New Grower 1st full grow

[bong_chat]

You know, that's a good question. I never kept track of the days. Now I see why people do. I was going to just let them grow until i saw the trichs the way I wanted. But seeing as I don't know what the pistals are supposed to look like at harvest, I find myself a bit lost. I know they are supposed to be turning brown or red at some point. But I have quite a few that are turning now, and honestly they don't look done to me.

Man I feel like such a noob. I know what bud looks like in the sack, but not what completed bud looks like on the tree.

And why is it my plants look better in pictures then they do through the naked eye? lol

 

[Dr Dog]

Some strains turn some don't
I have had pistils start changing on me after a few weeks, and I have had some that did not until it was curing, once the trics are starting to get amber, like 30% I would start flushing them, then a week to ten days later you should have about 50 50 amber/cloudy which to me is the perfect bud.
The reason your buds probably look better in camera, than to your eye is that you are looking at alot more than what you see through the camera lens, so you see much more to compare it too, the camera is focused on the buds so that is the central view point, where as your eyes are looking at an area probably 10 times the size of the lens without you even knowing it
Don't be concerened about being a noob, we were all there at sometime
Cheers

 

[bong_chat]

So after my "am I doing this right" freak out moment, I'm back and feeling a lot more confident. I've found quite a few mistakes I made over this grow, that I won't make again.

Like for instance...always recalibrate your pH meter. I screwballed that one big time. I thought I was putting in pH 6.7. But instead it turned out to be 5.6. Apparantly the pen meters need to be calibrated almost every time you use it. Either that or my meter sucks. But it's still better than that cheap probe. That's junk. And when you do discover the screw up, don't try to over compensate. I tried, and my girls said "ok, hold up there jackass. We got spot now. you happy? Now FIX IT".

Other things I've learned. Cats like leaves. ALOT.
Plants like light and always wants to try and hug the bulb.
When bugs appear, spiders can fix it.
I STILL HATE SPIDERS!!!
If you don't top the plant, you get a broom handle of bud.
If you use distilled water...CAL-MAG is your friend. Otherwise your plant will slap you.
A good microscope is VITAL. 60X minimum. I like 100.
And most important...it's a weed. LEAVE IT ALONE. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.


So now I open the room, and I am met with seriously sweet smelling crystally plants full of loving green goodness. All the girls that were not showing before have trichs all over them.

My old scope had a max range of 60X, and it was ok. But I wanted better and got the radio shack illuminated hand held. Went to 100X and what a difference. Now I see all my trichs except a couple are cloudy across all the plants. Not many clear at all. And a couple have turned amber. Like 5-10% tops. So I started a bit of a mini flush. Plain water with a slight hint of nutes. Probably will be the last nutes they will get, and the next watering will be the beginning of the real flush. I want to check my triches though, and take Dr. Dogs advice and really flush at 30% amber, and wait a week or so to chop. I would like to hit that 50/50 mark. Nice even combo of body and mind high.

So, at best I think I may have about 2 weeks or so till chop, if that. I'm keeping a close eye on those crystals though, and I'll let the girls tell me when it's time. And even if I lost 80% weight during the dry/cure, it will still be more bud than I have seen in my life. It's hard to be patient.

I snipped one of my smallest side nugs for a test. After a fast dry in the nuker, I packed 1/4 of a bowl. After about 3 tokes, I felt like I was hit in the face with the "YOU ARE STONED" bat. All head high, which I expected with mainly cloudy trichs. But I can totally see the potential. It was a bit on the harsh side, but again to be expected. But the taste was still nice and sweet. I can't wait to cure these beauties, and see their real potential.

So on with a couple pics. My camera sucks, so I had to toss most of the pics, but here's a couple that I do like.



My favorite gal, Stumpy. She's showing her age now



And the great (green) Redwood



And a couple side nugs that got some lovin from the side lights







More pics will come soon. I want to get some at pre-chop, and then post chop. And of course, the end product and a smoke report.

Till next time...

 

[chubbynugs]

Stumpy looks like she has grown into a woman now! No more lil girl in her thats for sure. Wonderful job man. Very impressive for a first grow. I always shoot for more amber than cloudy but thats my preference. I think if you went 50/50 cloudy/amber it will still be more couchlock than anything. Good luck with your harvest.

P.S. cats do love mj plants a lot.

 

[bong_chat]

Thanks Chubs. I hope from this point I can only get better. And I swear Stumpy was my biggest suprise. For such a short stack, she's put the other plants to shame. She's only droopy in that pic cause she needed water badly.

The couchlock for me is not a bad thing. Because this is more medicinal for me. I find the couchlock bud tends to help me the best. Nice amount of pain management, as well as helping me sleep through the night uninterrupted. And that in itself is more than any prescription has ever done for me.

