crispy leaves late in flower, brown crispy spots on buds at harvest.

Hi everyone.
These girls started showing leaves going crispy and brown at about week 8 of flower. I wasn't worried about it because they were still showing strong healthy bud growth. I hit them with Nutrifield PK Heavy at week 8 which initiated heavy foxtailing, which is something I usually do as it puts another 10-20% weight on the final yield.
They took an abnormally long time to ripen, I pulled them down at week 13 of flower as I was tired of waiting and the leaf problem had started to affect the bud, trichomes were only about 30% cloudy but the PK Heavy does tend to draw out that time frame anyway.
When I noticed the leaves getting bad I flushed several times with water at PH 6 and checked runoff which was a consistent PH 6. Fed with PH 5.5 - 6.5 water only for a week after that assuming it was a nutrient build up problem. The flushing did absolutely nothing. I'm certain it's not a nute buildup problem as I always go very light on nutrients - I typically run half recommended strength.
Upon harvesting 99% of the bud is just fine, really pleased with it. There are however a few that are brown and crispy and I'm at a loss to figure out exactly why. If anyone can shed a light on it that would be super.
One thing to note is that we have had a pretty severe heat wave the last few weeks and the AC struggles to keep up. Temps at the plant canopy had been hitting 35C for a week straight. If I had to guess I'd say that's the problem but I thought it prudent to bounce it off some folks more experienced than I.
First few photos show the plants I've just hung up with no problems and the last photo shows one of the problem buds.

Strain: Critical Kush
Medium: Hempy buckets in soil with a perlite layer on the bottom up to the drain holes. 40 Liters per plant.
Nutes: Nutrifield Coco (half strength through veg and first 3 wks of flower, ramping to full strength by week 5)
Feed rate: 5 liters per plant when dry during veg to maintain wet/dry cycle, 5 liters per plant every second day during flower making about 20% runoff with a PH 5.5 to PH 6.5 flush once per week.
Additives: Nutrifield Veg Ignitor (veg), Bud Burst (flower), Cargo Boost (full cycle), Fulife (full cycle), Root Nectar (veg), Paclobutrazol (week 1 of flower), Chlormequat (week 2 of flower), PK Heavy (week 8 of flower)
Lighting: 600W HPS one per two plants normally 24 inches off the canopy, but raised up a bit during the heat wave.

That doesn't look like how its supposed to look, no?

Looks like bud rot

Sounds like bud rot too. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then what it is?

When I seen Paclobutrazol and Chlormequat ... I cried

Do you run a/c or dehu during lights out?

Budzbuddha said:

When I seen Paclobutrazol and Chlormequat ... I cried

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Totally. But I don't smoke, wouldn't smoke it if I did, it's what the customer wants and I get paid by the Oh-Zed.

SPLFreak808 said:

Do you run a/c or dehu during lights out?

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AC runs in the air intake 24/7, so it also dehumidifies the intake air. The room is extracted 24 hours with a 200mm centrifugal fan at about 400 watts if I recall correctly, so quite a lot of air flow. room is probably about 8 square meters.

Herb & Suds said:

Looks like bud rot

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So bud rot can be brown and crispy like that? I've never seen it before so I don't really know what to look for. I thought it was more like wilted mouldy looking stuff.

I wouldn't be impressed if I was the customer who's gonna smoke this. How many bud boosters are you using? Would you eat a tomato that's been fed that many shit? It's really interesting seeing how hard you guys work to fail when it's that simple to grow a beautiful healthy weed.

GentleCaveman said:

I wouldn't be impressed if I was the customer who's gonna smoke this. How many bud boosters are you using? Would you eat a tomato that's been fed that many shit? It's really interesting seeing how hard you guys work to fail when it's that simple to grow a beautiful healthy weed.

