Hello Everyone! Sorry I have been away so long:-/ Have had a few issues come up that had to be dealt with and adding anything at all to my already ridiculous schedule of working 14 hour days lately makes everything very difficult. My oldest daughter Sophy, literally my right hand has been having some medical issues for a while now. With the affordable care act she was finally able to get health insurance we could afford and after waiting over 4 months for a good dr appointment she has been preliminary diagnosed with MS. This is devastating to us all as you can well imagine. I still do not believe that is what is going on with her though and we are going to many specialists and lots of different testing and hopefully we will find out after all of this that MS is not the issue but at this point it is still all up in the air and a big worry to our family. Keep us in your thoughts and positive thinking:) We could use it!
As to harvest.....after careful inspection with better microscopes I decided that really there were only a couple of strains that were at full ripeness so we harvested the majority of our Berkeley Blues last Thursday, 252 plants to be exact. They were our smallest plants and yields were pretty much what we expected. We do not have our exact dried weights yet as they are still all hanging, curing slowly at between 64-68 degrees with humidity between 50-60% but we trimmed up a few that are dry enough to see what we might be able to expect. We averaged about 87 grams per plant wet (some more, some less but our average was 87 grams per plant when considering all the plants together). With our plant count per table, with two 1000W lights per table, we are looking at very close to 1 gram per watt at this point which was what I was aiming for with our first crop. Nothing huge and we certainly hope to improve upon that but for the first grow I will be happy with that I think as long as all the other strains produce at least as much.
Harvest with the reporting requirements of the WA Liquor Control Board is pretty freaking ridiculous! When you cut the plant down you have to keep track of the barcode or the 16 digit number that is the barcode, record the wet weight of the whole plant, the weight of any trim, and the weight of any trim. Then you still have to keep it distinct in the drying room so we hang them in the same order as we cut them so we can distinguish them by barcode because you need to enter the dried weight of the flowers from each plant separately, the dried weight of any trim and the dried weight of the waste (stems) again...all separately by plant. This all has to be recorded somehow and then entered plant by plant in on a really shitty program on the LCB's website. The process of recording the information takes much longer than the actual process of harvest and it is just tedious as hell. I am still working on getting all these plants recorded on their website a full week later because their website freezes up constantly, the more data you enter in it the slower it goes, it times out frequently and every entry brings you back to square one where you have to search for the next barcode in the long list of plants you already have in their system. Basically it totally sucks but we are getting through it:-) It would seem with their system that having less large plants would be much easier from a reporting standpoint than lots of little ones.
As to all the questions.....
fishwistle - I am taking lots of photos and will post the better ones:-)
Headgrow - We took off the main fan leaves to dry but are dry trimming to keep the buds looking as pristine as possible. The trichomes are just so crystally and shiny if you do it this way instead of trimming wet and everything can get smooged all together. We have a drying room with an airconditioner in it. Dark except when we are in there hanging something up or taking something down. Keeping temps between 64-68 and humidity between 50-60% and it all looks lovely so far. We did spray with
azamax and mint oil early in flowering but for the last 3 weeks only clean water spraying, lots and lots and lots of vacuuming including the whole plant and watching for mites very closely. Very labor intense but it seems to be working.
caveman - Definitely bare handed trimming:-) We use Gojo or some similar hand wash stuff from the auto parts store for getting off the sticky....after we compile any finger hash:-) Also have found that pouring rubbing alcohol and dish soap in the same time on your hands gets off most of it.
Since our Berkeley Blues were our smallest plants I do not really have any huge bud shots:-( Those will be coming hopefully with a few of our other strains this weekend and later next week. Tonight we harvest the Bubba Kush, Blue Dream, Burmese Kush, Blue Cheese, Critical Kush, Critical Mass, Frisian Dew, Cripit, Pitbull, Purpit, McBud, Green Crack, Northern Lights and I don't even know what other strains off the top of my head. Probably won't get it all done tonight but over the next few days since it is such a time consuming process to do it within the scope of what the LCB requires.
Here are a few photos:-)
Hayden and I just starting out with our first cut plant with the laptop to record all the data and our nice Ohaus Ranger scale:-) Hayden is my youngest daughters boyfriend and one of the 3 of us that are partners. The other partner did not even show up for our first harvest!!! Can you even believe that? His focus and ours is totally divergent it would seem.
Me, both my daughters, Sophy and Rachael and each of their boyfriends, Hayden and David who are all integral to our operation.
Our drying room. Not that impressive for 252 plants is it but again they were our smallest plants:-/
Another shot of the drying room.
And yet another.
Other things we found out.....the plants on the interior tables were as much as 15 grams heavier than the ones on the outside tables that were lined up against the wall. That shows me that airflow and cooling were probably at play on the tables by the walls and we will definitely do a better job with that in our next indoor grow. The table that we removed fan leaves from a few weeks ago were not heavier at all than any of the rest of the plants on the tables on either side of it. This particular strain is not very leafy though so that is not really a surprise. We will probably see more of a difference in the more leafy varieties if indeed it makes a difference at all.
Trimming up a few branches for close ups now and will post shortly:-)
