So it's been really humid and raining here lately. I found spots of powery mildew on my plants. It was mainly on the fan leaves but one bud was infected. I bought a solution from the hydro shop and sprayed them. I don't see anymore mildew. Today I was inspecting my buds and I noticed that some of the hairs are turning a brownish color. Also, a few of the leaves that were coming out of the bud were brown and looked unhealthy. I touched one of the buds and it basically fell apart in my fingers. Not sure if I should completely remove the rest of that bud. I do have a lot of little yellow caterpillars on my plants. Not sure if it's a mold or a bug issue.
The caterpillars do damage like this, but so does powdery mildew. Since you treated the plants for the mildew, you should now attend to the caterpillar issue. Spay with Thuricide (BT) every week and it should get rid of them. As a precaution I would cut away the brown areas to slow down the spread.
Thanks Nate. How do you feel about the hairs turning that color? Is that a bad sign? The plants are all outdoors.
The hairs turning brown means that your plant is maturing, the majority of hairs will be brown by the time you harvest. The only issue I see is in picture one, right below the top bud there is a brownish area I would trim that small section off.
Seems like bud rot to me. I've lost plenty of great buds to this, so you better cut off the infected area as mentioned, and isolate the sick plant from other plants so the fungal spore won't spread to other plants. Trust me, fungi can spread like a wild fire, ruining months of hard work in days.
Okay, I just trimmed. I'm also going to spray for the caterpillars. Is the powdery mildew the same mold that causes bud rot? I went through all the buds. Only two had any brown. Minus the brownish hairs that are forming. I cut everything that looked questionable out.
I don't believe that the fungus is the same, they belong to different families of fungi but they usually cause the buds to die in the same manor.
So I 100% found evidence of bud rot today. The whole bottom of the bud was falling apart. It also clearly had mold on it. I snipped off the entire bud. I lightly shook all the plants to get off as much water as I could Still fucking raining. We have had fog and rain for a week now. I went through all the others. On the surface they look okay. How likely is it that the others will or are going to get infected? Should I be doing anything else to help prevent it?