Botrtytis Powdery Mildew or Simply K def? With Pics

Aright I have 4 white widow plants under 600w HPS. They are in a 4x4 grow tent, conditions are 68-74F, 25-40% RH. I'm at day 69, planning on harvesting this weekend. A couple days ago I noticed a gray/purple spot on one of the buds so I removed the entire branch and inspected it. Under closer inspection of that branch, a few of the calyxes and small sugar leaves had turned a dark purple at the tip. They were not wet or mushy, and it appeared to only be on the outside of the bud, the inner bud and stem appeared healthy.

A couple days later I noticed a similar purple on a lot of the colas in the garden. Again, it seems to only be on the outside of the buds, I just pulled a bud apart and the inside and stem looked fine. The buds are pretty hard and don't feel mushy at all. If it is PM or bud rot is there anything I can do? How will it effect the bud being so close to harvest should I just chop now instead of waiting a couple days?

I had a heat disaster at week 4 of flower and a lot of the leaves got burned up and never fully recovered, so many of the dying leaves you see in these pics were caused by that. At the same time that makes it hard to identify any new dying leaves that could be caused by mold... In the first picture notice the purple/brown spot in the middle of the bud (as well as the tip). In the second picture notice the darker calyxes and leaf edges. The only thing that is giving me hope is that I do not SEE any mold/fuzz, even with a 30x scope, and the the inside of the buds seems to be ok. But it sure looks like mold to me from a distance.

I am absolutely terrified that my crop is going to be ruined by bud rot or PM! Does this look like something like that or simply a K def turning the leaves purple? This is my worse nightmare, any help is greatly appreciated.

takes pics that arent yellow...cant see correctly to advise

Kite High said:

takes pics that arent yellow...cant see correctly to advise

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Hmm, easier said that done with the light on (or maybe its just my lack of photography skills). I will post a true color pic as soon as the light goes off at noon (2 hours). Thanks for pointing that out.

I should also mention that if I pull on the dying bud leaves they do not come off easily. I know if they fall right off thats a sign of bud mold, but thats not the case here. Also, there is no PM visible on any leaves.

And I'm not sure if this is relevant, but I have been flushing with pure RO water for 10 days.

Maybe heat burn?

Kite High said:

Maybe heat burn?

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That did come to mind, the only thing is I haven't moved my light in a couple weeks and the plants havent grown vertically. Temps at my canopy are no more than 82F when read by IR thermometer. I've also never really seen the purple hue I'm seeing from heat burn, is that possible (I know you cant really see the color in those pics).

I do have a couple Repti-glo high UV CFLs that DID burn some leaves when I had them to close right after I got them. I have since moved them further away, but maybe this is some weird manifestation of UV damage from that happened a few weeks ago.

Well it was definitely my photography skills that were the problem. Im having a real hard time getting a photo that gives an accurate picture of what it looks like. Here are a few, I will try to get a better one tonight, any tips on bud shots?

The first two pics you can see just a bit a purple in the buds. The third pic highlights the area in question a little better but once again the lighting is terrible and it's out of focus

Does this look like some kind of mold/rot? Is it possible to have mold on the outside like this while the inner bud and stem look normal?

Here's a couple pics of the bud that I first noticed the grey/purple spots on and chopped after trimming. Does that bud look aright?

your nugs look fine, the plants look like they are on end stage hospice care.

if you are real close to harvest thats fine, if you got a week or more to go, then you got problems, most likely severe and prolonged nutrient deficiency. of which the most obvious is nitrogen

is see tons of colas but no fan leafs, where are your fan leafs hiding?

please tell me you did not strip the fan leafs off your plants when you started flowering...

give us a pic or two of some randomly selected fan leafs, or your worst fan leaf and your best.

i see no signs of mould fungus or mildew, just plants that need either a good meal, or a harvest.

They look moldy. Make sure your running fans 24/7 .

I do not see bud rot in the pictures you provided. For what it's worth, I have had botrytis outbreaks two times. Both times the infection started in the main cola about half way up the flower. The first time the bud tuned brown and the flower got hard and crunchy. The second time it turned grey and got really squishy. Both times the infection progressed incredibly fast and consumed rather large colas within 2 or 3 days time.

Dr Kynes said:

your nugs look fine, the plants look like they are on end stage hospice care.

if you are real close to harvest thats fine, if you got a week or more to go, then you got problems, most likely severe and prolonged nutrient deficiency. of which the most obvious is nitrogen

is see tons of colas but no fan leafs, where are your fan leafs hiding?

please tell me you did not strip the fan leafs off your plants when you started flowering...

give us a pic or two of some randomly selected fan leafs, or your worst fan leaf and your best.

i see no signs of mould fungus or mildew, just plants that need either a good meal, or a harvest.

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Well that is very reassuring and I think you are probably right because everything else you noted about those pictures is spot on. They indeed are on there last legs. This is my second grow, same strain same room. I thought I had it all figured out after the first round, but oh was I wrong.

As I said in the OP I had a major disaster during week 3 of flowering. The one week I went out of town my thermostat malfunctioned and it hit 100F+ in my grow room during lights out. I'm not sure how long it stayed hot for but I think it was probably at least a day because they totally dried out from the heat. When I got back I thought they were dead, all the leaves were bright yellow and drooping. Over the next week almost all of the fan leaves died and dropped. Even some of the sugar leaves dried up like you can see in the very first pic I posted. Long story short it was basically my worst nightmare. Anyways, much to my surprise the leaves stopped getting worse and buds continued to develop at about the same pace as my first grow which was much healthier so I just let them keep going. So, no I did not remove the fan leaves intentionally, but you are correct that they are missing. I'll post a couple pics of the leaves tonight but even the healthiest fan leaves are bad.

