By Mikal Jakubal
It's just a few brown leaves...
After yesterday’s tarantula in the trim scene photo, I thought I’d share these much more gruesome (to growers) images of pot-farm terror. Powdery mildew, mold and stretching buds are three end-of-season demons that rival thieves and law enforcement as the stuff of grower nightmares and B-grade slasher movie plots. Well, if anyone made B-grade slasher movies about growing weed.
The photo at right is Botrytis bud mold or stem mold. It kills the plant as it grows, feeding on the dead plant matter like the giant space amoeba in that old movie THE BLOB. I freakin’ loved that movie as a kid!
Mold first shows as brown leaves on the outside of the bud. This entire bud, including all the way to the bottom of the photo (above), is trashed. Compost. Once you cut into something like this, you find the stems rotten well beyond the surface indicators. If you catch it when you see one teeny, tiny brown leaflet, you can often save most of the bud. Within one or two more days at most, this entire bud would have been brown. It happens faster than the bite of a zombie leaves you undead.
Powdery mildew. No, that is not frosty with hash crystals, it's fungus.
Powdery mildew is caused by another, parasitic, fungus that feeds on the living plant juices like a vampire and spreads by wind-blown spores to infect other healthy leaves and plants. A wooden stake wouldn’t do much, but potassium bicarbonate or hydrogen peroxide foliar spray helps.
The plant pictured above was left untreated for far, far too long. Once it gets this bad, it is very hard to eliminate, especially this close to harvest.
Like one of those beanie caps with the little propeller on top.
This bud (right) was left on the plant well past optimal harvest time. Note how the tip has elongated into a central stalk circled by leaflets and calyxes. It’s the marijuana-plant equivalent of being put on the rack.
Growers call this “stretching” or “helicoptering” because of the way the leaflets protrude in alternating pairs like the blades of a helicopter. I’m a volunteer firefighter/EMT, so I usually consider helicopters a blessing, but they get a bad rap in this town.
Once this bud is harvested and dried, that tip will be cut off, leaving a little snipped off stump-end on the tip of the bud instead of a nice, round, groomed top. This sort of stretching takes place throughout the entire bud structure, decreasing the density and increasing difficulty in trimming. I’m told that leaving them on the plant this long also makes the smoke more “stoney” as opposed to giving a more “up” high had it been harvested earlier. (Opinions on this anyone?)
Leaving a bud on the plant this long also increases the risk of mold, as evidenced by the stretch-out tip on the moldy bud in the first photo.
Happy Day Of The Undead!
Excellent post, Mykal. Very informative and the photos highlighted the problems so that even a novice can see what is happening!
Thanks. These are photos I snapped during my filming in gardens last month, but never got around to posting. Then the Halloween horror theme came around and it seemed like a good fit.
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Wasn’t this the virus that the DEA had Genetically created to attack, Pot plants?
but it was rejected because it was shown that marijuana was the strongest of weeds, and pretty soon the fungus would mutate to attack any plant but marijuana.
i believe this happened in the late 1980’s but of course since the story was buried.
THAT has got to be the most conspiratorial idea I’ve heard yet, right up there with “chemtrails” being sprayed on Humboldt to cause mold or hermaphrodism in pot plants. It’s Botrytis, a fungus, not a virus and has been around on Earth for, like, two billion years or so, long before pot plants. The DEA would never actually try something like that because they need pot growers worldwide. Imagine if they did develop a virus that instantly killed 100% of pot plants. Next year there would be no need for the DEA’s marijuana interdiction and eradication programs, putting a whole lot of agents out of work. It’s like suggesting that the Border Patrol wants to build the ultimate immigrant-proof fence along the U.S. borders. Next year, there would be a whole lot of agents working in the California tomato fields. (Now, that is kind of a nice image, isn’t it?)
Everyone is invested in these sorts of “crimes,” the enforcement agencies as much as the drug producers/smugglers and people smugglers. It’s a big-money business all around. (And we won’t go into the allegations of CIA drug smuggling to fund covert operations.) Not that I’m advocating anything to actually eliminate pot or immigration, but this economic and political relationship explains the seemingly irrational behavior of the government.
So, what your saying is that it is okay to smoke fungal marijuana.. Or do you just harvest the plant before spreads? what do you do ?
Ick, no! Most people will cut out the moldy garbage and throw it in the compost. Usually any mold at all is a clue that it is time to harvest immediately, since the Botrytis mold can spread like wildfire, destroying a crop in days. It’s crazy fast in the right conditions. Even if someone tried to distribute this nasty stuff, you’d know it. Even when dry it looks bad and stands out against the green bud. It is possible to get mold hidden in larger buds, but all conscientious growers I know excise anything even remotely moldy-looking.
Dealing with this monstrosity of a fungus right now, im snipped out some dry parts andnow iam praying for my outdoor fire og and purp kush….will some one else pray 4 me…..
From what I’ve heard, many people along the coast are dealing with it as well. Inland has been so hot and dry that I haven’t heard of problems there. Good luck. Yuck.
I am a new grower. I had several plants but only one has a white powder on the leaves, and it is growing great except for the strange powdery stuff on it. The other plants turned out fine, no white stuff. They were all in an outdoor location within 3 feet of each other. Could this white stuff be powdery mold? If so, am I just lucky the other plants don’t have it?
Hi Frank, thanks for reading my blog. Sounds an awful lot like powdery mildew to me. Look online for treatments. I hear several natural methods here: diluted hydrogen peroxide, milk spray and potassium bicarbonate. Look up proper ways to use these. Lots of people swear by them and they’re all nontoxic. No need to use poisonous fungicides. Whatever you do, you’ll want to get rid of it before harvest.
As to why one plant had it and others didn’t, that seems to be a function of the different strains. Some are prone to it. Like I said, look on the pot growing forums for actual advice.
Hi all, I am also currently dealing with this yuk. I had never seen it before. It is taking over pretty fast. Mikal, what happens if you harvest with the white mole? I am harvesting now. Does it dye when the plant dries?
Yes, the powdery mildew dies when the plant is dried, but you don’t want to dry it with that stuff on it. Last I heard, there aren’t any known negative health effects from smoking powdery mildew but, as a matter of general principles, you wouldn’t want to do it! Like I said to Frank below, look around the online pot forums for detailed info on how to control or remove it before harvest. I’m not the expert on these production details, I just report. 🙂 Good luck.