Grow Journal - Possible Painkiller XL (RQS)

[SoOrbudgal]

Those are some very nice skeletons and that bud looks great. Nice training and enjoy the harvest

[Eigholte]

One week post harvest:


The buds dried down over 6 days in my tent (lights off, fan on) at 50%RH and 20c (68F). They were then jarred for curing.

Yield of buds was 40g/1.4oz off one plant. It also yielded 35g of dried, water-cured trim which is now being turned into an extract.

So, I got 75g of harvest of this plant, which I think is respectable in my set up. It's an improvement off last grow where I got a total of 62g off two plants, at least!
So total wet "biomass" of the plant was 680g, and with 75g dry harvest, that means I got 11% of the plant as usable product. I think that's okay.

Here's my bud harvest validation photos.

[Eigholte]

What was that thing Allannis Morissette sang about the good advice I just didn't take? I probably should have known better - that was a very beefy stem!

[Doubledealing72]

Congratulations! I use heavy duty tin snips for the main branches. You can get a pretty cheap pair at a hardware store for $10 or less, depending on the area. Keep the trimming scissors for trimming only, no choppy choppy lol.

[Eigholte]

End of Week 17 from seed / End of week 10 from 12/12:
HARVEST DAY!

Today was chop day. The plant, under normal circumstances, would have been watered a day or two before, but because I knew the chop was coming, I skipped that last watering. So I had a rather floppy and thirsty looking plant to chop down today.



But it looked like the right time for harvest.



The chop took 3 hours, including clean up time. I was pretty aggressive about labeling things as "trim" since my trim is being water-cured and extracted to a tincture. I don't have to worry as much about "green" tastes with the water cure (though, that also seemed to take out some of the flavour last time. I think it may wash away any water soluble terpines, to some extent). And because light is my limiting factor, there was no shortage of fluffy, "undercarriage" buds that weren't worth my time to dry and slow cure for vaping.

So when all was said and done, I weighted out the parts of the plant after chop and got the following distribution:
(Keep in mind, this is on a water-starved plant, so it may be hard to reproduce these numbers on a well-watered plant)

Total weight: 680g 100%

Rootball (that I could dig out): 35g 5.0%
Stems, not attached to buds: 134g 19.7%
Fan leaves: 152g 22.3%

Trimmed flower and attached stems: 150g 22.0%
Trim for tincture making: 209g 30.7%



In addition to the above, the Cola's I harvested earlier are dry now, and came out to 9g dry weight. Not bad for a start!


And then, in less excellent news, I managed to bust my scissors trying to break up the massive main stem on this plant.
Need to get me some more non-stick scissors!



Have a good day, GWE!

[Eigholte]

Early Sample Report:

Uncured, dried flower. 0.2g ground and loaded into Pax 3, on lowest temperature setting (360F).

Flavours: Spice and Fruit, reminiscent of papaya, with a very slight sharp aftertaste (and some minty chlorophyll flavors due to lack of cure on this sample).
Dose: ~2-3 medium draws. Around 3 second inhale each.
Effect: Nice sense of relaxation, and a loss of muscle tension (Notable because I just finished an evening Mountain Bike session and was a little wound up). Went from reved-up to chill in about 60 seconds. Despite being relaxed, I have no real desire to sleep as such, unlike some of my higher THC experiences. Do have a sudden urge for a good massage and a glass of water, though that may be unrelated to the cannabis.


Full harvest is scheduled for this weekend. Timing looks right, plant is going purple and showing all sorts of fun color, and the trichromes are starting to really stand out, at least visually. I am hoping to have at least my wet-weight yield for my Sunday update this week, with final dry weight the week after that hopefully. Also hoping that my trim will be wet-cured, and turned into extract for next week, so I can give that a test run and report back. Final cured sample report could be a few weeks later than that depending on how curing ends up proceeding.


In other news - checked on my little trio of Blue Mystics this evening and they are MONSTERS. They're already at 4 nodes and ~6.5" canopy diameter at 11 days, and are beating out this plant at rate of growth fairly solidly (This plant was ~3 nodes at day 14). This is great... but I'm not ready to transplant them yet, dang-it! And I also have to harvest this plant and also am expecting tiny rabbits this weekend (which will need to be weighted and health-checked). I am going to be really busy...


(Edited to add a stupid after-thought: Wonder if my rabbits would appreciate the leaves from my crop... I've sampled the leaves, and they were actually really palletable, and I didn't notice any effects. According to this, it's hypothetically possible to use it as animal feed, at least in cattle - fermented hemp silage had promising results in a feed study ~15 years back. https://www.producer.com/2000/08/hem...energy-levels/ And the stats they give are very rabbit friendly - ~19% protein, high fibre and high calcium... I might have to actually look into this. It'd be a shame for perfectly good leaves to go to waste with a group of hungry herbivores just hanging around)

[Eigholte]

I just tried some of the earlier harvested top buds (which are not completely dried, and certainly not cured yet...) and I think I'm a fan! 😊👌 I think I am getting some papaya notes coming through all the chlorophyll, too. I think this one is going to be really, really nice, especially when cured. Which makes me a little happy that the spouse and I decided we should turn it into a mother's day gift. His mom is a long-term fibromyalgia sufferer, and my mom basically just recovered from an auto-immune arthritis flare. So it's really nice that in addition to maybe being useful to the both of them, it's also looking like it may be really nicely flavored.

