SHIT! I went down to Pismo beach Saturday night for a much needed couple days off and all was groovy, I came back Tuesday and all my girls are covered in ash!!! and its getting worse by the day. I just went and bought a stihl blower to hit em every morning but there is still tons of ash on the girls. i'm basically blowin em to make myself feel better and maybe its helping a little. my supply guy said if it lasts another week my shits fucked and the end product will smell like campfire complete with ash in the bag. what are you other guys doing about it? anybody that dealt with this before got some advice? besides start over indoors...that's not an option for me now.
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Dang fires and ashy skinned girls
- Thread starter ponocrookedbrah
- Start date
also mad props to the firefighters out there risking their lives, true heroes.
Yeah I feel your pain man. We went through this crap in socal back in 2007.
How many girls you got? How far spread out are they? If you can walk em all everyday, I suggest hitting em with water from a hand sprayer just 30-40 minutes before dawn, rinse off most of the ash and give the water time to evaporate before the sun starts hitting em hard.
If the girls are medium sized, you can throw trash bags over the top of each after it gets dark and that way they wont collect as much ash overnight. Just make sure to have holes poked in the bags so the girls can still breathe.
Following a protocol like that and then making sure to water cure the flowers after harvest should minimize the damage and make smell/taste issues less noticeable.
How many girls you got? How far spread out are they? If you can walk em all everyday, I suggest hitting em with water from a hand sprayer just 30-40 minutes before dawn, rinse off most of the ash and give the water time to evaporate before the sun starts hitting em hard.
If the girls are medium sized, you can throw trash bags over the top of each after it gets dark and that way they wont collect as much ash overnight. Just make sure to have holes poked in the bags so the girls can still breathe.
Following a protocol like that and then making sure to water cure the flowers after harvest should minimize the damage and make smell/taste issues less noticeable.
thanks for the tips yall I appreciate it. in the am I will spray wash em then blow em off. I might use my fogger/atomizer for the spray down. but after another 12 days or so I wont feel comfortable spraying them, I turned my supp lights off on the 19th so they are all done with the stretch pretty soon.
Water cure flowers?
Sure why not? You're gonna lose 10-15% of the weight as opposed to air drying but the remaining bud is more potent by weight and the increase in bag appeal from tighter/denser buds is worth a lot to some. You also have less resin degradation so it's a higher THC/lower CBD/CBN content than an air cure would be if max THC is your goal.
welcome to outdoors in norcal
RosettaStoned
Member
Some people are pretty opposed to water curing. IMO it's a good option at times, I've done it and the smoke comes out okay, but it loses it's taste/smell and turns brown. It shrinks, but yeah it doesn't lose THC so it's more potent by weight. Not sure if the degradation thing would really be noticeable. If the buds ended up really ashy, it wouldn't hurt to try, maybe even water cure then turn them into hash or oil.
Im just going with the hose on mist setting and letting them have it, seems to be working pretty well down here.
I mean they both have pro's and con's. I'd rather smoke air cured personally, but if I had the option between air cured with ash on the bud or water cured with no ash it's a pretty easy choice.
Hey Po...Falling ash is not necessarily a bad thing and can actually be a good thing, depending on the amount and more important, at what stage the plants are in the grow cycle. I would suggest first, stow the blower as it will help in removing only the larger particles and you can end up doing more damage to the plants than good by subjecting them to man-made wind storms. The leaves will still absorb, to a degree, the unseen ash dust which can coat the leaf surface, thereby potentially shutting down the "breathing" process by suffocation. That fine dust is your main concern.
Make the ash work for you. It is a form of pot ash. Every year, I till the woodstove ashes Ive saved over the winter into my soil as a source of well, ash. It not only aids in aerating the soil, when watered, it promotes many organic benefits. Very similar to potash.
So, depending on the amount of the ash coating, GENTLY spray the plants with nothing but water, lightly drenching the plants no more than 3 times a day. As the ash fall decreases, and it will eventually, decrease the cleansing times. Allow the drippings to fall into the soil thereby giving the plants a free dose of ash which the plant will utilize during the flower stage. Blowing the ash off is just wasting a good nutrient. I say A LIGHT SPRAY, because you also want the leaves to absorb the ash/water mix to a small degree which is in itself a foliar application. Dont assault the plant which a major stream of water. A pressure washer, similar to the leaf blower would be overkill. There is no need for a radical "blast" remedy here. A good mist will rinse/cleanse the plant and actually give a good feeding, foilar and soil wise.
When I mentioned at what stage the plants are, the only time the falling ash would be a serious problem is if the plant is in full flower and the trichomes are at the seriously "sticky" stage. At that point, the water will not help. The ash will stick to the buds, will not wash off and an early harvest would be one of your few options, short of somehow covering the plants.
It should be noted that if the plants are still in veg or even pre flower stage, with nothing for the ash to "stick to", youre not going to get a woodsmoke flavor. That is nonsense. If you are getting falling ash at time of heavy flower, any possible woodsmoke flavor is going to be the least of your problems. Ash mixed with trichs would pretty much render the crop unsalvageable...CC
And yea, the 19 Hot Shot firefighters who lost their lives in the Yarnell Az wildfire makes ashes falling on plants seem...very small...Thanks for giving the firefighters an ups Po...
Pono, how are things? Has the smoke or ash stopped? Its letting up, in my neck of the woods. Had a few nice sun filled days. Oregon fire must have gotten a handle on a couple of these bitches up here.
Nice post. Reminds me of old talk about lactic acid bacteria foliars as a way to "clean" leaves by getting the bacteria to digest some of the dust on the leaves for the plants to absorb.
Might work OK with ash too.
