First Grow - Northern Lights - 600w - 3x3 Grow Tent

That's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking of pulling the 2f2v out right before lights out and giving her a day or so of dark. I've heard some pretty good things about a little extra dark time right before you chop.

 

 
I'm doing pretty fantastic.  The little autoflower that I've been posting on is a 2 Fast 2 Vast from Heavyweight. It's a cross between their fast & vast (afghani x skunk x white dwarf) and a NL's autoflower.  The other two are Norhtern Lights from 00 Seeds.  My wife isn't the biggest fan of the heady high part of sativas so I'm going to try and find some tasty indicas for her.
 
As you said, knowing when a plant is done just by the look/smell/whatever is something that comes in time.  I'll probably play around with harvesting depending on the trichomes for a while.
 
I know what you mean about gardening.  It's hard to not, once you finally see the fruit of your labor.  Mine has always been the tasty food that I can make from the harvest.  But I can see the appeal with beautiful flowers as well.  It sounds like you are getting pretty heavy into medicinals as well.  I"m sure there will be tons of herbs/flowers that you will be able to grow to add in to that as well.  I've been staying up with your journal as well, there is plenty of great information in there for that side of things.  I would love to get more into that as well.  There are just so many benefits that good plants can add to your life.  One of my favorite things from my harden last year was some plain old mint tea.  It was a french mint that I got from one of my CSA's and I drank it pretty much every night it was growing.  

 

So yesterday was a great day  It was harvest day for the little autoflower!
 
So right before lights came on, I pulled the 2f2v out and chopped it at the base.  It was the start of the 82nd day.  I started to have right around 20-25% of the trichomes were getting amber and I couldn't find any clear trichomes.  I figured that's as good of time as any to take her down.  
 

 
After I chopped her down I went through and took of most of the large fan leaves.  I tried not to disturbed the actual buds too much and just snipped of the leaves that were sticking out past the flower sites.  Once all this was done I threw her on the scale real quick.  So the initial wet weight was 44.44 grams.  I read around a little bit and saw people saying anywhere from 20-30% is what people can expect as the dry weight.  If that is the case, I should be able to have just under 1/2 oz, which seems like a pretty decent yield for my first harvest, especially considering it was an autoflower.
 

 
I cleared out a little space in the closet that I have the tent in to use as my drying space for this harvest.  I tossed all the fan leaves and trimmings into a paper sack with some shredded up strips.  There were a couple tiny little bud branches that I threw in as well.  I figure I'll dry those all out and freeze them so I can do a qwiso or bubble hash run down the road.  
 

 
She's been in the closet about 20 hrs now.  The temperature in there is in the high 60's and the humidity is a little low in the mid 30%.  I'll be checking on here every so often, but I figure she'll be in there for probably 5ish days.  Once the little bud stems snap I'll do a proper trim and throw them into a jar with a boveda 62 pouch thrown in.  I figure I'll still burb it every so often but the pouches should make it hard for me to mess up.  Haha.
 
For the NL's, I swapped out the MH for the HPS light. I've heard some pretty good things about putting them into a longer dark period when switching to 12/12 so I figure I'll give that a shot.  Probably only 24 hrs of dark, then I'll kick on the HPS.  They are both still looking pretty healthy.  I can't wait to see how they do in flower now

 

Damn right!

I sneak a peak every once and while. The leaves are starting to droop and things are drying up in the closet. I figure under half an ounce of delicious bud is a fantastic payoff for all the reading and research. Plus the whole thing has been fun. I'm definitely hooked. And don't plan on leaving GC anytime soon.

All you guys have been a huge help in getting me successfully to my first chop. Many thanks to you all. A couple more months and my first official grow will be done. Still can't wait for the first puffs

 

That's more or less what I'd like to do. With this being the first time I've dried my own bud, I'll need to peak in occasionally so I can learn what things look like through each step. But I don't plan on doing anything other than looking for a few days.

Today is also the first day of 12/12 hps light for the two NLs ladies. That light sure does kick out a LOT more yellowish light than the mh. That might take a minute to get used to. I have some blue tinted safety glasses at work, I might grab those and see how they make it look.

 

I've seen a few people doing the same thing.  It seems like a good way to sample the same plant at different done-ness levels.  I'll most likely do that on my next harvest. I have a little jewleres loup that works great for me to look at the plant, but it isn't the best for trying to get trichome pictures up on here.  I may just grab one of those USB Microscopes, or finally look for my DSLR's charge so I can use my macro lens.
 
