Papaya Goes Soil - CFL - 2nd Grow - Soil Grow Journal

Thanks Redlan!! I did add in a 600 Watt HPS Cooltube about 4 weeks ago! Mid flower. The CFL's were doing great but i know the HPS really stacked on the weight of these colas.

I checked out under the net good and i cant believe at the buds under the net and all growing in and around the net! I dont know exactly how im going to harvest yet as the whole net is just bud growing all around it lol... This is a good problem though!


oh yea whoop whoop !!! :)
 
Update!!

Papaya's are doing great! They are starting to yellow now as they finish up. That FloraKleen flush was amazing! You should have saw the color of water the past 2 flushes i have got from the runoff. Flushed another 6 gallons per plant today with watering. After the 5th gallon the runoff was finally clear.

They are at 5% amber at this point. Cut the HPS off and checked them good today. Im thinking another week and they will be ready. They should already be flushed good and they are using up all there stored nutes. I will still flush at least 2 more times over the next 5-7 days. If they stay healthy i will let them go 7-12 more days. I can for sure tell that i havent feed any nutes and did the flush this past week... Its crazy how fast they are taking the stored energy from the leaves now. Im going to trim these and cut them up and lay them out on a hanging net to dry this time. Im hoping it will be easier than hanging the whole colas up and drying whole. Any suggestions on harvesting?

:thanks:

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**DROOL**

Jesus your ScrOG is an inspiration... So excited to see you harvest those babies, they are going to give you some beautiful buds, that's for sure!!
 
still perfection - whoop whoop almost there!!!!
 
I'll give you a great tip on harvesting.

Pull off all your fan leaves without frost on them and discard them.. DO this while the plant is still whole.

then, take off large branches so that when you hang dry them (dont put them in a drying rack!!) buds can pull the remaining moisture from the stems. If you trim your buds up and have them drying in a rack, the buds need to constantly be turned so they dont get flat spots, as well as the buds dry too quickly giving you a harsher tasting smoke.

Hold your branch by the stem and work your way from the bottom up. Take your scissors and put them flush against the bud and rotate the bud so the leaves turn into the scissors. This way you will get an even looking bud.. then afterwards you can get all detailed and get any larger leaves you have missed. It will take some practice, but eventually you will get the hang of rotating the bud and snipping the scissors at the same time.

Once you are satisfied with the trim job you have done, take the branch and hang it on a coat hanger and into your drying area
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Make sure that your drying area is about 50-65% RH otherwise your buds might dry too quickly, and this will leave a harsher tasting smoke than if you slow dried your buds. Its best to leave them on the stem, so that the buds can pull any remaining moisture from the stem. This will give you a slow dried, smooth tasting smoke once its cured.

After 3 or 4 days, bend the stems, and if they fracture, but dont snap, the buds are ready to remove from the stem and place into curing jars. You should not dry the buds longer than 5 days in your drying area.

If your buds DO get too dry from the drying process, you can place them into a large air tight container and cover them with the lid for 4-6 hours. Once you open up the container, if they still feel really dry, take a piece of bread and place it into the container. This is similar to rehydrating brown sugar when it dries out. The cannabis buds will pull the moisture from the bread, and rehydrate themselves. From this point you can continue on with the curing process.

The drying and curing process is the easiest way to ruin your hard work. Its HIGHLY suggested that you maintain a 62% RH inside your jars. Boveda 2-way humidity packs are the best you can get for curing your medicine. NO need to have a hygrometer in your jars when using Boveda packs.

For the first two weeks, remove your buds from the jar every 24 hours and give them time to air out. let them sit in a large bowl or whatever for about 20-30 mins, until the buds start to feel dry on the outside again. Place them back into the jars and repeat the process again in 24 hours, and continue to do so for the first 2 weeks of curing.

After 2 weeks in the jars, your medicine is good to smoke, but a longer cure in the jars will produce a more intense high, as well as more pronounced flavour in your buds.

I hope this information helps HN!! We all know how great of a grower TheCapn was here on the forums, this is his harvesting, trimming and drying techniques, and i swear by it!
 
Thank you for the great detailed explanation! This is the exact method i used last time and it worked pretty good. My final smoke was a little harsh on the lungs on the exhale which got better after 2 months but even now its still a little harsh if you take a big rip. I dont know if its possible i didnt flush proper or for long enough. Thats why im flushing longer and with a flushing solution this time. I want it to be super smooth.

