This is a good thread. Nice and detailed. I subscribed. I'm only 10 days into my first grow from bagseeds. The part I feel most anxious/worried about is the harvesting, curing, and processing steps.
Awesome, thanks! Well, depending on a couple of things, there's a way to make that part easier. If you don't have much space and you don't need the grow space for a couple of weeks, you can dry in the grow area with the lights off & good ventilation out. If not, a drying rack in a dim area in a room with good ventilation is ok. Whatever your situation is, I recommend to first decide up front if you want to pick buds off as they ripen (the tops usually ripen a little earlier than sides) or all at once. I personally wanted to try the method of light depriving the plants for 2 days before harvest to diminish the chlorophyll out of the buds. I think it worked because the test buds that I dried before doing that were a little more 'earthy'. So, I harvested all at once after 2 days of light deprivation. Ed Rosenthal (one of the most prestigious growers) recommends to NEVER pick a bud before its time, but convenience is a factor Processing is kind of a pain, so make it as painless as possible. Have a clean desk area with good lighting. This seems simple, but it's really a huge help to be comfortable. Have 3 containers: Unprocessed branches, trim, processed buds. Get a real good pair of scissors, and have rubbing alcohol nearby to clean them with, as they will quickly gunk up with resin after a plant or so. As for growing bagseeds, I recommend one thing strongly: Force them into flower mode at 6" in height for them to show their gender. It really sucks to raise high quality male marijuana plants for a couple of reasons. 1. Of course the extra cost of soil and nutrients and maintenance time that is wasted 2. It sucks to dispose of all of the plant material a large male plant will produce when you find out that its a male. If you don't live near the woods, it's pretty conspicuous. Especially if you go to toss the trash & the garbage bag rips and all these nice green 5-7 finger leaves fall out. 3. The fastest growing, best looking plants usually are the males. They have to compete so much more than females, usually they are the strongest. It bummed me out to throw my healthiest plants out. 4. If you bought a bag of weed with seeds it in, they are most likely outdoor plants. Seeds mean that a grower was lazy, or ran a renegade grow where he planted early and left the field to grow all summer. The plant may not grow as well indoors. My bagseeds did pretty good actually, so this might not be a factor. Howeve,r the one surviving female had a major issue shortly into flower. It could have been the age of the seed, bad genetics or a nutrient lockout, but it was treated the same as the feminized high quality seed, and they didn't lockout. 5. It takes a plant 2 weeks to adapt to a light change. So, you will be out a month of veg time to do it (4 weeks). Use that to help with the decision to sex them early or not. This was the reason I didn't, and I regretted the decision. Anyways, if you want my opinion on anything else, let me know!
Excellent info! Thanks. I'm actually interested in juicing my male plants, for medicinal reasons. I don't mind having a lot of male plant mass, as long as I don't get too close to pollination. I've been considering maybe even tossing a few of the male plants in stealth locations outside this year, just to let them grow larger before juicing them, but I think there's not enough growing time left in the season (USDA Zone 5).
Woah, juicing the plants... that's a great idea to deal with the plant matter! Have you done it before? How's the taste? We juice as well, but never even considered using plant material.. Very cool idea.
Here's what the buds look like under the microscope: As my wife said: "It looks like a field of dicks"
You seem to have a scientist/researcher personality type. I juice frequently for health, but I've never tried cannabis juice. I haven't seen a lot of info about it on the net. I think it might be one of those things that might become popular in 3-5 years from now among the health-conscious groups, but currently it's not very popular. I think there's also a lack of information/research on carboxylated (unconverted) cannabinoids, so not much can be said about it with certainty. I ran into this book last week, and I'll probably read it sometime soon: http://www.amazon.com/Juicing-Cannabis-Healing-Remission-Marijuana-ebook/dp/B00LWCY196 The author has posted a few times on this forum, and I found her posts informative. Some people were negative against her because she was promoting her book here.
Alright, so the final numbers are in. Out of two plants, minus the moldy buds that I disposed of/used for hash I got - 5.5 ounces dried. That's about a third of a pound out of my first grow. Since I'm legally allowed 6 flowering plants, I most certainly can hit my 1 pound per grow goal. Especially now that I learned so many lessons from this original grow. I also got about 4 grams of hash out of the third plant and the moldy/unsmokable buds. The problem is that I don't have anything to smoke it with easily, unless I crumble it on top of a bowl. It's weird too, I did two runs and wound up with two different types of hash really... the first run dried so its easily crumbled, the second is like silly putty, even though it's dried for 5 days.. Anyway, not bad.