Homer's Legal 4-Plant Max Perpetual Minimalist Garden In Ontario

[BigD13]

so I ran it through my little still.

Hey Homer, I really like your still. Very cool.

I think I will stick with my NL

Nothing wrong with NL. I find it to be good night time meds. Have you looked into a pure Indica strain? For my next seed order I’m looking at stuff like Kosher Kush, Purple Kush, Afghani, & Granddaddy Purple. Those look to be pure/100% Indica.

I’m going to chop the Chemdawg I have in veg and pop a NL tomorrow.

 

[Chungo]

I managed to get my tincture made today from four ounces of Chemdawg. Here are the four ounces after decarbing for 2 hrs at 235F.

I find it easy to break up by hand with rubber gloves on after it is cooked.

I soaked it in 95% ethanol for 1 hr in the freezer.

I run everything through a mesh strainer.

I squeeze the bud in 20-micron bags but I need to come up with a better method; three bags this size did all four ounces. I recover about 1/3 of the total this way.

Next, I run everything through a coffee filter.

It almost looks like a nice brandy.

I ended up with a little over 16 ounces but I like it about 4 times as potent so I ran it through my little still.

I put cameras on the still so I can monitor it and don't have to stay upstairs. Since I know I had about 16 ounces I will stop around 12 ounces ethanol recovered so I get four one-ounce bottles.

And here is the finished product with 12 ounces of ethanol I recovered with the still.

I managed to get my tincture completed in time so I could “medicate” as usual with my dinner. I have been using my old standby, Northern Lights, which is still the dankest and most sedating strain I have tried which is what I am looking for in my evening medication.

I can only blame myself for listening to people but I was told that Chemdawg was very sedating to the point of almost narcotic but after tonight’s test it feels more to me like a hybrid rather uplifting like a Bruce Banner.

I have wasted a lot of time and effort trying to find a good nighttime sedating weed. I started out with Northern Lights and then tried P98 but had nothing but problems and didn’t even get one bud out of trying about 20 seeds with that accursed strain. And now I am on my third generation of Chemdawg only to find it’s not sedating hardly at all, at least for me.

So trying to find a more potent sedater than Northern Lights I figure I have wasted probably over a year with P98 and Chemdawg and I am down to one jar of Northern Lights. Being restricted to four plants makes trying a strain a major commitment. Now that I have finished banging my head against the wall it seems my course is clear; I’m going to chop the Chemdawg I have in veg and pop a NL tomorrow.

No sense in getting all bent out of shape but what a waste of time and effort. Besides, my last NL plant I reaped 10 ounces so it is the dankest plant I have grown and the second-best yielder. I am going to grow a few year’s worth of Northern Lights and then begin again my quest for a danker bud but I am starting to doubt I will ever find one. NL is hard to beat I find. I am curious how I will sleep tonight; with my NL I drift off just a few minutes after going to bed.

Like the still. Been thinking of it for a couple of years now. I have a friend who is using a still to extract just the CBD with some success. He still has some impurities in the final product. Could you explain your actual construction of your still. Try Green Gelato for a more narc effect. .....

 

[Homer Simpson]

Hey Homer, I really like your still. Very cool.


Nothing wrong with NL. I find it to be good night time meds. Have you looked into a pure Indica strain? For my next seed order I’m looking at stuff like Kosher Kush, Purple Kush, Afghani, & Granddaddy Purple. Those look to be pure/100% Indica.

Hey Homer, I really like your still. Very cool.


Nothing wrong with NL. I find it to be good night time meds. Have you looked into a pure Indica strain? For my next seed order I’m looking at stuff like Kosher Kush, Purple Kush, Afghani, & Granddaddy Purple. Those look to be pure/100% Indica.

Yes, my still saves me a lot of alcohol because I can make more concentrated tinctures and reuse what I recover. I figured with the pandemic isolation it was a perfect time to stock up my supply of 95% vodka/ethanol since besides drinking it I am using it for tinctures now.