My papaya's after cut and drying for 24 hours they smell so wonderful and so fruity. Just like jolly ranchers. But right after 24 hours (still not dry yet) they start losing the smell and never comes back. Any suggestions on why this is or how i can keep that fruity smell that my papayas are suppose to have? I keep my drying area like you said around 50-60% and last time i dried for around 3 days and then went into jars. Like i said the fruity smell never comes back?

Thanks GreenthumbJ!

Also, thats why i did soil this time as they say the soil will really bring out the natural smells of this strain.
 
Personally, i grow in rockwool, so i dont worry about using flushing agents as salts and the metals in the nutrients dont leech into rockwool like they do into soil.

I give my plants anywhere from 5-14 days of flushing depending on ripeness, and amount of time i have to trim, as well as how heavy i was feeding them in the last week before flushing, which is usually pretty low.

My WW smelled like rotting nectarines sitting on your kitchen counter on the plant.. Sickly sweet, and now after the harvest, manicure and a couple weeks in the jars, it still doesn't smell like that. It smells more earthy and kind of like smelling fire. I have not smoked my WW grown in DWC, which has cured for over 2 weeks now, but i have smoked my WW in rockwool cubes that were clones of the same plant, that has had less than a week in the jars, and it was a great up high, very creeper, and the joint tasted like a popsicle stick after you have sucked the flavour out of it! But i know that flavour will improve with a long cure, and proper burping for 10-14 days.

I can say that theres a big difference in the final look of the same strain grown in different methods.

My WW grown in a DWC bucket doesn't look as good as the WW in Rockwool cubes that were irrigated 2-6 times a day during flower. Its amazing actually to see the difference.

This first picture shows 2oz of my WW that was grown in DWC:
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Darker coloured green, not any noticable frost

This picture is the same WW as above, but clones off the DWC plant, grown in Rockwool grow cubes, irrigated via a top feed drip ring 2-6x daily:
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Much lighter in colour. Much more trichome coverage, overall nicer looking product.

Same strain, different growing method.

3 days is definitely too slow.. I actually just bought a cool mist humidifier from the local store to put in my veg area as well as to double for extra humidity in my drying tent. The slower the drying process, the smoother tasting smoke you will have after a proper cure. But then again, it could just be how it tastes right?

We will find out how the Papaya looks grown in Rockwool cubes on a top feed system in a couple months as i have 8/10 of my Papayas cracked. 5 of which are 1"+ in their rockwool cubes the other 3 are lagging behind. All of which are under my 4 foot 4-bulb T5HO fixture. Beside some clones.. A happy little tray :)
 
Thanks for you information Green! Yea its crazy at the difference. I can already tell a difference from my DWC papaya and soil. My soil girls are a lot more green and are super frosty also. I love the bright green look.

Update

So i took a small bud around .5 grams 3 days ago and decided to try it out last night to see where we are at. Let me just say ive very very happy with these girls so far. After 2-3 day dry they still had the amazing fruity smell. The small bud was dry enough to get some good smoke. The flavor was something i have never tasted before. So smooth and sweet mixed with a pine flavor on the exhale. No cough and so smooth. I can only hope the whole plant is as good as this test bud! It should be though!

Also i took one of the smaller colas from off the side yesterday and have it drying now to taste test hopefully sometime this weekend if its dry enough! Took so pics. It looks fabulous!!! Ive been thinking about harvesting this weekend as it has flushed for 10 days now.

Question: Do you let you girls soil dry out before you harvest? And if so for how long before u harvest?



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I harvest when they are scheduled for their next drink. light degrades thc if the plant isn't in a state of growing.
 
I dont know about soil, but a properly watered plant is much easier to trim and manicure than a plant that is wilting and thirsty.

The fan leaves aren't easy to pull off and are limp and possibly could snap a branch ruining a nice looking cola. Remember my harvesting tip about pulling the useless fan leaves off by hand and all other leaves you can. A properly hydrated plant has strong feeling stems and petioles making pulling leaves of as easy as bending it down and giving it a nice little tug to snap it off. A plant that needs to be watered will have weak and rubbery petioles (the part of stem connecting the leaf to the stem of the plant) making it more difficult to remove these.

But its all a personal preference. Some people like to chop their plants and let them full dry before manicuring and such. Personally, i think thats silly as you will lose a load of trichomes in the process that you could have kept on your buds or trimmings to use for later extraction.

I think those papayas look amazing tho, and you really should take every step possible to harvest them, 1. when they are fully ripe, and 2. manicure and store the buds in a proper way to preserve the look and smell/taste of the buds!

