Just Getting Started

from my understanding of it, you chop the plant down, cut away all the fan leaves down to the stem, you can do the next part before or after hanging them.. then you cut your sugar leaves away from the bud(all the leaves with the trichomes on them) you can manicure it down to just bud or leave a little sugar leave on . All your good trimmings you can freeze until you decide what to do with them.. oil, hash, wax whatever. then you want to hang your buds on a string in a dark room for 5-7 days until you can snap the stem .. not super dry but dried down a little. And next on to the jars for the cure If you just quick dried them they would taste nasty and burn your throat because of all the chlorophyll and this is what the cure is for. cut your buds off the stem to nugs and put them in a mason jar , every day take the lid off the jar for like 10 minutes (burping them) every time you do this moisture is released. every now and then you can take them out and put them back in different order to even the dry. For two weeks MINIMUM you do this , ive heard the longer the cure the better the taste ;/ hope this helps

Cool thanks! Definitely helpful.
Are the fan leaves and any leaf with a stem garbage? Are they worth hanging onto for anything?
The sugar leaf trimmings I'm thinking of turning into butter or oil.

pretty much as far as cannibinoid content goes, unless they have trichs on them trash um;/ when did your plant start to look frosty?? i have pistils everywhere but as far as trichomes go im bare ? maybe im impatient lol lookin at your girls makes me want a fast forward button;/ ill put up some pics tonight or tomorrow,

The critical has been flowering just over 5 weeks now. She started getting frosty about 2 or 3 weeks after the hairs appeared, I think, it's been a while.
I didn't realize that they were the tri chromes when they showed up, I just noticed things smelling really good!
The diesels have been flowering for about 4 weeks now. Guessing I have another month on them.

Shawangunk Skunk said:

Cool thanks! Definitely helpful.
Are the fan leaves and any leaf with a stem garbage? Are they worth hanging onto for anything?
The sugar leaf trimmings I'm thinking of turning into butter or oil.

Click to expand...

Oh, and trimmed leaves with trichs.... If I were to make butter/oil do these need to cure/dry out or can they be used right away like a fresh herb?

im pretty sure you do that with them fresh , you can freeze them too to keep them fresh, there is tons of methods to extractions but the basic idea is separating the trichomes from the plant matter, i dont know exactly how its done but im sure you can find helpful threads on here. The trichs are the most potent part of the plant containing most of the thc and cbd , then the bud, and way behind the leafs. Thats why extractions are super potent;/

Alright, what's the consensus? Does she look ready to harvest? Only been flowering 6 weeks.
I don't have a microscope for tri chrome inspection. so I'm kinda winging it a bit for now.

Switched up the lights again.
Swapped out the (2) 23w, 1,600 lumens, 5000k CFLs with (2) 105w (500w equivalent), 7,150 lumen, 2700k CFLs. They were pretty inexpensive.

Still have the 400w HPS and 3 fluorescent t8's- 2,700 lumen each (2@2700k, 1@ 6500k)

About 75,000 lumen total. Wonder if that will make a difference.

i would think so, 2700k is better for flowering:/ and geez^^^^^^^^^^^^ that is a beautiful plant lol and i would go for it, as long as its been flushed , its not putting on any more size do you think? im excited for ya

Definitely not growing. Leaf edges are starting to get pale/yellow. I'm thinking very soon it will be ready but not just yet....

Well, I have a hand held lens and do see some amber trichomes.
I think tonight's the night.
Gonna play the reservoir dogs sound track, particularly "Stuck in the middle with you" as I cut her down. It's such a love -hate thing....

looks dank almost purple like at some spots, you try to make your oil yet??

So I've been gone the past 5 or 6 days..... Lots to report.

4.21
I chopped my first plant, the critical auto. And let it hang for 8 days in the basement (mainly because I was gone for a chunk of that). When I returned today things were pretty dry, I continued to cut it up and separated it into 2 mason jars. One for bud only, the second for trimmings that still had a lot of trichomes which will probably be made to butter. Total harvest from this plant was 8 grams of pure bud and 10 grams of trim.
The buds seem light and airy. And I am so damn tempted to light my finger tips on fire and smoke them! Holy sticky! After licking them clean, then washing them they still stink so damn good!

Update number 2.... The 4 remaining plants are enjoying a bit more space since the critical was pulled out. I watered everything real good before I left and all looks ok on my return.
The 3 of 4 that made it from the first batch clones look decent... Lots of new growth- Pic below


And the 5 news ones....

Update number 3...

That colloidal silver batch I made a month or so has worked I think (thanks for the comment DrWho-in my other thread)
- I have 2 NYC Diesel autos going and applied the silver to the bottom half of one of the plants.... This is what plant balls look like I guess...

Top half of same plant....


Now I have to figure out what to do next... Collect pollen and apply or let the plant go and hope it pollinates itself?

Update #4

I ordered a pocket plant microscope from amazon. 60-100x magnification.

I expect the larger of the 2 NYC diesels to be ready for harvest this week. I'll update pics later.

definately want to see that diesel!! and i would think it should pollinate itself just fine , keep it away from your other ladies tho! when the pollen sacs are mature they kinda pop and let out a ton of pollen into the air as long as the air is circulating it will be fine

5.16
A few more updates- I moved the 2 photo period plants outside repotted into about 30Gallon pots. The brainstorm has a tomato cage over her just to give me something to tie some of her branches down with, she went out about 2 weeks ago... and is loving it. Gets blasted by full sun all day, i spent over a week moving her in and out of the sun and was bringing her in at night, but have been leaving her out now. She's about 3.5 ft tall- see below

Ill post a pic of the California Hash plant later- she is much smaller but real dense.

The first batch of clones i repotted today into 8 inch pots, they seem to be doing well. The second batch is now out of the dome. Pic of first 3 is below...



Also finally chopped the bigger Diesel today..... took way longer than i thought but i kept an eye on those trichomes and they finally started to amber. The plant looks like crap- probably exhausted.