I was upcanning my containerized full-season plants (Orange Candy Floss & Super Lemon Haze) Sunday and discoverd a bunch of little ugly critters in the bottom; they looked like maggots at first but I used the loupe and found that they look a lot different. I'm not sure what they were but I pulled all my containers and, yesterday, bought some insect killer with pyrethrins and rotenone. I gave the plants a good douching yesterday evening and they look great this morning. A few of them still had some stubborn bugs so I poured about 1.5" of the poison dilution in a bucket and sat each of the containers in it for a few minutes.
Yesterday I was inspecting the buds and found that some of them were nearly all amber or brown so I decided to give them until today and do my first harvest. Four of the MTF's, two LowBerry and two of the Orange Candy Floss were ready. I'm not sure about the OCF actually being OCF. I bought the seeds from Dutchbreed along with the mini-MTF and LowBerry. They look almost exactly like the LowBerry and either were autoflowering or they kicked into flowering because of the short days a month ago when I put them outside. I'm leaning towards them being LowBerry since they smell just like them - which is incredible!!! I didn't take pix of the OCF. They were planted in the ground, not in containers because they were supposed to be full-season plants.
I got all my plants that I decided to chop and made myself comfy, had a big pan to catch the shake, my new trimmers and went at it. Since the MTF's are a sativa, I left almost all the leaves on the buds. Anything that was an obvious fan leaf came off. On sativas, the small bud leaves are *part* of the smoke. If fact, when I trimmed some of the "larger" tiny leaves, they were so resinous that they stuck to the trimmers. I'm saving all the shake to make bubble hash, which will then be put in butter and used to make magic brownies and chocolate truffles.
Trimming is always a wonderful experience; it borders on getting high to me. Taking the plants that you have invested so much money, time, energy and concern in comes to a head at that moment when you snip the stalk and the deed is done. You are now holding what will be the reward of your labors.
I'll give these a week or two (depending on how dry they are in a week) and put them into glass jars to cure them. I bought a hygrometer at a tobacco store; this is used to put in the Mason jar to read the relative humidity. When it gets to the right dryness, it's done. No opening the lid for an hour every day for 18 days; no hocus-pocus; no BS, just science.
I accidentally snipped of a tiny little bud from the MTF and, clumsily snipped off another from the OCF - how terrible; I guess I'm just going to have to use them for a smoke report in a couple of weeks.
I still have some MTF so I'm not pushing for something to smoke and I wouldn't "dry" it in the microwave if it were the only option left. I do plan to dry some of the full season plants like they do in Acapulco (I never can spell that place!), just lean it up against the building in the full sun.