After the harvest - the 'after crop' or 2nd harvest

[phxazcraig]

I've been trying something my girlfriend suggested after my last harvest - cut the buds, but leave the rest of the plant in the grow tent, to fill out the tiny, albino buds that were growing beneath the canopy.

It's working, to some extent. This is just a concept and progress report. My goal is to get a bit more yield off my infrequent indoor grows.

So here's the deal. I tend to let my plants grow 'bushy', with a lot of leaf not trimmed off and pretty tall plants. I've harvested the top 3 feet of my 6 foot plants (4 of them in a 4x4 grow tent), and I got decent crop off them (well over a pound). But I had lots of tiny buds in the bottom 3 feet of the plants. I decided to just keep watering and feeding them, leave the lights on 12 hours/day, and see what happens over the next few weeks. In my last crop I left the lower buds for 2 weeks, and they fattened a bit and gained some color.

In this (my 4th) crop, I had to harvest a bit earlier than desired because I was heading out of the country on a trip for two weeks. My girlfriend stayed behind, but only to shut things down if there was a leak, not to take care of the plants. I had been watering every 2 hours in a drain-to-waste coco coir system. With nothing to lose here, I just took the drain hose and stuck it into the 30 gallon watering source reservoir. I knew the nutes would be used up, waste accumulated, and pH dropped, but my only goal was that the plants be alive when I got home. Sure enough, came back to pH 5.6 (down from 6) and sickly plants - but live plants. I had harvested a week before I left in order to have time to dry the crop sufficiently before traveling.

That was 9 days ago. I quickly dumped the water and replaced it, using a mid-flower nutrient schedule from GH. The health of the plants started to improve immediately, and the buds started growing again.,

Yesterday the largest of the plants broke out with an obvious new shoot - leaves and all. Not just a bud. Overall, all 4 plants have put a lot of bud weight on, and there is new growth in all the buds. Given that I would otherwise have cut down and thrown away the plants a month ago, this all looks good to me. I suspect I'll get over an ounce of bud from each plant, which is worth it to me.

Unlike the earlier part of the grow, which was essentially the same as my last grow as documented here in 'Explosive Growth in Coco Coir', I let convenience rule for this experiment, No more collecting 11-12 gallons of RO water in order to mix up a new batch of nutes. Now I just filled up buckets with tap water, mixed in nutes and dumped it into the tank after getting pH down to 6 or so.

I think I'll let this go on another couple of weeks before harvesting again. Seems an easy way to increase yields if only doing about 1 crop a year.

 

[Mikedin]

I've been trying something my girlfriend suggested after my last harvest - cut the buds, but leave the rest of the plant in the grow tent, to fill out the tiny, albino buds that were growing beneath the canopy.

It's working, to some extent. This is just a concept and progress report. My goal is to get a bit more yield off my infrequent indoor grows.

So here's the deal. I tend to let my plants grow 'bushy', with a lot of leaf not trimmed off and pretty tall plants. I've harvested the top 3 feet of my 6 foot plants (4 of them in a 4x4 grow tent), and I got decent crop off them (well over a pound). But I had lots of tiny buds in the bottom 3 feet of the plants. I decided to just keep watering and feeding them, leave the lights on 12 hours/day, and see what happens over the next few weeks. In my last crop I left the lower buds for 2 weeks, and they fattened a bit and gained some color.

In this (my 4th) crop, I had to harvest a bit earlier than desired because I was heading out of the country on a trip for two weeks. My girlfriend stayed behind, but only to shut things down if there was a leak, not to take care of the plants. I had been watering every 2 hours in a drain-to-waste coco coir system. With nothing to lose here, I just took the drain hose and stuck it into the 30 gallon watering source reservoir. I knew the nutes would be used up, waste accumulated, and pH dropped, but my only goal was that the plants be alive when I got home. Sure enough, came back to pH 5.6 (down from 6) and sickly plants - but live plants. I had harvested a week before I left in order to have time to dry the crop sufficiently before traveling.

That was 9 days ago. I quickly dumped the water and replaced it, using a mid-flower nutrient schedule from GH. The health of the plants started to improve immediately, and the buds started growing again.,

Yesterday the largest of the plants broke out with an obvious new shoot - leaves and all. Not just a bud. Overall, all 4 plants have put a lot of bud weight on, and there is new growth in all the buds. Given that I would otherwise have cut down and thrown away the plants a month ago, this all looks good to me. I suspect I'll get over an ounce of bud from each plant, which is worth it to me.

Unlike the earlier part of the grow, which was essentially the same as my last grow as documented here in 'Explosive Growth in Coco Coir', I let convenience rule for this experiment, No more collecting 11-12 gallons of RO water in order to mix up a new batch of nutes. Now I just filled up buckets with tap water, mixed in nutes and dumped it into the tank after getting pH down to 6 or so.

I think I'll let this go on another couple of weeks before harvesting again. Seems an easy way to increase yields if only doing about 1 crop a year.

I like to experiment as well, for me, if it’s worth it for you to do personally, either just to see or to gain experience in something, then it’s worth doing

 

[phxazcraig]

A bit of feedback, though no pics yet. Once again this crop grew tall - over 6 feet. I harvested the top 2-3 feet by simply cutting the stems at the trellis line. Below that was just a lot of 'fuzz' - small sprouts that most people would have trimmed away earlier. But these clipped plants were still 3+ feet tall with a fully-developed root system. The light is cranked to maximum, (650w), and there is good space between the light and the plants. Moreover, there are very few big leaves left so the light is getting right down to the base of the plants. (I have some green algae on the top layer of coco).

The first week after harvest was rough on the plants, but at least they had fresh water and nutes. While I was gone, the plants barely did anything, but the bottom buds filled out a bit at least. Once I came back and started fertilizing again, things have really changed. Two plants look like they are mostly just making nice big buds from top to bottom. One, the smallest of the four, seems to be doing that but is a week behind. The last, and biggest, plant has full-on re-vegged-flowered. That is, I have brand new leaf, stem and flower growth at the top of one of the stems on this plant, and it has grown six inches in a week. Looks like week 3 of flower or somewhere in that range. Other buds on this, and the other, plants show a lot of new growth and excellent swelling of the buds. The old leaves look horrible with dried, burnt edges, but the new growth looks fine. I suspect I have at least an ounce of bud on each plant now, and those buds are looking good. Amazing plant, cannabis! The first cutting is starting to be mildly cured at 4 weeks in the Grove bags. Still tastes a bit green, but improving a lot since the 3 week point.

 

[Xhale]

fantastic experiment. I also get this outdoors when I plant in mid-winter, then they start to flower in Spring -> harvest buds but leave the plant-> reveg. this works for me as I don't put effort into these plants. *if* I were to spend more effort (or the indoor effort of $$$=lights, fans, etc) then I think I would not bother with the reveg mission, I would just buy+plant more seeds because of the variety of strains. I *may* consider putting in the effort if I was REALLLLLLY happy with the strain+plant...however Cloning would probably be my effort-option if I wanted to preserve a MotherPlant, which I did for a few years, then my friends and I decided that we prefer a variety of strains over time.

<edit> I start the mid-winter indoors then put them outside in larger pots when they look strong enough to deal with the weather. I learnt not to spend too much effort on these ones, so they're usually seeds from previous generations that I collected rather than known genetics.