Plus I do like tokin, sitting on my recliner, and bustin out some Halo3. Or watching movies when the xbox controller is further than 2 feet from my maximum arm reach...lol

 

[Dr Dog]

Looking awesome here man, nice plants
And it is great to see that the most important thing to do when growing weed, is nothing!!!
As for the microscope, I use mainly just my naked eye, I can see the trics just fine and their colors. I will also use macro shots of my buds, that is really easy just zoom in and bamm!!! tric fest
Good to hear you enjoyed yourself with your grow
What do you have planned for your next

 

[Black Ra1n]

bong_chat hey man, damn nice looking plants. Love the if it's not broke don't fix it. I tend to ignore my vegging plants, check on them every few days give them some water, and fert. them once a week. I spend most of my time on my flowering ladies, besides they pay off the best hahaha, great looking grow man.

B/R

 

[bong_chat]

Hey Dr. D.
I wish I could see their colors with my naked eye. But I am terribly nearsighted with a bad stigmatism. If they're too far away, they get blurry. If they are too close, my vision gets funky. As soon as I get close enough to see the trichs, my nose gets sticky. So the scope for me was a must.

Not sure where I am going to go from here. I do still have an assload of bagseed I can do, or a few more Top44. But I have had kind of a bad germ rate with those. I want to do others, but I have no safe address to have anything sent. And even if I did, I don't think I could spend the extra $$ right now on a good strain. So I may play weed roulette with my bagseed. Just make due with what I have for now. You never know, I may end up with a few gems.

Hey BR.

Yeah I'm one that has to force myself to leave things well enough alone. Especially seeing as I am one who can kill things with a glance it seems, if I can get this far and nothing is dead, then these plants can survive just about anything.

How bad am I? Well birds fly by my house to tell their children about the Great Canary Massacre of 1984. Twice a year mice from all over the land walk by my house in silent reverence for those who lived through the Mouse Holocost of 89. Then there was the Trail of Dog Tears, the mysterious death of the black bunny, the mass cat graves that the UN thought about filing a war crimes against me for. There was the Gerbal Genocide of 93, The Reptile Murders of 94-96, The Great Garden slaying of 04-present. Many tomatoes and peppers have died because of those.

I don't do it on purpose. I love animals and plants and most other living things (except spiders). I think it is some sort of mass suicide plot from nature's kingdom meant to frame me. I don't know what they want from me yet...but they'll crack one day and I'll find out.

 

[bong_chat]

All good things...

All good things...

Well, the time has come. The girls have become women, and it was time for them to go one to better things. Or so I told them. They were too excited to pose for pics. They were ready to leave and head out to the world. So I took them downstairs one by one to give them each a special present. I told them to blindfold themselves as not to ruin the suprise. Then in one quick move, I broke their stems. Very quick, no pain. They've done their jobs.

So anyway, I didn't realize just how much work went into trimming. And by the end of the night, my eyes were crossing, my head felt like a college frat party was going on in my brain, and I felt so naseaus I could barely stand up. That one I didn't expect. Does anyone else get upset stomachs while trimming? I'm guessing it's from skin absorbtion. So next time I'll be wearing medical gloves.

They are drying now, and they smell unlike any weed I've ever smelled. Kind of like cucumbers with lemon juice. Nothing musty as far as I can tell. But definitly lemony cucumber.

So here's what I came up with...





And for sizing, I put the 12 oz 7 Up can in the pic. Plus...I was thirsty and was out of orange juice



Cola close up (I still have tad bit more trimming to do)





And my container of trim and the lowest of the popcorn buds that wouldn't have been good smoke anyway. But I plan on making hash out of it, so no waste here.






As you can see, I have a tad bit more trimming to do, but I couldn't do anything else. My stomach gave out and I had to hang everything before bed. I didn't get done till around 230 am, and I was running on fumes. And what I didn't get done were side buds anyway, so the best of the plant has been trimmed up and hanging. Ohh and for anyone that can answer, my drying area humidity seems to sit at 50% RH. I can't seem to get it any lower. This is with the plants drying for over 24 hours. Is this ok, or should I do more to lower the RH. The room is dark and the temps swing between 60 and 70 degrees F.

I have no idea on final wet weight. I don't have any scales in my house. Don't want anything like scales or baggies or anything in my house. Hell I don;t even keep sandwich bags. I may try and borrow a scale from work to get a final dry weight, but if I don't I will say it's a lot of weed. More weed than I have ever had in my life.

This has been a hell of a ride, and I know I've made some bad mistakes. But I already know things i need to change, things I will need to do different, and things that I will do exactly the same. But the most important thing is...I learned. Hopefully this will be only the first of many grows.

Once they are jarred I will take some bud shots and some jar shots. Then of course...the smoke report.

And now...off to work.

