Hey BID, saw you got your SRP and refractometer! The SRP is the same one I use, I like how it has the added bennies !! Congrats on the high brix readings BID...25 is freaking unbelievable!!! Highest I ever got was 22 for a short time before my grow went sour and PM killed my babies.. I read your posts here and in Docbud's journal and saw the debate of the readings being so high. Its hard to tell from the photos because the color of the photos seems to be off, but the blue dream looks freaking amazing, definitely frosty as hell and has many more trichomes than my blue dreams had on the fan leaves, and mine were testing around 15-17 so it very may well be possible that your hitting 25.
Things I noticed when my plants were reading higher brix (15+).
- The stems were a very bright yellow green neon color, almost reminded me of florecent green spraypaint color, extremely vivid and bright. The higher the brix from 15 and up, the color got more intense and vivid. The lower the brix, the duller the stem color.
-The leaves had a very thick waxy look to them, almost like they were molded out of plastic.
-The fan leaves usually were pointed upwards towards the light on what looked like a good 15 degree angle or more. Like they looked like they plants were so happy they were holding their arms up in joy.
- When I did LST or Scrog bending, the plants reacted to the light extremely fast, almost could see them within 1 or 2 hours completely change position in response to the light, where as my lower brix plants would take much longer to respond.
These are the things I noticed so far while testing my plants and comparing the results... hope this may help you determine whether your readings are accurate. How long ago did you water vs when you tested your plants? Doc brought up a pretty valid point and I looked into leaf moisture content and found a graph of Kale that was tested from different sources. They found that the dryer the leaves, the higher the brix reading. At a 30% moisture the plants averaged a 28 bix, at 60% moisture content the plants were reading about a 24 brix, at 80 percent the plants were reading around a 12 brix, and at 90% the plants were reading around 6 brix. I usually checked my brix usually the day of or within 2 days from when I gave them a watering, and the leaves for the most part were always juicy, as soon as I cut a leaf off, the plant would ooze juice from the wound in a bubble. Did yours do that? I would imagine if you were able to squeeze juice from your leaves, and they were healthy adult leaves, and the plants were within a few days of a watering, then I would assume that the moisture content was there.
Here is a chart that Kentucky state University did regarding moisture of kale leaves and brix..
In the study they also noted that there was no different between the young leaves and older leaves. So where we take the samples may not have much influence, however I have read from other sources that their findings were different..so it may possibly mean that different plants distribute sugars differently and we have more work to do to know how cannabis is
Another thing I found interesting is that one set of plants was sprayed with molasses, 2 weeks from harvest, the control group was not. They found that molasses had no influence on brix values after harvest, however the ones that were sprayed with molasses had a higher ash content than the control group...interesting.
Either way BID, not sure what to say about your readings besides I am happy that you are testing your plants and we all colaboratively are figuring out this brix thing with cannabis. It feels pretty awesome to be amongs cannabis brix pioneers who all are sharing their findings to figure out this puzzle and take our plants to the extremes!!! Your plants look freaking amazing though and I would love to try your blue dream, yum,!!!!
