Really interesting, Stunger! So there is a dual effect of applying "controlled drought conditions" in flowering: the plant will contain less water at harvest and dry more quickly, plus increased THCA.
Do you have any ideas on what a good method for getting this effect of increased THCA would be? Seems the key element is the size of the container, as you point out.
When -- what week of flowering -- would you think is the best time to start denying the plant water? My guess would be to water plentifully up to week 5 and then impose a drought for the last weeks.
It is already common practice to let the plant dry out several times during flowering, and to stop watering altogether about 2 weeks before harvest. Maybe that can be moved to 3 weeks before harvest with good effect.
Thanks again. How are your quadgirls doing? Photos, please!
When I read
@Maritimer 's posting it was very interesting to me too, and more so, as if you remember I have from time to time reminisced over the first plant that I grew here. That it came from fairly ordinary bag seed where the dried buds it came with were ok but absolutely nothing special or outstanding. Yet the result was outstanding, the buds were airy but the most rigid sugar leaves I have seen, they were stiff with 'substance', and the stickiest buds I have grown. I speculated whether this was from the heat and drought stress that the plant was getting in it's small container, i.e. the container size was heating up in the sun and the daily watering was rapidly used up so by the end of the day the plant was presumably having to produce more of the good stuff to help it combat the drought stress. I also speculated on whether the layer of scoria lava rocks in the bottom of the pot contributed to this. And it quite possible helped too, but now I feel my original thoughts on what can be summed up by the description of 'drought stress' was probably the main contributing factor. It is interesting too, as popular wisdom often would have you believe that the resulting bud quality is all down to genetics. Well, I think we all have genetics but different gene characteristics will be expressed depending on what environmental and nutritional factors (and others) are present, e.g. in humans people who lived to long lives in Japan when they moved to Hawaii and their kids took up the western american diet it triggered sometimes unwanted genes expression that caused a bunch of health problems and much shorter lifespans. So to me it is clear that there is more at play than just genetics that will produce plants like the breeder's pictures. We know that doesn't happen. When good experienced growers use seeds with great genetics then they will tend to grow out amazing looking plants, but when beginners grow them with too much of this or not enough of that, the resulting plants can look anything but like the ones pictured on the seed packet!
Reading thru the excerpts of that research article, the authors make note of other herbaceous plants where oil production has been increased dramatically by employing drought stress.
The other interesting observation I made from looking thru pics of my 2 plant grow last year. The 2 plants were struggling nutritionally, but the WW struggled the most, I was wanting to wait until I got 20 - 30% amber trichomes before harvesting so I let the plant continue until April 21st. The last couple of weeks it was actually dying in the container, you could see the plant browning off more than the Gorgonzola. However, the WW after drying/curing gave the stronger high. Yes, it may have been from the 'genetics', but also it may have been contributed to by the drought stress.
This brings me to another thought.
@nickeluring speaks highly of drying the whole plant even retaining some root mass in doing so. (I am running out of time otherwise I would go look for his post) but he feels when drying the whole plant that when dried the plant is almost cured too. And for the first few days drying the plant in the light it continues to carry out photosynthesis before he would then continue to dry but in the dark.
Anyway, and I am rushing here as I have to go out soon. In the research article the authors carried out a test of 11 days of drought stress at about week 7 of flowering. But it is hard to find the equivalent in one's own grow, as it is tricky to determine just how many weeks of flowering one's plant will require and therefore it is tricky to know how many to go at a given point (as you found out with your Arjan's Haze #1 last grow). I have gone over my pics from last year's grow and seen how the buds noticeably thickened at the middle of March, and really start to increase from around March 21st to maybe April 5th. I am keen to try drought stressing this grow, the question is when to start, my feeling is that I want to let the buds form close to their maximum size first so I don't stunt that potential yield, so any drought stress carried out doesn't inhibit potential bud growth. So my feeling at the moment is to let the plants grow with adequate watering until the end of March, maybe up until April 2nd or 3rd, and then stop watering until I get fan leaves drooping and at that point endeavor to give them the bare minimum of water for the next 2 - 2.5 weeks, maybe 3 weeks, and see what happens. My feeling in that this could also come into line with what
@nickeluring is doing with his whole plant drying, that if I water only to the absolute minimum just enough to keep them alive that perhaps then it will provoke the plant to express it's genetic potential to make itself more sticky with THCa and CBDa compounds in it's attempt to survive the drought conditions that have been imposed upon it.
This is all just speculative at the moment, that is as far as I have thought it through. But I had that initial experience of growing out some bag seed that was ordinary, and yet it was completely different from it's mother weed, it's resulting high far surpassed it's mother. And speaking of mothers, it is interesting with my 2 plants grown last year, of how ordinary and unspecial they were. Surely if speaking of genetics anyone would say, they look nothing special, and probably have crap genetics, and I would have agreed. Yet those 2 ordinary looking plants were the mothers of this year's plants! And I think anyone looking at this year's crop would perhaps think that they have pretty good genetics, but actually a lot of it I feel is down to the growing conditions/environment that have caused different genes to express themselves with a completely different and better appearance than how their mothers looked last season. Anyway I'm rushed, there's probably lots of spelling mistakes I don't have time to go over, but I hope it makes some sense and you get the gist of it.
I was going to selectively pollinate a couple of colas of the Quad girls this morning but I will have to try to get that done instead over the next couple of days when I get my next clear/stealthy moment to do so! Besides it is windy so I'd probably end up doing a right royal pollen chuck!
Here's a photo from yesterday of the Quad girls, it's taken in the afternoon sunshine and accordingly looks better than the one I just took this morning as they are in shade.