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We could debate whether using PGRs is a good thing or a bad thing all day long and never come to agreement on anything so I guess the best thing to do is agree to disagree. I told the guy I grow this for exactly what I understand about PGRs which is this: "They make the bud denser and heavier, they might be harmful but there's no concrete evidence that they are, they are commonly used in agriculture but not on things you smoke and it's possible in theory that when you smoke pot grown with them it might, maybe, be bad for you." And he's like "Yeah, use it."
As far as I'm concerned that's about all I'm morally obligated to do, maybe he's saying the same thing to the people he supplies it to and maybe he isn't - it's not my problem once it's his pot.
It was only a decade ago people said GMO soybeans were going to make a trillion people drop dead from cancer.


Anyways, the long and the short of it is that it looks like you guys are right about the bud rot, I cut an affected bud apart today and it's mouldy inside. Thankfully only a small percentage is affected. I guess we can put it down to the added density from the PGRs coupled with too much humidity and possibly not enough air circulation. Ah wells, you dance with the devil.

TheGreatSouthern said:

We could debate whether using PGRs is a good thing or a bad thing all day long and never come to agreement on anything so I guess the best thing to do is agree to disagree. I told the guy I grow this for exactly what I understand about PGRs which is this: "They make the bud denser and heavier, they might be harmful but there's no concrete evidence that they are, they are commonly used in agriculture but not on things you smoke and it's possible in theory that when you smoke pot grown with them it might, maybe, be bad for you." And he's like "Yeah, use it."
As far as I'm concerned that's about all I'm morally obligated to do, maybe he's saying the same thing to the people he supplies it to and maybe he isn't - it's not my problem once it's his pot.
It was only a decade ago people said GMO soybeans were going to make a trillion people drop dead from cancer.


Anyways, the long and the short of it is that it looks like you guys are right about the bud rot, I cut an affected bud apart today and it's mouldy inside. Thankfully only a small percentage is affected. I guess we can put it down to the added density from the PGRs coupled with too much humidity and possibly not enough air circulation. Ah wells, you dance with the devil.

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But shouldn't the humidity be low if your a/c has been working overtime? Anyways, some strains are sensitive to rot, those same strains get even more sensitive if they are nearing lockout or fed incorrect ratios.

TheGreatSouthern said:

Totally. But I don't smoke, wouldn't smoke it if I did, it's what the customer wants and I get paid by the Oh-Zed.

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The customer wants to be poisoned? Ok

SPLFreak808 said:

But shouldn't the humidity be low if your a/c has been working overtime? Anyways, some strains are sensitive to rot, those same strains get even more sensitive if they are nearing lockout or fed incorrect ratios.

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Yes quite right, humidity should have been low. I actually have two portable ACs in the doorway where the intake is, and they make a fair bit of water. The extractor fan is quite a high CFM unit too so I would have thought humidity would not be a problem. I don't have a humidity meter in the room though unfortunately and I wish I had put one in, I actually used to have one years ago but stopped using it as I never had any humidity problems whatsoever. The feed schedule has been exactly the same as every other time I've run that strain with the only difference being this is the first time I've used PGRs on them.

curious2garden said:

The customer wants to be poisoned? Ok

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I didn't ask him if he wants to be poisoned. Maybe I should have just to be sure, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't. I wonder if he asks his customers.
Fortunately for everyone concerned, there is absolutely no hard evidence that residual PGRs in cannabis, when smoked, cause harm.
Quite a bit of paraphrased garbage from a few folks cherry picking the bits from a few not quite relevant studies to support their scaremongering but that's about the extent of it and there's the evidence that some PGRs when burned turn into nitrosamines - but that said if you're worried about nitrosamines in your body forget about the PGR weed and cut your bacon intake down a bit.
Maybe we should cut and paste this thread into a PGR debate thread, it's starting to feel like it's in the wrong place.

