jkpaw
- 26
- 3
Weird grow, weird harvest. Looking for opinions on which of my mistakes most likely caused my trichomes to degrade from full and cloudy to 75% degraded between the chop and the jarring a week later. All eight plants degraded -- some worse than others. While trimming, I could find pockets of nice bubbles, but mostly I found collapsed caps with lots of amber spilling everywhere. (Amber percentages only ranged between 5-15% at the time of chop.)
I like to chop each plant in about 6 main sections, hang them overnight, and then transfer them to drying racks the next day. Usually I just chop one plant per night. I was careless this time about leaving them hanging in the main room for several hours after the lights came on for the remaining plants. So that's my first suspicion: would those chopped branches, hanging from the ceiling about ten feet from my grow area be ruined by a half day of indirect but substantial light? (The racks, where they spend the following week before trimming, are also in the room, but shielded in a corner by cardboard walls -- so it's really pretty dark there, but not pitch black.)
Another possibility: I like to wash the branches just before hanging them, using the typical 3-tub wash with baking powder and lemon juice. But this time I decided to try citric acid instead of the lemon juice (about 3 tablespoons in the first 5-gallon bucket). I could not find any warnings on the web about citric acid, but is it possible that that was my main error? There are plenty of testimonies to be found that washing with lemon juice does not threaten trichomes.
Also the grow was kind of weird, with all 8 plants (different strains) finishing a week or two ahead of schedule. Past grows have always finished later than scheduled. Germination was a bitch for some reason, so I lost a lot of seeds, resorting to using some old seeds from previously hermied plants. (I only use fems.) Several seedlings began their lives slow and stunted (but then grew nicely after that). The grow was organic -- except that 3 times during flowering I decided to add quarter-doses of salts (epsom and Flower Fuel), which the buds responded nicely to, firming up considerably. But maybe late salt in an organic grow stresses plants?
Finally, most plants had a smattering of late seeds, only externally, on lower popcorny areas -- except for one, which was more fully seeded. That one must have been the hermie, although I swear I could never find any male parts anywhere, even though I did a lot of regular inspections. Hard to believe these were just the kind of stress seeds you get from late harvesting. I felt I was harvesting earlier than I ever have in the past.
I had no infestations or other obvious signs of stress. The room is totally dark, but I'm just now realizing that there is a remote wall-mounted temp/humidity sensor that seems to emit one tiny, faint red light blink every half-hour or so. Maybe that's the sole cause of the stress? But right now I'm wondering if any stress might cause the trichome development to speed up, and then degrade rapidly after harvest.
Anyway, it's not a total failure -- the smoke is pleasant enough -- but I'd love for anyone to chime in with which errors they think caused such a massive collapse of trichomes this time around.
Thanks, jk
I like to chop each plant in about 6 main sections, hang them overnight, and then transfer them to drying racks the next day. Usually I just chop one plant per night. I was careless this time about leaving them hanging in the main room for several hours after the lights came on for the remaining plants. So that's my first suspicion: would those chopped branches, hanging from the ceiling about ten feet from my grow area be ruined by a half day of indirect but substantial light? (The racks, where they spend the following week before trimming, are also in the room, but shielded in a corner by cardboard walls -- so it's really pretty dark there, but not pitch black.)
Another possibility: I like to wash the branches just before hanging them, using the typical 3-tub wash with baking powder and lemon juice. But this time I decided to try citric acid instead of the lemon juice (about 3 tablespoons in the first 5-gallon bucket). I could not find any warnings on the web about citric acid, but is it possible that that was my main error? There are plenty of testimonies to be found that washing with lemon juice does not threaten trichomes.
Also the grow was kind of weird, with all 8 plants (different strains) finishing a week or two ahead of schedule. Past grows have always finished later than scheduled. Germination was a bitch for some reason, so I lost a lot of seeds, resorting to using some old seeds from previously hermied plants. (I only use fems.) Several seedlings began their lives slow and stunted (but then grew nicely after that). The grow was organic -- except that 3 times during flowering I decided to add quarter-doses of salts (epsom and Flower Fuel), which the buds responded nicely to, firming up considerably. But maybe late salt in an organic grow stresses plants?
Finally, most plants had a smattering of late seeds, only externally, on lower popcorny areas -- except for one, which was more fully seeded. That one must have been the hermie, although I swear I could never find any male parts anywhere, even though I did a lot of regular inspections. Hard to believe these were just the kind of stress seeds you get from late harvesting. I felt I was harvesting earlier than I ever have in the past.
I had no infestations or other obvious signs of stress. The room is totally dark, but I'm just now realizing that there is a remote wall-mounted temp/humidity sensor that seems to emit one tiny, faint red light blink every half-hour or so. Maybe that's the sole cause of the stress? But right now I'm wondering if any stress might cause the trichome development to speed up, and then degrade rapidly after harvest.
Anyway, it's not a total failure -- the smoke is pleasant enough -- but I'd love for anyone to chime in with which errors they think caused such a massive collapse of trichomes this time around.
Thanks, jk
