Autos v. Photos - A 5x5 No Rules Fight for Yield: A Jon & NickHardy Gig

This may turn out to be the single largest auto cola I’ve ever grown. Get a load of this thing.

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I keep wanting these three to be finished so badly. They just won’t finish. They refuse. Lol. If that “never turn white” trichome thing is indeed reality, I know these strains and it’s not in play here. They’re just slow as hell. Closer, but slow.

Cherry Pie:




Skywalker:




Bruce Banner #3:





Would you guys take any of them? Not me. They ain’t ready yet. Goddamnit.
 
Apple Fritter Auto
Blimburn Seeds
Day 114


This Blimburn Apple Fritter….jeez. Second time I’ve grown it, and they both grew almost exactly the same way in every regard. Very tall, tons of side branching that must be controlled, super big colas that get super dense, lots of yield, and just an awesome plant - but a bit weird. My two tries were once in coco straight and once as you see here in coco/hydro. Both with Remo nutes.

The plant is odd. She seems to like a heavier feed in veg by a mile. I burned the last one at Remo by the book, so this time I decided to never go to 10 ml/gal in flower and instead stay at 8 the whole time. Also this time I actually am discontinuing the MagNifiCal and Astro Flower when Remo says to. And still she is burned. The foxtails may be due to light I’ll grant you, but the burning is due to the nutes being too hot for the plants preference. Once this strain hits post stretch (which is also a ton, easily she doubles, maybe 2 1/2 times…) she seems to prefer that you slow down in the feed. At 8 ml/gal she burns some. I saw this a couple weeks ago and dialed it back even more. That seemed to arrest it.

I am changing the reservoir so it was the perfect time to measure. The new res you see ready to go is at 805 ppm and 5.82 ph, with temperature at about 70 degrees. She’ll get to about 68 after the tent is closed back up. This is quite light in my world, but that what she seems to like.

I’ll keep it here for the duration. She has weeks to go yet. A long time. Last plant done in the contest portion of this grow by a mile. And she went about 120 days last time if memory serves. This one looks to be more like 150. Longest auto ever for me if that’s the case.

Here is her majesty from left and right plus a res shot.

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Trizkit Photo
Day 114
Flower Day 16


Houston, we have a problem. I just half broke one of the largest branches on the plant. Broke her about halfway through. I *think* I fixed her properly, effectively, and quickly enough that I’ll get away with it. But to fix the break I had to unleash the branch. This put that cola set way higher than the rest. But this is the price I now pay for over aggressive training. Lesson learned - branches may be thick but they snap when they’re this big with so much weight. Be careful training. No big deal. Not ideal, but I don’t really think it’ll have too much impact. It did however put an end to any further training or affecting of branches. As soon as I do more messing around this branch will come unlodged. It’s not worth it. So this is how we go to war.

Here’s the break, the fix, and the plant after the fix.

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Jon do you tape it up also? 🍋
Hi Keith - yes, normally I would. But duct tape is not even close to enough support for this branch and break. If it weren’t for the table and hoop, when I heard it snap, that branch is so damn heavy it would have snapped clean off. I got lucky it just happened to be a branch over a table. But that wood wedge is quite solid and that’s really all it needs. The wire I added just for some upper tension going the right way to the break. I sealed it up pretty well - I was looking at literally half stem, half straight up wood where it broke. Now you can’t even see there’s a break there. I’ve had way worse and fixed it successfully, it’s just the sheer size and weight that makes this one a bit trickier. You may well experience such carnage on your huge beasties growing outside in your environment. I could have easily seen one night of hard wind and rain taking out a branch or two on your last plants. They were houses!!! But I don’t remember you reporting any real serious breaks, right? Yay for you!
 
Scenes from Trim Jail
Thursday Edition

So you guys all saw how incredibly frosty the two Gorilla Cookies got. Those are the two plants I’ve been trimming. Done the one. Jarred. 1/2 done the other. It’s a pretty good amount of bud (understatement). But the larger one had a significant amount of non-jar-making excuses for buds. Even in a yield contest I’m not jarring garbage. Lol.

