First Time Grower - Outdoors - Bag Seeds

[apd420]

Hey everyone! I believe I'm just a couple weeks away from harvest so I wanted to stop in and see if anyone had any drying and curing tips. I've done quite a bit of research but can't really seem to find a definitive answer on what is truely the best method so I'd love to hear what yall's techniques are. I will be updating with pictures of the girls this afternoon I also will be starting a feminized super silver haze this afternoon, anybody think I'll be able to complete veg before the time changes?

Thank you!
Apd

 

[apd420]

Picture update! The girls are about 6 weeks into flower I believe. Lady #1 is looking pretty close to harvest to me, but I'm not sure what do y'all think?

Lady #1

Lady #2

 

[Lester Freeman]

Another 3-4 weeks things will start to ripen up

 

[Kink]

Hey, apd! Your girls are looking stunning!

I'm buying a jewelers loupe soon for my indicas but I'd highly recommend grabbing one for your sativas as well as they're less than $5 ; since your sativa girls will have a longer flower time (by at least a couple weeks, sometimes even months longer) than indicas, it would be a good idea to harvest buds by looking at their trichomes rather than the overall bud structure/pistils turning orange, etc.

A lot of people recommend harvesting your buds in stages and it makes a lot of sense when you think about it, you wouldn't go and pick all the Tomatos in your garden at one time, you let them ripen - that can be applied to cannabis since some buds are going to mature faster than others; letting the smaller buds finish maturing in return helping to increase the overall potency consistency of your harvest.

Here's an example of what you'd see with the jeweler's loupe:

With this, we can use the loupe to check each bud site for the maturity that fits your preference, i.e. with indicas I'd want to harvest buds that are more in the cloudy mixture, trying to harvest before they go amber as I prefer a heady/energetic high - with sativas, you'd want to harvest later when they're mostly cloudy, maybe some just starting to turn amber on one of your plants if you're looking for the balanced high, with more of an indica feel than pure sativa. We can also use it to take closeup pictures of our buds for better opinions from others in our journals on when to harvest!

 

[apd420]

Hey, apd! Your girls are looking stunning!

I'm buying a jewelers loupe soon for my indicas but I'd highly recommend grabbing one for your sativas as well as they're less than $5 ; since your sativa girls will have a longer flower time (by at least a couple weeks, sometimes even months longer) than indicas, it would be a good idea to harvest buds by looking at their trichomes rather than the overall bud structure/pistils turning orange, etc.

A lot of people recommend harvesting your buds in stages and it makes a lot of sense when you think about it, you wouldn't go and pick all the Tomatos in your garden at one time, you let them ripen - that can be applied to cannabis since some buds are going to mature faster than others; letting the smaller buds finish maturing in return helping to increase the overall potency consistency of your harvest.

Here's an example of what you'd see with the jeweler's loupe:

With this, we can use the loupe to check each bud site for the maturity that fits your preference, i.e. with indicas I'd want to harvest buds that are more in the cloudy mixture, trying to harvest before they go amber as I prefer a heady/energetic high - with sativas, you'd want to harvest later when they're mostly cloudy, maybe some just starting to turn amber on one of your plants if you're looking for the balanced high, with more of an indica feel than pure sativa. We can also use it to take closeup pictures of our buds for better opinions from others in our journals on when to harvest!

Hey kink and thank you! I'm definitely going to be picking up something to magnify those trichs, I was really hoping to get something locally as I am very impatient and hate waiting for things in the mail but short of going to the hydro store and paying outrageous amounts for things you can get from amazon for a few bucks there's no local options the woman at Walmart just kept telling me they don't sell things that sit on your glasses lol wtf! So I'll most likely just order the Carson led scope they have on amazon for around $10. I totally agree with it making since to harvest buds individually but am not certain of a optimal drying method when doing this, I've read that you get the best product from slowly dried buds with a lot of people hanging branches to dry before trimming or removing buds from stems to increase drying time. But if you are harvesting single buds you would have no options but to use a drying rack of some kind which would decrease drying time significantly. What do you think?

