Advice needed about fox tails

[Weaselcracker]

Hey Weaselcracker: I just got great news from my tester! (I don't smoke) He said the test bud was exactly right! A heady high that lasted a good deal of time, and that was just cut, quickly dried a bit, and smoked in a bong. Cured, it should be really, really good for the smokers in the family!

The hairs are 90% amber, but I can't tell cloudy from clear trics with these old eyes, even with a 40x loupe. And the plant has her second wind, growing new calyxes. The smoke test was the only way I had of judging when to harvest.

So, do you think I could get away with harvesting the most mature buds, even tho they're growing new calyxes? Growth isn't any different than the last pic? What has been your experience?

Ha ha. I torture myself over these decisions, and that's with my own plants in front of me under the microscope and I still can't figure it out. It's really the end of growing that I have the most to learn about. The tail end. But- 'he said the test bud was exactly right'. No need to argue with that!
Sometimes those new pistils just keep coming and all too often there's no real clear ending for me till I make one.
I sometimes take the tops as well, and get the rest ten days later. But usually I'm too impatient by then.

 

[AKgramma]

I just harvested about 10 2+ inch colas today from 3 original plants from seed. I got 70 g wet and have them in the drying box on a screen. The rest of the buds still have more white hairs than amber and are significantly smaller. Hoping that they continue to grow more calyxes and fill out.

Trimming was fun, and I ended up with a tiny ball of finger hash! It looks so lonely in the cup! LOL! It's so small it doesn't even register on the scale.

 

[OldMedUser]

Mmmmmm . . . Fresh scissor hash.

That's the only thing that motivates me to trim at all. Otherwise I'd screen dry my pot in 3 days, run it thru the wood-chipper and toss it in a pail of naphtha.

It's the damned arthritis. After an hour or so I can start getting cramps that lock my fingers into place and have to use the other hand to unlock it. Hurts like a bugger.

If you multiply the weight of freshly trimmed bud by 0.24 you should be near dead on to the dry wt. I keep mine in wax paper lined boxes that I've punched holes in with my trim scissors. Both the boxes and the wax paper. Kept in a cool place and opened daily for airing to loosen the buds and prevent mold I take 2 - 3 weeks to get them dry enough to put in jars and burp for a month. The boxes are fairly small and hold about 100g of freshly trimmed buds when right full. I also bust up the colas as I go along so the buds are a more uniform size and also so I can snip out all the little bits of sugar leaf for kief and oil. Takes me a couple hours to fill a box and I only take enough colas off the plant at one time to last me an hour so they stay plump and easier to trim.

It might take me a month to trim a few plants that will yield 10 - 12 oz dry so I don't flush and the slo-dry seems to allow the buds to get rid of any chem taste that may linger. If I flushed or ran my DWC with just RO water then the lower down colas would have nothing to feed on and wouldn't yield near as much. Smokes smoother than any flushed and screen dried pot I've ever smoked and the ash is near white too. Once the outer parts of the bud get dry they are as cured as they are going to get. You can re-hydrate them but they just get moist and the processes that convert the chlorophyll etc don't re-start. In the boxes the moisture slowly comes out of the middle of the buds so the outer parts never dry until the whole thing is dry. They still have some moisture left when they go into jars but not enough that the buds will clump together much.

Probably more than you wanted to hear but I tend to ramble.

L8r

 

[Weaselcracker]

Definitely wanted to hear all that and more. Do you know your RH and temps of the place you keep the boxes? I've been drying in a metal box with screens - air flow/drying time half-ass controlled by a computer fan. I worry about mold though (very high RH here though I may have some options for that) so will have to really hover around and fuss over my cardboard box full when I try it for the first time.

 

[OldMedUser]

I don't know the RH of where I'm drying them but in winter it's about 50F in the stereo cabinet in the corner of the shop where I'll keep the boxes. It's very dry all winter here and I have a hard time keeping the grow room moist enough for vegging plants but it's great if I'm flowering.

At first I will open the boxes 2 or 3 times/day. I just hold the ends of the wax paper and roll the buds around to break up the clumps so I handle the buds as little as possible. The trichs don't stick to fresh wax paper but oat the inside of the boxes without it and that's waste! Can't stand waste! lol

Each box has a little sticky note on it with the tare wt, gross, date/time and strain info. After a week I'll check and note the wt then every couple days until they are only losing about a gram/day or so. Then they go into jars for burping. The jars I use are plastic tobacco cans that are smooth all the way up the sides so the buds just slide right out. Unlike mason jars that have a shoulder inside that means you have to poke the buds out if they are clumping.

It's fussy and there is a greatly increased risk of mold. If I get mold, and it's happened, then I just spread the buds out to dry fast and that goes in the oil pot. The box and the wax paper go in the burning barrel.

L8r

 

[AKgramma]

I also want you to keep rambling, OldMedUser! Your info is very useful for comparison purposes.

I am drying on a screen in my DIY moving-box drying box, and for the first harvest, I want to try the freezer method of curing, which takes about a week or two to sublimate the rest of the moisture out (in open cardboard boxes), then I'll store them in jars with humidipaks. I understand that the extra step in the freezer practically eliminates burping the jars.

I've only harvested a dozen 2.5" colas and a few stray popcorn buds, so if mold happens, I haven't lost much of the crop. There's more waiting to mature!