ltecato
Well-Known Member
I've been keeping an eye on relative humidity in the weather report for my part of LA County. As a general rule, the readings online have been on the dryish side, 35-40% most days. Then I had a minor accident that I'm not going to describe because the details are too complicated and it's none of your business anyway, but it put me in the hospital for a couple of nights. I got someone to water my plants while I was gone, but I didn't even think about that effing botrytis attacking because of the dry weather. Well, imagine my chagrin when I went out to check my plants this morning and found two of them with bud rot. I just now checked the weather page and it says RH is at 50%.
Anyway, I cut off the infected buds and gave all the plants a quick spray of neem oil. Maybe I shouldn't have sprayed without checking first but I got all in a lather over my shitty luck, because it seems like I can't turn my back on the fuckers for five minutes without something like this happening.
So, I was going to go out and buy some mancozeb but no store near me seems to have it in stock and besides I think it's more of a preventive spray than a treatment for plants that are already sick and especially those that are as far along in flowering as mine are.
So I decided no mancozeb for now, maybe none ever since I prefer to avoid those chemicals, and I got rid of the infected branches and sprayed my scissors with Windex vinegar cleaner and left them to bake in direct sunlight for a few hours so hopefully the UV will kill any spores that the Windex missed.
Now, I've got to decide what to do with my two most mature plants. Both are Purple Godfather Kush. They are both really far along in flowering. In fact, I cut a few buds from both of them just to get an idea of how potent they might be, and both samples kicked my butt, despite not being 100% mature if you go by trichome colors and calyx swelling.
I am really really leaning toward butchering both plants and drying them out now, rather than risking more bud rot. So two questions:
How long should I wait for the neem oil to break down so I can harvest the plants? And, once I harvest the plants, what precautions should I take while drying the flowers, since they might have botrytis spores lurking inside them? Would it be a good idea to nuke them in a microwave at some point? I realize microwaving is a sub-optimal method for drying but I'm willing to sacrifice some bud quality to make sure I kill all the nasty fungus.
Also, I think I recall that Jorge Cervantes recommended dunking flowers in hydrogen peroxide-water mix if they came from a mold-infected plant. Any reason I shouldn't do that?
Anyway, I cut off the infected buds and gave all the plants a quick spray of neem oil. Maybe I shouldn't have sprayed without checking first but I got all in a lather over my shitty luck, because it seems like I can't turn my back on the fuckers for five minutes without something like this happening.
So, I was going to go out and buy some mancozeb but no store near me seems to have it in stock and besides I think it's more of a preventive spray than a treatment for plants that are already sick and especially those that are as far along in flowering as mine are.
So I decided no mancozeb for now, maybe none ever since I prefer to avoid those chemicals, and I got rid of the infected branches and sprayed my scissors with Windex vinegar cleaner and left them to bake in direct sunlight for a few hours so hopefully the UV will kill any spores that the Windex missed.
Now, I've got to decide what to do with my two most mature plants. Both are Purple Godfather Kush. They are both really far along in flowering. In fact, I cut a few buds from both of them just to get an idea of how potent they might be, and both samples kicked my butt, despite not being 100% mature if you go by trichome colors and calyx swelling.
I am really really leaning toward butchering both plants and drying them out now, rather than risking more bud rot. So two questions:
How long should I wait for the neem oil to break down so I can harvest the plants? And, once I harvest the plants, what precautions should I take while drying the flowers, since they might have botrytis spores lurking inside them? Would it be a good idea to nuke them in a microwave at some point? I realize microwaving is a sub-optimal method for drying but I'm willing to sacrifice some bud quality to make sure I kill all the nasty fungus.
Also, I think I recall that Jorge Cervantes recommended dunking flowers in hydrogen peroxide-water mix if they came from a mold-infected plant. Any reason I shouldn't do that?
.
