A friend of mine who has just started a very nice hydroponic grow and is using White Widow seeds claimed to me that you can use blueberry extract (which im guessing you can buy at a grocery store) to create blueberry buds. He went on to tell me that if you dilute it enough (cant remember the exact formula) and do not over do it with watering with the extract that you can successfully turn any strain of marijuana into a blueberry strain - it does not increase its potency he said but it gives it a blueberry-fruity smell and taste. He says he is going to create "Blue Widow" or "Widow-Berry" by conducting this method. Does anybody know if this is in fact possible?
This is two questions. 1) Can you turn any strain into Blueberry? No. No way. To get "Blueberry", you need seeds with Blueberry genetics. 2) Can adding fruity/sweet substances in the flowering phase create fruity/sweet flavours in the finished product? Maybe, but probably not in the way most would assume. It's true that you can use complex sugars in an organic grow (eg. molasses), to feed the soil organisms into producing a perfectly balanced, rich soup of nutrition to the plant, thereby enabling it to fulfill its genetic potential, which should have a fruity sweetness to it anyway, being cannabis; though every strain is, of course, different. Quality guanos have this effect, too, but the buds don't actually taste like shit! I can't comment on hydro. I've not experimented with "adding flavour" to flowering plants, either, so I can't give you an answer to that. Plant science says it's unlikely that the flavour would remain in-tact (plants being ionic feeders, and all that), but I know from experience of testing growing tips in the middle of a urine-based veg schedule, certain tastes do pass straight through into the leaves! I do now they use cannabis to mop up toxic chemicals in disaster sites, like Chernobyl, so cannabis certainly has the ability to suck up all sorts of crazy stuff (which is good, for my research). Fruit juice? Dunno, but I'm curious. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will have a better idea. -mu
A few days ago I was reading about the same subject, This was taken from the article, I DID NOT WRITE THIS. ----- "Adding Flavors People pay a lot of money to get seeds they think will grow pot that smells like blueberries or chocolate or something else. Often these strains are hard to grow or may not be as potent or high yielding as other less expensive varieties. People want to know if orange bud smells and tastes like an orange. With the proper techniques you can make your favorite variety smell and often times taste like anything you want. You want to do this without ruining the cure. It's no point having blueberry pot that burns your throat or doesn't get you high. Do not pour any syrup or similar flavorings on your pot. The sugar will make it very harsh and you are inviting mold. There are better ways. The best flavor enhancing starts while the plant is still growing. You can do a certain amount while it's curing and you can even affect the smell/flavor somewhat after it's been cured. There are two main approaches, inside out and outside in. You can apply flavors inside the plant while it's still growing and you can try to add flavors after it's been harvested but this is from the outside. Anything you put in your plants water will affect the taste of the finished product particularly if you harvest it right afterwards. I learned this about 20 years ago the hard way. I fertilized using fish emulsion right before I topped the plant. Bad move! The resulting top smelled like fish and had a foul taste. What you want to do is select a flavoring that is very concentrated. Lets take orange for an example. You could use orange juice but if you could find concentrated orange extract you would have less pulp etc to deal with. You will find some concentrated flavor extracts in the grocery store. Want your pot to smell like vanilla? Vanilla extract is cheap and readily available, so is lemon extract (cooking variety). Other extracts can be found in stores that specialize in baking supplies. Lets say you can't find any of that and you want to use what you have on hand. I took the example of orange flavoring. If all you have is orange juice you could use that. I would suggest filtering it first to get out as much of the pulp as possible. A coffee filter works well but it'll take a while to filter it all. You may have to change filters a few times. Those with hydroponic units will shudder at the thought of a lot of goop going through their system. That's why I suggested the concentrated extracts if you can find them. It's important to do this shortly before harvest. For one thing, most extracts including the ones you make up yourself have a lot of sugar in them. This sugar will ferment and decay rapidly, even more so in a hydro unit. With hydro I recommend putting the flavoring in the water between 1 and 3 hours before harvest. This rule isn't set in stone but I heard from one grower who used a sugar based clearing solution on his crop and less than 24 hours later the water was foaming from bacteria growth. Plants draw up solution fairly quickly so one hour should be enough for some of the flavoring to reach the top. Three hours should not be enough time for bacteria to grow but you will want to dump out the solution right afterwards and clean out your unit. If you read the SU of Mar 27 you knew to use plain water for a few days before harvesting your hydro crop so all that will be in the water will be the flavoring. If you are a soil grower it's even easier. You might think it would take longer for the flavor to work it's way through the plant but this is not the case. All you have to do is let the plant dry out a little before your apply the solution. In other words schedule a watering just before harvest. Naturally you were giving your plants plain water for several days to a week or two before harvest weren't you? Give the plant the water with the flavor when it's a little bit thirsty and it will draw it right up. One hour is more than enough time for this to happen. After harvest it's important to give it a good cure as I described last week. Resist the temptation to fast dry some of the weed to try it out. You will find it's even more harsh than it would be normally because you have added some sugar to the plant by way of the flavoring. The curing process will take care of the extra sugar and give you nice mild smoke. It will also have the flavor and aroma you are looking for.
Hmm. This is interesting. I know of adding glucose to the water during the flush, grow shops even sell the stuff bottled ("Sweet", I think it's called). But flavoring? I have had weed that tastes EXACTLY like blueberries. Even people that didn't smoke said it smells like blueberry jam in the bag. It was very very good weed, so I figured it was great Blueberry genetics, but now I wonder. Wouldn't it be great if you could smoke a joint that was like eating a burger? Get high and take care of the munchies at the same time....