[Doubledealing72]

Nice job man! I just took down a white widow CBD that was also a 1:1 ratio. It was the first time I tried a plant with CBD, and it's amazing how much better my body feels after smoking! It's a real treat!

[Eigholte]

End of Week 16 from seed / End of week 9 from 12/12:

At this stage of the game, I think I could potentially harvest at any time. The trichromes are largely cloudy all over, and some of the lower canopy are showing any where from trace to maybe 10% amber. They could go a little longer though, so I think I'll give them that one extra week, as planned, before the chop.

Still watering with "flush" nutrients - today's batch was around 280ppm.

Plant is also putting on some nice fall colors. Here's the plant as my grow light sees it.





And that same "bottom bud" from last time now looks like this:




We're getting really close!

The harvested buds from the top are not quite dry yet... otherwise I might have tried a sample. I'm a little excited to try a 1:1 CBD/THC plant - it'll actually be my first time trying anything with a respectable CBD content, so a little novel. In addition to that the buds have a scent right now that reminds me of papaya (Very peppery, spicy fruit notes). So I can't wait to see if that translates through to the vaping experience, as well.

[Eigholte]

I took my loupe many, many buds to get a feel for what was going on, and only the top-center 6 colas were looking mature. Incidentally, those were the same ones with mild light-burn.



So I harvested those six, and left the rest of the plant to keep maturing. I'm thinking April 28th might be a good harvest day for the rest of the plant. That'll strike a nice balance between getting the rest of the plant to gain what last weight it can and leaving myself enough time to make some mother's day gifts out of the produce!

Also, watered with more molasses-laden flush solution - poor plant was looking thirsty!

[PhantomSulker]

I did that with my first plant it was not quite done, but I was out of product and not going to buy more, so I started taking down a few branches each night and hung them in order in my closet in order of how I took them down and then as they dried a bit I started putting them in jars. They are curing nice, but will likely run out as next plant is finishing.

[LurkingInTheGrass]

Yes - you can harvest the ripe ones and leave the rest to finish, harvesting as they ripen

Worked great for me. Allowed me to manage the time (to harvest, over a few evenings, rather than a frenzied rush to get it down and hanging) and let the lower canopy get more ambers

[Eigholte]

End of Week 15 from seed / End of week 8 from 12/12:


So the scent is still overpowering... that's nice.

This weeks watering was done with a 'flush solution" of 4L water, 18g molasses (Fancy, cause that's what we had), and Ph'd to 6.5. Final strength was ~180ppm, which is pretty close to my from-the-tap ppm (down from around 650 on last 'feed' watering).

The discrepancy in ripeness between the top of the plant and the bottom is getting bigger... I'm starting to see closer to 30-40% amber on the top and only a trace of it at the bottom.
I wonder: Has anyone here done a 'Half harvest" - just taking the ripe top colas? If so, how did that work for you?

If I don't half-harvest, I am considering taking down the plant next weekend. The Easter holiday will give me an extra day off, which is nice given the amount of trimming I expect I will have to do. And that may get me a head-start on my planned mother's day gifts.


Anyhow, here's the photo parade!!

Overview:


Floral clusters:


Main cola glamor shot


My strange GA3 branch is still strange.


The top of the plant is looking pretty mature!


The bottom, not so much. Hints of amber, at best.

[Eigholte]

I guess the "downside" to this new hobby of mine is that I drink a lot less - It's going to be hard for me to handicap him to the same extent, unless I make some sort of request that he make some interesting new liquor that requires him to buy a reflux still or other such equipment. (Actually, tax free 96% ethanol from said still would be super handy for tinctures... *evil chin stroke* but that would also make us "super criminals" in roughly the same way that making an extra clone during a grow cycle would...)

I do have a rather pricey scotch already - more like $200 instead of $500 though. I met a lovely scotch at whiskey fest one year, and after I found out that it and I are the same vintage I had to have it.

[LurkingInTheGrass]

LOL

My mother called me once, because she was in argument with a guy
He: "IT doesn't like it when you call them geeks"
She: "let me prove it" and called me to tell him it's ok to call us geeks
LOL, Family can be nuts


Oh, he wants to play like that, does he...

Since you have to cover his paraphanelia, that means he covers your liquor? you could up the ante by taking up scotch - you know, the $500 bottle, that you never open 😁