I usually wake up 3 to 5 times in the night and last night even after going to bed an hour later it felt like I woke up about 100 times so I don’t think the Chemdawg is quite up to and NL sleepy wise to say the least. Since I have some NL seeds from Sensi seed company and I know it’s a winner I dropped one of them this morning but I have saved your recommendations so they are on my list for research and consideration once I get my NL supply back out of emergency ration range.

Sadly, I did pull the Chemdawg today because there’s just no point in having more stimulating hybrid type weed because I only use it during the day in micro-dosing or at all so I go through about 20 times as much Indica but I have 10 times as much hybrid as Indica, D’oh. So at least now I’m on the right track again and all is well in the garden at least for now.

 

[Homer Simpson]

Like the still. Been thinking of it for a couple of years now. I have a friend who is using a still to extract just the CBD with some success. He still has some impurities in the final product. Could you explain your actual construction of your still. Try Green Gelato for a more narc effect. .....

That is interesting about extracting just the CBD and have no idea how that would work. Thank you, for the suggestion of the green gelato; it is also on my list now.

Here is my still in all its glory. In essence, it is simply a long piece of ¼ inch copper tubing attached to a mason jar lid that passes through a coffee can filled with cooling water to condense the alcohol that comes out the other end of the tube. What I like most about it besides that it works is that I had everything sitting around the house I needed to make it so it didn’t cost anything.

The top tubing coming out of the can is the overflow so if the cooling water gets too warm I can add cold water through the top which will settle to the bottom and the warmer upper layer of water will drain away.

I curled the tubing up inside the coffee can condenser to get more length for better cooling and I’m not proud of the job as a tradesman but in my feeble defence, I made this from old scrap pieces of tubing that I spliced together. But it works which is the main thing and I made it in a couple of hours.

Here are some condensers I have made over the years for my big stills. It’s a real challenge not to kink the tubing; I filled these ones with salt which helps a lot but adds the challenge of getting it out once the bending is done. Besides filling with salt to avoid kinks when bending and coiling tubing it really helps to wrap around something like a pipe or a can of vegetables or anything round the right diameter. On the distilling forum I was on some people were real Masters at bending.

I couldn’t solder my tubing to a canning lid with a hole drilled in it because these days the rubber seal is fused to the lid so it would get destroyed from the heat of soldering so I made the lid out of some .060 thick copper plating which is a lot sturdier. I really globbed the solder on because it’s not just sealing it, it’s holding the thing together which isn’t really what solder is meant for but I find if I keep the solder below the temperature where you want it to become liquid so it runs into joints you can create a puddle like welding and build it up a bit. Looks like crap but it’s plenty strong and it seals. In the background you can see the Teflon gasket I made that provides a seal between the copper lid and the rim of the mason jar.

Of critical importance! Put the threaded part of the jar lid the right way down over the tubing before you solder on the top part of the lid. Surprisingly this time I didn’t learn that the hard way.

I use a 1500W hotplate and a pot of water as a double boiler that I put the mason jar into that is attached to the still. That’s about all I can think of.

 

[Homer Simpson]

Here is my third generation Chemdawg happy and healthy less than a week after a long-overdue transplant. Not being a sedating Indica has sealed her fate. I feel bad but sometimes unpleasant things are necessary and so shortly after this photo was taken she was murdered. It was a Sophie’s choice because I can only have four children. That’s all I’ll say about that.

Since she has only been in the big pot for a few days I just pulled her out and I will reuse the soil. Good substantial root growth in a few days she was there.

I also started my NL seed this morning. I let the temperature stabilize overnight after fiddling with it with my doodad where I can adjust the power going to my heating pad and monitor the changes within fractions of a volt with my multimeter to dial it in precisely. I try for high 70s but under 80 Fahrenheit.

I know from my Killowatt meter it only uses about 10 W but I use that for my MegaLight so now I’m just using my multimeter to adjust with which will only tell me voltage not amperage so I don’t know my watts because it’s in parallel not series like the Killowatt that is plugged in, in parallel but all I need is voltage to adjust it. Actually, I think the voltage and amperage drop off proportionately so I think you could actually figure out the wattage assuming so with a multimeter in parellel.

