When I get weed from friends whom purchase from dispensaries the buds are nice and tight and professional looking. Why do my buds look so loose an unprofessional after curing, Is this normal? Is there a trick? For me, I trim as close as possible, but I don't want to remove the small sugar leaves that have high amounts of trychomes on the bud,,, so I don't usually trim so tight to the bud. I dry and cure my buds very well also. I'll enclose pics shortly of what I'm talking about.
Are you talking about the natural compaction of the buds as they dry / cure and lose water weight? So pre-trim the nugs come off the plant like this But after about 3-6 months in jar storage shrink and "harden" into something more like below (I think this is actually from the same bud as above) I trim sugar leaves close, but thats only because my brother does edibles so he is always happy to hoover up any waste trim for butter.
Is total potency solely a direct result of bud structure? Can you have 30% THC flower that is not dense? Can airy or fluffy buds carry the same potency as rock hard nugs? You cant necessarily impact bud density on an outdoor grow but some strains do create a denser bud then others, imo.
Yeah I definitely agree with both of you. It seems my buds at the very tippy tops of my branches are hard as a rock and the lower ones are way more airy. But my white widows are waaaaaaay denser than my ak47 plants in general. And my jack herer last year were super airy from top to bottom and I got the same strain from the dispensary to compare and theirs which I’m assuming were indoor grown were significantly denser which would further reinforce light intensity playing a major role. As long as it gets you high that’s all that really matters though. Plus if you sell it the airy stuff makes for a fatter bag anyway.
I can tell you in my last 2 grows I've been using a light that can put out over 1,400 umol / sec on the canopy, and the buds were definitely denser than the older lights that were only putting out 700 umol/s The problem is once you start getting up to 1,000+ umol/s on the lights, everything has to be dialed in pretty well or you will stress the plants (or need to add supplemental CO2 above 900-1000 umol). Same genetics same seed bank, same medium, nutes, schedule etc. The gelato bud under 700 umol/s (what I consider about the minimum for a flowering canopy) Another gelato under about 1,100 umol/s same age (week 4 of flower for both) Light intensity for sure makes a difference in both bud size and trich density, but like nutes or anything else, you push it too far and the plant will hurt, also, PH issues, or nute overload / deficiencies, can really trash a plant in like 2 days when you are maxing out photons, and vice versa (nute lock or bad ph will make the plant unable to tolerate high light levels.)
Well, a real important part like always......Genetics. And, Outdoor stuff is lot of times fluffy as shit. That's why they make Avalanche.........
Directly related to light duration (how many hours a day your plants get direct sunlight during bloom), light intensity (no clouds and nice warm sunny days), available food (how much you fertilize your plants and the quality of the fertilizer), and genetics.
Its usually related to light. Do they get full direct sun all day? What is you latitude. the higher latitudes the plant will be getting less light at the end of flowering. Mine are in full sun for about 6 hours in veg, and down to 4 at the end of flower because of shade for fence. The rest is bright shade, and it definitely makes for fluffy buds. I don't mind too much, because anything that is dense gets mold anyways.