it evaporates fast and doesn't rust tools.

If you have botrytis in the environment (many plants from peonies to roses, strawberries and grapes are subject to botrytis blight (gray mold) in dark, cool, damp or late season conditions), then by cutting and cutting away at your plant, you may actually be opening up wounds that allow botrytis to enter buds.

Wow, thanks BernerS and everyone! I'll try to get a good photo or two. Meanwhile, we haven't had more than a tenth of an inch of rain this fall, and we were able to shelter the girls from some of it, so I'm pretty sure I'm looking at budworm. Crunchy, no slime. Positive id on worm, worm poop, holes and whitish things kind of like grape nuts that I guess are eggs? And apparently they're neem resistant. And really hard to find.

Anyway -- we've got 4 plants/4 varieties, we harvested & are drying the tops. Roughly 2/3 of the buds are still on the plants and many trichomes still look clear. But the worms are still marching. What would you advise? Cut the rest now? And should we wash it? I've heard you can do a bath with water & hydrogen peroxide to kill whatever's in there. Too late to do that for the drying ones, I guess. And I also read that spraying bt on the buds will cause them to taste bad. True?

Velma Melmac said:

Wow, thanks BernerS and everyone! I'll try to get a good photo or two. Meanwhile, we haven't had more than a tenth of an inch of rain this fall, and we were able to shelter the girls from some of it, so I'm pretty sure I'm looking at budworm. Crunchy, no slime. Positive id on worm, worm poop, holes and whitish things kind of like grape nuts that I guess are eggs? And apparently they're neem resistant. And really hard to find.

Anyway -- we've got 4 plants/4 varieties, we harvested & are drying the tops. Roughly 2/3 of the buds are still on the plants and many trichomes still look clear. But the worms are still marching. What would you advise? Cut the rest now? And should we wash it? I've heard you can do a bath with water & hydrogen peroxide to kill whatever's in there. Too late to do that for the drying ones, I guess. And I also read that spraying bt on the buds will cause them to taste bad. True?

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It's not too late to check your drying bud for discoloration from rot, tho.

BT/Bacillus thuringiensis is the organic spray of choice for caterpillars. Read up on it. http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/24d-captan/bt-ext.html It is a beneficial bacterium, very short acting, that requires the caterpillar to actually eat something that has BT on it to work. It disrupts their digestion or something. So....you can only spray the outside of the plant and will have trouble getting it inside the buds. If you're seeing caterpillars on the outside, BT will slow them down. I'd also pick them off manually and drown them in soapy water. I frankly have no fears about BT and smoke, since it has a half like of less than 4 hours, but I'm sure you'll read not to spray it on your bud some certain number of days before harvest. The caterpillars you're seeing now won't have time to destroy buds you're going to harvest within a couple of weeks (it's not the caterpillars but rather their earlier life stages that damage buds), but they are creepy. I'd nuke em.

Neem oil can be a decent insecticide, but IME it mostly works like any horticultural oil, by smothering insects (not caterpillars). I like it for fungus gnats, which it can kill dead. I didn't have nearly as good luck using it on white fly. It's hard to spray the underside of leaves properly, takes some equipment, lots of time. And it has a definite taste. I

Well I was feeding the neem oil systemically. Luckily I didn't spray any on the buds! We do have drying buds with some discoloration and poop/eggs, not a lot, just here and there (visible at 30x magnification). Can dry buds be washed and dried again? Or should I just "roll it up"?

Picture...

I keep trying to upload one and it won't work.

Another tip I found online which seemed to work amazing for me! Have experienced with bud rot a few times in my 5 years of growing and recently had a small bud rot problem, not much at all, but running a UV light for a quick 5 seconds over every sq inch of the bud is supposed to kill 99.99% of spores, germs, bacterias, etc. Make sure to wear gloves and special glasses as the UV is really bad for your eyes. Of course you still want to clip off whatever part of the bud is completely infected, but to prevent the spread to the rest, it literally kills it all!

Yes.
Small or large worms of all species will crap on your flowers and cause that area to rot.
It's your choice what to do at this point,particularly look at the area and come to a conclusion based on that.
Yw

Velma Melmac said:

I grow in pots in my backyard. For the past week we have been getting increasingly concerned about bud rot. I've looked and looked, but have found no way to tell definitively that it is botrytis. We snipped and snipped but the brown/dead spots kept coming. I knew there were budworms, but I thought only a few, and since I didn't see chewed leaves I assumed it was bud rot.

Now, thanks to this site, I realize that I cut a bunch of branches too soon and that it's not fungus at all! They tell you to be ruthless but don't tell how to id fungus vs. worm damage. Now I have to decide if I should just leave the rest and harvest soon, or buy BT and wait a few weeks. This shit is hard. Hard hard hard. I'm impatient for standardized professional help!

Click to expand...

Can you please share a picture of what the brown rot looks like