As @DV8 just mentioned, small scale growers like us can experiment to try and replicate your "accident" of 12 years ago, but we lack a disciplined scientific approach.
In Caplan's study on this, he carried out a controlled grow whereby he could test against non droughted plants, he had to do this to make it scientifically acceptable as a thesis. But for me, it is more simple,
just drought the plant in late flowering, give her a small rescue watering, and then continue repeating this cycle until harvest. If I was tent growing, I would most likely only do this over the plant's last 10 days of flowering, but because I am growing outdoors and I have no control over rainfall, I need to begin a bit earlier to cater for potential periods of rain, to allow myself enough 'drought time' to create a sufficient response in the plant. As it was, so far in 20 days there has only been 1 day of a little rain and it was not much, not enough to interrupt her droughting!
But more to your "accident." This year you did not include a couple of aspects of that accident, namely the small stone pot on the hot sun, which must have been a factor as well. And I imagine that plant was intensely root bound, and the heat on the roots is something you understandably did not want to replicate, trying to keep the plant basically happy in a large amount of soil while stressing her at the same time. Also your whole droughting process back then was not organised with frequent rescue drinks.
My original accidental droughting was something I didn't even recognise as being beneficial while the plant was growing. In fact, I did my best to water her every day, often twice a day, except for a period of 5 days when we went away and on my return I found her almost dead. But despite my best attempts, she would badly wilt every hot sunny day. And as I have mentioned before, the stone tiles of the balcony I have measured at over 50C or 122F on hot days! And at that time I only grew the one plant, so there were not multiple plants whose canopies could shade the tiles, so the stone tiles were heated up all around her and would have radiated a lot of heat back at her.
So, I actually did my best to water her every day except for that one 5 day period when I away. At the time I just wanted to get her to harvest so I would have some home grown bud to smoke. It was only when I smoked it, that I realised how potent it was, and then I reflected back on the grow to arrive at the idea of the heat, wind, and insufficient water had caused drought conditions that she'd been growing under and I assumed her potency was a side effect of her responding to the drought stress. When I came across
@Maritimer's work, from him I realised that Dr Caplan had already proved this in his thesis, pretty much the same thing that I had clumsily and ignorantly fallen across.
That might have remained just a quirky bud story that I never returned to, had I not come across Maritimer's excellent investigations, and when
@Krissi1982 started up her droughting journal, well that did it for me, I knew at that point that I would purposefully try to drought at least one plant this grow!
am really looking forward to your upcoming smoke report (or vape or edible). Just from my own experience last year, I would be wary of overdoing it, depending on the type of effect you are looking for. Maybe it's just my imagination, but the effect might go extremely sedative if you're not carefully monitoring her. How are the pre-harvest samples?
Yes that is the real test, actually trying the bud. Dr Caplan of course had to be scientific, so his results were simply reduced to the percentages of the main cannabinoids compared to the control plants. But as we know or suspect, that there is an 'entourage effect' that makes those percentages alone insufficient to explain the effect of a plant's buds. But in a fantastic but limited way they indicate a response by the plant to drought conditions which happen to effect potency.
I can only go by that one grow a dozen years ago, but I can say, that I never thought of it as being sedative, it simply had a very noticeable and much appreciated potency that my usual bud lacked. I recall harvesting it somewhere around 15% amber, I remember that amongst the amber there were a small number of dark amber trichomes too but most were still cloudy. Who knows, this time I may find myself describing it as 'sedative', but I didn't have that impression a dozen years ago. The impression I had was that it was simply stonkingly potent.
The only 'pre-harvest' sample of my current Mango Sherbert was taken 7 days into her droughting when she showed her first bad wilting, at the time I thought the sample was 'good' and 'very good' but not what I would call 'above and beyond, potent'. However, if I can keep her surviving for another 10-20 days then I would be surprised if she wasn't at least a little bit special.
As an aside, today I noticed on a couple of stems of the Mango Sherbert had bracts that appeared to be swollen with seeds from the selective pollination that I carried out on her a month ago with the Mulanje's pollen. I am rapt about that, as she was my last seed and I love the idea of getting some seeds of her crossed with Mulanje.
