My very 1st grow.. very ghetto to start!

Pipe Dream

Well-Known Member
quick drying with heat can degrade potency. I dont know how hot it is but i would also say that your plant is not really ready. When you get to mostly amber is when you wanna pull it. Thats when i would at least. If you pull early and dry fast your not gonna be satisfied. You need a scope.
Also the drying process is essential in changing the molecules into the phychoactive ones use to get high. Improperly dried but just won't get you as high dry and cure them right you will see the difference.
 

President Kush

Well-Known Member
quick drying with heat can degrade potency. I dont know how hot it is but i would also say that your plant is not really ready. When you get to mostly amber is when you wanna pull it. Thats when i would at least. If you pull early and dry fast your not gonna be satisfied. You need a scope.
I agree. I'll keep posting daily pics until I (or someone who knows better) see the trichs turn mostly amber. There will still be pics, although they'll show the colas and top branches hanging out to dry :weed:

The heat from the computer probably didn't go above 110*, if that. Ya know, it may have not been hot enough, actually. I read that THC has to go from THC-A to THC-B via heat or drying to get you high. When I dried some lower-branch buds inside a piece of tissue using a toaster oven strictly regulated to 130-149*F (one of my quick dry methods), it got me pretty damn high compared to the stuff I tried yesterday. The high was too light and cerebral, not the "heavy hitting" body stone like I want though. Those buds were a few weeks younger when the trichs were just turning cloudy, so that probably explains it.

Also the drying process is essential in changing the molecules into the phychoactive ones use to get high. Improperly dried but just won't get you as high dry and cure them right you will see the difference.
Yeah, I may have no heated it up enough. The stems snapped, but it was not long enough for an air dry and probably not hot enough to produce THC-B in a short period of time.

Man, who the hell knows. I just want some weed that turns my brain off and helps me relax, otherwise I end up over thinking things and staying up all night worrying if my trichs are amber enough hahaha.
 

palehawaiian

Active Member
You dont want to dry with heat, just hang in a cool dark place with good airflow and let nature take its course. If you dry any other way then your not gonna get the full potential of your smoke. Only thing that i would say to do different that what others would tell you is if your clipping single buds off to put them in a jar of distiled water and let them soak for 36 hours in the dark. then hang and dry them. You will thank me for that tip. Try it with a few smaller buds atleast if the though of soaking your smoke in water bugs you. But it will cut down on curing time. If you soak it then dry it its ready to cure for 7 days and then smoke. If you dry it normal it takes 30 days to cure right.
 

President Kush

Well-Known Member
You dont want to dry with heat, just hang in a cool dark place with good airflow and let nature take its course. If you dry any other way then your not gonna get the full potential of your smoke. Only thing that i would say to do different that what others would tell you is if your clipping single buds off to put them in a jar of distiled water and let them soak for 36 hours in the dark. then hang and dry them. You will thank me for that tip. Try it with a few smaller buds atleast if the though of soaking your smoke in water bugs you. But it will cut down on curing time. If you soak it then dry it its ready to cure for 7 days and then smoke. If you dry it normal it takes 30 days to cure right.
Hmmm, I do have some distilled water left over from the seedling days, so I'll give it a try with at least half of the harvest. I only dried using heat cause I wanted it dried quick. Too bad I'm running out of bud again and may have to sacrifice a few of the shittier buds from the harvest as well :(. Most of it will of course be hung up and dried then cured in a glass jar like it should. If your water method works, I'll have half my harvest in a couple weeks with pics to document it :weed:.

Judging by the latest pics, she is about done! Everything has an amber tinge now. It's tough to make out the trichs though, probably because I moved the camera or something.



When I harvest, I will start with the colas and top buds cause everything else is barely even getting cloudy. Do I just cut the whole main stalk right under the cola and take the whole thing, branches and all, or should I cut the buds off the stalk and leave it there along with the fan leaves and branches?
 

