Nowadays, it is now easier to grow your own marijuana plants at home and in concern of your gray molds in marijuana plants than it is to buy the buds from reputable sellers and from retail outlets. After all, ever since marijuana became legal in a lot of countries and states, you are also allowed to not only use it for recreational and medical purposes but to grow the plants in the comforts of your own property as long as you grow the seeds within limits provided to you by the law.
Since you are now allowed to grow marijuana plants, it is a good idea to learn more about marijuana cultivation so that you will be able to grow them from seeds in the best way possible. You have to know what they need to grow healthily, such as the nutrients and the type of growing method that is suitable for one kind of strain or another. However, it is even more important to know what kinds of different conditions can potentially harm and damage your marijuana plants.
Many different marijuana growers will go on to tell you that arguably the riskiest hazard to see on your cannabis plants are those dangerous gray molds. Also called bud rot, these gray molds are especially dangerous to your buds because they can potentially affect the way the buds grow and can even make them unsuitable for consumption. As such, it is important that you know more about gray molds and how to prevent them.
What are Gray Molds in Marijuana Plants?
Gray molds, otherwise known as bud rot, is a cannabis condition that stems from a disease that your plants suffer as a result of an infection that happens in the dense cores of your marijuana buds. Unlike other types of molds, the bad thing about bud rot is that it starts from the stem inside the buds and then will slowly work its way out to the rest of the bud until the infection takes over it. It will break down the entire bud and will produce its own spores to infect not only the other parts of the infected cannabis plant but also nearby marijuana plants.
In that sense, gray molds are dangerous not only because they make the buds unsuitable for consumption but also because they can potentially harm the entire plant as well as all of the other cannabis plants nearby because of how easy its spores are to spread out. In that regard, identifying bud rot and then removing the affected plant or bud is more than essential for the survival of your entire cannabis garden.
How to Identify Gray Molds in Marijuana Plants
Identifying gray molds at its onset can be pretty difficult. After all, as mentioned, bud rot usually happens from the inside in the core of the bud and then will begin to spread out from the inside all the way to the outside. As such, identifying the rot when it starts from the inside tends to be almost impossible. The best you can do is to identify gray molds once they manifest on the outside of the buds and before they could spread out to the rest of the plant and to the other marijuana around out.
Usually, gray molds are just visible in some parts of marijuana, even though they may have already been developing inside. There are times when it is only visible in buds that are bigger, but smaller buds may actually have already been infected from the inside.
Grey molds are quite easy to pinpoint once they have already manifested on the exterior of the bud. They will appear like a very thick carpet of spores that are grayish in color to the naked eye. These spores may appear as bruises in some cases and will cause discoloration on the buds and will eventually turn into a rot that can spread out to the rest of the entire plant. In some cases, the rots can even develop into spores that can actually affect nearby marijuana plants.
Once the rots have already manifested, they tend to stand out because they make the entire bud look dead. Even growers who have no experience in the field of germinating marijuana will immediately know that something is wrong with those buds even if they do not really know what exactly is wrong. At this point, it is best to do something about the rots, or else you can lose your entire marijuana garden due to bud rot.
At times, one of the best ways to identify the onset of gray molds is not by looking at the buds and inspecting them for spores. Instead, it might be more effective to inspect the leaves and to check if they seemingly died overnight. Leaves that turned to a more yellowish color quickly means that molds may have developed at their base. However, this might not always be the case as there are other reasons as to why marijuana leaves turn yellow seemingly overnight. This is merely one of the ways you can tell whether molds are starting to develop in the marijuana plant.
What Are the Causes of Bud Rot?
The main cause of bod rot or gray molds is the fungus known as Botrytis cinerea. As mentioned, this fungus will start to affect the entire bud from the inside. You might not be able to see it from the outside, but if you break the bud open, you will definitely see the rot starting from the inside.
This fungus Botrytis cinerea does not only affect marijuana plants but can also cause rots to other types of plants. In that sense, it really is known as a plant killer and is notorious for being a bunch rot kind of fungus because it tends to cause rots to your plants in bunches instead of simply damaging or killing one plant or a part of one plant.
But how does this fungus get to your plant? Well, it usually infects your marijuana plant from dusty gray spores that the wind blew from another plant that was infected. Your plant can also get it from infected rainwater that carries the fungus. As such, marijuana plants that are exposed out in the open are more susceptible to this kind of fungus since wind and rainwater can easily get to them compared to cannabis plants that are grown indoors.
How to Prevent Gray Molds in Marijuana Plants
When it comes to grey molds or to bud rot, there is some bad news. Once the rot starts to manifest in a cannabis bud from the inside, there is no way to prevent it or to cure the bud of the rot. The good news, however, is that you can still salvage the plant and all of the other plants around the affected bud so long as you detected the early signs of rot as soon as possible. And the better news is that you can actually prevent the rot from happening in the first place if you know the best ways to prevent it.
Here are some of the ways for you to prevent and get rid of gray molds:
Get rid of the infected buds as soon as you can
There is no better way to put it. Once you see that molds are starting to manifest on the exterior of the infected bud, discard it. Throw it away before it develops its own spores and starts to infect other plants. Go get a pair of scissors or a cutter and then trim the infected area from the rest of the blood. Clean the wound of the plant with alcohol. After that, keep the infected portion free from the rest of the plant by throwing it in a trash bag. You may incinerate the infected part if you want to. If there are several affected parts, make sure you clean the scissors or the cutter using alcohol every after you cut out an infected portion to prevent it from spreading.
Again, there is no treatment to bud rot. Once the rot has already manifested, it is time to cut your losses and decide to get rid of the affected plants or buds before the fungus spreads. It might be too difficult to decide to throw the buds away, but that is better than having your entire garden getting infected.
Adjust the environmental conditions to prevent molds
The best way for you to prevent gray molds and to minimize the risk of your plants suffering from bud rot is to adjust the environmental conditions in your cannabis garden or grow space. Molds then to thrive well in places that are quite humid. As such, make sure to lower the humidity in the grow space so that the molds will find it more difficult to propagate.
Decrease the moisture on your plants
If you are growing them outdoors, protect them from rainwater, and learn to rely more on the usual type of water you use to hydrate your marijuana plants because molds also thrive in moisture.. If you are growing your plants indoors, try to maximize the period between watering so that there are times when your marijuana plants stay a bit dry. If you need to provide your plants with water, watering the soil is a better choice than misting or spraying the entire cannabis grow space.
Improve the airflow in the cannabis grow space
For outdoor cannabis growers, make sure you grow them in an area where wind and air can flow freely so that the moisture does not get trapped in one place. For indoor growers, investing in a good fan system to blow air in and out of the grow space is essential to improve airflow.
Harvest as early as possible once your buds are ready for harvest, or else you might be putting your ready buds at risk to molds. While there are some strains that are better off given a few more days or weeks once they have started to flower, harvesting them early is still better than waiting for molds to start to take over.
