Tbone's Alaskan LED adventure...

Those are some seriously thick colas. Nice work man. I do love hydro. I'm not sure I'll ever use soil. Honestly it seems like more work. In hydro you always have the control to change things at a moments notice. You just have to learn to recognize what the plants want and settle into a good routine for your strain and room. Less is more. I see these people feeding at over 1200ppm and I cringe. It's so not needed in DWC.

 

For the price get the 6 bucket system and if you can only use 4 just cap 2 lines on the pump. You'll have 850gph of air for only 4 buckets. I ran mine like this for most of the bud cycle since I cut down 2 plants that were slow growers at the beginning. 2 veg buckets and 2 bud buckets would be good for a 4x4 tent split in half with a divider made of white/black plastic doubled over with white on both sides or mylar. By the time you buy 3 buckets independently you could have just bought the six and you won't have the big air pump that comes with the kit if you buy them separate. The pump alone is 40-$50 online.

 

2 plants showing sex today in the bud room. Both female. That's 6 for 6 from seed. Creepy. We'll see what happens with the other 2.

 

2 more ladies showing today. I'm 8 for 8 now females in the bud room. I've never even seen a male from my seeds. I would be more excited if I didn't know that means I may have to deal with a hermie again. You just don't get all females for no reason.

I'm probably going to end up squeezing 6 in the bud room. I have 2 plants in hydro buckets right now and they're starting to get big. No way I can veg them more than another 2 weeks tops. I think I'm going to redo my ventilation. I'm going to run a duct to the outside for pure outdoor air intake, add a thermostat, move my fan outside of the tent on top, and move my p450 into the bud room. With 6 plants I'll probably need more light.

I'm seriously considering ordering another light for the veg room. If I move the 450 all I have in there is a single California lightworks 110 vegmaster. I'll need at least 2 to have enough power to veg.

 

I got a new strain last night from a guy down the street. It's supposed to be from the late 70's/early 80's a hybrid indica/sativa cross. He calls it Danny Glover but I looked and can find no information on the strain. I may pick his brain a little more to see if I can get more info on it. Anyway he's been growing AK47 & White Widow. He did a plant of this Danny Glover last crop and I guess it was super impressive. Colas the size of his arm. He's doing a scrog and had accidentally broke off a top trying to train it so he let me have it. I cut three clones off of it just to make sure I get at least one. I'm excited to have some new genetics in the garden, something green instead of purple. I'm almost getting burned out on stoney grape tasting purple buds. I thought I'd never say that.

I'll post some pictures of the veg side later. The new generation of Purple Prose looks healthy as ever. I've topped this new plant a couple of times so far and done a little LSTing with it to bush it out. It has a good 10-12 tops coming up this time.

I did find about 2 more seeds since I've been smoking my bud. That's only a total of 4 and 98% of the bud I pack doesn't have any seeds so I haven't worried about it. That does mean that I may still have a hermie tendency in the new Purple Prose. I can't help but be excited that I may have the purple plant accidentally fertilize the danny glover. I may end up with my own new phenom strain. GDP is an indica dominant 50/50 hybrid of purple urkle and big bud. This other plant is a sativa dominant. They may make something nice together.

 

I ordered a new light last night. Another California Lightworks Vegmaster 110. I'm really happy with the last one. It's a lot more light than it seems like because it's all veg no bloom mode. If you want a bloom mode 110 it's called the bloombooster. There's 44 5 watt leds in it. Most other companies would rate that as a 220w led light. It actually runs 85-90 watts so they just call it the 110. I'm running it next to the p450 right now and its surprisingly bright. It's because it's all veg. The p450 is half turned off in veg mode. It's only 137watts in veg. 255watts bloom.

It really doesn't make a lot of sense to buy higher end LED's with veg/bloom switches for vegging plants if you're doing two rooms. You're running at least 30% of the light off in veg mode. It's crazy to pay $550 for 137watts of veg power. The vegmaster is very near the output/veg coverage for $270.

I have 2 plants in hydro buckets right now 5 weeks old. In a week or so when this light gets here I'm going to redo my whole setup and squeeze 2 more plants in the bud room with the p450. I think the p900 and the p450 together in the same 4x4 is going to be badass.

This is an older picture but you can see what I'm doing. There'll be 2 red boxes in the left hand side and two platinums on the right. The fan is going to go on top of the tent to make room.

 

I've been making dabs since before they were called dabs, about 2002 or so. I've resisted the whole dab movement. I hate the trendy name. It's just another form of hash. People act like it's something new. I used to make my own "dab rigs" the old fashioned way. I heated up a huge bowl for a bong I had and bent the stem straight down. Everyone remember hot knifes? I would heat just one knife up, then I would dangle a dab about to fall off the other knife. When I had the bowl in position to catch I would drop the wax on the hot knife and catch the smoke. Good stuff. Actually better than the torch method if you ask me.

Anyway been making some wax with my clippings and didn't have a proper setup for it. I felt like I was wasting it a little just putting it on bowls so I went to the local shop to get an upgrade. The dude did a proper sales job on me and talked me into one of these wax vape pens talking about how stupid the torch is and I agree. The one I got is called the x-vape v-one.


