I guess the correct headline here is bud rot.
Took a while to figure out why I ran into these issues, after a bit more snooping around and investigating I came to a mostly certain conclusion.
My passive intake was clogged with dust, barely any air was coming into the grow room. This, coupled with the fact my temperature and RH sensor/recorder was giving me back dated information and applying it to the present day. I didn’t realise I was getting 80%+ RH spikes during lights out for the last 3 weeks. I’ll call it a lesson, and start to check things more regularly around the grow room, not just the plants themselves.
After a heavy crop scout with sterilised gloves and alcohol rub to hand, I carefully pulled back and inspected every cola, washing my hands between each cola.
Unfortunately most of the largest colas fell victim to botrytis, in the end I cut off 7 colas completely and carefully sorted through into 3 separate piles on D100.
One pile was the bin put into double tied sandwich bags with a good spray with 70% alcohol , this contained directly infected areas with a 5cm radius. (235g including fan leaves and stems (wet))
The second pile was for buds that were within 10cm of the rot sites that appeared to be healthy, this went into a brown paper bag, ready for hash making when I complete the harvest in the next couple weeks. (305g including buds and sugar leaves (wet))
The third, and most limited pile was bud sites that were more than 10cm away from the rot sites. These are now successfully dried and are now in their curing jars. Based on the smell, they already smell better than my last harvest so I’m hoping it’s a sign of things to come. (58g buds (dry))
I had to buy a 4x4 tent to temporarily dry the good buds, and will use again when I do the main harvest.
The top colas that are left look a little stressed this week, not sure if it’s to do with shock from early harvest, but I am going in and checking every other day with clean clothes to make sure the problems are not progressing further.
Based on the trichomes (video) the samples look like they’re a week or two away from harvest now, so hopefully I won’t have the throw anymore away before then.
Anyway, waffling over, mainly wanted the detail for my own reference if I ever have to come back to this (I hope not).
Good luck all!