 

[420Amard]

Hi and welcome to the forum if you can please get a close up picture of the suspected pre-flowers sometime new growth that is close together can mistakenly be taken as pre-flowers. Also what lighting schedule do you have them under?

 

[apd420]

Hi and welcome to the forum if you can please get a close up picture of the suspected pre-flowers sometime new growth that is close together can mistakenly be taken as pre-flowers. Also what lighting schedule do you have them under?

Hey spart and thank you for the welcome. I'm not completely certain as to what you are referring to, my girls are going into their 7th week of flowering and are currently on a 10/14 light schedule.

 

[420Amard]

Sorry man had tooooooo many tabs going and had a couple drinks last night. Flowering time can vary outdoors but I'd say you got a while left.

Looking really nice tho

 

[Kink]

Hey kink and thank you! I'm definitely going to be picking up something to magnify those trichs, I was really hoping to get something locally as I am very impatient and hate waiting for things in the mail but short of going to the hydro store and paying outrageous amounts for things you can get from amazon for a few bucks there's no local options the woman at Walmart just kept telling me they don't sell things that sit on your glasses lol wtf! So I'll most likely just order the Carson led scope they have on amazon for around $10. I totally agree with it making since to harvest buds individually but am not certain of a optimal drying method when doing this, I've read that you get the best product from slowly dried buds with a lot of people hanging branches to dry before trimming or removing buds from stems to increase drying time. But if you are harvesting single buds you would have no options but to use a drying rack of some kind which would decrease drying time significantly. What do you think?

A lot of people swear by slow drying, but ultimately it comes down to the grow location & setup/growers preference. They say if the room you're drying in is going to be higher in humidity (>60% RH), then harvest, trim and finally you''d want to remove them from their big stems and use something like a drying rack which will result in quicker dries. In a less humid place (<30% RH) it's better to just hang them upside down on their stems and dry them as slow as you can. If you don't trim the sugar leaves, it's recommended to at least take off all the sugarless fan leaves on buds you're going to dry.

Dry until the buds are physically dry to the touch and smaller bud stems start feeling crisp enough to snap and if you didn't take the buds off of their big stems, these will also start to feel bendy (meaning there's still very little liquid, but letting these dry out would probably cause too dry of buds).

I'm personally going to harvest buds one by one as they mature and place them into my dry location which will be a closet with intake/ehxust/oscillating fan blowing hair in the closet but not directly on the drying buds, because of this, some buds are going to dry faster than the ones that I just freshly harvested and put in there to dry, I'm just going to place colored coded tape for myself on the ones that are to be watched for because they've been in there the longest so I know which to monitor frequently and get out to place into jars .

 

[apd420]

Hello! Sooo I picked up a 40x to 60x loupe yesterday. Unfortunately the 60x lens is the smaller of the two so taking pictures with either was hard but the 60x was extremely hard hopefully y'all will be able to tell something from the pictures I have. To me I believe the vast majority of my trichs are cloudy with some individual buds trichs being almost completely a golden amber color but I guess I still could be wrong. Let me know what y'all think. Also I do apologize for the lack of quality in time with more practice I should be able to provide better pictures.

 

[apd420]

Also here's just some pictures of my ladies this morning. I'm so proud of my babies!

Lady #1

Lady #2

 

[apd420]

Second attempt at capturing some of these amber trichs.

 

[420Amard]

all clear you got a while yet man she looks lovely

 

[Kink]

Awesome apd, so glad you decided to get one ..also excited it seems to be working fantastic!

Make sure you get pictures of the actual colas and try not to focus on any sugar leaves, trichomes on the leaves close to the bud will always mature faster than the bud itself .

Here's a pic I made in paint of, from what I can tell anyways, are better spots to aim for taking pics on one of your buds :

I'm no expert obviously but just looking at them to me looks like they still have weeks to go, and probably are gonna swell up some more as well .

 

[apd420]

Awesome apd, so glad you decided to get one ..also excited it seems to be working fantastic!

Make sure you get pictures of the actual colas and try not to focus on any sugar leaves, trichomes on the leaves close to the bud will always mature faster than the bud itself .

