With only one female cannabis plant growing outdoors I focused on making sure it got everything it needed. This year I was careful not to over water it. And luckily we did not get any tropical storms coming through dropping many inches of rain in a single day. So it would seem that was key to success this year. Checking the crystals with my microscope they are showing a milky amber. It has a been a little over 55 days of flower so I think they are ready.
Last years outdoor grow I lost quite a bit of bud to rot, this year very little was lost.. maybe 5% of it had rot in it I pulled out. Much better this year. Though I would like to try to find some strains that will not rot at all out in these humid summers.
I cut all the buds off the plant, and now its time to clean them off. Since they have been growing outdoors for months they have accumulated some dust and debris on them. We can clean them off using a series of buckets.
In the first bucket I add a cup of baking soda, a half teaspoon of citric acid and a cup of hydrogen peroxide 3 percent. The first two buckets have warm water in it, but not hot. I do not want to damage the crystals with it being too warm. So just below body temperature is good. When I put my hand in the water it should feel slightly cooler than my own hand, which seems to be perfect for cleaning but also not too warm to hurt the buds.
Once I started my hands got so sticky I could not take any pictures. But after I was done I cleaned off and took some pictures of what remained in the water.
The first is the most dirty, then the second and third get cleaner with each step.
Now my buds are washed, its time to trim them. I am not very picky, so a auto trimmer does the job.
This is known as wet cutting, as I did not let the buds dry out at all. Doing it this way is ideal when using an auto trimmer.
Twelve turns one way, and twelve turns the other way and I get these as a result.
So green, they will lose some of that color as they cure.
With all the buds washed and trimmed, its time for them to dry out for a few days. I place them in these bags that are hung up, and they will spend about three days in there before going into jars for months of curing before they can be consumed.
Soon it will be time to start my indoor grows, as the weather is cooling off soon we will get freezing days quite often. And at that point I must grow indoors, so looking forward to starting that soon. Got myself some new goodies to try out, planning on deploying some IOT (internet of things) devices in my grow tent for my next grow. So I can monitor the soil moisture, soil temperature, tent humidity and temperature all from a webpage. Using an app called Home Assistant I can make all that happen. So lots going on with my indoor grow setup, hoping my future plants like the changes.
I installed a bigger tent in the room I use to grow cannabis during the winter. This is a Gorillagrow 5x9 tent. I added the twelve inch extension kit on it. So it is close to eight feet tall now. My previous tent was 6'8" so having a much larger tent in height and width will give me more room to grow four plants inside. Using a good training method I hope to add two lights and have the whole space filled using SCROG netting and topping them.