This was added as a comment. Again I DID NOT WRITE THIS. With regards to flavoring, or should I say odourising your buds, one would presume that fragrant flavoring chemicals should be used. Seeing as you are unlikely to be eating the cannabis, the goal is to use flavoring chemicals that give off a strong smell, rather than just 'tasting' of a specific flavor. Substances rich in volatiles are good candidates. Essential oils for example. Essential oils contain, you guessed it, terpenes. Terpenes are volatile hydrocarbons that have low boiling points and therefore fill the air with smell easily. Most essential oils are quite expensive but are extremely intense, so very little needs to be used. The cheapest option is to use turpentine, if you want a light pine forrest smell to your buds. Turpentine also has a light citrusy note to it because it is high in limonene. Another cheap option is pure orange oil cleaner. Orange oil is a waste product from the peel of oranges used in the juice industry. It is full of terpenes like limonene, which are strong solvents used as cleaners. So long as you get 100% pure orange oil cleaner that hasn't been de-terpened or de-sesquiterpened. Another cheap option is vanilla extract, as someone pointed out earlier. Vanillin, along with others is a fairly volatile phenol in vanilla that fills a room with aroma. One example of this is how a whole vanilla pod will flavor a jar of caster sugar if left inside the jar for a few days. I can hear you saying now "Vanilla extract? Cheap??." Well, yes actually. It is only your usual domestic vanilla extract that is expensive. What's more, most domestic vanilla extract is inferior quality. If you want the very best quality vanilla extract, at rock bottom prices, buy mexican vanilla extract. The stuff is sold by the liter along the mexican border, to US visitors. The best of which is made by La Vencedora. You can buy a liter of award winning, double strength La Vencedora for around $8 on ebay!! People bring it accross the borders from Mexico because it is so cheap in Mexico. So those are my cheap, intense flavoring ideas for you. If you can spare the cash, you can try some expensive essential oils sparingly. Just to note, I have never fed flavorings to plants, so I am just taking Boosted9's word for it that it works.
I know this is an old thread but I'm interested in this topic. I think you can make a plant take on fruit flavors, much the same way using fish emulsions in flowering will create fishy tasting buds. I'm interested in using vanilla extract, orange extract, and lemon as flavoring for buds, along with blueberry. I need to do more testing to know the actual results. I assume that it will work, at least to some degree.
this has been discussed exhaustively .. most want their buds to taste like vanilla ..only one person claims it works.. let me ask you this .. how would you like to smoke the chems in extracts?
What chemicals? If you get pure extracts there are no chemicals. I'm not saying it will work for sure, but why does bud take on a fishy taste from fish emulsions if it can't take on flavor? No disrespect, just asking your thoughts on this.
Delta 9 tetrahydrocannabinol is a chemical lol, had to be a smart ass, as for flavor an old local hippie trick is to cure with fruit. Takes skill to prevent mold tho, be careful.
Ever smoked sugar...it sucks. Check out the reasons for "curing" including not only decarboxylation of THC, but also the expenditure and breakdown of glucose in the plant to GET RID OF THE HARSHNESS THAT COMES WITH SMOKING THOSE SUGARS. Adding sugar may make it smell sweet, and if you make a tea, I'm sure it tastes sweeter, but sugar is bad for smoking, and one of the reasons for a full flush it to strip the nutrients from the plant, so that while curing, the plant uses the rest of it's nutrients up and burns it's sugars before smoking. Blue Widow would probably be a cross of the "blueberry" genetics and White widow. It could be a stable F10 or a Dom-State F1, but adding blueberry flavoring isn't quite the same. -- the reason molasses is added is not to help nute uptake, but to feed bacteria and fungi, THEY help the nutrient system in a number of ways. The plant may take some of the sugars, but it's not in a readily available form when you add it to the soil/res. the reason your plant rotted is because you overfed the breakdown bactr, and created an environment for other species that ate your plant. Or, the syrup you created caused an anaerobic environment in the soil, killing the plant and the microherd.
You can get blueberry extracts without much if any sugar. Same with Lemon and Vanilla. And I've never had any problems with using molasses late in flower so I don't see any reason a mildly sweet extract would hurt anything. Maybe the fruit juice is a bad idea though. I think to have any real effect it (it it's even possible) it would need to be used throughout flowering. I'm still stuck on the idea that if fish emulsions can make a plant taste like shit, fruit could make it taste yummy. But people who used fish emulsions, that was in the feeding regimen for the whole grow, not just the end. So maybe adding extracts the whole time would make a difference. All that said, the extracts are way to expensive to be worth it, expect maybe lemon which would be too acidic.
It's funny cause I made a thread asking if it would be ok to water with sugar and they all said it was fine to do...honestly I don't know what the fuck I was thinking. I just thought it would taste better.
I tried that as a kid with house plants after reading a book about a kid who grew a giant pumpkin by feeding it sugar water. I killed a lot of house plants and my mom was pissed!
Granted, I just dumped a handful of sugar in each plant and then watered which was probably even worse, lol.
^^^^not after I get done smoking a bowl^^^^ thats just mean man...... mean I tell you!! a person shouldn't have a stomach ache from laughing ....
Ouch. All things in moderation. It won't kill your plants to add some molasses or even beat sugar, in small amounts. But it's still best to flush the plant with pure water before the harvest, so that the swolen cells have the cleanest water in them, and aren't being soured by salts and sugars. Non-sugar based extracts, added on harvest day, a few hours beforehand, would probably give some sense of the smell, probably not the taste when smoked. It's strange how most things, even if they smell good, smoke horribly. I'm down for flavors man, I'm workin on a limonine extract to try out with some bubble hash, but, so far, nothing I've tried has smoked well.