Dear readers, every story has an ending, and we are rapidly approaching the end of this one. Last night we hit the 48th hour of darkness and we started harvest. I did get a few pictures, but it seems that at 3am I am not a very skilled photographer, so we got what we got. My apologies in advance.
So, after all the cutting and trimming and hanging to dry, there are some success stories in the tent, and there are some disappointments. The two 5 gallon containers both underperformed when compared to the 7 gallon, both coming in at under 2 oz. The big producers in the tent this time ended up being the Tangerine Dream and the AK47, and the Royal Queen held her own with decent production despite having fewer kolas.
LSD - Final, 174.5g, projected dry 1.54 oz
First on the list, the star of this journal, our LSD. She turned out to be easy to grow and produced good tight buds with lots of trichomes. She was always the healthiest plant in the tent and would have been a great candidate for a larger container and longer veg time. We also did an experiment on backbuilding on her, and tonight I have the pictures to show the result. Based on what I have seen here, I will be making this snip on most of my plants from now on, right around week 5 when the buds begin to peak into a cone shape.
Here is the one that was trimmed:
Here is one left to grow normally.
Next was a pleasant surprise, the once starving AK47. She turned around and became quite healthy and ended up being one of the big producers of this round. Every nug is covered with trichomes, and this was some of the stickiest and heaviest I have seen yet. You can see from the pictures that in the last 48 hours she began to foxtail dramatically, and along with this dramatic growth burst, trichome production went nuts. I can not wait to smoke some of this!
AK47, harvest weight 324.6g, projected dry weight, 2.86oz
We forgot to take pictures of Royal Queen, probably because her harvest went so fast and it was 2am. There were only 5 main branches and each one of them was loaded down with her huge buds. We harvested 255.9g from her, or projected 2.25oz dry.
Lastly, Tangerine Dream. Wow is all I have to say about this one. Every nug, even the smallest of the popcorn buds at the bottom, are covered with trichomes. These buds are going to snap,crackle and pop in the pipe like nothing I have ever grown. This plant exceeded itself, and I anticipate quality to be off the charts when this gets cured out.
Tangerine Dream, harvest weight 300.1g, projected dry weight 2.64 oz.
So, all of this has been trimmed and is now hanging in a specially made drying box now sitting in the flowering room. The big lights are all off and the local power company is no doubt confused as to the drop in local energy usage. The experiments with the big lights, and the second 600w bulb coming on for 4 of the 12 hours every day seem to have been a huge success... in 5gal containers I see an average increase of .4 oz and the 7gal containers allowed me to get very close to the 3oz production point. I am happy with the results from my room this round, and will be now trying to break this record in my subsequent runs. The next run should be slightly better too, just because of me having a better grasp on the whole organic thing now... and I am curious what output looks like next time, without the delay that I might have been causing because of early nutritional problems. Time, and of course, more journals, will tell if this turns out to be the case.
Now I am off on a 2 or 3 week trek into the world of curing, and finishing up what I have started here. First reports are in, from the Cookies Kush that I harvested earlier. She is now dry and curing nicely in the jar, boveda packs allowing me to quickly get the buds into the curing range. Already she is some of the tastiest and most enjoyable smoke I have ever produced, and I can not even bear to smoke the stuff that I had left over from the last run. Just from experiencing the Cookies Kush organic, even before she is fully cured, I have already decided to send all of the leftovers from last run to oil production.
The previously harvested Green Crack is doing well too, on its 4th full day of slow drying in the trash can drying bin... and I anticipate 2 more days in there before we move her out to the paper sack stage.
More reports still when things get dry enough to jar and I can get an idea what the smoke, flavors and highs are like... until then, I hope your next harvest is a good one!
Sense Emilya