I have to say. I'm super impressed. This thing is so convenient it's hard to realize I lived without it this long. Welcome to the modern era I guess. If you're into making shatter/wax/dabs. It's hard to not have one of these things.
Xvape V-One 1.0 Ceramic Disk Wax Vaporizer Pen Kit - Vape Pen Sales

 

I'm using butane for now. I bought a glass extractor and some filter but after trying that I went back to my old homemade rig. It yields more with less material. These modern people just trying to sell glass don't understand if you hold back the gas a little and pressurize the material as much as you can you get a better yield. My glass extractor is all open on the bottom. The one I made is out of 1" copper pipe with caps and a series of small holes in the bottom that don't let the gas out very fast. .

 

My glass extractor is super thick glass. It's supposed to be fine with pressure and cold. I really don't like it though. My copper pipe is about 9" long 1" wide. You can fit about 3/4 to an ounce of trim in it. I don't really know how to weigh the yield. I will typically make it in a pyrex cake pan. Once it's done I just keep the pan in my bottom drawer and scrap up a hit when I want one. I know it's maybe 3-4 times what I get when I buy a gram.

I got one batch left to make I could take a pic of. The problem with bubble hash is the amount you get for the amount of material you put in is really low. There's lots of waste. I've made alcohol hash, screened hash, and BHO. BHO is by far the most efficient. You get more bang for your trim with butane hash than anything else. If you want to be super conservative the trim can actually be ran through the extraction a second time for about 1/4 the yield of the first but it's there. Sometimes I will save my first run material for a while so if I really want I can make some still.

If you use high quality butane BHO is actually really clean and some of the strongest extracts. 75% thc is common. I put the oven on warm for about 5 minutes and turn it off. I put a good amount of trim on a cookie sheet then leave it in the over for about 5 minutes letting the pan get warm. I take it out and set the pan out to let the trim cool. It's only about 100 degrees but if you let it cool it gets bone dry. I bought a coffee grinder just for this. I start putting large pinches of material in the grinder and bumping it a few times to break it up to fine shake.

Once the dry shake is prepared I tape the bottom cap on my 1" pipe with duct tape. It has 4 1/16" about holes drilled in the bottom like a pepper shaker. The hole drilled in the top cap is the right size for the butane can. I pack the shake in the tube careful not to pack it too tight. You want it tight but you can get it too tight. I've blown the bottom cap off when it got clogged once. It was bad. Batch is pretty much ruined when you blow shake all over it.

I get an oven mitt because the tube gets super cold. I grab the cake pan, the tube packed with shake and head out to the back corner of my property where there's no lights or electric sources of ignition. I run the whole tube of butane through the shake and collect the liquid in the pan. Once it's done I'll put the tube under a rock in the yard or another place hidden but so it can air out for a day or so before I clean it out. That shake is full of butane and it continues to evap out of it for hours especially in the tube. Better to just leave it be to disapate.

You swirl the liquid in the cake pan with your hand on the bottom until all the liquid is evaporated. I get the oven just slightly warm again. Maybe 90 degrees or so then I turn it off. I put the cake pan with extract in the oven to warm up. It's ice cold and covered in condensation. I leave it in the oven checking every couple of minutes until all the condensation evaporates and the cloudiness disappears from the resin. Once it goes clear it's done and can be smoked right away. The longer and hotter you do the oven curing the thicker it becomes. If you don't oven it at all it's typically a little runny. I have left it in too long it's very easy to do and then once it cools down it's really hard like hard candy. Somewhere in the middle is best.

When I was younger and a more crazy stoner I had it down to where I could make a batch at lunch and get high before I left to go back to work in only a 30 minute lunch. It can be done really quick. That's another advantage of BHO.

 

Here's a pic for you. This is less than 1/4 of what's in the whole pan. I smoked off it all day yesterday. I just scrapped some up to show you.


It's funny because people used to ask me to sell it for years and I never would because I couldn't figure out how to put a price on an amount or package it. It's so hard to deal with. I could have been early in on the dab scene but I didn't have the vision. 15 years ago I knew people growing illegally that didn't want to deal with all their trim so they gave it to me for free originally to make edibles. After I got sick of that and learned how to do BHO it was on until the day I showed them how to do it. I never got any more free trim.. hehe. Shot myself in the foot.

My wife doesn't really like it and kept trying to get me to smoke a bowl. I was like "nope, I'm good".

 

My light showed up. I'm excited. I can daisy chain the two in the veg tent. My veg plants are getting big in the two buckets. I have a bunch of work to do. Move my main fan to top of tent, re-do the intake and exhaust connections for winter, make new window mounts for both, move p450 to bud side, add clip on fans to open up floor space, move DWC plants to bud side, making room for 6 plants in the 4x4, mount new light, clean remaining 4 buckets from last harvest, sterilize gravel, buckets, and tubing, mount new airstones, ready buckets for next clones.

All this to fit in and I twisted the shit out of my back at work today. I can barely walk. I'm hoping I bounce back after a good nights sleep and somehow can do all this.

I know this is a superior setup to my original plan. I was going to veg with the p450. Well it's only 137 watts when you only have the veg switch on. My new setup for veg with two 110 vegmasters is 180 watts with 72 5 watt led's total and a recommended 12" distance so I should be able to pound more par into my plants.

 

I've made it with alcohol but not for a long time. My friend just made a nice batch with alcohol. It's near the potency of BHO. It just seems harder to get all the solvent out and get a good consistancy. BHO is so easy. The alcohol hash I've seen lately was kinda golden and buttery but crumbed up. It melted and bubbled when you hit it with heat.

I'm curious about the flat iron method since it's no solvent. I'd love to do it but it looks like so much work.

I bet someone could figure out a method with a hydraulic press. Maybe heat up metal plates with wax paper between.