After that incident they looked N deficient so I continued to feed them according to the Foxfarm schedule (soil) but they never really greened up. I don't know if the roots got cooked in the heat or I had a toxic salt buildup or both, but it got to the point where I didn't know if they needed extra feeding or a heavy flush. It seemed like it didn't matter if I fed them or gave the pure water, the leaves either stayed the same or got worse. It pretty much continued like that until a little over a week ago when I decided to just give them a 10-14 day flush and be done with it. My rational was that I'm more concerned with quality/taste than quantity (so much for that plan if they are moldy!) so the flush seemed like a safe plan... In retrospect flushing an already deficient plant for two weeks might not have been smart.

At this point I don't think it's worth feeding them and trying to keep them alive. The trichs are about where I want them anyways. If it turns out that my harvest is ruined by bud rot, after all me and these plants have been through, that would just be terrible.

If you don't think that is some form of mold, what do you think would cause that brown spot in the middle of the bud in pic 1 an the dark calyxes at the tips in all the pics? I really appreciate the help. I'm just trying to decide if I need to take drastic measures and chop them right now and/or start cutting out the purple spots.

wheelt01 said:

I do not see bud rot in the pictures you provided. For what it's worth, I have had botrytis outbreaks two times. Both times the infection started in the main cola about half way up the flower. The first time the bud tuned brown and the flower got hard and crunchy. The second time it turned grey and got really squishy. Both times the infection progressed incredibly fast and consumed rather large colas within 2 or 3 days time.

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Thats reassuring and terrifying at the same time. What were your atmospheric conditions like when you had those outbreaks? I thought I was all good with my humidity maxing out at about 45% at night and I think because of that I got a little lazy with my bud inspecting. Do you think its a different kind of mold causing the brown & crunchy or still Botrytis? That sounds a little bit like what I'm dealing with. My buds do have a bit of a tan hue and are a little crispy. Did you buds looks mostly healthy besides the coloration and feel? Could you see fuzzy or hairy mold (with the naked eye or a loupe)? Was the damage focused more on the inside of the bud or outside? Even when I do see a spot that looks questionable on the outside of cola, I have yet to find anything mold like on the inside of a bud.

*BUDS said:

They look moldy. Make sure your running fans 24/7 .

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I had my ventilation fan and a floor circulating fan running 24/7 and another circulating fan blowing over the canopy during lights on up until a few days ago. I now have all 3 running 24/7.

So I have two votes for no mold (just on there last legs), and one for mold. Still not sure if I should take action and chop these or let them go till the weekend. The colas almost look like they have a tan hue to them under the HPS, but when I look under a 30x loupe all I see is trichs.

Any other opinions? Is there a particular pic I could take to clear this up? Is Botrytis easy to spot under a loupe? Like I say I would be devastated if I let this crop be ruined by mold.

what is your humidity when lights are off? looks like mold

rleezx said:

what is your humidity when lights are off? looks like mold

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40-45% with lights out, 30-35% light on. I'm getting more and more convinced that this is mold too. I just don't know what else it could be. at the same time I've never heard of botrytis being visible only on the outside of the bud, like I said from what I've seen so far all the buds are green and healthy on the inside. When the light comes on tonight I'm going to really investigate.

Things are not looking good. It looks like I have bud rot. I still cant spot any mold hairs or fuzz but I took one of the worse looking buds and it just doesn't look right at all. Is there anything else that could cause the plant to go purple like this? It's pretty bazaar it doesn't really look like any mold I've ever seen but it does look like it is rotting or something. Is that what botrytis looks like?

Man I am confused. Can anyone confirm what this is. It doesn't really look like any of the bud rot pics I've seen. its really only effecting some of the outer calyxes and for the most part only the outer half of the calyx. The Inner bud looks fine. The effected areas are dispersed around the outside of the bud, its not like one big spot of mold like I see in a lot of other pics.

Can anyone confirm this one way or the other? Is there any definitive way to tell for sure? I don't want to toss the buds if I don't know for sure but at the same time I don't want to contaminate the rest of it if it is.

Anyone? Is this for sure mold? The last two pics I posted show the purple I'm talking about.

nickwin said:

Anyone? Is this for sure mold? The last two pics I posted show the purple I'm talking about.

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dude. youre fine. i dont see any budrot, or PM, or spider mites, or budworms, or aspergillis, or aphids, or even any banannas.

relax, smoke a fatty and let the stress escape.

every one of those nugs looked fine, if you had budrot, the core of every cola would be a mass of slime and goop with no plant structure remaining to speak of, rather like that grocer's produce cello bag full of lettuce you forgot in the "crisper" for three weeks and it turned into a brown slimey liquid with no sign of leafs at all.

you are trimming way too tight and losing some excellent smoking marijuanas though.
if you just trim around the nugs to remove the leaves which are NOT heavily crusted with resin glands youll smoke more dope, get higher and be happier.



thats what a properly trimmed cola should look like, some trim closer, some leave them a little shaggier, but thats about what youre shooting for for drying.

when you break em up to start the curing process, most of the fine leaves and straggly bits will crumble off, and you can catch em, roll em, and smoke em, or save them in a bag with the rest of your trim in the freezer for making hash.
loose shake is also a nice thing to add to your tobacco for cool summer mornings on the patio with coffee a danish and a good book.


if youre still worried, send them to me and ill make sure these "tainted" buds are "Properly Disposed Of".

and thats a promise.