Recognizing Cannabis Bud Rot: How to Prevent it from Spreading?
Cannabis bud rot is something you won’t want in your growing area because it can damage your crop ultimately. During your cultivation, you may have to face bud rot, root rot, or even mold kind of situation.
Having all these things inside your growing area is an alarming situation for inexperienced growers. Even though experienced growers find it difficult to tackle these situations, that’s why it’s essential to keep an eye on your growing area, identify the problem, and how to avoid them.
In this article, we’ll talk about what exactly is cannabis bud rot and how to identify it in order to prevent it from spreading inside your crop.
What is Cannabis Bud Rot?
So, what exactly is bud rot?
Cannabis bud rot is one of the kinds of mold that develops in the base of the cannabis bud system. Sooner or later, it starts to spread outwards.
It’s extremely hard to identify in its prior periods. One thing is sure; mold usually develops in the flowering stage of plants. During the flowering phase, buds become more sensitive to bud rot.
So, the question is how it spread in other plants?
After the outbreak, bud rot quickly surrounds the different buds; then, it starts to produce small reproductive units that spread to other plants or growing areas.
Well, you already know what bud rot is? Now, you may be wondering how it looks like and how to identify it before spreading it towards other buds? You’ll figure it out in the next section.
What Does Bud Rot Look Like?
It looks like a white feather at the initial stages, and as the bud turns soft and greasy, it turns black or grey. The grey mold is also known as bud rot botrytis.
Once it starts to appear on your plants, the whole growing area would be unsafe. It’s essential to throw away those infected plants once you find out which one is infected.
Don’t ever try to keep or heal the infected plants unless you’re an exceptional grower. Once you’ve done that, your entire space will no longer be safe.
Many experienced growers usually chop off the infected part of the plant and let it remain in the growing area. Well, if you’re not an exceptional grower, you would have to be more cautious while cutting the infectious bud.
Plus, you have to make sure that you’ve checked each and every plant in the growing space.
Yet you find bud rot signs in other plants, and you may have to chop off the infected plants to protect your growing space.
What Causes Bud Rot?
Well, cannabis bud rot commonly happens in outdoor cultivation after the rainy season — especially at the end of the cultivation when buds are more prominent and denser than usual.
But that doesn’t mean indoor growing is safe from mold. Still, indoor growers need measurable precautions to stay away from bud rot infection.
Before salvaging bud rot, you need to know the leading causes or reasons for bud rot are? The best way to stay away from the cannabis bud rot is to recognize the conditions that allow mold to spread on your plants.
1. High Humidity
One of the primary bud rot causes is high humidity.
Mold usually attacks when humidity around your growing premises is higher than usual. As we mentioned above, mold mostly strikes when conditions are humid after heavy rainfall.
The same goes for the indoor growers as well. Indoor growers should keep an eye on the humidity level, and it should not exceed the average level. Otherwise, there’s a greater chance of getting bud rot to your plants.
2. Low Temperatures
Mild or shallow temperatures mean more exposure to moisture which leads to mold. Low temperatures are a big concern for outdoor growers because everything is under mother nature. You cannot alter nature unless you’re well prepared.
In indoor growing, everything is under an artificial environment with the help of led grow lights so that you can change things around according to your needs.
The ideal temperature for cannabis plants to grow is between 20 ° — 30 °C. So, anything in between this temperature will minimize the chances of bud rot causes.
3. Impoverish Ventilation
Good ventilation is always required for cannabis plants to thrive.
In indoor growing, ventilation is the only thing that exhausts excessive air and reduces humidity. If you don’t have a good exhaust or ventilation system, soon mold will start to appear to destroy your entire crop.
Outdoor growing always has natural ventilation, so no worries for outdoor growers.
4. Buds Thickness
During the flowering phase, the buds are more vulnerable to mold. As the buds become thicker, there are more chances of getting infected. This is the phase where your plants need more care and protection.
5. Weak Resistance System in Plants
If any problem within the plant occurs, it will show some resistance only if it is strong enough.
But if it’s not strong, it’ll probably get the infection — it works like a human immune system.
How Fast Does Bud Rot Spread?
Once cannabis bud rot makes contact with the plant, it spreads exceedingly quickly and is highly transmissible. If it’s indoor or outdoor, the entire growing area will get infected in a matter of few days.
In short, cannabis bud rot in growing space starts colonizing within 12 hours. That’s how fast bud rot spread in other plants. That’s why you need to stop it by all means.
In the next section, we will discuss how to stop bud rot before making further progress.
How to Stop Bud Rot?
You already seen how dangerous the bud rot is? And how faster it can infect your whole growing space.
So, how can we stop it?