My 1:20 is looking nice and healthy and at that stage where she’s really going to start growing fast. I’m pretty certain the first one of this strain I grew had a structure like an Indica but this thing is pretty lanky surprisingly. I have it on the veg red spectrum now on my Blurple which seemed to shorten my Chemdawg strain in veg. Just before I took this picture I remove the two bottom branches for cuttings.

It didn’t seem a good sign they wilted so much by the time I got them in the dome despite I had them sitting in water immediately after cutting and until they were in soil.

So I was delighted to see them perking up about an hour later after settling into the dome. Here’s a shot looking into the side of the dome. That is a relief.

An unusually busy and dramatic day in the garden today. A tragic needless loss of life of an old friend but hope for the future in the form of two new cuttings and a new NL seed and Girl Scout Cookie on the way for the big comparison grow! Interesting times indeed.

Excellent, time for my weekly cocktail hour, Cheers!

 

[Homer Simpson]

It’s alive!

When I checked my NL seed this morning with my magnifying glass I thought I could see a little tail developing but I wasn’t sure so I was elated when I checked this afternoon and saw a significant one! That’s pretty impressive considering its only about 24 hours.

I memorialized the achievement in a photograph with my $40 LED microscope.

Since she has cracked already I put her in the paper towel so she is nice and snug in her new home. This is the second seed that really seems to like the little bit of extra heat.

 

[Homer Simpson]

Here my NL from Sensi is looking healthy after day 3 since cracking.

My NL cracked and had a tail within 24 hours which was pretty impressive but it isn't as vigorous a grower as some seedlings I have had for example below is my 1:20 seedling I started several weeks ago also after three days since cracking but I think my NL will do just fine. I put it in soil today so it should break ground in the next few days.

My two cuttings are coming along nicely meaning they are still healthy-looking. I find the secret is to just keep them alive and in the dome for as long as it takes and eventually they will grow roots. The water I keep the pod moist with has 2 g per gallon of MC and I spray it every day once or twice with plain tap water but since they looked so healthy I am going to try and stop spraying them.

I also received an email saying my seeds are on the way for the big comparison grow but unfortunately they are coming from Europe so I am not expecting them anytime soon the way the mail is with the pandemic. I ordered some seeds from Seedman in Europe a few months back and one group took a few weeks and another took a few months so God only knows when they will be here. Looking forward to it though.

 

[Homer Simpson]

Today my second generation Chemdawg has been flowering for 10 weeks and 1 day. I took her mom to 14 weeks letting her get pretty amber so I thought I would pluck this one a little sooner. For the first time instead of training a plant I just kept trimming this one to keep it short enough to fit under my lights and I am curious how it yields compared to its mom who wasn't trimmed. My current observations lead me to believe it didn't hurt it but the final weigh-in will decide.

Here she is with all her fan leaves on tied up still.

Here she is after I removed all her fan leaves.

And here she is chillin' with her supports removed. Her mom spent half her flowering time flopped over a table because she had a cataclysmic structural failure so this one I used silica additive and tied her up better and she is more upright but I am not sure how much it was the extra tieing up or silica, D'oh!

I have a lighter leaning against the trunk for scale.

A little closer. Not huge buds but frosty enough.

Judging by the triches I think she has a week or so to go still. I am not after so much amber but I still see a lot of clear.

Day 2 after planting my NL and she still hasn't emerged but she wasn't growing that fast of a tap root so I am not that concerned yet. Hopefully, she pops her head up tomorrow.