President Kush

Well-Known Member
So i went and dug up the thread, if you follow this DIY to the letter you will have fully cured ready to smoke buds in like 10 days from harvest. No need to cure in a jar after they are dry, you just do the water cure and after the seven days of water curing you hang them and dry them. No need to do anything after they are dry if you do it this way.

https://www.rollitup.org/harvesting-curing/102641-greenx-how-tos-how-water.html
Cool man, I will definitely try that out. It beats waiting like 4 weeks. Are the results as good as regular jar curing?

I was just about to harvest yesterday, so I took a bud off the cola and took some flash-free macros in the sun. Is it just me, or are the trichs not even getting that cloudy yet?

Please excuse the lack of thumbs for the last two pics, imageshack decided to crap out so I had to use a different site.




http://i39.tinypic.com/6z7hxz.jpg <--- best macro

http://img150.imagevenue.com/aAfkjfp01fo1i-19668/loc37/56087_3_122_37lo.JPG <--- pic of plant
 

President Kush

Well-Known Member
bro that weed looks amazing
Thanks.. the love is much appreciated:hug:

I have completely sealed the grow box with tape so that it is 100% dark, and watered her with distilled water to flush.. even though I didn't use nutes, it won't hurt I guess.

She'll sit in the box for 2 more days, then I'll unseal it and pull another small bud to check via sunlight macro. God I hope I see some amber.. I need to fuckin smoke and relax before I go nuts and end up doing something stupid.
 

palehawaiian

Active Member
Some Sativa can go for up to 12+ weeks of flowering man. Since your growing bag seed you don't know what you got, if its sativa dominate you may be another 3 weeks or so from harvest. Thats one of the downfalls of not knowing what strain you have.

The stuff I grew in Hawaii i knew so well i could leave it outside and know when to harvest without having to go check on it. I would plant it indoors and put them out on a certain date depending on sun cycles and length of day and let it go, by knowing how many days it took to flower i could tell you what day i was gonna harvest the day i put them out. Your "mystery bud" is just that, a mystery. You wont know how long it will take to finish till its finished. Once you get into ordering some seeds you will be able to set a date.

Take a picture but try to back light the trichs so you can see the light shining through them towards the camera, you could do it by putting them on a piece of white paper thats sitting over a bright light. So that the paper is illuminated, then take the pic from above. Should be able to tell a little better on the color.
 

President Kush

Well-Known Member
Some Sativa can go for up to 12+ weeks of flowering man. Since your growing bag seed you don't know what you got, if its sativa dominate you may be another 3 weeks or so from harvest. Thats one of the downfalls of not knowing what strain you have.

The stuff I grew in Hawaii i knew so well i could leave it outside and know when to harvest without having to go check on it. I would plant it indoors and put them out on a certain date depending on sun cycles and length of day and let it go, by knowing how many days it took to flower i could tell you what day i was gonna harvest the day i put them out. Your "mystery bud" is just that, a mystery. You wont know how long it will take to finish till its finished. Once you get into ordering some seeds you will be able to set a date.

Take a picture but try to back light the trichs so you can see the light shining through them towards the camera, you could do it by putting them on a piece of white paper thats sitting over a bright light. So that the paper is illuminated, then take the pic from above. Should be able to tell a little better on the color.
That's nuts that sativas take that long to mature.. I guess that good things come to those who wait the longest, or something :bigjoint:

I just realized that my favorite bud (NYC sour diesel) is mostly sativa, even though it gives an insane body stone, especially the really expensive diesel. The only difference between the mainstream and expensive shit seems to be maturity and perhaps better curing. Here's a pic of that bud again:

http://i39.tinypic.com/2vsq2i0.jpg

Now THOSE trichs look amber, at least to me. I'm hoping that my plant--even though it's apparently a sativa--will give at least a similar effect if I wait till the trichs turn amber.

When it's time to order seeds, I'll definitely be getting some sour diesel for my personal plant.
 

President Kush

Well-Known Member
So my mind is pretty much made up. I will harvest the colas and tops tomorrow; half will be hung up to dry and the rest will go straight to water curing! I took some more macros last night although I was too late to take any in sunlight. Bringing the 40W 2700K CFL closers to the plant allowed me to take a couple of interesting pics.. in that light, the trichs look totally amber! bongsmilie

Later tomorrow I will take some macros as per your instructions, palehawaiian. I also read up on water curing and I LIKE IT! I guess I'm one of those people that don't really care about smell or taste, as long as the bud gets me high, unless fo course I'm growing Sour Diesel, then it would be a different story. I'm still gonna air cure some just to see the difference.. in fact I have one little top branch drying upside down right now.

