Do you have an idea what went wrong?

[ILGM.Becky]

A customer has a question or concerns and I hope we can get some opinions on it, thanks

“I’m a medical user, disabled by Ankylosing Spondylitis. I have the book, bought white widow fem. First harvest just finished which started a month ago (harvesting as trichomes became 30% amber). Buds have trichomes all over sugar leaves as well as calyxs. ALL trichomes after drying and curing have turned a dull red color. No method of ingestion has proven effective. The whole crop seems a waste. I am retired and worked at this diligently for the last 9 months for apparently nothing. Do you have an idea what went wrong? Is this common that a crop can look fine and be a total waste of time? No, you can’t blame it on any technique used, I tried them all. Even drying and curing techniques were tried (some dried in a remote room hung and some buds on a drying rack, another batch dried in my wine cellar at 64 F and 62% RH, all bottled buds rest in the wine cellar, no there is no mold, buds aired daily, sifted and checked throughout. O,K I did have some caterpillars I quickly dealt with BT and some fungus gnats that were quickly occluded and destroyed before much noticeable damage (some early flowering that just kept maturing with some early flowers rotting off and removed. (see pic) Still wound up with good looking plants (see attached) but of absolutely no use. I would have been much better off saving my money to purchase commercial product. Do you have any answer for me?”

• Strain (type, bag seed): white widow fem.
• Soil in pots, hydroponic, or coco?: 20 gallon pots, Ocean Forest Soil
• PH of runoff or solution in reservoir?: PH’d water and food to avg 5.5
• What is strength of nutrient mix? EC, or TDS: Your nutes, given as directed.
• Indoor or outdoor:Outdoor
• Light system, size?:from seed, LED lights till appx 18” then outdoor…
• Temps day, night: Low at night 60 high during summer; 90 So. California means most days are in the 80’s day and 60’s night and NO rain.
• Humidity day, night 60 to 80
• Ventilation system (yes/no, size): Outdoor
• AC, humidifier, de-humidifier?:no
• Co2 (yes/no):no

“Early to flower, they never reverted to veg. Just kept flowers leading to a three month harvest (still going) started in August as cola’s became ripe (for me that’s 30% amber trichomes). (using a microscope) AVG. three or four ounces of dried flower per plant. Dried in an isolated dark room, hung, baby nugs on a rack, September harvest dried in my Wine cellar due to high heat spell (over 85 for that week) at 64F and 62RH for about a week then bottled in glass jars, rotated and aired daily. ALL cured in the wine cellar. August pick now at 62%. Have tried smoking, vaping and making extractions with alcohol, VG and peanut oil. Alcohol extractions will not vape, have ingested up to an ounce of the “Green Dragon” alcohol extracted to no effect. VG and PG added to alcohol still will not vape well. I’m a high tolerance patient on opiates for Ankylosing Spondylitis (the hunch backs disease) I did not expect to product to equal what I had been buying, but I thought half of that would be a reasonable goal. Now I don’t know if this stuff has even 5% THC. The only relief I got from this was eating three large decarboxilated flowers directly out of the oven. One flower of this size of commercial product would last me a week if smoked (3 to 4 grams each). What happened??? I’m retired, studied every day, tended plants diligently several times a day, bought everything I was directed to, finished product looks good but……Can you help? I certainly don’t want to go all through this and spend all this money again to get nothing. I’m a good gardener. Have raised prize roses and tended my own garden all my life. I can’t believe a plant supposedly a weed, and very hardy, is this finicky, weak, disease prone and now just a weed.”

[Donaldj]

Nutrients given as directed? what brand product line? this can matter since they do require a good diet to develop true potential being very short grow they may not have had the root structure and enough nutrients to get there being in a Veg type soil FFOF is meant to feed your lady during veg 2 months of it’s growth or so after that nutrients are usually tailored to flowering without the cumbersome imbalances of extra N in a veg formulated soil

[MattyBear]

Did all the buds end up looking like the top picture? That kind of looks like bud rot or some mold going on. The bottom photos the plant looks healthy tho.

[VelcroThumb]

Im a rookie myself, not even one grow under my belt yet. My buddy showed me a heartbreaking picture the other day… his huge 6 ft or so plant wss weeks from harvest when Irma hit. We are a few hours from the coast so we got alot of wind. Anyways, he left his girl outside in a fabric pot and eventually her roots grew through the ground. The wind blew it over and his aunt put it back up. Within days all the buds started looking like yours… we assume it was from the roots breaking or being damaged. This goes along with what @MattyBear mentioned about root rot or mold. So sorry to see that happen

[garrigan62]

I hope this helps

During the last week or two of flowering, depending on if you use chemical or organics. If you use chemical, you want to flush 1 ½ weeks to 2 weeks before harvest to flush out all of the chemical nutrients that your plant was using. If you are using Organics then you would want to flush about a week before harvest. Giving them plain water is fine, flushing them also improves the overall quality of your bud. Once you start to ‘flush’ you should check extra careful for bud rot. Bud Rot Happens when the humidity is high, if you have fat dense buds, or if mold spores are in the air. Bud rot looks like a black brownish sludge that can quickly take over your plant and ruin your harvest. The mold spores are air-borne.