But it is FAR FAR from garbage. Especially when it’s this frosty. As everyone knows, and many do, you can make all sorts of extracts and oil and butter and such from your sugar leaves and trim. Bubble hash. Whatever you want.

I’m a kief guy. As many already know, I use the cheapest poor man’s kief collection method there is: the Trim Bin. People shit on the poor Trim Bin. And of course dry ice or whatever would be better. But…..

I’ve gotten pretty damn good at the Trim Bin. Think it’s just two interlocking plastic trays with a screen? Think again. It’s as sensitive a tool as any other you use for pot related stuff. There’s a right way and a wrong way, and there’s a way to max your cleanliness and results. I’ve spent four years doing it this way, and my kief is as clean as anyone else’s or cleaner, and I get TONS.

The trim I had that was totally dry and ready to kief fit entirely into a one gallon plastic storage bag. So from a gallon or so of trim comprised of both first and final trimmings, here’s what I got from the Gorilla Cookies. And there’s about maybe half this volume again in what I have left to trim.

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Scenes from Trim Jail
Thursday Edition

So you guys all saw how incredibly frosty the two Gorilla Cookies got. Those are the two plants I’ve been trimming. Done the one. Jarred. 1/2 done the other. It’s a pretty good amount of bud (understatement). But the larger one had a significant amount of non-jar-making excuses for buds. Even in a yield contest I’m not jarring garbage. Lol.

But it is FAR FAR from garbage. Especially when it’s this frosty. As everyone knows, and many do, you can make all sorts of extracts and oil and butter and such from your sugar leaves and trim. Bubble hash. Whatever you want.

I’m a kief guy. As many already know, I use the cheapest poor man’s kief collection method there is: the Trim Bin. People shit on the poor Trim Bin. And of course dry ice or whatever would be better. But…..

I’ve gotten pretty damn good at the Trim Bin. Think it’s just two interlocking plastic trays with a screen? Think again. It’s as sensitive a tool as any other you use for pot related stuff. There’s a right way and a wrong way, and there’s a way to max your cleanliness and results. I’ve spent four years doing it this way, and my kief is as clean as anyone else’s or cleaner, and I get TONS.

The trim I had that was totally dry and ready to kief fit entirely into a one gallon plastic storage bag. So from a gallon or so of trim comprised of both first and final trimmings, here’s what I got from the Gorilla Cookies. And there’s about maybe half this volume again in what I have left to trim.

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Can you share your technique ?
 
Can you share your technique ?
I have done it more than once, but sure I’ll sum it up. Thought about it but figured I was repeating myself too much.

The way I do it, it is part patience, part freezer, and part crushing technique.

Patience:
You gotta wait til the trim is dry as a bone. I put mine under a fan to accelerate the process. This is vitally important.

Freezer:
If drying it completely is first, the freezer is next. I put the trim into gallon storage bags. Then I suck the air out. This is also very important. If you freeze your trim before it’s super dry or fail to remove the air from the bag before freezing, all that effort is for naught. The air will condense as soon as you remove it from the freezer and it hits the tray with moisture. Or the moisture in it will freeze and thaw in the tray. Once the air is out just freeze the bag or bags overnight.

Crushing Technique:
Now you have the empty trim bin and a frozen bag of trim. Do not dump a whole gallon of trim into the bin at one time. More like a third to half at the most. That way you are maxing the removal on each batch. When you overload, you leave a ton on the table and if you try to rekief it you will get green. Green is death to kief. So only enough at a time to cover the bottom an inch or two.

Then - I use a bare hand. Shake the trim to one side. Grab a big handful and move to center (open area) of bin, near center of screen. Then, with a flat palm, GENTLY cover as much as you can and press down lightly on the trim while using a circular, rotating motion to break that handful down. A rotating motion is far more effective than back and forth. If you have done it right, this will break down relatively quickly. Then grab another handful and repeat til you got it all. Then put it all in the middle and do a final light pass to get broken down anything you missed. DO NOT CRUSH IT TO DUST. If you do you’ll get a ton of green. The idea is to break it down completely without making any dust.