Well, you’ll figure it out in this section. We’ll discuss the precautionary measures for both indoor and outdoor to eliminate the mold.
Let’s start with indoor growing:
Indoor Cannabis Growing:
If you’ve already figured out some plants are infected from bud rot, there’s a high probability that the entire crop will get infected.
So, it’s better to throw away the infected plants before they infect the whole growing space. This is the only way to stop the fungus from spreading. At this point, growers who don’t want to take risks start harvesting straight away.
Always use good LED grow lights and other necessary equipment for indoor growing. These little things can also stop or save bud rot from spreading.
If you’ve found out earlier the presence of cannabis bud rot, you may remove the infected part. But again, this is extremely risky. By doing so, your entire crop is at stake.
There’s another way to treat the fungus and stop it from spreading. By spraying with fungicides on the entire crop, you can stop the infection completely.
BioSafe ZeroTol is one of the powerful bud rot fungicides that kill fungi, bacteria, and algae. This is the best solution, and many gardeners sanitize the entire growing area before and after the harvest.
Outdoor Cannabis Growing:
There are a lot of things that should be considered when you are growing outside.
In indoors, you can manage everything with the help of a controlled environment. But how can you stop bud rot outside? Weather and humid conditions are the primary concern outdoors. These two things can be painful if you are a grower.
You cannot stop the rain, but you can prevent its effect on your plants. By applying a greenhouse to your outdoor growing area, you can keep your plants warm and dry.
Well, that’s the first thing, but how can you reduce the humidity levels? There are lots of dehumidifiers that can help you to reduce your humidity levels outside.
And lastly, follow the footsteps that we’ve discussed in the indoor section to stop bud rot.
How to Prevent Bud Rot?
Like everyone says, prevention is better than cure. It’s better to prevent the bud rot before we have to pay for it.
Let’s start with the prevention of bud rot in indoor gardening:
Indoor Cannabis Growing:
The ideal temperature is the key to preventing all diseases for indoor growing, especially the bud rot botrytis.
Keeping the consistent temperature of your grow will be your highest priority. We discussed earlier a sound ventilation system, exhaust fans, dehumidifiers, and other controlling systems that keep the humidity levels down.
Don’t ever use ordinary lights. Use proper LED grow lights for your plants.
Your plants need to stay strong and have an excellent immune system. A superb resistance can help them to fight against different diseases. That’s where specialized LED grow light comes to boost the immunity of plants.
Remember, excessive humidity is the primary source for plants to get infected by cannabis bud rot. Keeping the levels of humidity in check is the key. This will not only help your plants to stay away from the mold but also keep your plant’s health in check.
Always make some spaces between each plant. Don’t get your growing area denser. The denser the site, the more likely it is to get mold. Pruning will increase the space between plants and reduce the humidity and less likely chance of getting mold.
Outdoor Cannabis Growing:
Like indoor growing, creating space by pruning and feeding is necessary. But when it’s outdoor growing, you’ve limited resources, and you cannot change the course of the weather. Your outdoor plants are more vulnerable to cannabis bud rot.
At outdoors, pruning the bottoms of the plants is essential because, in outdoor growing, there is more moisture available at the base of the plants. The space among the plants will allow air to flow under the buds, which helps to reduce the humidity.
Final saying, cannabis bud rot is the thing that shouldn’t be taken lightly. If it is identified at the earlier stages of its spreading, then it can easily be tackled.
If you’re an inexperienced grower, then you shouldn’t go for the treatment of the plant. Just discard the infected one and move along and follow the footsteps that we mentioned above to travel a successful journey in cannabis growing.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What to do if you get bud rot after harvest?
You should remove and throw away the infected buds, pull off the fan leaves before drying, enhance the airflow, and fast the drying process when you get bud rot after harvest.
2. Does bud rot ruin the whole plant?
Yes, bud rot can easily ruin the whole plant. In fact, it has the ability to ruin your entire crop within hours.
3. Will bud rot spread while drying?
Bud rot develops in humid conditions, mostly in outdoor cultivation. The bud rot can occur and spread while the plant is drying, living, or even in curing.
4. How long does it take for a plant to recover from bud rot?
The answer to this question depends on the steps taken to cure the plant by the grower. One thing is for sure if you find bud rot at its early stages, then it can be curable; otherwise, it cannot. Once it is identified, the damage is of the plant should be obliterated. Then the infected plant is put in a particular place where it gets good air and oxygen. After following each step, the plant will recover within a week.
5. Should you harvest if you have a bud rot?
Bud rot usually develops in the flowering phase. If you see the early development of bud rot, you should start harvesting early. Once it spread, there’s no way to stop it.
