That Special Lady

Yea, that special girl. The one that stands out above all the rest and reminds you why you fell in love the first time. The one you happen by in the garden and the song 'Sundown' starts playing because you just can't wait to see the final outcome.
She stands with her family, yet your eyes are immediately drawn to her every time, first. Her health is paramount, you inspect her more closely than the others yet try to maintain casual distance. She is special, has promise, each night you pray for her safety.

Usually, it's that mold that starts inside at the stem that impossible to see. She looks immaculate and as the harvest closes in, eventually you can't resist. Although she is High Times centerfold material on the outside, 1 big baseball bat of main cola, you reach out to touch her glistening majestic beauty, and......

Ppppffffftttttttt, your finger sinks into two inches of mush.

You stand there dumbounded.

You poke again. Same result.

"No, no, no," you cry. inwardly. "This isn't possible!" But it is. The whole cola is mush from the inside out. Smoking it may kill you. Never attempt to save any of this bud, but discard it immediately. This may have happened to you, perhaps not. Yet this is a very true story. I did smoke some of that plant, and it's possible that later I had to have a rib resection - I developed a rare infection in my chest and they had to chop out a piece of my rib.

Never smoke molded weed, no matter how good it looks and if you think you got it all out. Trash that shit. If I showed you the scar, you'd freak, lol.
that's my story of the day- raining and I'm bored.

Damn! I'm crying inside. Ever findout the cause? Stem damage? How do you watch for it?

Johiem said:

Damn! I'm crying inside. Ever findout the cause? Stem damage? How do you watch for it?

Click to expand...

There is absolutely no way to tell. Everything looks PERFECT until you look just under the surface. Now I poke and prod a lot more than I used to!

I'm watching my girl hard. She got damaged about week 5, she has recovered but the damage caused all her pistils to color and retract like she was ready for harvest. Her calyxs are still tiny but she has at least 3 weeks to go.

Unless you show the scar I cannot believe such a story.

I've lost my biggest colas to bud rot before. Heartbreaking. Ironic how it starts in the primo colas. Secret is to have tons of airflow and extraction and keep humidity below 50% in late flower. Ive also noticed I have more problems with bud rot when running a hydro system. Never had it with a soil grow.

I get it outdoors with certain strains on certain years. But I would never throw out a plant that has 2% bud rot and 98% clean. Chop the rot, chop the surrounding material, inspect everything and your good to go. I suspect if every outdoor plant that got a bit of bud rot had to be completely scrapped, there would be a lot less weed out there.

Some strains just bud rot very easily, others rarely if at all. Need good ventilation and air movement. Also something that makes mold start is if you take leaves off but don't get the whole leaf stem. That leaf stem will mold right up and spread it to the rest of the bud. Same with if cut the top off of a bud, the end of the cut stem will get mold on it and spread it to the bud around it. Bud rot mold doesn't usually cause lung problems though, just certain molds, usually ones whose name starts with "Aspergillus" and are black. Maybe you just had an unrelated lung infection. Did the doctors tell you what the disease was?

BobCajun said:

Some strains just bud rot very easily, others rarely if at all. Need good ventilation and air movement. Also something that makes mold start is if you take leaves off but don't get the whole leaf stem. That leaf stem will mold right up and spread it to the rest of the bud. Same with if cut the top off of a bud, the end of the cut stem will get mold on it and spread it to the bud around it. Bud rot mold doesn't usually cause lung problems though, just certain molds, usually ones whose name starts with "Aspergillus" and are black. Maybe you just had an unrelated lung infection. Did the doctors tell you what the disease was?

Click to expand...

It was an extremely rare infection, one that caused me to leave one hospital and go to a larger, much better staff and where they actually taught students, so instead of one set of eyeballs, 6-8 students, (I'm sure there's a better term for them) would come in. It was actually one of these students that suggested that was either a candida or rare fungal infection, as these both took a long time to expose themselves in a petri dish. This was the info I was given. Well, since a yeast infection in my chest seemed fairly unrealistic, it was the process of elimination. I had this wound packed with foam, connected to a vaccumm pump, the foam had to be pulled out and replaced every 48 hours. It was pretty intense. I kept thinking back to that moldy weed, and even though I did throw out most of it, I couldn't resist it looked soooo amazing.
Cost me a piece of my rib, and I didn't even get a wife out of it.

Ok im a believer.

Didn't you wash the moldy bud to get rid of the mold first? I smoked molded bud plenty of times but I washed the mold off and dried it in a microwave, which would kill any spores. If you just dried it at room temp over several days then yeah, I can see how it could be filthy with it. Though the lit end of a joint would probably kill the spores right there, the rest of it is not hot and is full of spores so you suck them right in. I guess you learned a lesson there, smoking live mold is a bad idea. It could still have been some other source, tobacco also has various molds on it, including Aspergillus, if you smoke tobacco. Usually it's only people with compromised immune systems who actually get serious infections though.

BobCajun said:

Didn't you wash the moldy bud to get rid of the mold first? I smoked molded bud plenty of times but I washed the mold off and dried it in a microwave, which would kill any spores. If you just dried it at room temp over several days then yeah, I can see how it could be filthy with it. Though the lit end of a joint would probably kill the spores right there, the rest of it is not hot and is full of spores so you suck them right in. I guess you learned a lesson there, smoking live mold is a bad idea. It could still have been some other source, tobacco also has various molds on it, including Aspergillus, if you smoke tobacco. Usually it's only people with compromised immune systems who actually get serious infections though.

Click to expand...

No, I've never washed moldy buds after my experience, I just toss it. Fortunately, I don't run into this that often, and if I do have a plant that molds, I have 11 that didn't, lol.