Outdoors in SE Virginia

[Retired engineer]

Well, I only got 5 oz from 4 plants (one was a runt), and the density just kinda disappeared...the buds are airy and not too dense. No matter, that’s more important for bag appeal I think. They are very stinky and I have them in a CVault with many Boveda packs to modulate the humidity. couple of bud Shots below; they are covered in tricromes, and some leafy matter.

the weed I buy in DC are hard little nuggets, completely smooth on the surface. So, I surmise they trim then run thru a salad spinner kinda thing to get down to,the nugget. All that stuff that comes off the surface is filled with tricromes and terpenes, so I just keep it on the bud.

hope your grow is sprinting toward the finish line; where would halfway be between you and me in Yorktown VA?

 

[FirstCavApache64]

Sounds like you had a busy weekend. What size pots were you're plants in? You took such great care of them and they got so much direct sun. I'm just surprised they didn't reward you with a little more on the scale. They look really nice and I'm with you on yield not being super important but you worked really hard and it seems to me they shorted you a little on their end genetically.

I'm dealing with spider mites on my Blue Dream and some yellow spot leaf mold shit on my one Bag of Oranges. The spider mites are fairly bad and I don't know how they got so established without me seeing the signs . Hit them with this 3 in 1 spray at dusk last night and I just checked them. No moving mites, everything seems dead but it fried my pistils fairly bad. They're all brown but not too crispy and curled back so hopefully it's not going to hurt the plant as bad as the mites would have. I'm on week 6 of flower with my girls, day 42. I'm guessing they're about 9-10 week strains so between 10/6-10/13 is when I'm planning harvest. I'm doing a cold and slow dry with big branches that in my drying room should be about 7-10 days. Looks like Halloween timeframe and I'll be sampling some blue dream and be oranges.
I saved this pregnant praying mantis from a wolf spider web out front in the wood pile by my flower garden and brought her around to the Blue Dream to stand guard. She was almost dead when I found her. I'll put her out front in my blueberry bushes so she can lay her eggs there for next year. Try to make sure you are burping that C vault a lot for the first week to get rid of any hay smells and remaining moisture from the quick dry.

 

[Retired engineer]

I burp the CVault a few times a day, and every couple days take everything out and then replace the weed...just to mixup the bups and make sure there are no wet spots buried deep in the stuff. The dank smell is holding on, so all is good so far.

They were in 4 gallon fabric pots. I noticed a pretty scant root zone when I pulled them from the pots - only went half the depth and to 75% of the width. I have a tendency to underwater, not to the point of damaging them, but not soaking the entire pot volume every time I water. I might have stunted the root developmemt by not keeping the lower regions in the pots wet. I can push about 1 liter of water/nutrient solution in them and get no runoff. I’ll change the approach next time and give them more fluids.

I left them on the rack to dry outside for about an hour after I washed in H2O2, with a fan on them at low setting, so this might have started the drying process too soon/aggressively, so next time I’ll just let them hang dry with no fan.

I had the buds drying for 4 days at around 72 to 75 degrees and 55% humidity, so that quick dry might have contributed to the loss of density too. I wish I had a cooler place to hang them but I don’t. I think I might try something else next time - I have a fully enclosed standing shower with 2 sliding glass doors. I’ll put the fully loaded hanging rack in there for the first couple days with a couple 5 gallon buckets filled with warm water and drop some dry ice in them and seal off the volume by closing the doors. Might cool them down for the first part of the dry, and if the CO2 level builds enuff, could be a final move to kill pests. It’d look way cool too...

id love to foster parent a praying mantis in my garden, and will be on the look out for them to relocate if possible. I did release some green lace wings and they are still buzzing around out there, and I see the occasional ladybug too. Eat up my buddies!

I found a catepillar in my blue mystic this morning and squished it well, so an application of either Spinosad or Green Clean will be in order soon. I spray them down at dusk then give them a good leaf wash the next day before the sun hits them. I’m following your lead and shopping for a bug zapper too...might be time to deploy the Audrey Two again soon.

im bringing two of the plants from the GFs house to mine; they are the same vintage as the four I just harvested (same birthday and strains). They had a ruff start to life stuckin a corner formed by a 6 ft fence - they got direct sun for about 4 hrs a day and were in the shade the rest of the day. Two of them are short enuff to relocate, and they’ll get twice the sun at my house. they are autos that are in their eleventh week of flowering, so I’ll sprint them to the finish line with a heavy dose of Kaboom and other high phosphorus supplements. maybe I can get some rock hard buds by pushing them hard at the end.

 

[Retired engineer]

Wanna split one of these with me? Ha ha ha...

Cryo Cure Cannabis Machine Models

cryocure.com

 

[Retired engineer]

A more reasonable solution...would be good to s-lit the cost among a few local growers and share the machine...