Here's a pic I made in paint of, from what I can tell anyways, are better spots to aim for taking pics on one of your buds :

I'm no expert obviously but just looking at them to me looks like they still have weeks to go, and probably are gonna swell up some more as well .

Thank you so much kink I love that you take time to explain things to me with pictures and all! I'll try to maybe update on trichs just once a week the waiting is getting hard going into these last few weeks. I'll definitely try to focus more on the actual buds it is super hard to try to focus on anything and take the picture I'll be practicing though. What are your thoughts on a 48 to 72 hour dark period directly before harvest? From what I've read it supposedly increases resin production.

 

[Kink]

Thank you so much kink I love that you take time to explain things to me with pictures and all! I'll try to maybe update on trichs just once a week the waiting is getting hard going into these last few weeks. I'll definitely try to focus more on the actual buds it is super hard to try to focus on anything and take the picture I'll be practicing though. What are your thoughts on a 48 to 72 hour dark period directly before harvest? From what I've read it supposedly increases resin production.

I think it's interesting, remember reading about a medical cannabis institute in holland, I believe, that harvested half their crops and let the rest sit in darkness, after drying they saw a big increase in THC percentages in "some" of the varities kept in the dark.

It's a fact that waiting to harvest outdoors until right before/ASAP after first light so the plant doesn't suffer degredation from the sun an extra day increases potency.

Naturally people thought to try taking this technique indoors to apply to their garden and found that longer dark periods were actually beneficial, though imo it's not really proven and I try to avoid anecdotal type stuff but it makes a lot of sense to me - 72hrs being the longest a plant will continue living on stored energy, going shorter in length is said to not be worth it in comparison to the extra trich production you would get just going the 72.

In the end, seeing as it looks to be more effective to certain strains than others, like I said though, that institutes research showed it only provided the BIG increase to some of their plants, not all. It might be worth testing out on one of your 2 girls to see if there's any worthwhile and noticeable difference, it's stuff like this I find fun about growing as we can try it to see if it's worth ever doing again in the future .

If you do do this, I'd take pics prior to the dark period and after for comparisons, if trichs are amber going in I just feel it won't be worth it, for your sativas I'd probably wait until you're certain on wanting to harvest and know the 3 days wont just be an added delay and more time you could have been drying.

 

[Lilred]

As it becomes legal more there will be test run on everything and we will have a greater understanding of our girls

I am new to all this...remember that when I give my limited advice which is mostly theory right now til I get practical experience.

 

[apd420]

I think it's interesting, remember reading about a medical cannabis institute in holland, I believe, that harvested half their crops and let the rest sit in darkness, after drying they saw a big increase in THC percentages in "some" of the varities kept in the dark.

It's a fact that waiting to harvest outdoors until right before/ASAP after first light so the plant doesn't suffer degredation from the sun an extra day increases potency.

Naturally people thought to try taking this technique indoors to apply to their garden and found that longer dark periods were actually beneficial, though imo it's not really proven and I try to avoid anecdotal type stuff but it makes a lot of sense to me - 72hrs being the longest a plant will continue living on stored energy, going shorter in length is said to not be worth it in comparison to the extra trich production you would get just going the 72.

In the end, seeing as it looks to be more effective to certain strains than others, like I said though, that institutes research showed it only provided the BIG increase to some of their plants, not all. It might be worth testing out on one of your 2 girls to see if there's any worthwhile and noticeable difference, it's stuff like this I find fun about growing as we can try it to see if it's worth ever doing again in the future .

If you do do this, I'd take pics prior to the dark period and after for comparisons, if trichs are amber going in I just feel it won't be worth it, for your sativas I'd probably wait until you're certain on wanting to harvest and know the 3 days wont just be an added delay and more time you could have been drying.

I think I might try it with the plant I've been calling lady #1 she doesn't have nearly the amount of trichomes as lady #2 I should be able to see a significant difference if it does actually work I'll definitely do a before and after picture though. I'm really hoping I get the harvest time correct.

 

[apd420]

Hey guys I just have a quick question, the single pistils down the main stem of my plant have started yellowing and shriveling up all the bud sites are fine and maybe this is normal I just couldn't find any information about it online.



Thank you,
Apd

 

[apd420]