 

palehawaiian

Active Member
The nice thing about water curing is that when you smoke your herb nobody will smell it, if you mix it with some decent flavored tobacco you could smoke it while a cop has you pulled over and they wont notice. It does make your final weight a little less but if your smoking and not selling its no big deal. Think about it this way, you have two joints, the first you gotta smoke the whole thing to get high, the second you need to smoke less than half for the same high. Even though you have twenty of the the weaker joints your 10 joints of the better stuff will get you just as high. Not that you lose half or anything, from what i have noticed you get about 1/3rd less in total but you get buds that are twice as potent.

I would like to see ya make a writeup for others to when you do your water cure. Just take lots of pics and explain what your doing, it will help pass the knowledge along. Just make sure you do the water cure for 7 days, no less. Change the water every day and you will thank yourself for it. Great job on seeing this one through. Well done.
 

President Kush

Well-Known Member
The nice thing about water curing is that when you smoke your herb nobody will smell it, if you mix it with some decent flavored tobacco you could smoke it while a cop has you pulled over and they wont notice. It does make your final weight a little less but if your smoking and not selling its no big deal. Think about it this way, you have two joints, the first you gotta smoke the whole thing to get high, the second you need to smoke less than half for the same high. Even though you have twenty of the the weaker joints your 10 joints of the better stuff will get you just as high. Not that you lose half or anything, from what i have noticed you get about 1/3rd less in total but you get buds that are twice as potent.

I would like to see ya make a writeup for others to when you do your water cure. Just take lots of pics and explain what your doing, it will help pass the knowledge along. Just make sure you do the water cure for 7 days, no less. Change the water every day and you will thank yourself for it. Great job on seeing this one through. Well done.
Thanks, yeah I'm not selling this bud so weight doesn't matter. I just want it to be as potent as possible, don't care about smell or taste either, at least with this stuff. It smells almost nothing like weed actually, it's like strong, uh, "flowery plant aroma" mixed with a hint of skunk. At the start of flowering, it just stunk like some skunky ass kush. That's why I think it's some kind of haze/skunk cross or something. I heard it was "chrons chronic" but I can't find anything about that strain.

I just took a moderate sized bong rip of a bud from a little top branch I dried for three days. The larger bud on top of the branch was really potent.. I actually feel that heard pounding, hard hitting, relaxing effect. Dunno if it's a body high or just a really strong cerebral buzz, but it's awesome and just what I am looking for! I haven't smoked much in the last few days, and this is my first time using my big bong (the other shit was smoked out of a pipe), so it could have been a tolerance thing too, although I still smoked and took big hits out of that pipe. Big hits get me more stoned than a series of little ones, if that makes sense :blsmoke:.

Here she is as of this morning:



I'd say we're 90% there, at least on the very top cola buds. Some of the buds closer to the bottom of the cola do not look that done, like the ones in the 4th pic.

Someone said I can trim off the cola and top branches then re-veg the rest to get clones and I guess more buds from the remaining plant. Is this a good idea?
 

palehawaiian

Active Member
About re-vegging your plants, you run a risk of losing some smoke, you would need to revert back to an 18/6 light schedule. You have to leave the bottom 4 or 5 branches on the plant and leave them alone, cut the main stalk right above the fourth or fifth branch and leave the bottom half be. Put it back under 18/6 light and hope for the best. One of two thing will happen, it will dry up and die, if that happens you will lose all the buds off the plant and not get any clones, or, it will go back into a veg cycle and look real weird for a few weeks. The buds will get really leafy and stretch out, the leaves will get bigger and start to look deformed. After a few weeks of the re-veg if all goes well you will have another plant going strong, now you can clone this plant or you can veg it back out and flower it again. I have done a few re-grows and the buds the second time around are even better. Good luck if thats what you wanna do. I thought you wanted to get some real seeds?

So when you cutting her down?
 

