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Moldy Buds

ilvthsgm

Member
Hi,

Before harvest, i left my plants alone couple days like 4-5 without any air circulation. Now almost every buds get moldy or something. Is there anything i can do? Like using hydrogen peroxide or washing them? If i can't smoke, can i make cannabutter?
http://i.imgur.com/T983eGL.jpg
I join from Turkey, please excuse my English. Thank you.
 

TCortese

Well-Known Member
I'm on my first grow, a few weeks into flower. While I may not have experience growing this particular plant, I do however have experience with botany in general and more importantly microbiology/mycology. Here's my input:

I would suggest you chuck em. I know that's hard to hear (and there may be more qualified posters who will argue against it), I'm a few weeks into my first flower and having issues with powdery mildew...I know what a drag malevolent microbial menaces can be. Those buds are in VERY bad shape, and from what I can tell from the pic, I see a lot of grey going on and when I think grey, I think genus Botrytis (I'm not sure if cannabis is susceptible to it but it makes sense, the stuff commonly infects old fruit). B. cinerea can cause some serious lung infections/reactions in certain people. Peroxide will kill any spores of the mold, but won't take care of the mold itself, and this is just a guess, but I think butter would no doubt be horrid tasting (if not dangerous).

I suppose you could attempt an extract (soak em in peroxide and then use an alcohol at some point in the extraction), but I think that taste would come through if you do not have the proper reagents/equipment to perform high quality extracts. I suppose they can be used for making bubble hash if you remove as much of the mold/spores as possible (any remaining spores will be too small to get picked up in the screens), such a product would certainly be safe to smoke, but again I have doubts on the taste.

Take all of this with a grain of salt and wait for someone with more experience with cannabis molds to comment as I'm just guessing the culprit is Botrytis, there could be other more dangerous things hiding in there (aspergillus....), which would make the buds difficult to even be near without a proper face mask.



T
 

TCortese

Well-Known Member
In response to that video...

With PM, you aren't seeing the actual fungus, only the fruiting bodies (tiny hairs, almost microscopic) and the spores those fruiting bodies produce (the white fuzziness). Peroxide is an atom bomb for all spores (I can't think of any species of fungal or plant spore that produce the catalase enzyme...) and so the peroxide does do a good job of removing the visible aspects of PM. The fungus is still in the plant mind you, you simply can't see it and the hyphae are insignificant enough not ruin taste.

Peroxide will kill Botrytis spores, but you are going to be left with the hyphae (the visible wispy grey stuff). The spores tend to be the dangerous part of any fungus so a peroxide bath will make the bud reasonably safe. So once again, if you really have your heart set on keeping it (I know it would simply kill me to have to toss it), hash made from it should be OK.
 

LIBERTYCHICKEN

Well-Known Member
Peroxide is a great sterillzation product , but not at the concentrations shown in the video , 1cup of 3% per 5 gallon is knothing also must rember peroxide is highly reactive , peroxide mixed with tap water will be useless (sterillization wise) after 2-3 minutes
 

TCortese

Well-Known Member
Not to get too far off topic, but yea I was going to point that out. If you're afraid of using the 3% for some application (that concentration really shouldn't hurt anything, I've been using 3% straight on my leaves to fight back some powdery mildew for days now with no ill effect), dilute it three parts water to one part peroxide. This is considered standard in treating most plant molds I've dealt with, cobweb mold comes to mind, it can be a pain when growing plants under humidity domes (carnivores come to mind for me, I'm a big collector of the bug biters...). While you are right that peroxide is notoriously unstable, Cervantes was using Rite-Aid brand which is stabilized (most major drug store brands are and for that reason should not be used for this sort of application).

Can I ask the original poster as to what humidity your drying room was at? My grow room is at a constant 60-70% (Yikes!) and as stated, I've already got the PM. Now I'm concerned about the Botrytis attacking my 4 week old flowers as it apparently is wont to do (according to some quick reading), I didn't know this was an issue with cannabis, specifically the living stuff....
 

bondoman

Well-Known Member
chuck it and don't think twice about it, your health is more important than gambling with that, it looks very bad.
 

urgod

Well-Known Member
you can use vaccum distillation and distill the essential oils out of that plant lol. OOORRR you can use iso or butane to extract the resin. then distill the resin to get rid of the mold... but then you need some breaking bad shit to do all this so might as well start over from scratch unless you got $$$$$$$
 
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