Emmie's Berry D'licious 2019 True Living Organic: No AACT, SCROG, COB, SuperSoil Production Grow & Seed Run

Hey @Emilya ... nice harvest!!!

On my first harvests I tried cutting all the buds off the branch, ... I'm gonna try this way this time.

I just made some cannacookies from the cannabutter I made a few weeks ago ... yum!!!

I used cured buds and the effect is awesome :)

I'm curious ... Do you let the buds cure down to 62% before using them for edibles?

ttyl
 
fanleaf said:
For a 2x4' area 1lb dried is very good.
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Yes, I am pretty well pleased with the yield this time in the half sized tent. This never was an option with the big dual 600w HID lights and the need to deal with their hoods and the heat issues. These new LED lights have made a huge difference in the efficiency of these operations and it was for just this reason that we decided not to set up the 4x4 until we find a new house.
As far as the drying goes, we are still working on it. The first batch, Red, came in at all the wrong humidity and temperature and I got a scare yesterday morning thinking that I had overdried her. The other harvests looked ok, but I quickly chopped the buds from the branches and moved it into a big mason jar trying to save it.
The jar showed 45% RH when I went to work and I was starting to think that @Mark Gordan Smith might have a chance yet... but when I got home and checked the RH had risen up into the curing range, and by the time evening came it had risen up over 70%.... so it wasn't overdried after all.
That batch was taken out of the mason jar and put into a paper sack, where she still resides this morning, in the drying tent, slowly and naturally coming down into the cure range. I am now convinced that by carefully controlling the temperature and the humidity, I am going to get the best cure I have ever gotten on this batch... nothing like a little incentive to really make me put my best effort into it. :)
 
Seed Report...
As of this morning all three plants have found their way into large 5 oz Ball jars with the RH reasonably close to the curing range. I may still have to go back to the paper sack on one or two of them to get them into the range, but it looks like at least the first harvested, Red, is now where I want her.
As I started working with Tara I set the 3 branches that were pollinated aside. Last night I started pulling apart some of those buds to see what we have. I know these buds are not going to be the same quality as an unseeded bud, but they are sticky and full of trichomes and once the seeds are cleaned out, it looks perfectly smokeable.
As I peel these buds apart down into their individual nugs, new clusters of seeds are found at each level. They are not dry enough yet to totally dismantle them, but I am going to guess there to be around 200 seeds per bud.

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In the Jar!
All three plants are now in their own individual jars, stabilized in the cure range. I didn't get the long summertime slow dry that I was shooting for, but I got close to 4 days in the beginning of wintertime and I am going to call this acceptable.
My test buds have been in a jar since right before harvest and they are starting to cure up a little bit now... and the test pot just keeps getting stronger and more enjoyable to smoke.
Check out the big screw I am going to use in the next harvest... its twice as big as the ones used this time!
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Here is the group.. already starting to compress and change colors. Without a doubt by the time I am done with my test buds in a couple of weeks, any of the 3 curing jars will have become much better smoke than the uncured test buds ever were. I will first be heading to M&M for a smoke report as even now she looks to have the densest trichomes and the deepest color. It is still too early to tell anything about the smell or the taste... there is not going to be anything to do with berries or delicious until the cure activates the terpenes.
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Hey @Emilya ...

I've been inspired by you ... so I am going to try capturing pollen and then growing some seeds in my January grow ...

Thanks again for another valuable journal!!!
 
SQl2kGuy said:
Hey @Emilya ...

I've been inspired by you ... so I am going to try capturing pollen and then growing some seeds in my January grow ...

Thanks again for another valuable journal!!!
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Thank you @SQl2kGuy, that is a wonderful compliment! There is nothing like having your own seedbank to fall back on if times become hard for you or someone you know.
Oh, and so far I have gathered about 10 grams of seeds so far from this grow. I figure there are about 75 seeds per gram, so I have 750 seeds in my cup so far, and I have not even fully harvested my 3 pollinated buds. I am guessing that I have about 2/3 of the seeds collected at this time.
 
The drying process is still underway and the bulk of the buds have not really even started to cure yet, still hanging mostly up near 66-68% RH. I keep burping, nudging them down a little bit each day, and just today we reached that point where 10 minutes open starts really moving the meter. This morning I watched a 10 minute burp bring it down from 67 to 64, and when I put the lid back on it had risen back to 65 as I walked out the door to go to work. I am getting close, and soon it will sit inside the curing range and stay there.

