This is my fourth harvest since I started and all have been tent grows with 1 plant outside this time around. The bud rot was in the outside plant. I blame myself, live and learn. It grew exceedingly well and had main colas 2-3 times larger than any of my tent grows have gotten. And I've never been disappointed with my tent grows, they have all produced nice stacked buds. The problem was that I let the biggest buds dry without breaking them down a bit. I still yielded over 6 oz , but probably lost 2-4 more due to the largest buds rotting from the inside out. Had I trimmed into thumb size or so instead of forearm size I think I would have avoided that. Big giant buds are great to look at, but they don't dry quite the same as what I consider 'normal' size nugs. I do the 7/7/7 drying method. Hope this may help someone before they run into the same problem.
totally agree, its been years since I've blown out my ego with arm length sativa colas, due to the fear of being rotted down I have dropped some rotters to a bath of bleach and warm water then rinse off allow to dry then pick out the snot with eaze but I'd leave them for cookies and such before toking smart ass once said a bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush or florets in jars is worth more than an arm of rotted cola ..lol cheers ps imo make a breeze way for the external plant?
Thanks for the warning but it's too late, I had the same problem. If I ever grow monster colas again I'm breaking them down before drying. I'm not sure why they grew so well this year, maybe because of the wonderful spring rains or maybe because I turned about 5 inches of fallen pine needles into the soil last fall which should have lowered the pH of my alkaline southwestern soil. Some of the colas were the biggest I've grown in my life. Still I ended up with more good pot than my brother in law, my grandson, and I will be able to smoke in the next couple of years and they go thru a lot of weed plus I got three and a quarter pounds of popcorn. I had bud rot on inside grown plants once before I got a dehumidifier and they smelled bad, these don't smell bad and I didn't see mold but the middle of the dry colas were brown next to the stem. I'll add the brown parts to the popcorn and make oil.