Harvest Right™ | Home Freeze Dryers | Freeze Dried Food Storage Home Freeze Dryers

harvestright.com

 

[FirstCavApache64]

Wanna split one of these with me? Ha ha ha...

Cryo Cure Cannabis Machine Models

cryocure.com

You ever noticed the holes in my deck in my pictures from the rotten decking? Wanting to and affording to are different animals brother. I've fallen through the deck three times this grow and that's with being careful but it's the only place I have that gets sun and met the privacy requirements even though I have plenty of land. I think I would spend the money on an extraction machine to do whole plant extraction if I had that kind of money instead of trying to cure it quickly. I'd just do rosin. It looks cool as hell though. Group buy on a rosin press? I got five on it

 

[Retired engineer]

I’ve been thinking about a rosin press, but I gotta find the right/best way to use rosin. I bought some live resin and crumble on my last trip to DC but haven’t gotten the hang of smoking it. I bought the special screen for my Volcano vaporizer to use concentrates. It filled the bag okay, but after just a couple uses the whole mouthpiece was a sticky mess.

I bought a dabbing bowl for my bong, and a torch, but that’s proven not to be too successful either, I heat the bowl, use the nail to put some rosin or crumble in the bowl and it vaporizes right away, but when I draw on the bong I don’t get too much smoke. As soon as I stop drawing though, a big puff of smoke shoots out from the bowl. I’m looking for a better dab rig now too...

so, if you were to do a whole plant extraction, do you hang/dry as normal then use the press, or would ya freeze the product for a while then use the press, or just go straight from plant to press?

 

[Retired engineer]

So, I found a pretty nice curing unit with environmental controls to dial in the optimum conditions. Not too big, and looks pretty easy to figure out. I’m almost sold.

then, all the way at the bottom of the page I discover it’s made in my home state of VT. Where’s my damn credit card?

I have a couple buddies here who are growing that would probably like to use this, so it’d recoup its investment pretty quickly. I’d rent it out for a half an oz of whatever they grew...

Cannatrol Cool Cure

Dry, cure, and store your cannabis harvest with the power of vapor pressure. Our patented Vaportrol® Technology will assure consistent controllable results year round in any climate. Fully programmable, this system eliminates burping jars and takes the guess work out of the post harvest process.

cannatrol.myshopify.com

 

[FirstCavApache64]

Whole plant extraction is fantasy level stuff for me and currently illegal in VA because of the solvents but it uses fresh frozen whole plant material to give you this stuff called live resin. I tried it a couple times visiting family in DC it had a ton of terpenes and flavor since the plant is flash frozen while fresh. The Rosin press takes heated plates and a hydraulic or manual press and mashes buds between two heated plates to squeeze out terpenes, thc, cbd and other goodies into a dab. I've watched a bunch of videos and done it with a hair straightener and parchment paper. The yield was crappy with that method but the product was good. The law on that one would be fuzzy if you ask me because you aren't really concentrating anything, just melting it. Who knows? It's a tricky landscape to walk with concentrates until they decide to fix all the crappy language in the bill. I just got a printer so I could get my Virginia ABC grain alcohol permit printed out and mailed in. Now it's a matter of waiting and seeing how long ABC takes to either approve or reject it. I am going to get some Everclear and do the Green Dragon tincture.

 

[Retired engineer]

Yep, the law is kinda vague on some things...hope they fix that.

the cure cabinet should be here around the time it will be chop city for the blue mystic. I’m moving it indoors tomorrow at first light. Will give it an extra hour of light at the end of the day, and then an extra hour the next morning. Gonna sneak up on 18/6...

I brought home a couple of sickly plants from the GFs house to try and salvage. At worst, they go in the trim bag for future use. the other two at her house are doing better, and are now in the sun a whole bunch more than they had been so I’ll pound them with high phosphorus stuff and see if they fatten up. Next year at her place we might put 4 plants in the ground and see how that goes - might be calling out to ya for advice...

 

[FirstCavApache64]

I figured the discount would seal the deal for you. You Vermonter's are rumored to be just about as frugal as us mountain folk. We just got bombed by a rainstorm so I'll be dealing with drying the big girl off tomorrow. Hopefully the yellow spot leaf crap stays away. The plant had a bad smell from the three in one spray the other day so a nice rain might be good to rinse it off. I'll put a ton of fans out there to try and dry them off and head off any bud rot.

 

[Retired engineer]

The Blue Mystic in a milk crate is moving indoors to finish today. Found some caterpillars so a couple good doses of Green Cleaner killed them. I’ve been picking dead ones off the plant most of the morning, prolly around 5 or 6. I’ll keep inspecting rest of the day, and get into the grow space later on...

humidity is way too high outdoors to push it out there much further.

 

[Retired engineer]

Safely in her new home...

