- Thread starter
- #901
Hello grow group!
While no one would ever accuse me of having a scientific mind, I do like to make observations about my plants and act on what I observe as best as I can. And I'm not afraid to experiment.
That said, I was a little concerned about the 2 Grandaddy Black plants that I attempted to drought. As I took them down I noticed that certain parts of them felt a little crispy. When I finished trimming them, per usual, I put them in a big paper bag and stuck it in the fridge for an overnight period.
But the next day I started thinking, "Why not just dry them all in that big bag inside the fridge?" I figured all I'd have to do was move them around daily so that the same branches would not always be on the bottom of the bag.
I saw this as a potential "game changer" for me as far as drying goes. (During the winter my house is very dry with RH levels consistently around 30%. I had no empty tent that I could use with my smallish humidifiers, so the fridge route is nearly mandatory unless I buy a huge humidifier, which I don't want to do.)
So I left the stash in the fridge and once or twice a day I'd reach into the bag and reposition the branches. I let them stay in there from this past Saturday to last night, rotating them around all along the way.
Then last night I took them out and jabbed them with my Wood Moisture Meter (WMM). What an eye-opener! The buds at the tops of each branch barely registered any moisture on the WMM! All the buds below the top ones registered around 11-12% moisture!
It appears that the buds that were closest to the grow light got "droughtiered" than all the others. And, yes, they were all quite dry for having been in the fridge for only 4 days.
I decided to bag (not jar) them up. But before I did, I removed all of the lower buds from the branches and put them in one pile. Then I removed all the top buds for a separate pile. (I wish I had taken it pic of all the branches with just the top buds remaining. It was funny-looking! But I was too wrapped up in what I was trying to accomplish to pause and take pics.)
@InTheShed introduced me (us) to the concept of using turkey bags for burping buds down to the ideal RH before jarring them. I thank him for that because opening/closing a bunch of jars is just no fun. But rather than turkey bags I chose to use GDBBurpers®, pictured here:
I put the top buds into one burper and the bottom ones into another.
I had 4 hygrometers available, 2 of which read 29RH, one which registered 30 and the other 31. Thus all were close to being accurate. (Those things drive me nuts!) I decided to use the 2 that were reading 29%.
I bagged them up, put them back into the big paper bag and stuck them back in the fridge for overnight. Oh, and I placed 4 fresh branches in the bag with the top buds (shout out to @Carmen Ray).
This morning, the hygrometer in the top-bud bag read 64% and the one with the bottom buds read 68%.
Top-bud burper:
Bottom-buds burper:
So I've got one conclusion and one hope:
Conclusion: I over-droughted these flowers and they were already partially dry when I took them down.
Hope: I hope I didn't screw the pooch.
BTW, I weighed both piles before bagging them and the top-buds weighed 106 grams while the bottom buds weighed 216 grams. So if I didn't screw the pooch not a bad haul by my standards.
Later on today I'm going to smash and dab about 5 grams from the top-bud bag to see what results. I'll let you know!
PEACE.
While no one would ever accuse me of having a scientific mind, I do like to make observations about my plants and act on what I observe as best as I can. And I'm not afraid to experiment.
That said, I was a little concerned about the 2 Grandaddy Black plants that I attempted to drought. As I took them down I noticed that certain parts of them felt a little crispy. When I finished trimming them, per usual, I put them in a big paper bag and stuck it in the fridge for an overnight period.
But the next day I started thinking, "Why not just dry them all in that big bag inside the fridge?" I figured all I'd have to do was move them around daily so that the same branches would not always be on the bottom of the bag.
I saw this as a potential "game changer" for me as far as drying goes. (During the winter my house is very dry with RH levels consistently around 30%. I had no empty tent that I could use with my smallish humidifiers, so the fridge route is nearly mandatory unless I buy a huge humidifier, which I don't want to do.)
So I left the stash in the fridge and once or twice a day I'd reach into the bag and reposition the branches. I let them stay in there from this past Saturday to last night, rotating them around all along the way.
Then last night I took them out and jabbed them with my Wood Moisture Meter (WMM). What an eye-opener! The buds at the tops of each branch barely registered any moisture on the WMM! All the buds below the top ones registered around 11-12% moisture!
It appears that the buds that were closest to the grow light got "droughtiered" than all the others. And, yes, they were all quite dry for having been in the fridge for only 4 days.
I decided to bag (not jar) them up. But before I did, I removed all of the lower buds from the branches and put them in one pile. Then I removed all the top buds for a separate pile. (I wish I had taken it pic of all the branches with just the top buds remaining. It was funny-looking! But I was too wrapped up in what I was trying to accomplish to pause and take pics.)
@InTheShed introduced me (us) to the concept of using turkey bags for burping buds down to the ideal RH before jarring them. I thank him for that because opening/closing a bunch of jars is just no fun. But rather than turkey bags I chose to use GDBBurpers®, pictured here:
I put the top buds into one burper and the bottom ones into another.
I had 4 hygrometers available, 2 of which read 29RH, one which registered 30 and the other 31. Thus all were close to being accurate. (Those things drive me nuts!) I decided to use the 2 that were reading 29%.
I bagged them up, put them back into the big paper bag and stuck them back in the fridge for overnight. Oh, and I placed 4 fresh branches in the bag with the top buds (shout out to @Carmen Ray).
This morning, the hygrometer in the top-bud bag read 64% and the one with the bottom buds read 68%.
Top-bud burper:
Bottom-buds burper:
So I've got one conclusion and one hope:
Conclusion: I over-droughted these flowers and they were already partially dry when I took them down.
Hope: I hope I didn't screw the pooch.
BTW, I weighed both piles before bagging them and the top-buds weighed 106 grams while the bottom buds weighed 216 grams. So if I didn't screw the pooch not a bad haul by my standards.
Later on today I'm going to smash and dab about 5 grams from the top-bud bag to see what results. I'll let you know!
PEACE.
making notes and keeping track.