The interesting thing to note is found by watching them settle in the jars as the moisture content starts to go away. As they begin to compress a predicted thing has happened. When first stuffed in the jars, Red definitely filled the jar more than the others, with Tara right behind her. Now looking at the jars, the best buds, the most dense, are the ones that are not compacting as much as the others. M&M with her Vulx, is turning out to be the winner here. In the end, more quality bud weight is going to come from her than the other two were able to provide.

Meanwhile, my nifty mini member-of-the-month jar has served me well. The test buds stuffed in there right before harvest did cure up a bit finally and for the last 3 or 4 days the smoke has become smooth and a pleasure to partake. It hasn't cured to the point that I can taste any berries yet, but it is becoming some very strong smoke.
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Good juggling! They look wonderful!
 
More Observations From The Harvest
Today before I get busy doing the much needed transplant in my other grow journal, I had some more cleanup work to do in here. First task was to deal with the now dried out pollinated buds. I took some time to hand pulverize the buds and shake out the seeds. I was a little off on my guess how many were still left in there, and I now have 14.3g of seeds, or roughly, 1,172.5 seeds. I am exceedingly pleased with these results.
The second task of the evening has been to take the buds out of the jars to loosen them all out, get them some air and get ready for the final phase of the drying process. One by one I dumped them out on a table , pried any stuck ones apart and then put them back into the jar without compressing them this time. Gauging just by the feel of the buds and how they stacked back in the jars, I agreed with earlier assessments that Red was the best and Tara was the least favorite...
That was until I got to M&M. She got the @Vulx, in only the supersoil of her final up-pot. These buds are by far the stickiest, the dankest and the heaviest of the three batches. At this point there is a noticeable difference in the quality of these buds when compared to either of the others. This IS better pot. I smoked some of it. Two bowls of it. This IS better pot. Vulx has me totally sold... the stuff works.
 
Emilya said:
More Observations From The Harvest
Today before I get busy doing the much needed transplant in my other grow journal, I had some more cleanup work to do in here. First task was to deal with the now dried out pollinated buds. I took some time to hand pulverize the buds and shake out the seeds. I was a little off on my guess how many were still left in there, and I now have 14.3g of seeds, or roughly, 1,172.5 seeds. I am exceedingly pleased with these results.
The second task of the evening has been to take the buds out of the jars to loosen them all out, get them some air and get ready for the final phase of the drying process. One by one I dumped them out on a table , pried any stuck ones apart and then put them back into the jar without compressing them this time. Gauging just by the feel of the buds and how they stacked back in the jars, I agreed with earlier assessments that Red was the best and Tara was the least favorite...
That was until I got to M&M. She got the @Vulx, in only the supersoil of her final up-pot. These buds are by far the stickiest, the dankest and the heaviest of the three batches. At this point there is a noticeable difference in the quality of these buds when compared to either of the others. This IS better pot. I smoked some of it. Two bowls of it. This IS better pot. Vulx has me totally sold... the stuff works.
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I will be ordering some this spring to use in my LOS greenhouse grow. Thanks for the update and congrats on all those seeds.
 
Emilya said:
I now have 14.3g of seeds, or roughly, 1,172.5 seeds.
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I guess the half seed is for when you only have room for another half a plant. ;)
 
Old Salt said:
I guess the half seed is for when you only have room for another half a plant. ;)
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Nice ... I was actually thinking I would give a half seed to my half-assed brother-in-law :)
 
Hey Emilya,

reading through your most recent notes on how the drying and curing is going and I kept thinking the same thing. Would you ever considering giving the DrZiggy low and slow method a try? (Especially in the winter when you struggle with rH) By the sounds of it, you probably won’t have the space in your fridge to fit a whole lb of bud (cause it sounds like you’ve got people you live with and such), but even if you did a couple of oz to try it out, I think you’d be very surprised at the quality that comes out. As you said in your last post, very low temps make it almost impossible to dry pot.. low and slow takes advantage of that.

