Give up or keep trying?

OK, long story short, I'm starting to test buds from three plants I grew from seeds that I got from a sample of Dutch Haze. I'm getting barely any noticeable effect from any of the buds I took from all three plants. These seeds were planted early November and have been blooming at least a month. The buds look pretty normal, but aren't very aromatic compared to most stuff I get from dispensaries.

Lucky I've got a couple other plants growing from seed I bought on the Net, and I've got 10 Northern Lights beans just begging to be planted. But I'm wondering about the Haze. Do I just toss out the plants or is it possible they'll produce better buds if I wait longer or change they way I'm caring for them? Right now I'm leaning toward the death penalty because I don't have enough space to keep three questionable plants around. What would you do?

Doesn't sound like you let them flower long enough. Seems weird not to have any effect though. I'm out of bud and have been smoking leaf I trimmed off mine at 4 weeks of flower and it aint the best, but it keeps me going....

How did you cure it???

if the buds are immature they wont contain much THC. if you have any kind of tolerance for THC which im sure you do its very unlikely that immature buds will get you high at all. let them mature and the smoke will likely be much better. Also the proccess of dryign and curing makes the smoke much much better

Regarding my drying process, there's nothing to it. I just cut the buds, trim off big leaves and let them dry. With smaller buds, they'll be dry enough to smoke in about a day. And right now I'm just testing these, based on previous experience where I got a wide range of variation in potency from plants I grew from bagseed. I prefer to know as early as possible if some of the plants might be non-performers so I can get rid of them and their clones. If I know for sure that a plant is potent, I'll let the buds dry and cure before smoking. But again, right now I'm just doing a crude sampling to see if the crop is worthwhile. In the past, I've been able to zero in on the best individuals by smoking leaves, but with my new plants I don't even get as much a buzz as I'd get off shake from a decent plant.

ltecato said:

Regarding my drying process, there's nothing to it. I just cut the buds, trim off big leaves and let them dry. With smaller buds, they'll be dry enough to smoke in about a day. And right now I'm just testing these, based on previous experience where I got a wide range of variation in potency from plants I grew from bagseed. I prefer to know as early as possible if some of the plants might be non-performers so I can get rid of them and their clones. If I know for sure that a plant is potent, I'll let the buds dry and cure before smoking. But again, right now I'm just doing a crude sampling to see if the crop is worthwhile. In the past, I've been able to zero in on the best individuals by smoking leaves, but with my new plants I don't even get as much a buzz as I'd get off shake from a decent plant.

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Yea, you probably didnt cure it right. Should dry it out, pit in jars and burp them a couple time a day. Not curing properly can destroy your high......

if the plant is still alive, the trichomes are full of crude, acidic thc. this thc is NOT psychoactive in its acidic form. through the process of slow drying and curing (letting the plant loose all moisture, so its 'life' functions come to a halt) the acidic thc converts into its ph neutral form, which is psychoactive.

the amount of thc doesnt increase, but the effect will. i learned this when i was very disappointed in my sample buds that i only let dry for a day or two.

OP did you say they have only been flowering for a month? some strains don't have much of a smell to them, not a bad thing imo. i would let them bud a while longer to get a better "sampling". it sounds to me like you want to get rid of them in favor of other strains. you should do what you want.

GrowinDad said:

Doesn't sound like you let them flower long enough. Seems weird not to have any effect though. I'm out of bud and have been smoking leaf I trimmed off mine at 4 weeks of flower and it aint the best, but it keeps me going....

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This would be my first guess.


Check they are cloudy, not clear before you chop your ladies!

Sunny Boy, I'd rather have these plants produce decent buds if they can, but if they can't, I'd rather go with the Northern Lights, assuming that NL is more likely to give me what I want. And if this crop is just a washout, I'd like to start working on the next one ASAP. But, I'd hate to throw away good plants that just need a little more time to finish the job.

did you even read what i posted?

thc is not psychoactive until it reaches its ph neutral form, which takes a couple weeks.

ltecato said:

Sunny Boy, I'd rather have these plants produce decent buds if they can, but if they can't, I'd rather go with the Northern Lights, assuming that NL is more likely to give me what I want. And if this crop is just a washout, I'd like to start working on the next one ASAP. But, I'd hate to throw away good plants that just need a little more time to finish the job.

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oh i hear ya, i hate to kill plants, even males lol. the trichomes ripen, they go from clear, which means they are not ripe, as it were. the affect you get is when they turn cloudy and then amber. cloudy with a little amber is when i chop as i like more of a heady high and not so much of a couch lock, which happens more with the amber trics.
i would hang on to them a while. i had some sativa that went 15 weeks and they were worth every minute of it.

Update: I tried vaping this stuff instead of smoking it. Vaping seems to work much better, potency wise. I let it cook for a couple minutes before I start inhaling the vapor.

What a polite place this forum is. I have been on forums where people get flamed for threads based around requests for information deemed as basic knowledge to the community that forum represents - even more so when pertinent information is offered non judgementally by forum members only for it to be ignored in a continued quest for the answer that has already been given. Glad this place isn't like that.

In some strains, usually the more sativa dominant ones, like the hazes, trichome production doesn't begin until later in the flower process. The grow in my sig has a haze dominant girl that didn't start producing resin till day 22 of 12/12, so three weeks in. One of her sisters started after about 9 days, so just after a week. By four weeks, when you tested yours my early starter may have had proper trichome heads, but the late starter certainly wouldn't. Someone else has already told you why even the early starter would not have much if any active thc, but the late starter hasn't even got the receptacle for thc (the trichome head) developed yet. So of course, there will be no effect at all.

You need to let marijuana plants develop, so the thc can develop, before you harvest any to use for thc. Your trial and error method of growing and testing your results will simply lead to continued confusion and disappointing results with no hope of working out what is causing any differences.

Bigby, thanks for the feedback. I think part of the problem is that my prior experience was mostly with Afghan. I got absolutely butt-kicking buds simply by harvesting when half the hairs had turned red or brown. Sativas are easier to screw up, I believe, based on my experience with this Haze strain. The Afghan seeds I had were so freaking strong that any idiot could grow decent buds.