White Widow Auto for RSO - Advice needed

[manhattanguy]

I started my first ever grow 2 months ago after reading through this site for about 6 months prior. Thank you all for the wealth of information you provide. I grow two plants, white widow autos in a self-built grow box and was planning to start a journal here but thought that I will fail for sure the first time so I didn't. I am planning to use all for making medical oil (rick simpson method) and now I am at the point I need some advice. Some background:

White widow Autos, Nirvana seeds, both started in a dwc setup but moved to coco due to ph reasons (impossible to maintain). Today, June 13 the plants are 8 weeks and 2days old since they sprouted.

Fed with Canna coco A and B, Calmag, bit of peroxide, ph 5.8. When flower started I continued with less A and B and added PK13/14 and once a week only biobloom (biofizz), runoff is around 6ph

Lights are selfmade, one COB 100W, one COB 60 W and during veg I had a triple LED blue spectrum around 6000 lumens. Now It's around 160W LED and today I put in a 25W reptile UVB light.

Watering is pretty much every other day and they seem to like it. Temp is a bit on the up side, night 26c and daytime it can hit 29-30c because in closet.

The questions I have are the following:

1.Due to the fact that I plan to flush 3-5 days how long do you estimate (visually) could have left to harvest (so I know when to flush)? I know this is impossible to pinpoint but from your experience and looking at the pictures below what do you think? I am planning to cut down when all trics are cloudy. It's been 58 days since start and it doesn't look ready (to me)

2.Two days ago I noticed some small brown burns on a few bud leaves (pictures) any idea what it is and if I should get worried (looks like calcium but I feed them that).

3.If making RS Oil, is it really necessary to cure the buds or can I just dry them crispy

Thanks for your time and sorry if this has been answered on the forum, I did look through though...))

 

[Scientific]

1.Due to the fact that I plan to flush 3-5 days how long do you estimate (visually) could have left to harvest (so I know when to flush)? I know this is impossible to pinpoint but from your experience and looking at the pictures below what do you think? I am planning to cut down when all trics are cloudy. It's been 58 days since start and it doesn't look ready (to me)

Those flowers still look pretty young to me. The advice I got was that when over half of the pistils turned brown and twisted, you were close to harvest, then fine tune by observing trichomes. That worked for me. It's not a short window, so you should be able to time it easily just by watching. I would guess that you have well over a week left. (Just a guess.)

2.Two days ago I noticed some small brown burns on a few bud leaves (pictures) any idea what it is and if I should get worried (looks like calcium but I feed them that).

I don't know. Light burn? It doesn't look serious, though.

3.If making RS Oil, is it really necessary to cure the buds or can I just dry them crispy

No, you don't need to cure. Just dry them and then decarboxylate. I grind mine coarsely before decarb to help the gas exchange process and then fine grind after decarb to speed up the solvation process. Photos at page 9 of my log if you're curious. (I make tincture first, which I prefer--works faster--but sometimes boil that down to Rick Simpson oil.

 

[manhattanguy]

Thank you very much for your answers... I read through your entire log, lot of useful information (for me). Like your tinctures but I think I will simply go for RSO extraction only. You say to de-carb before. I was under the impression that de-carb occurs while boiling off the solvent and to be sure put the finished oil in the oven afterwards?

 

[Scientific]

You say to de-carb before. I was under the impression that de-carb occurs while boiling off the solvent and to be sure put the finished oil in the oven afterwards?

I personally like the idea of decarboxylating fresh-dried, coarsely ground cannabis because that gives me the most control over the process. Many people heat it up till "it stinks up the whole house," which tells me they have overheated it, to the point that the small, volatile organic components--or in the worst case, even the THC--are boiling off. Scientific studies (and my personal experience) have show that you can decarb just fine in a double boiler for an hour.

I also think that decarbing coarsely ground cannabis helps the CO2 to off-gas from the cannabis more easily than in a liquid. (Just a personal theory.)

But that's just my method (though I think it's a good one).

Have fun with whatever method you choose!

 

[manhattanguy]

Thanks Sci,

I will try to make Coconut-cannabis oil the way you describe in your blog.

One question; How should the trics look when harvested for Oil only (no smoking, kief etc) I dont need to wait for amber or? Should most be cloudy or cloudy clear?

 

[Scientific]

Hi MG -- First, I got to thinking some more about decarboxylating by boiling off the alcohol. The boiling point of 95% ethanol is only 174 F, at least 40 F below the lowest recommended temperature AND I think the boiling process would take considerably less than the 1 hour + recommended for decarb. So it's doubly bad.

I have seen a variety of recommendations for when to harvest. As you have probably seen, too, the recommendations talk about different effects based on different harvest times as CBD/THC/ETC shifts. I wonder how much of that is folklore and how much reality.

What I ended up doing was using guru Nebula Haze's recommendation to wait until more than 50% of the hairs have turned brown and then 50% of the trichomes have turned cloudy. I think about 80% of my trichs were cloudy by the time I harvested.

It would be fascinating to see lab results for different harvest times. I'm sure that someone has run the tests by now, but I haven't seen anything.

Happy harvesting!