 

[Retired engineer]

Threw 4 sticks of butter and the decarb’d shake in the machine and cooked at 165 degrees for 2 hrs (mfg recommendation). Made a batch of blondies that are still firming up in the oven...pretty gooey right now. But ya can’t taste the weed, and I feel it coming on after a mandatory sample...

in the long run I’ll stick to oil and Duncan Hines Salted Caramel Brownies. I don’t do much cooking with butter, and have 2 sticks in the fridge cooling down that’ll keep my toast company for a while...

 

[Retired engineer]

Here is the Blue Mystic in the indoor grow space - a tub I setup. On the back wall is a four fixture T5 light with three standard 3500k T5 bulbs and an LED 3500k bulb. That points straight in at the plant.

Hanging from the rack above is a Marshydro TSL3000 LED light, running at 100%. It’s around 16 inches from the pant and I’ll crank it down to around 12 inches over the next week.

Hanging from the frame above, pointing in is a six fixture T5 light with five standard 3500k T5 bulbs, and an LED 3500k bulb.

up in the left and right corners are a pair of two foot T5 fixtures I have pulled out of the way for now. They each have a standard two foot 3500k T5 bulb, and a two foot 10,000k T5 bulb. I use these in the last couple weeks of flowering - lowered, they point in at the plant at a 45 degree angle. Used this arrangement on my last indoor grow and after some trail and error, found the plant responds best to 5 min/hour. Doesn’t sound like much but made a big difference.

ive got the humidity down between 45% and 50%, and temps run from 72 to 78. The buds were noticeably soggy and with the falling temps and reduced sunlight that’s a recipie for mold so I’m drying them the best I can. I have them on a 16/8 light schedule now and will slowly crank that up to 18/6.

The Cannatrol curing cabinet I ordered will hopefully be here mid-Oct, so that is my harvest goal for this plant. It is in its seventh week of flowering, so I’ll push it to 10 or 11 weeks if need be.

I used to grow 3 or 4 plants in this arrangement, but I think I’ll keep just growing 1 and use the milk crates and wooden dowels to keep it tied down...yield is not the prime motivator, ease of care and quality/density of product is. I already have enuff curing to last me a long time...

 

[FirstCavApache64]

I hear you on growing just one or two at a time. I say that each time lately but then I end up tossing in a few extras since there's room in the tent and I'm running the lights anyway and before I know it there's too much work. I just like strain hunting too much, so many flavors, smells and effects to experiment with. I do have too much of a stash though which is the reason for the tincture application to ABC. I can do a shitload of flower into tincture and store it for well over a year in a tiny smell proof space. That lets me keep harvesting flower without a big buildup of pounds of bud which equals felony now. I need to get my medical card so I can have legal excuse to have as much flower as possible. Same with my wife. Just to feel warm and fuzzy.

 

[FirstCavApache64]

Had two showers today while the sun was out shining bright, the Irish say that means the Devil is beating his wife. It's not really an issue until you consider the current electrical situation on the deck as I try to battle the humidity. So tomorrow I'll be working on a Tupperware housing for the plug junction. I'm about as quick and nimble as a two legged dog so I try to prepare for everything ahead of time.

 

[Retired engineer]

Tupperware and waterproof duct tape save the day. the air outside last nite was pretty thick here, so I understand your issues up there in the mountains. direct sun is getting tough to catch on my patio, so I think I’ll shoot for a harvest in early Sep next year, and back off from that to figure out when to put outside and how long I can get them started inside. I had delusions of a two harvest summer, but prolly not gonna happen.

I bet your house smells awesome right about now...just a reminder of the great things to come! I get a good reminder every time I burp my CVaults.

the Blue Mystic seems to be okay inside, but there are some weird leaf patterns at the end of some colas. If ya look to the left where the main stalk is tied to the dowel, they are really whispy and throwing off single leaves. I might have moved it inside as it was deciding the hermie on me, I dunno. But all the new growth seems normal. not much I can do about it so it’ll keep growing..

 

[FirstCavApache64]

Got a nice day all day today so I spent most of it outside so I could keep moving them around as the sun moved to try and maximize sun. Trimmed all the huge guard/fan leaves off Blue Dream. Just the monster dinner plates that are pretty chewed up by now and are really blocking bud sites. I'm at day 52 with it and I'm more worried about getting air and sunlight into everything than I am about losing a few solar panels. Here's a couple pics. They're a little blurry because the fans are blasting them so hard. I'm getting ready for Wednesday, supposed to be a drencher on Wednesday night, rain all night long and maybe an inch or more. Trying to McGyver a plan but I'm thinking grow room for the night since it's light proof. Just muscle it in and deal with some trichomes getting rubbed off coming through the door. Better than 8 hours of rain and bud rot.

 

[Retired engineer]

Best of luck with the rain...it’s a pain in the ass bit moving them indoors so the best solution sometimes...