Prevent and Control

Removing any dead or dying material from the plant helps prevent bud rot so does decreasing humidity and increasing ventilation. There are also safe anti fungal sprays from hydro shops that help. If you do find gray mould, cut off the infected part of the plant well above and below the effected area and remove it from the grow room. Decreasing the humidity from 55% to around 40% will make a big difference in preventing bud mold. Also having very big buds can cause bud rot, and would advise watching the areas on your plant that have the biggest, thickest and the more dense buds. Try to have medium size buds rather than having big thick buds. Having a dehumidify around when high humidity days can help as well.

To protect them against bud rot for outside. DO NOT foliar spary at night, doing this the heat will not evaporate the water as well because it is night.
Water the plants in the day instead of so close to being night. Same as foliar spraying.

Make sure your plants are stress free as possible and checking plants often can aid in getting rid of moldy bud before the spores spread onto other areas of the plant! Have a lot of air going around the plants for bad ventilation= sick plants and a breeding ground for spores!

Keep leaves away from soil making sure they do NOT touch the soil.

Keep cooler temps at night while plants are on there down time.

If you have gotten bud rot already the best thing to do is cut off the bad buds discard them away from you’re grow and apply any of the following: Neem oil, Neem2 which is a ready made solution!
Using high ph water for foliar spray prevents them from spreading as well kills the mold. pythium is another good product to use! There are many other chemicals and organics that work, but these are the most popular and they work very very well!

Fungus

Fungus is another problem when you are in flowering, because they are susceptible to a fungus or bud rot. Growing conditions for fungus are best when temps are between 60 and 80 degrees and the humidity is high. The fungus is very destructive and spreads quickly. These kinds of fungus are air borne and can travel to other bud sites. If you already have been infected by them the best thing you can do is cut off and remove the infected area and then discard out of the grow area, then get a hold of some anti-fungal spray and apply.

Fungi can kill your crop quick, so invest in some SAFE fungicide and spray down the plants as much as you can and as soon as you can. The faster the safer… If you have had problems with fungus before, do NOT spray them you will contribute to the fungus becoming resistant to the spray/chemicals you are using. Try to keep the humidity down to the range fungus do not grow to well in. Keep a good amount of ventilation around your grow, and if you have plants outside, always keep them quarantined away you’re your indoor plants until you know they are safe.

Most fungicides are very nasty and eating them can be very dangerous so its best to use something on them that is safe on plants that you can eat., Safer makes a very safe product that can be found in most stores and hydro shops. it contains only sulfur in solution. Here is a picture of what bud rot looks like when it starts to form.

Control
To control to prevent fungus from forming there are a few things you should do.

DO NOT foliar feed at night, tends to make humidity higher rather than when you water in the day the water has time to evaporate where at night will linger in the air.

Same goes for watering plants at night, wait till the morning or afternoon to water!

Keep a happy plant and will not become prone to infections. Checking plants often can aid in getting rid of any fungus that may attack other leaves and or bud!

Have a lot of air going around the plants for bad ventilation= sick plants and a breeding ground for spores!

Keep leaves away from soil making sure they do NOT touch the soil.

Keep cooler temps at night while plants are on there down time.

If you have already gotten some kind of fungus there are things you can use: neem2, neem oil works wonders!! Potassium Bicarbonate, Baking soda and for other chemical agents you can use Plant Shield, Serenade and pythium! There are many other chemicals and organics that work but these are the most popular and they work very very well!

Wrote by
Stitch
Posted by
Garrigan

[MattyBear]

Thanks for sharing that Will! I’ve dealt with spots of bud rot on a few of my outdoor greenhouse plants this summer. I’ve just been cutting it out and trying to keep good air flow around them so they make it to the finish line!

[FreakyDeekie]

I am so sorry this happened to you. It stinks! I am new to this and recently had a sudden, overnight, infestation of spider mites. They were so bad on my Gold Leaf plant that I took the plants outside, gently hosed them off and then sprayed them with Azamax, let them dry and then put them back down in their tent. The next morning all of the spider mites were gone but my poor Gold Leaf was 3/4 dead with no fan leaves left, few sugar leaves, etc, Tricomes were there but there weren’t many. I took the plant down after 36 hours, washed her like the .method in H202 and rinsed and hung. Dried a bud and got nothing off of it. It’s been hanging for 8 days and I smoked a bud last night and actually it wasn’t bad, nothing to write home about, but I did get a decent buzz. Is there any chance that the spider mites got to your buds and sucked up all of your tricomes?

[dbrn32]

Also looks like pH was pretty low for soil grow.

[rodri59]

What @dbrn32 said.

I am currently having slight ph issues and it is amazing how quick things can go south with ph out of range. 5.5 is pretty low for FFOF.

[garrigan62]

@rodri59

Maybe this will help you out some my friend.

