# Need help fast: New harvest starting to smell musty



## Volcano Buds (Aug 17, 2019)

I just finished my first grow and harvested early yesterday. It has had an incredible aroma until just a few hours ago...now it’s quickly beginning to smell musty. I live in Colorado,  but I’ve kept the room at an RH of roughly 45%. I just felt the buds and they’re pretty moist so I opened the tent to help it air out and I cut off most of the bigger stems as well.

I put a ton of work into this crop and I’m freaking out about losing it to mold or bud rot, so I’d appreciate any help!


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## hollowpoint (Aug 18, 2019)

Hi VB.... It is normal for the smell to change from a strong cannabis smell to one of curing hay or alfalfa smell. Keep plenty of air flow on your drying crop and it should be fine, in my area I dry for about 10 days and then its off to the jars to cure with regular burping. Good luck with everything.


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## CannabisKidPot420 (Aug 18, 2019)

Yeah I totally agree with HP and he is right just give it planty of air but keep them buds out of any kind of light so don't expose them to any lights because if you don't keep your buds out of any lights then it can degrade your THC levels and making your stash very harsh.

I learned that many times in the past and learned that the hard way through trial and error!.

If you do jar them then I would highly recommend that you tint your jar's on the outside with either duck tape or just spay paint the outside of your jar's black to keeping any kind of light in getting in your jar's of buds because any kinds of light can defiantly degrade your buds THC and can and will make your stash very harsh, it my not happen right away depending on the circumstances but it can happen in over a length of time or even sooner!.

I always make it a good habit to never let any of my stash get in direct light of any kind.

If you are hanging your buds to dry in a closet that's a good place to or where ever you will not disturb them from being exposed to any kind of light and keep it in total complete darkness. You need to do this so the cells have enough time of to break down and dry out and to allow the green chlorophyll to also break down to a smooth tasting bud flower!.

If you don't believe me on this then google about it regarding light degrading THC on bud flowers flavor.

I wouldn't never lie to you about this!.

Give it time you'll be getting really stoned very soon in the next 10 or 12 days from now!. LOL

Sincerely,
CK


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## Volcano Buds (Aug 18, 2019)

hollowpoint said:


> Hi VB.... It is normal for the smell to change from a strong cannabis smell to one of curing hay or alfalfa smell. Keep plenty of air flow on your drying crop and it should be fine, in my area I dry for about 10 days and then its off to the jars to cure with regular burping. Good luck with everything.


Thanks HP! Your totally right...it smells like hay/alfalfa! The buds turned from just sticky to really moist the day after I harvested, so I did some trimming, then added another fan to the tent last night and they’re much dryer already this morning. The overpowering smell of hay and alfalfa has also started to improve some, so I think they’ll be fine.


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## CannabisKidPot420 (Aug 18, 2019)

Volcano Buds said:


> Thanks HP! Your totally right...it smells like hay/alfalfa! The buds turned from just sticky to really moist the day after I harvested, so I did some trimming, then added another fan to the tent last night and they’re much dryer already this morning. The overpowering smell of hay and alfalfa has also started to improve some, so I think they’ll be fine.


Your welcomed


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## Volcano Buds (Aug 18, 2019)

CannabisKidPot420 said:


> Yeah I totally agree with HP and he is right just give it planty of air but keep them buds out of any kind of light so don't expose them to any lights because if you don't keep your buds out of any lights then it can degrade your THC levels and making your stash very harsh.
> 
> I learned that many times in the past and learned that the hard way through trial and error!.
> 
> ...


Thanks CK! 
I’ve got the buds drying in a dark, ventilated tent with fans, but I did have them in the light for 3 or 4 hours while trimming. I’ll keep them in total darkness now and when I move them to jars, I’ll keep them in a dark tent as well.


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## CannabisKidPot420 (Aug 18, 2019)

Volcano Buds said:


> Thanks CK!
> I’ve got the buds drying in a dark, ventilated tent with fans, but I did have them in the light for 3 or 4 hours while trimming. I’ll keep them in total darkness now and when I move them to jars, I’ll keep them in a dark tent as well.



