Hello Everyone,
Last night was the cannabis harvest!
The two plant strains harvested were:
- Big Mack Superstar
- Miracle Mack
I didn't end up making the post until tonight because it was an all day thing and a lot of work. By the time I was finished I was a bit too tired to focus my efforts towards making a decent harvest post.
So these photos were all taken yesterday, with the exception of the GIF I made tonight specifically for the end of this post.
Let's check out the final photos of the grow!
At this point I debated on taking some macros and decided against it. I didn't need macros to determine the plants are ready at this point, and doing so would have (possibly) slowed me down to a point of not being able to finish the harvest before lights out. I need to maintain the 12/12 hour light cycle for the last Big Mack Superstar that's a few weeks behind these current clones in flowering.
After making my decision I decided to take a shower first, even though this is a somewhat messy job. I just like to feel fresh when I'm harvesting, hence the wet hair :D
I decided to remove the main fan leaves, and this was the bulk of the work.
The procedure happens to be a debate amongst cannabis growers, and most growers agree that the best decision is to leave all foliage on during the drying process. I actually agree with this but I had my reasons, which were:
- Limited drying space.
- High humidity.
I have a small three rack net and a small tent that I'm not using right now. These spaces happened to be just big enough for the entire harvest, but would not have been big enough with all of the foliage on, and would have given way to a higher likeliness of mold occurring during the drying process. I would rather avoid mold, and was the biggest factor in my decision.
We can also see in the photos that these buds are indeed fat and dense!
I worked slowly, a branch system at a time.
These left over branches will be added to the crock pot when I make my butter, but I'll need to chop them down smaller of course. For now they'll just get added to a box to dry out a bit first.
I was so happy the entire time while harvesting, and what's not to be happy about with these buds, they came out soooo good!
This photo with the flash on kind of shows what I mean. They are so oily and packed with trichomes. The smell was out of this world and even cut through incense I had burning.
I'm hopeful some of these purple tones will carry through the drying, but sometimes the colors become a more dull brown after drying. We'll see, either way I expect this bud to be some of the best I've ever grown after it's dried and cured.
In the photo above we can see my hand was pretty well covered in sticky cannabis oil. There was so much I began having trouble using my hands and really had a hard time getting it all off. I might need to start using gloves for this, but I probably won't because I like the personal intimate feeling of using my bare hands with this process. Maybe if I end up working much bigger grows in the future I'll need to use gloves, but I can handle a few plants with bare hands :D
I wish I could project the smell through the screen but you guys and ladies get the picture ;D
I still don't have a count on the peppers. This cayenne pepper plant was tucked behind these girls, and when moving her out from under the netting, we can see this plant depends on that netting now. Some pepper fell off the plant while harvesting the cannabis and I simply added those to my dinner later on. They were super hot and painful just like I like it :)
Branch by branch I continued to work these girls and put them in the drying rack net until the process was done.
It worked out as perfectly as my futuremind envisioned it would, one plant per compartment, and the fourth plant in my unused tent.
I even ended up with a razor blade full of gooey resin from all the cutting, smoked it after dinner and slept till' noon today in fine stoner fashion. It was strong :D
Now the cayenne pepper plant is supported and has a bunch of peppers ripening up nicely.
There's one Big Mack Superstar remaining out of that clone line, and will be the last.
I learned a bit about these lights because of this last clone too. I learned that it's easy to overexpose the plants to too much light early in flowering. This was somewhat unavoidable because I added her to a tent that had plants further along in flowering, so options were turn the lights down and suffer the consequence of lower harvest, or blast this girl with too much. She paid the consequence but is still healthy, now spread a little better with 80% light power on her. I expect she'll still do pretty good like her cloned sister's.
I'm not going to publicly post the harvest weight after drying, due to the current legalities surrounding this plant. It's recently legalized in New York State, but with an unreasonable weight and plant restriction. I'm likely over the weight due to the lights working so good, and will need to dispose of however much over I am, which I will do in my own way. Anyone is welcome to post guesses for the dried weight and I will tell you later on if you were close or not.
The last thing I would like to say about cannabis is:
This plant helped save my life!
Throughout my entire 20's, I suffered from extreme addiction to alcohol, cocaine, and various other drugs. I lived homeless for years, and was in and out of every type of institutional living setting that there is. I started really getting my life back on track when I discovered blogging, and smoked a lot of weed while abstaining from the hard substances, blogging from a homeless shelter.
Now my life continues to get better and better after finding some healing through blogging and cannabis cultivation, now a culmination of both since it's legal for me to blog about it in New York State.
I'll always be pro natural medicine, because I'm still alive today through the power of natural medicine, and I use myself as a literal walking billboard for it, because I should have died from all that drug use, but here I am still going, and I have Hive and Cannabis to thank for a large part of that recovery.
That will do it for the harvest post!
Next I'll be posting about my vegetation plants that are currently growing nicely. I'll be getting back to cloning soon, and also will be doing some seeding soon!
Thank you to everyone who visits my blog and says such kind things about my passionate work with plant cultivation. You ladies and gentlemen are the best and help keep me going.
As always,
Thank you for stopping by!
Have a great day! -@futuremind