Help with drying setup please- Murphy strikes again!

[Ckbrew]

Woke up today, went to tend plants, these two are telling me in a very stern voice that they need to be harvested. Went to check drying room. House heat is not on, 58*F. Get portable heater, motor bearings crapped out. Buy new heater, POS unsafe will return. Mr Murphy is kicking my ass today.

Moving drying to the grow room and into the currently unused veg tent. Will set up stringer racks. Room temp low 70s, humidity ~50%.

Question: How much do I need to vent the tent? Leave it partially unzipped, start up the exhaust fan?

Harvest is right after I hit send so this is happening- no more waiting.

[BU2B]

When I do the initial drying I hang the girls in the tent - turn off the carbon filter fan, turn on one fan to circulate the air - not directly aimed at buds. Zip up the tent door halfway from the top and leave it open at the bottom. Humidity where I live is VERY low so it only takes a few days until small branches are snapping and buds are ready to be be trimmed off the branches. With humidity about 50% I'd guess 3-5 days before they are ready to be removed from the branches. Congrats on a great grow my friend! VERY NICE!

[Ckbrew]

Thanks much for the info. Just finished cutting, trimming, and hanging everything. Will go set up the fan and flaps.

[Ckbrew]

BU2B How dry is it normally where you are? Here is my situation. I was keeping humidity in the room at 45% to finish the second set of clones. I turned it up to 50% to dry the buds. Would you know about 24 hours later I had a case of bud rot in the clone finishing tent. After cutting the rot from the plants I put the humidity back down to 45% to save the plants. Now I'm dealing with low humidity for the bud drying. I can slow down the drying by partially closing the tent in increments until I find a 50% range. Is doing this advisable or should I rethink this? I don't want to start mold in the drying tent. Never done it this way before.

[PeterMatanzas]

That's heart breaking to have bud rot happen when you're drying.

[Ckbrew]

No the rot was in the growing plants not the drying buds. But you know Murphy...

[DeadlyFruit]

Seems very strange that bud rot would be triggered by 50% humidity given we typically cure in jars from about 59-62% with no problem. I don’t have an answer for it I just think it is weird. I don’t think I have ever had bud rot in my indoor grows (definitely in the outdoor grows). Indoors my humidity ranges a bit and certainly goes higher than 50 at times although usually in the 40s.

I read recently that WPM likes warm and humid (not rain) while bud rot likes cool and rainy. Perhaps you already had the spores on your plants (were they ever outside?) and your broken heater triggered bud rot because of the cooler temp, although that still seems like a really fast onset if the heater only broke the night before.

In short, I don’t have an answer but I do wish you luck!

[Smoklahoma]

Can you hang them in boxes? Should keep a little extra moisture inside.

[Ckbrew]

I managed to get my regular drying room up to temperature, so all is well with the drying. Just need to finish the second half of the clone grow.