When that batch is done, set it aside. It’s done for kiefing but if you’re a butter/edibles person it still has enough juice for that too. Repeat for entire bag, setting aside each batch as you do it in a box or whatever.

Then, last step, re-dump the entire gallon you began with, now set aside for edibles, back into the bin. DO NOT TOUCH IT WITH YOUR HANDS. Instead, shake it to the center and take the whole bin, lift it off a table, and bang it onto the table as hard as you can without spilling it all. Do that two or three times.

Remove top screen part of bin, use small brush to transfer to storage container. You’ll have more than you imagined was possible every time.

I let mine sit out in a bowl for as many days as necessary to make sure it is bone bone dry before permanently jarring. You can jar it less than super dry if you like, and if you let it sit that was for like a year, it will cure, get better, and become what I call “half-hash.” Or I just top bong hits with a dash when I want to or need to for pain.

Did that do it @Azimuth?
 
Data collection continued -

Yay. Looks as if the Strawberry Banana would prefer more early N than my early mix is allowing for her. I’m gonna let it go for now. If I don’t see improvement we’ll move on. I will also start the EWC on her earlier than the Blue Dream. I would much prefer not to have to use a calmag shot. Even one bugs me with organics. It is anti the point.

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I have done it more than once, but sure I’ll sum it up. Thought about it but figured I was repeating myself too much.

The way I do it, it is part patience, part freezer, and part crushing technique.

Patience:
You gotta wait til the trim is dry as a bone. I put mine under a fan to accelerate the process. This is vitally important.

Freezer:
If drying it completely is first, the freezer is next. I put the trim into gallon storage bags. Then I suck the air out. This is also very important. If you freeze your trim before it’s super dry or fail to remove the air from the bag before freezing, all that effort is for naught. The air will condense as soon as you remove it from the freezer and it hits the tray with moisture. Or the moisture in it will freeze and thaw in the tray. Once the air is out just freeze the bag or bags overnight.

Crushing Technique:
Now you have the empty trim bin and a frozen bag of trim. Do not dump a whole gallon of trim into the bin at one time. More like a third to half at the most. That way you are maxing the removal on each batch. When you overload, you leave a ton on the table and if you try to rekief it you will get green. Green is death to kief. So only enough at a time to cover the bottom an inch or two.

Then - I use a bare hand. Shake the trim to one side. Grab a big handful and move to center (open area) of bin, near center of screen. Then, with a flat palm, GENTLY cover as much as you can and press down lightly on the trim while using a circular, rotating motion to break that handful down. A rotating motion is far more effective than back and forth. If you have done it right, this will break down relatively quickly. Then grab another handful and repeat til you got it all. Then put it all in the middle and do a final light pass to get broken down anything you missed. DO NOT CRUSH IT TO DUST. If you do you’ll get a ton of green. The idea is to break it down completely without making any dust.

When that batch is done, set it aside. It’s done for kiefing but if you’re a butter/edibles person it still has enough juice for that too. Repeat for entire bag, setting aside each batch as you do it in a box or whatever.

Then, last step, re-dump the entire gallon you began with, now set aside for edibles, back into the bin. DO NOT TOUCH IT WITH YOUR HANDS. Instead, shake it to the center and take the whole bin, lift it off a table, and bang it onto the table as hard as you can without spilling it all. Do that two or three times.

Remove top screen part of bin, use small brush to transfer to storage container. You’ll have more than you imagined was possible every time.

I let mine sit out in a bowl for as many days as necessary to make sure it is bone bone dry before permanently jarring. You can jar it less than super dry if you like, and if you let it sit that was for like a year, it will cure, get better, and become what I call “half-hash.” Or I just top bong hits with a dash when I want to or need to for pain.

Did that do it @Azimuth?
Is the trim bin your own design or something you purchased? Could you share a pic or two please?
 
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