There were no fungus gnats present. I was relying on a combination of calcium and silica along with an early season devoid of the temp swings typically conducive to botrytis incubation to mitigate this time. I've tried a myriad of bud rot inhibitors over the years, and I mean a LOT of them, bacterial to immune strengthening, preventative and remedial, from DIY solutions to $400/gal products such as Regalia (with venerate and grandevo), cease, botrystop, ad infinitum... Multiple lengthy phone calls with said product reps, add I've come to the singular conclusion over the course of a good 8 years or so of dealing with it that if environmental conditions are correct and then spores are present, your going to get it, and that's that. Now, with photos, those plants are generally so big that I can mitigate losses to minimal with a lot of interventive effort, but with these autos I've seen this go systemic alarmingly fast. If you want to eliminate bud rot, you've really got to eliminate the source of the spores themselves, and up here, that means eliminating all brambles in the area, and that's a BIG ask, lol. My source in particular are blackberry brambles, and those suckers are everywhere... They will produce botryris spores from root to leaf tip, and even if you get all of them on your own property, they can still drift in from elsewhere. I live on 51 acres down a mile and a half private road, and they are everywhere in the surrounding forest. I've never heard of getting bud rot in midsummer, nonetheless, but now I can add one more thing to my list of problems I didn't think was really very possible... Much like the lygus bugs I've had to learn to deal with over the years that seemingly no one else has ever had a problem with (they are a typical scourge to canola crops).
FYI, for what it's worth, when i was doing no till indoors in tents for years before i built out a bigger room, fungus gnats were my Achilles heel. I've tried damn near everything from Ho2o drenches, dia earth, stickies to bacterial and nematodes, analysing and understanding their life cycles and how to break them... And you know what worked the best in the end for me, which put and immediate end to them everytime? A 6hp shop vac. I would first hold it near the plants to suck in all the adult flyers, and then suck up there first inch or so of soil from the pots, and then suck up any additional flyers which were disturbed from the soil. I had to laugh at myself for not thinking of such a simple and cheap solution long before I did, but boy does it ever work well. In a tent anyway. Don't think I'd enjoy doing that in a full out room though.