 

[DeanWest89]

I really love your style of photography with the dark back drops , amazing photos , I think thoes Chem dogs do really well with scrog support , I know they can be very big yielding plants , well done Simpson

 

[Homer Simpson]

I really love your style of photography with the dark back drops , amazing photos , I think thoes Chem dogs do really well with scrog support , I know they can be very big yielding plants , well done Simpson

Thanks for the comments, DeanWest89. The way they are so tall and floppy I concur with your scrog notion. I think she will do a little better than her mom at 6.5 ounces. This one I vegged longer than mom and to keep it short enough to grow in the basement I just trimmed it back and since it looks like that will give me bigger yields I am thinking of vegging one for ages and trimming it back to take it to extremes, lol.

 

[Homer Simpson]

Houston; We have lift-off!!!!

This morning when I checked my NL seedling I saw this little baby breaking ground! More pics to follow this evening.

 

[Homer Simpson]

Here is my NL seed from when I checked after the lights came on at around 12:30 pm till dinner at about six. I am really happy she made it because I only have one NL seed from Sensi left after this and so far NL is my fav nighttime med. I am going to keep her going for generations.

 

[Homer Simpson]

I was glad to see when I checked my NL this morning that she is standing upright basking in the light like a big girl. I am constantly in awe of how good the camera on the iPhone performs.

 

[Homer Simpson]

I decided to harvest my Chemdawg today. This is a second-generation plant from a cutting whose mother came in at 6 ½ ounces dried. This second-generation plant judging by photos of the freshly cut bud between the two plants makes me think I should be in the 8-ounce range.

I believe the reason for the increased yield is I let this plant veg longer but instead of training it and holding it down I just kept trimming it probably taking about a foot and a half off its total height. I have been warned that it’s not a good idea to trim plants because it would reduce yield but it seems to have done the opposite since trimming allowed me to veg longer with this being a stretchy strain. I wouldn’t be doing it this way but being limited legally to four plants I basically can veg my plants for as long as the next generation takes to flower.

Here is my second generation harvested today and the photo below that shows the smaller harvest from the mother plant I harvested a few weeks ago.

 

[BigD13]

Looks like a good harvest. Do you keep your hygrometers in the jars all of the time?

 

[Homer Simpson]

Looks like a good harvest. Do you keep your hygrometers in the jars all of the time?

Thanks, BigD. I have only been growing in the few years since it's been legal here and it looks like I will have to soon either buy more hygrometers or take some out but I think I will take some out because most of these are really stable now. They are all between 60% and 65% but before I take the hygrometers out I would like to air them out to get them all down to about 60% humidity for long-term storage. One of the many things on my to-do list. I'm just too busy doing nothing in particular.

 

[Ossi Ossi]

Because I am going to bud these 2 plants under a 600W LED they have to fill the 3' x 3' that in my first 2 grows I filled with 4 plants so I need to get twice as much canopy from each plant so I am going to go for max training.

Here is a series of pics of my Cannatonic training up till yesterday.

March 20

March 21

March 23

And WW. March 20

March 21

I am getting a good quad structure on my WW stalk.

very nice job my freind very nice
if you google a plant called "velvet Elvis" there is sumfn about it....iut looks like a nice indica at times and look from underneath (word)haha have a squizz

 

[Homer Simpson]

very nice job my freind very nice
if you google a plant called "velvet Elvis" there is sumfn about it....iut looks like a nice indica at times and look from underneath (word)haha have a squizz

Thanks Ossi Ossi. Appreciate the comment.

I did google Velvet Elvis and it is half made of Girl Scout Cookie which I have in the mail for this big grow comparison which is pretty cool. Cheers.

 

[Ossi Ossi]

bit of TRIVIA shall we say

 

[BigD13]

I would like to air them out to get them all down to about 60% humidity for long-term storage.

Do you us Boveda packs? For long term storage I have the 62% packs in my jars. I also vacuum seal them with a FoodSaver kit that I use with my Mityvac hand held vacuum pump.

I am constantly in awe of how good the camera on the iPhone performs.

Which iPhone do you have? I have an iPhone SE 2020. It’s basically an iPhone 8 with the iPhone 11 processor.

One of the many things on my to-do list. I'm just too busy doing nothing in particular.

Ha! First world problems