Haha, I know what you mean.  It took a lot to wait until I had plenty of amber trichomes.  But I think it was worth it.
 
Her ankle's doing great now.  She's been back skating for a while, kicking ass!
 

I think that is going to be the best way to learn when a particular strain likes to get harvested.  I'm definitely going to give it a shot when I pull down the NL's.
 
Hope you guys enjoy the next couple months of flower for the NL's.  

 

Today was another big day
I've been checking on the drying autoflower.  Today was the day to do a proper trim.  I tried bending the smaller stems and they had a snap to them.  So I broke out the little clippers and went to them.  I ended up with a little less than what I had calculated earlier, that's mostly because I didn't do much trimming before they dried.  I think because of that I over estimated how I could have gotten.  But As you can see, I got just over 5.5g of bud. And I got just over 13g of trim.  
 

 
The smell of this 2F2V during flower was pretty mild.  It was a little earthy and funky, but still had a little fruity aroma to it as well.  When I started trimming up the buds, you could really smell it's true colors shining through.  It had that earthyness to it still, but a lot more dank fruity herbiness to it.
 
The buds go thrown into a mason jar with a Boveda 62 pack.  I have already burped it once, and have noticed an improvement in aroma since it has been in the jar.  The trim got thrown into a zip lock freezer bag and put in the back of the freezer.  I plan on saving all of this tll the end of the entire grow.  Once I have my NL's down as well I'll try my hand at making some QWISO.
 
I haven't tried a any of it yet, but plan to tomorrow.  So stay tuned for my first smoke report, of my very first harvest

 

I know I haven't gotten a picture of the NL's up in a little while. My phones battery just didn't want to work with me last night. But I grabbed a few tonight. Everything is so much more yellow under this hps. I need to get a white light to put on there when I'm taking some pics.

Everything is looking pretty good though still. I opened up the LSTed lady a little bit. Pulled a few if the branches apart to let more light get down in. I haven't done much at all to the topped plant. They are both growing pretty good and stretching out a bit.

I'll probably give them another tea in a couple weeks. But other than that there's not much more I think I should do but kick back and watch them grow.

 

Thanks a lot

Thank you very much.


There are going to be some pretty big changes and improvements in my next grow. So I'm really glad things have worked out pretty well for my first grow.

I've started looking into some things that I know I can improve on. I'll be making some changes to my soil, my equipment, and the way I go about training. So my next grow should be pretty interesting.

 

 
I think you were right.  I probably should have let it go a little while longer.  However, when I did end up chopping I was about 40%-ish amber.  But The buds didn't have a whole lot of bulk to them.  As others have pointed out, it seems like the autoflowers just don't have the same requirements as the photos.  Either way the smoke is pretty good.  I've sampled a few little bowls while it has been curing.  I haven't posted up a proper smoke reports as it is still pretty fresh and I don't think it would be fair.
 
The smell is really starting to come along with the harvested autoflower.  I have everything in a mason jar with the boveda 62 pack in there.  I do open it up a couple times a day (have gone down to once a day now).  It started out pretty mild and grassy smelling.  It has definitely bumped up a notch in aroma.  The grassy notes have gone down a lot.  I'm still getting some piney diesel smell, but it is pretty great.  
 
 

 
Yeah, it worked pretty good for me for a while.  It did knock down the adult population for about a week.  But they are back in full force now.  So I don't think it is very helpful. I did pick up some neem oil.  But they are in flower right now and I don't really want to go spraying a bunch of stuff on them.
 
I have my veggie starts in another room under a T5 light.  They are in some lightly amended HF soil (The same bag that I started my mix with).  The gnats were getting a little thick in there too.  They got the first spray of neem oil.  I just put a little bit in my spray bottle and shook the hell out of it.  Sprayed them twice yesterday and once today.  Maybe it's just me being hopeful, but I didn't see any gnats flying around in there at all today.  So far, in my book, neem kicks ass!
 
 

 
Those tilted screens do look like pretty slick idea.  Seems like it should do a good job keeping the canopy "even", at least as far as the lighting is concerned.  I think the learning and figuring things out is half of what I enjoy so much about growing.  I've changed a lot of what I first thought about growing.  Found some things that work, some things that don't, and some things that I really like to do in the grow.  I can't wait to see what we both start to get now that we are starting to figure this whole thing out (at least a little bit more).
 
 

 
Thank you for stopping in.  It's always enjoyable and enlightening.  
 
You as well my friend