I get a call from an associate of a colleague that they have a mold problem at harvest at a pretty big facility. It’s no problem, I’ve done jobs like that before. I thought it was weird that they had me sign an NDA and drop my cell phone at the front desk. They must have a lot of consultants come through. Turns out, this place was built by VC’s, not a passionate person coming from the medical side like most facilities. Humidity and HVAC was undersized. They didn’t know what VPD is and the plants went through hot dry/cold wet cycles their entire lives. It looked like a flock of birds left droppings all over their mature plants. OK, let’s do this . . .
When we went out to get tyvek suits and respirators, the management and staff understood the gravity of the situation. Branches were trimmed so they could be easily dunked in 30 gallon barrels. Fan leaves were left on to neutralize any attached mold. The following recipe was mixed up in the first barrel with room temperature water as cold water will break off trichs:
1 gallon RTU (multply by gallons in your vessel size)
Insecticidal Soap (also called Potassium Soap) (30 ml)
Yeast (fresh brewery yeast or dry yeast) (4 g)
Lemon Juice (2 ml)
Potassium Sorbate (2 g)
Sodium Benzoate (2 g)
The plant branch is dunked and gently swirled for 5-8 seconds in the soap mixture. It is hung for 15-30 minutes to let potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate to break up the mold cells. A second barrel of plain water with set up plain water as a rinse. The branch is dunked in clean water and gently swirled for 1-2 seconds. It is then hung to drip dry.These branches will be bucked and dry trimmed. This only works with wet flower, dried flowers with mold need to be destroyed or remediated when converted to distillate.
A treated sample of the least moldy flower is sent to non-state third party testing for mold to double check before submission. There is never any residue and chances are much higher that state testing will be passed.
All the equipment was then nuked with Physan 20 in the grow room before they start a long list of deep cleaning. I had a great weekend and threw my shoes in a dumpster behind a bar.
EDIT: Am I a shit bag for helping this place pass off moldy flower destined for prerolls? Probably, but they have a lot of money on the line and don’t deserve to lose a license because of it. They very well may still have to destroy this crop.
When you screw up in the corporate world, you get what’s called a “Performance Improvement Plan” (PIP). It is long-term improvement and means fixing their HVAC and dehus to proper size and teaching them about ventilation, VPD, deleafing, etc. They have to invest heavily in IPM, sterilization and UV in their air handlers because they thought they could ride it out til harvest with existing problems. This will also prevent them from passing along contaminated product in the supply chain long-term.
EDIT 2: Is it ethically OK to do this for a couple spots of mold on one leaf? Where is the line in the sand?