Hey there!
Here's the next HYENA'S GROW HOUSE update!
After a week of post-harvest rest and relaxation including smoking about 3 ounces of my latest buds (killer), I sobered up and ran back up to the GH. Things are as so:
First, the new clones are taking off. Just as expected, they look healthy and are all starting to branch.
So far so good. Cloning is the way, baby. I totally love the control and predictability of it. Plus, I avoid the main limitation of clones...the little friends that often come into your grow room with them. Since they come from a sanitized, pest-free environment and never leave it we can count on them.
So all good there. We turn to Tent #2, now in full blown flower power...
I'm extremely surprised this room is bursting to this degree. These colas are THICK and filling in everywhere with massive flowers.
These buds are going to be special
Betting this grow finishes sooner than I anticipated...plus you can see the total difference now between Delhi Friend and Incredible Bulk...though I'm not sure which is which...
I pulled about a hundred fan leaves and couldn't even see any difference, yes it's a nice thick canopy. The smell in here is like a skunk farm. But amazingly, the 80-pound can filters are doing a yeoman's job...I can't smell a thing outside! I actually went inside-outside several times and it's amazing that it can scrub so much air so thoroughly. It's some kind of miracle that I don't have every local stoner on my lawn. Thank you CAN FILTERS, yes, that's their rather unimaginative name.
Just wanted to show this picture one more time...
I'm such a dick...you can say it.
So...5 pounds from one harvest. A milestone I didn't know could be reached without CO2 or even maybe with it. Plus another several pounds of high-grade trim and smaller lower-growth buds. That second part is the issue still to be sucessfully addressed. Lots of trichome-laden material, I have rolled joints from all of it and it's all great weed. So naturally I turned my thoughts to the growing problem(?) of having pounds of high-grade trim accumulating...it's a pressing issue. Get it?
Pressing weed for oil is one way, but it's the long way IMHO...awhile back I acquired a 10-ton electric press and did plenty of runs with various sizes and shapes of pucks, and various combinations of press time and temperature, and found the efforts less rewarding than I had hoped. Very dry sugar trim and dinky buds don't press as well as fresh flower it seems, and even though I got some decent rosin, it's still rosin...hard to smoke, strange aroma and flavor generally, and the buzz was heavy. A very messy substance which is hard to handle, hard to store, hard to use. There's got to be a better use for trim.
I didn't become a professional stoner to work any harder...just the opposite. So enter: The Washing Machine!
This little invention looks like a miniature 5-gallon clothes washer and it probably is one just repurposed in a clever way for the task of separating yummy trichomes and tasty terpenes from ground plant material. I have seen some clever shit but this thing is the bomb!
The principle, for anyone unfamiliar with hash making, is to somehow separate and concentrate the trichomes. Butane is the common approach, requiring pressure, expensive and potentially explosive equipment, and consumptive use of solvents which leave some measurable residue no matter how well it is used. But the Washing Machine uses water and ice! I was skeptical, of course...the description sounded WAY too easy. But I gave a QP of Satellite (a really shitty lower end commercial strain, I couldn't even sell this weed so I had it sitting in a "for concentrates" box), ground it up and put it in the 120-micron bag with maybe a large pitchers-worth of ice...
Then filled the machine 1/3 with water and another 7-8 pounds of ice...
Set it for 15 minutes and hit the switch. This thing really is a washing machine! It aggressively agitates the mixture, one way, then the other, back and forth about 10 seconds each, and very effectively pounds those trichomes out of the plant material and into the water.
By the end the water was pea green, then you simply use the attached drain hose to run the water right out into a series of stacked micron mesh filters on a 5-gallon bucket. I tried several combinations like 90-60-30 and just poured the water through. That was it! Then pulled the bags and squeezed out the remaining water, and with a spoon simply scraped up the bounty:
An almost unbelievable 18 grams of real hash! From shit weed no less! You can see the slight difference in the color and consistency between the various micron bags but it was ALL good! I smoked plenty over the last 48 hours and it's the absolute real deal. The finest grade is as good as any Lebanese blonde I have ever smoked, that unique flavor of pure high-potency trichomes atomically smashed into a chunk of heaven. The tiny amount of work that it took compared to any other method blows my mind...no mess, no issues, just turn shitty pot into amazing hashish...magic!
Right now my next project is to run some of the high-quality trim, and I can't imagine how much better it might be...I shall report it all ere long so stay tuned!
Well that's about all for this week. Hope you are virus-free and getting back into life!
We have never stopped!
Peace, Hyena
You’ve put in the work, alright. There is no denying.