I almost thought that you forgotten about me there for a while there VB LOL

Yeah at least you'll have lots of smoking to do and to catching up to! LOL

As for the light while trimming,
I personally hope you haven't lost to much of the THC resin dry off from the lights being on it as long as you didn't have the lights directly on them but from a far distance for 3 or 4 hours idk so
If that could have an impact on your THC resin potency but only time will tell when you try and smoking it. So yeah I read up on that lights being on buds can trash hash your weeds bud in a 1994 high times magazine and I was skeptical about it at first but it did make a lot of sense in the long run later on. Especially when I had 12 pounds of buds that I had out on my kitchen table one time and had the lights on it in my up stairs hot apartment cutting up buds for a few days. By the time that I had finished cutting up buds for a few days my stash became harsh stash and lost most of it's potency. Especially since I personally didn't believe reading that article in the hight times magazine until I tried smoking it. Then after that I become  a beliver and no longer was skeptical about it any longer.

If it was by a darker side of the place from where you were cutting up buds for 3 or 4 hours then it really shouldn't be to bad or to harsh hopefully for your sake!.

However,
I wasn't there to know exactly what lighting you were doing it in or how far or how close to the lights you were but if I were there I would have given you a hand with it because I had my own harvest and I had nobody to help me so I know exactly how that crap feels like. Its not one of the fun parts about doing weed due to having resiny and very sticky fingers and wearing rubber gloves or not the buds still sticking to your fingers with the buds still stuck to your bare hands or gloves even while your moving your hands away from it and the buds still attached to your fingers. LOL

That's never the fun parts about it unfortunately but the growing and smoking it are LOL

Especially when your buds sticking to your fingers and where your about to move your hands away from it it's still stuck to your fingers with the buds hanging off your fingers LOL

Kind of reminds you of those sticky rodent glue traps doesn't it?
LMFAO





LMFAO


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## CannabisKidPot420 (Aug 18, 2019)

Sorry If I made any errors in my last message to you I just waked and baked so I'm really stones high AF
LOL


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## CannabisKidPot420 (Aug 18, 2019)

You'll need to do a page refresh since I had to correct a lot of my spelling errors sorry about that just to stoned LOL


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## Volcano Buds (Aug 18, 2019)

CannabisKidPot420 said:


> View attachment 254195
> Sorry If I made any errors in my last message to you I just waked and baked so I'm really stones high AF
> LOL


Holy F-bomb, those are some impressive buds! I was up really late last night trimming and I think I fell asleep just before your 1st post. And damn, it is a ton of work trimming and manicuring! I think it gave me carpal tunnel in my cutting hand. Lol

I was grabbing about a 1/2 ounce of buds from the tent at a time to trim and I only had direct light on the buds I was trimming, which was probably in roughly 10 minute increments.

I also realized once I started to manicure that I had no clue how much of the leaves to trim? I obviously trimmed all the larger leaves that stick out further, but wasn't sure about the much smaller single leafs that partially protrude from the buds, so I left most of those alone until I knew for sure?

Thanks for all your help! There are so many rookie mistakes that can reek havoc on the grow process from start to finish! Fortunately, I’m totally hooked on growing now so I‘ll stick with it and learn from my mistakes and the experts in here. I’ve got a 2 tent perpetual grow and already had 4 younger plants in veg ready to flower when I harvested Friday.

You mentioned growing in your apartment and I know many others do as well. How the heck do you control and conceal the overwhelming smell from your plants? I’ve got my set-up in a basement storeroom with 3 vent/scrubbing systems; one in each tent, another one scrubbing just the storeroom, plus the vent from a portable A/C unit that vents to outside. Still, my entire 3 story house smells of high-grade cannabis. I can also smell it outside for close to 100 feet out from the vent, which is at ground level since I’m growing from my basement. I have no doubt my neighbors can smell it! Good thing I live in the Colorado Rockies!

Here’s a few pics of my new crop which I just defoliated and scrogged yesterday...


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## CannabisKidPot420 (Aug 18, 2019)

Thanks for your reply back to me
and your very welcome,

I love your setup by the way and thank you so very much for taking the time of taking the pictures and posting them up here.

As for the smell,
I don't know what else to tell yeah lol

Fortunet for me I lived up stairs and since its higher up the smell goes higher up in the air when venting it. Unlike in your case at ground levels where it's smell is always in your face!. LOL

Anyway I'm. very glad to be of some help to you and I have a serious issue that I need your opinion on in a pm that I will send to you that I wanted to talk to you about that needs your opinion on regarding this website forum but I will explain that to later on!.

Anyway,
Enjoy your harvest and you have a lot of smoking to do very soon but it's far worth the work and efforts in the end!.

