Hacks to support overweight colas?

[majorana]

Paperclips are a great idea.

I just finished 5 days of flush and plan on cropping everything tomorrow. An additional flush might be nicer, but I'd say at least 20% of the crop has been decimated by the mold. (At least as much as I've already cut off, surely there will be more.) It's also probably past prime-THC anyhow at this point anyhow.

It's not that terribly tragic: since this is really only an over-sized hobby (i.e., I don't sell) I don't really have use for more than say 200-300g. Guesstimating, even if half is lost to mold, I'll still have more than twice my needs. But as a hobby, I enjoy getting better-- and avoiding mold is definitely a new challenge to conquer.

This is the first time I've grown regular (non-auto) strains. Mainlining/supercropping was great -- but I didn't foresee some of the implications. With autos I never had colas as long and as thick as my arm, and now I suddenly had ~40 of those.

Smell, I realized, only becomes a problem when I open the tent and the negative pressure (that takes everything thru the carbon filter) is lost. Those ten minutes spent looking for mold, and the extra five minutes just marveling at the ladies, well -- that's where my problem was. I'm going to have to see when my neighbors are away tomorrow when I need to go in the tent, unmount the lights (already turned off for 24h) and crop the plants.

As for prevention, I'm really not sure what more can be done. There were 7 little circulating fans (20-35W each) in the 5*5' tent, on top of the pump (520 m3/h) which should be adequate. One of the plants was actually too close to one of the circulating fans, which caused the trichs to be extra short, but still developed mold. The central plant (5, arranged in an X) didn't seem to be particularly hit. Once I end drying I'll be throwing away this tent and get a new one. Or, perhaps, get 2 smaller 4*4' tents to distribute the risk for the next grow, whenever that will be (possibly not before march 2019).

[sdfoster22]

Different strains have different mold resistance. Checking into that is an option. The more plants you stuff into a tent, the higher it drives the humidity. Maybe leave more room for air flow. Before you open your tent, shower and put on clean clothes. Make sure to sterilize any tools used on plants. Anything can bring mold spores into your grow room. Finally, make sure to keep humidity down to around 50% during flower, to try and keep the mold spores that make it in from spreading.

You don't have to throw your tent away, just clean it with a bleach solution. Google how much bleach to kill mold spores.

[Freeeg0]

From my experience there is no need to go crazy with the sterilization when it comes to grey mold.
Unlike the dreaded PM.
Grey mold spores are basically always present....just saturate with ozone and exhaust a couple time and yer good.

[majorana]

I pretty much never throw stuff away, I just find other ways to repurpose it. Not that I have a clue what that would be, but one day I'll get inventive

The thought is that separating into multiple tents hedges the risk.

I've had mildew in the past, during veg, but managed to handle it. This time it was botrytis.

And I also realized another serious contributing factor: the 552m3/h pump was for whatever reason set on the lower setting, and only did 75% performance.

I'm finally drying. Started trimming already, a couple of hours a day. Definitely my least favorite part. This grow -- switching to regular seeds -- ended up being a steeper learning curve than I expected. But still, I'm none the happier with how the colas look.