One of the first signs of having a slight ph problem is, your plant having part of the
leaves kind of twisty, spotty with brown, yellowish, red spots within each other.
Sometimes they don’t have to have all the colors, they could just be spots that have
yellowish brown, or just reddish brown and can happen anywhere on the plant. Mainly
starts on big fan leaves then goes to little leaves.
When this happens you need to check your soil ph, water ph before and after adding your
nutrients. One of the biggest causes is adding nutrients like earth juice; they take the
ph down quite a bit. Also can happen when you add bone and blood meal to your soil, that
will throw the ph off as well, so it’s smart to test the mix before putting your plants
into the mix. After the spots happen you will soon see nutrients being locked out, when
that happens DO NOT ADD ANYTHING TO FIX THE PROBLEM UNTILL YOU GET YOUR PH FIXED!! Reason
why is, because
the plant isn’t absorbing that nutrient, by adding the nutrient it is deficient in, you
are causing it to have a build up in the soil therefore can cause that nutrient to become
toxic to the plant, because of buildup, to much buildup of certain nutrients will lock
out other nutrients. In order to fix the problem you will need to first fix the ph and
then if the soil is deficient in nutrients you can add it to fix the problem. A digital
PH tester is the best tester to use as they are the most accurate. If you can’t afford
a digital ph meter, then your best bet is to get ph testing papers. DO NOT get soil testers,
those are the cheapest junk I ever seen and do not give good readings, so you cant rely on
one of those. There are a lot of good ph testers out there, one of them is hanna. That is
the one I use and is the best money ever spent! Vast majority of problems with soil ph comes
from the soil if it has additives like peat moss, which is HILGY acidic… and or the water
you are
using, as well as nutrient deficiencies from using the wrong ph for watering. You want to be
careful when adjusting your ph, doing this over a week is the best idea, to fast will cause
shock to the plant. If you can’t get a hold of a ph tester or ph test papers. If you have some
dolomite lime, its always better to use it in soil rather than every time you water, imo and
from others (Uncle Ben) That it really doesn’t stabilize as many people think it does, Soil pH
and micronutrient availability are interrelated. Don’t Use to much lime to decrease the soil
pH to a point where micronutrients can’t be unavailable to plants. The micronutrients affected
by pH include iron, manganese, zinc and, not as often copper. The problems when you apply to
much lime can make it harder to correct your ph than what you would have when you didn’t add as
much lime. You can always add more lime, but if you add to much you can’t remove it if you put
to much lime in the soil. With great soil moisture, lime will work immediately and pH will start
to change over a few months. However, it can take up to a year for the real benefit of lime to work.
As the soil pH rises, the time it takes for lime to react decreases due to lower levels of soil acids.
If you need to change your ph when its to high, if you choose to use lime it will not help as much as
you think in lowering your ph, it would need alot of lime to lower your ph to a point where it would
cause a toxcicity to the plants so look else where to use something to lower your ph rather than
using lime.

So here at the bottom is a list of some buffers that are good to go with when raising and lowering ph!

Here are some ph buffers when your ph is too high: Use these SOIL PH Adjustments to lower your ph:
sawdust, composted leaves, wood chips, cottonseed meal, leaf mold and peat moss. Sawdust, composted leaves,
woodchips and, lemon juice, PH DOWN.

Hydro PH Adjustments: PH Down (vinegar and lemon juices are good for soil, but not recommended
for hydro use) Phosphoric acid during flowering and Nitric acid for vegtative growth.Thanks goes
out to syko2 for that one! (Only quality PH buffers should be used to adjust ph and be sure the
buffer and nutrient work’s well together.)

Here are some that will raise the ph: use these SOIL Adjustments when your ph is to low: PH UP,
dolomite lime, hardwood ash, bone meal, crushed marble, or crushed oyster shells, potassium
hydroxide <— Thank you Uncle Ben!

Hydro Adjustments: PH UP,lime,potassium hydroxide and potassium sillicate .(Only quality PH
buffers should be used to adjust ph and be sure the buffer and nutrient work’s well together.)

Will

[rodri59]

@garrigan62, dood you are a wealth of information!! Thanks for this

[Screwauger]

Very sorry your end result was less than satisfactory, it happens. It certainly sounds like, you did all you could. I think you have already been given sound advice (5.5pH is a hydro/coco pH not a soil pH).

The other thing I would recommend is when the beans go into the pot, start a grow journal in the beginners section of the forum. Photos and support tickets get you lots of real time input and advice as to what may or may not be happening to your plants, soil, etc.

I do not thin in the end this poor result is the fault of genetics or nutrients but rather, a culmination of things and inexperience. It may be a weed but based on the volumes of information on this site alone (ILGM) it’s very clear that to grow excellent product requires some skill, some luck, some time and some mistakes. Temp, humidity, moisture, nutrients, pests, diseases, over-loving, under-loving; all these things can take an excellent strain with proven results and you can still wind up with an underwhelming product. Again, very sorry and most growers get the disappointment. JUst in the past month I have seen beautiful, near harvest plants rendered to the garbage can because of mold and pests.

Best of luck and do not wait until your underwhelming product is in the bowl, start a journal early on and seek input and advise. Your plant, as posted above would have surely gotten comments from experienced growers that it did not appear to be performing at the same rate as other documented grows of WW.

[Caosred]

Damm so sorry to see that yes oooks bit like over use of love to me