Blessings to you and happy harvestings to you also!.

Sincerely,
Cannabis Kid


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## Volcano Buds (Aug 18, 2019)

CannabisKidPot420 said:


> Thanks for your reply back to me
> and your very welcome,
> 
> I love your setup by the way and thank you so very much for taking the time of taking the pictures and posting them up here.
> ...


Sounds good CK. Been out cleaning my boat the last 4 hours, but I’m back home and I’ll keep and eye out for your PM.
The funny thing about my new harvest...I’m getting ready to switch jobs and may have to take a drug test, so I quit smoking nearly 5 weeks ago and I’m still not clean as of yesterday!


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## CannabisKidPot420 (Aug 18, 2019)

Volcano Buds said:


> Sounds good CK. Been out cleaning my boat the last 4 hours, but I’m back home and I’ll keep and eye out for your PM.
> The funny thing about my new harvest...I’m getting ready to switch jobs and may have to take a drug test, so I quit smoking nearly 5 weeks ago and I’m still not clean as of yesterday!



Oh wow bummer dude!.
Yeah I hate them stupid drug tests I had to do that once a very long time ago.

Anyway I hope you keep in touch with me and I sent you my contact information if you ever want to trade seeds and stuff and who knows maybe even be smoking weed buddies heck it could happen!.

Your friend,
Cannabis Kid


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## oldfogey8 (Aug 19, 2019)

Volcano Buds-I had an issue in the past with the smell even with carbon filtering the air exiting my house/tent. My neighborhood smelled like weed(which was bad because at the time, Massachusetts wasn’t legal). I decided to change the dryer vent hoses I was using and when I removed the one that was inside the tent, I noticed I could see light coming thru hundreds of tiny holes in the vent hose. I swapped that hose out ant the smell went away completely. Like water in plumbing and electricity in a circuit, air will take the path of least resistance. So instead of pulling air thru the filter, I was pulling air thru the leaks in the vent hose thus bypassing the filter. 

Make sure you have a lot of air movement in your drying area but don’t put a fan directly on the buds. Slow, steady drying is key. 45% humidity might even be a little low but I think Colorado is pretty dry so you may be stuck with that.

As for trimming, I trim in normal room lighting. Cut the whole plant up in ambient lighting. There may be some degradation in THC but a couple hours under normal room lighting isn’t going to ruin your harvest and there is no way to trim in darkness. I trim as much of the ‘sugar leaves’ as I can in addition to the fan leaves. I found that less leaf = smoother and tastier smoke. The trimmings can be used for making cannabutter, hash or RSO. 

Nice looking harvest btw. Take care.


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## Volcano Buds (Aug 19, 2019)

Thanks for the insight  Oldfogey! 
As a rookie just completing my 1st grow, I did a ton of research on nearly all aspects of growing, but failed to realize the science and importance of drying and curing techniques as possibly the most crucial part of the entire process! I also dried my crop too quickly (in 3 1/2 days) as I feared it was heading towards mold or mildew if I didn’t quickly rectify the issue. Now they appear to be dried more than adequately, so I’ve already started moving the buds to jars this morning. Hopefully I haven’t jacked-up my 1st crop, because they were in mint condition pre-harvest! 
Thanks again! I’m learning a ton from this forum and really appreciate all the help!


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## oldfogey8 (Aug 22, 2019)

For curing, I go with the ‘perfect cure everytime’ Thread on here. I have a bunch of the caliber hygrometers. I use Boveda packs to calibrate the hygrometers. I store my cured bud in mason jars after they have reached around 58% in the jars. I use Boveda 62 packs for long term storage. Smoked some Satori from 2016 last night that was delicious and potent. I can’t keep up with my output. First world problems...


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## Volcano Buds (Aug 22, 2019)

Thanks Olfogey. Guess it’s time to step up my game & get me some hygrometers & Broveda packs. My harvest is dry now & in large mason jars. Already doing much better & starting to smell more like ganja & less like hay/alfalfa each day!
Thanks!


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## SmokeRich211 (Aug 23, 2019)

CannabisKidPot420 said:


> Oh wow bummer dude!.
> Yeah I hate them stupid drug tests I had to do that once a very long time ago.
> 
> Anyway I hope you keep in touch with me and I sent you my contact information if you ever want to trade seeds and stuff and who knows maybe even be smoking weed buddies heck it could happen!.
> ...


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