President Kush

Well-Known Member
About re-vegging your plants, you run a risk of losing some smoke, you would need to revert back to an 18/6 light schedule. You have to leave the bottom 4 or 5 branches on the plant and leave them alone, cut the main stalk right above the fourth or fifth branch and leave the bottom half be. Put it back under 18/6 light and hope for the best. One of two thing will happen, it will dry up and die, if that happens you will lose all the buds off the plant and not get any clones, or, it will go back into a veg cycle and look real weird for a few weeks. The buds will get really leafy and stretch out, the leaves will get bigger and start to look deformed. After a few weeks of the re-veg if all goes well you will have another plant going strong, now you can clone this plant or you can veg it back out and flower it again. I have done a few re-grows and the buds the second time around are even better. Good luck if thats what you wanna do. I thought you wanted to get some real seeds?

So when you cutting her down?
Meh, I'm not sure about the re-veg yet. If I'm really impressed with the smoke I will definitely try, otherwise it's not really worth the risk.

I might take the colas and a few top branches tonight if the trichs got a little more amber since yesterday. I'll definitely be getting seeds (sour diesel is a must) when I do my serious grow. Just hope I have the cash to finance it soon :neutral:
 

President Kush

Well-Known Member
So I finally decided to harvest the very top cola buds. I just clipped the main stem right under the top buds, trimmed, and dropped the bud in a glass of distilled water to cure it.



The shot glass is in there to keep the bud from floating. :bigjoint:
 

palehawaiian

Active Member
That will work perfect prez. just keep it under water and change the water out every 24 hours fo seven days and let it dry after that. Nice thing is that it will take less time to dry after pulling it out of the water than it will fresh off the plant and dried. Its weird.
 

President Kush

Well-Known Member
That will work perfect prez. just keep it under water and change the water out every 24 hours fo seven days and let it dry after that. Nice thing is that it will take less time to dry after pulling it out of the water than it will fresh off the plant and dried. Its weird.
Awesome, I'm guessing the 7 days is inclusive, i.e. the first night of soaking is included in the 7, so early next thursday morning I can hang that bud up to dry. I'm also guessing it dries faster because the water cured bud has less mass and only the water has to dry.

Lights go on in two and a half hours and then it's time to check on the rest of the buds. Hopefully what's left of the cola and the top branches can be curing by the end of the week. I'm gonna have a bunch of "cure cups" in different stages of curing. Do you think it's OK to use plastic cups?
 

palehawaiian

Active Member
Should be fine to use plastic, a lot of people use plastic coolers to do big harvests. Its seven 24hour periods under water, thats how you should count it. Fill up your jar 7 times and drain and refill after 24 hours, the seventh time you refill it will be the last then go about drying it. I am hoping you like the water cure as much as i did the first time i did it.
 

President Kush

Well-Known Member
Sounds good. I can't wait to finally hang that juicy cola bud up to dry! In the meantime, I harvested a few more top branches that seemed about done:



Those branches are now hanging upside down to dry, and will be jar cured for as long as I can wait. As I have already harvested like 40% of the plant through "here and there" pickings, trying to figure out the total wet weight of all harvested buds would be meaningless. Instead, I will list the dry weight of all the buds I harvest and let cure officially, just so everyone can get a rough idea as to the potential of whatever strain this was.

I took the time to read up on taking macro pics with ordinary digital cameras, and came up with these pics after playing with the settings, lighting, etc:





Judging by the amount of *apparently* amber trichs, most of those buds were ready to go. For some reason or another, those big, golden looking calyxes on the bottom of the buds (even the green bud in the 7th pic above) looked the most "done" of all. At this rate, the rest of the mid-cola buds and top branches should be done tonight or tomorrow!!!

Here are those smaller buds quick dried using the microwave steam-dry method:




Looks like most of the trichs are intact, so the drying method cannot be all that bad. Half of that taken as a nice bong rip had me blazed practically all night, and the high was that hard hitting, heart pounding sedating shit I love. It wasn't as strong as the $50/1.8g Sour Diesel I'm used to, but it is frighteningly close. I can only imagine how potent the colas will be once dried and cured properly :blsmoke:
 
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