I’ve dried my last two harvests in the fridge, and you really just can’t beat it. I get a full 10-14 day dry, and the terpenes come out much stronger. Some of those monoterpenes volatize as low as 70F, drying low and slow in the fridge keeps everything as low as 40. That and the final stages of drying all take place in the jar; a contained system can only help the preservation of terpenes. If you’re interested I’ll post the full procedure, along with my own tweaks.

Edit: even my larf stinks to high heaven.
 
ChefDGreen said:
Hey Emilya,

reading through your most recent notes on how the drying and curing is going and I kept thinking the same thing. Would you ever considering giving the DrZiggy low and slow method a try? (Especially in the winter when you struggle with rH) By the sounds of it, you probably won’t have the space in your fridge to fit a whole lb of bud (cause it sounds like you’ve got people you live with and such), but even if you did a couple of oz to try it out, I think you’d be very surprised at the quality that comes out. As you said in your last post, very low temps make it almost impossible to dry pot.. low and slow takes advantage of that.

I’ve dried my last two harvests in the fridge, and you really just can’t beat it. I get a full 10-14 day dry, and the terpenes come out much stronger. Some of those monoterpenes volatize as low as 70F, drying low and slow in the fridge keeps everything as low as 40. That and the final stages of drying all take place in the jar; a contained system can only help the preservation of terpenes. If you’re interested I’ll post the full procedure, along with my own tweaks.
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Hi Chef, and thanks!
I got a little smile out of the fact that here was a Chef, inviting me to put it all in the fridge. :) That makes sense, because around here they say that Firefighters squirt water at problems while the PD shoot at them.... But seriously, I did try the low and slow about a year ago and although it was solving the slow dry problem it introduced an uncontrollable smell problem in the living area of the house that forced me to abort and can not be repeated. We have to be very careful since Ms. J. is a volunteer firefighter and we have first responders in and out of here all the time.
I tried and almost succeeded with a high tech fix in my drying tent this time, but I chickened out, thinking the buds were staying too wet at 70% RH. I should have stuck with it, and what I learned was that as soon as I reduced the RH it SUCKED the moisture right out of those buds and I only gained about a day over what I could do naturally in that small drying area. Next time I am going to keep with the humidity for a few more days and I bet it goes much better.
 
ChefDGreen said:
I’ve dried my last two harvests in the fridge, and you really just can’t beat it. I get a full 10-14 day dry, and the terpenes come out much stronger. Some of those monoterpenes volatize as low as 70F, drying low and slow in the fridge keeps everything as low as 40. That and the final stages of drying all take place in the jar; a contained system can only help the preservation of terpenes. If you’re interested I’ll post the full procedure, along with my own tweaks.
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For the last few years I have done it similarly but it works very very well for me.
I keep a small room air conditioned to 57-59 degrees F for the initial dry. I wet trim whole branches and I hang the trimmed branches in that environment for 6-8 days for the initial dry. Once the stems on the branches have a good loud snap to them but don't break in half then I trim the buds off the branches. I lay the buds out on 4 tier bud rack and I keep the temp the same 57-59 with RH around 60% for another week. After that, I will jar them up and burp as needed.
I am totally sold on cold temps for both the initial dry and first good portion of the cure.
 
I'm going to be harvesting some of my plants next week and I know I am going to be drying in a tent at 15°C (59°F ) and RH around 50% ... fan on low pointed at the wall for a bit of a breeze ... no lights ... and an exhaust fan of course.

Last time I dried too fast, ... so I am going to try entire trimmed branches like @Emilya did this time ...

But I also want to try one plant where I do a wet trim ... then hang the entire plant upside down with the roots covered in a garbage bag.
 
The cure is going well and all of the product is starting to lose the green smell and take on the hints of berry that I have been waiting for. It is still not there, only really being in the cure range for about a week so far... but the change is evident. The cure at the end is at least half of the process of growing good quality smoke.
 
Amen.
 
Emilya said:
The cure is going well and all of the product is starting to lose the green smell and take on the hints of berry that I have been waiting for. It is still not there, only really being in the cure range for about a week so far... but the change is evident. The cure at the end is at least half of the process of growing good quality smoke.
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Hi @Emilya ...

Do you notice a real increase in terpene quality and smoothness after 3 to 4 weeks of cure?
 
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