 

[chubbynugs]

OH hell yeah we had a thread in the outdoor section about trimming. Seems like lots of people get dizzy light headed and whatnot. We concluded it was from terpenoids seeping through your skin from handling the buds. Neck and back strain are also very common. Dude i had to trim for five days eight hours a day for my summer harvest. I barely smoked any week for a week and felt sick as hell. That humidity shouldnt be a problem as long as you have a fan on the ground moving some air around instead of it sitting stagnant in your room. Congrats on a wonderful harvest!

 

[strain_searcher]

Great job and amazing first grow.

 

[bong_chat]

And now to wrap up this diary. I had to chop a little earlier than I wanted. I got into a time crunch, and I didn't want to leave the system running for days while I was out of town. So the dry went well, but the buds turned out to be a bit more airy than I originally thought, and they turned crispy after a few days drying. So they got jarred up with a couple pieces of lettuce and the next morning they were moist and pretty again.

I decided to upsize my jars a tad as well. I only had about 5 quart jars, and they were definitly not enough. I'm not sure what size the jars are, but I was able to compact all the bud into the 3 jars shown below.






And a little nug shot





Now for the bud itself. When I open the jars, the smell is very very fruity sweet. Almost like extra sweet fruit loops. Like I said, the nugs are airy, so I'm sure my final weight suffered. But that's ok, cause I got plenty to last me for awhile now.

The high is nice and strong. A nice mix of heady and body high. The bud itself is potent enough that it took me 2 nights to get through one packed bowl. I had a friend try some of the "killer bud i got from my brother in law", and he said this was probably the best bud he has ever smoked. Nice little ego boost.

As for now, I am just about done making a small batch of ice hash. There was very little trich covered trim, but enough smaller popcorn buds that looked to sad to smoke. So it looks like I should get a good taste of hash smoke this weekend.

And so this concludes this series of "As the Bud Grows". I can safely say that now that I see what I can do with a little effort, time, and a LOT of patients, I'm hooked. This will definitly not be my last grow. Probably will never get bigger than this though. As this is all 100% for personal use, there's no need to grow a HUGE amount. So who knows, maybe I can keep it small and specialize.

Thanks to everyone here for the kind words and encouragement. I'll be thinking of you guys when I toke again...at least as long as my brain will allow me to think...lol.

 

[zeloszero]

Good Job man, those buds look very tasty have fun smokin it

 

[Rat_Genius]

What did you use for soil in the
A.) Seedling
B.) Veg.
C.) Flower

stages????

 

[igrowdadankest]

Did you take any pics of the hash before smoking it?Nice first grow also.Hey man about you not having enough money for seeds.Mandalaseeds.com is a very reliable breeder.You can purchase there seeds on Seedbay.com also.I bought there HB for my first grow and it is going ok if you would like to check it out just look at the link in my signature.I also just bought some Satori,Speed Queen and there Safri mix from Seedbay and it came out to be only 50$I also got some free Menage A trios.If you are super short on cash then just order one pack of the Safari mix its like 12$ you will also get free seeds too if you order from seedbay.I dont have a safe address eather and have had to order seeds to my grow area 2 times I also ordered the light, soil with some other growing stuff,and some bubble bags to the house.I dont live in a medical state and far from it also.You had a great harvest for your first time.When do you plan on starting another grow?

 

[bong_chat]

Wow I thought this thread had died. Thanks for the kind words guys.

Well I've been burnin this harvest for awhile now. Given a couple sacks away as gifts. All from this amazing dealer that my brother in law knows...lol. It's kept me good and baked whenever I need it. And the bubble hash I made blew my mind. I wasn't expecting that kick in the brain.

Rat...
I used fox farms ocean forest from start to finish. No additives either. No lime, no extra perlite, I just kept it very simple. I germed my seeds using the wet paper towel method, and then popped the seeds straight into a 16 oz plastic cup. When I transplanted up, I made sure to get as much fresh soil into the new pot. I went from the 16 oz to the 1 gallon pot, and then I jumped the gun a tad and went straight into the 5 gallon pot. But using the transplants gave me all the food the plants needed to carry them through the veg period. I probably should have hit them with a low strength boost of N before going 12/12, but I managed. But for the most part, all I did was water with distilled water with a shot of cal/mag.

Once I went to 12/12 cycle, I watched the plants to see when they needed fed. That's when I started hitting them with nutes. But the FFOF is a very rich soil, so I didn't over do the nutes. The only thing I would change next time is to add more perlite, as the FFOF has this bad habit of compacting over time. And it doesn't take much time.

Igrow...Nahh no pics of the hash. My camera took a dirt nap on me. I tried to get a pic, but my camera did everything but punch me in the eye before it died. But I can tell you...it was goooooooooood. For my next grow I'm hoping early in the new year I'll get started. The only change I'm making to my grow for the time being is I want to try swapping out my HPS with a CMH and see how that goes. And I want to try some gravity to harden up the nugs a bit. They were a bit too airy this time around. I'll look into some new seeds, but still uncomfortable with sending orders to the same place as my grow. I still have some top44 seeds, so I may rock out another grow with those and see if I can do it better next time.