So get a jewelers loupe if you dont already have one.. at least 20x magnification!
 
well, the damn plants slow down so much on their uptake, a person, if they wnated the soil to be dry at harvest, would have to time it out. i flush at three weeks left. and this time, i just watered after that. they are due anytime after the 28th, but they will not be uptakeing anymore. when a plant is done. its done. or slowed down so much, that it wont dry out, till its 200% amber. lol.
 
Greenthumb, I do have a loop and the trichs are still not exactly what i want yet. I didnt know the leaves would yellow this fast and thought i would would get a good 2 weeks before they started yellowing. What do you recommend if i wanted to let them go another week even possibly 2 weeks to completely finish? Will it hurt my buds if i just feed regular water for the next week or will the buds start yellowing and dying off also? What is your suggestion !?!?!
 
Your buds wont start yellowing off, but you might encounter a couple deficiencies right before you harvest which will leave you with sickly looking plants.. If you want to take them another week or two before you start to flush, give them another good feeding, then gradually ease off the nutrients until you start your flush.

What also might happen if you continue to water with plain pH balanced water, is your stems will become hollow, or at least very weak and wont be able to support the buds and start to fall over and break. I had this happen to a couple WW in my 4'x4' flood table. They also had HUGE heavy buds on top too so that might be the contributing factor!!

make sure you check all your colas.. just cause you see one amber trich on ONE bud, doesn't mean you should start flushing. sometimes trichomes degrade on their own due to a multitude of reasons. like you bumped it with something or whatever, mould etc.

Those buds look awesome, and the SCrog looks amazing. I love how full it is. Keep up the good work brother, and soon you will be chopping those ladies down!
 
Just wanted to let everyone know i started harvest this morning at 10 A.M. Im now half way done. One whole plant left!! I cant believe at how much medicine i have!!!!! I might get my goal after all =)!!!! I am SOOOOOO pleased with the HPS!!! Almost 8 hours and a few breaks in between. Its crazy how fast the time flies by. I will update with some pictures tonight!
 
UPDATE!

I hope everyone has enjoyed this grow! Thanks for the tips and everyone that helped me! Im very pleased with this grow. I wished i would have let them go another week but its ok as i have almost the percent amber trichomes that i wanted. I let them go almost 2 weeks more than my hydro girl so i thought they would be 100% ready.

The smoke is amazing from these soil girls compared to my hydro papaya. So much more flavorful and very very very smooth. I enjoyed some of a dried cola from my soil papayas that i took about 4 days ago while trimming and hanging for 12 hours lol... Even with no cure the smoke was so smooth and you can take the biggest hit you can take without coughing. The inhale is so smooth and sweet with a exhale of piney, fruity flavor. Im hoping these buds keep the fruity smell and taste through the cure.

Im glad to get these girls down as im ready to start my LSD's... I left some smaller colas on the papaya's and now have them under 18/6 and fed them some grow nutes yesterday. Im hoping I can re veg these girls enough to get some clones so i can get a mother plant from papaya's. Im able to keep at least 4 mother plants so i would like this strain to be one of them along with my LSD mother.

Picture time!! Every one of these colas are the size of my hand or bigger. I could not believe at the size of EVERY cola. I trimmed and hung tray after tray of colas. Im going to be pretty close to my 12 ounces i believe. Im hoping anyway! Room is holding at 70 degrees and 59% humidity! Going to keep it there for 3-4 days then into my jars with 62% humidipaks.

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The only thing i would change is i believe i let my girls get to big in veg for this 4x2 scrog (had no choice). The scrog was to full and lot of the buds grew together and caused some to not get any light. A lot of buds had no room and were forced below the scrog. If i had a bigger scrog i believe i could have added at least 3 more ounces on my yield due to lower buds not getting light. I had some whole colas just pushed all the way up to the net and squashed up against buds. They stayed small and had no where to go! If i had a 4x4 or 5x5 scrog i believe i could have pulled at least a pound from these girls.

Dont forget to subscribe to my LSD grow in my signiture! Its getting ready to kick off in the next week or two!!!!
 
Heck ya congrats so are you in love with hps now?+ rep

Thanks for the reps! Yes im in love with the HPS. These colas are so formed and dense. Its crazy how different they look from my CFL grow. Im going to continue with the 600 for a couple of months and i may switch to a 1000 or go with 2 600 watts! Either way im with HPS!
 
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