You shoulda asked him if he wants real weed or green, weed looking thing thats filled with bullshit. I'm not even concerned about health problems you might have smoking it. I'm just concern about all that nute mixing, money, work to fail. You are way better off growing organic ESPECIALLY if you are growing commercially. You probably have alot more experience than me considering I'm just a dude thats on his first grow, But have you ever catched your dad doing something stupid? For example like opening a package in a way thats harder than normally opening it. And you know he's been doing it for 50 years from how hes doing it. You ask him why he does that and he has no idea why? Thats how I look at hydro growers. Yeah you can grow weed with mixing 88 bottles, guessing what it needs and chasing your tail. But you can just let plant do its thing thats evolved to do for thousands of years. You can't make thousands of years of evolution better with some bottles. If you can't make it better why don't just let it do its thing? Thats what I'm talking about when I say working to fail. I don't care about poison or whatever.

One day people gonna talk about bottled nutrients like they are talking about cigarettes now. "Do you remember when they used to say its healthy, lol"

Do some research for yourself and your customers. Invest few hours of your time to save yourself years of work and disappointment.

TheGreatSouthern said:

I didn't ask him if he wants to be poisoned. Maybe I should have just to be sure, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't. I wonder if he asks his customers.
Fortunately for everyone concerned, there is absolutely no hard evidence that residual PGRs in cannabis, when smoked, cause harm.
Quite a bit of paraphrased garbage from a few folks cherry picking the bits from a few not quite relevant studies to support their scaremongering but that's about the extent of it and there's the evidence that some PGRs when burned turn into nitrosamines - but that said if you're worried about nitrosamines in your body forget about the PGR weed and cut your bacon intake down a bit.
Maybe we should cut and paste this thread into a PGR debate thread, it's starting to feel like it's in the wrong place.

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We are not discussing oral or dermal we are discussing vaporization and/or combustion and subsequent inhalation. Please link me to your peer reviewed science demonstrating safety in the human organism.
Thank you

TheGreatSouthern said:

I didn't ask him if he wants to be poisoned. Maybe I should have just to be sure, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't. I wonder if he asks his customers.
Fortunately for everyone concerned, there is absolutely no hard evidence that residual PGRs in cannabis, when smoked, cause harm.

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This is exactly the sort of self-satisfied unscience the Tobacco Institute (USA) used to block necessary legislation for decades. The compounds in question are not safe for humans when ingested, and we have no information on what hazards they present when combusted and inhaled. So "no hard evidence of harm" becomes a weasel-word for "I don't know and I don't want to know because I have an interest in protecting the salability of my crop, and to hell with honesty".

Quite a bit of paraphrased garbage from a few folks cherry picking the bits from a few not quite relevant studies to support their scaremongering but that's about the extent of it and there's the evidence that some PGRs when burned turn into nitrosamines - but that said if you're worried about nitrosamines in your body forget about the PGR weed and cut your bacon intake down a bit.
Maybe we should cut and paste this thread into a PGR debate thread, it's starting to feel like it's in the wrong place.

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It is a basic principle of any honest merchant to disclose what additives and processes are in a product offered for sale. You are deliberately withholding this information from your mentioned wholesaler(s), which means your final customers are buying a product they have every reason to believe is ok but isn't. And your wholesalers are not given the info. So I conclude that you have set out to grow and profit from a product that you have intentionally fouled so it'll harm the customers, slowly, painfully but above all deniably. Why do you have such hatred for pot smokers?

GentleCaveman said:

You shoulda asked him if he wants real weed or green weed looking thing thats filled with bullshit. I'm not even concerned about health problems you might have smoking it. I'm just concern about all that nute mixing, money, work to fail. You are way better off growing organic ESPECIALLY if you are growing commercially. You probably have alot more experience than me considering I'm just a dude thats on his first grow, But have you ever catched your dad doing something stupid? For example like opening a package in a way thats harder than normally opening it. And you know he's been doing it for 50 years from how hes doing it. You ask him why he does that and he has no idea why? Thats how I look at hydro growers. Yeah you can grow weed with mixing 88 bottles, guessing what it needs and chasing your tail. But you can just let plant do its thing thats evolved to do for thousands of years. You can't make thousands of years of evolution better with some bottles. If you can't make it better why don't just let it do its thing? Thats what I'm talking about when I say working to fail. I don't care about poison or whatever.

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So how are bottled nutrients worse than adding poisons?