Completing my first outdoor cannabis grow, it has been quite the experience. With lots of highs and lows throughout the journey. At some points I thought the plant would not make it.. Other times I thought nothing could stop it. So I am really glad I was able to walk away with something from this grow.. Lots of experience at the very least and will know what to do better next outdoor growing season.
 Strain: | Zsweet Inzanity |
|---|---|
 Dominance: | 50/50 Balanced Hybrid |
 Nutrients used: | Foxfarm Grow Big / Foxfarm Big Bloom / Foxfarm Tiger Bloom / Foxfarm Open Sesame |
 Lineage: | Durban Poison / Rainmaker / Gorilla Glue #4 |
 Current growing stage: | Late Flower |
 Current plant age: | 190 days old |
 Sex: | Feminized Photoperiod |
 Location: | Central Virginia USA. |
| More info: | https://en.seedfinder.eu/strain-info/Zsweet_Inzanity/Ethos_Genetics/ |
190 days from seed to bud, and its time to take the flowers and process them. I was surprised they were ready so soon, but the crystals do not lie and based on what I saw with my microscope its time to cut them. I was expecting another month, but glad to harvest them as soon as they are ready.
While I was taking my daily trip out to the fenced in garden, I checked on the cannabis plants. Bringing my pocket microscope along it was time to see how ripe they were.
Each plant is showing signs of ripeness due to their orange hairs, but you really must look closer to know for sure.
The smell is just amazing, and will be even stronger when its time to harvest and cut them all up. Makes the whole house smell like weed.. lol
Not the best looking plants, but if I can harvest and cut out the bad stuff I think I should be okay.
Spider webs but not the mite kind.
There are some pretty buds, but when you pry them open you find stuff like below.
Bud rot, because they got too much rain and waterings from us this year. I was hoping just the leaves would be affected, but parts of buds seems to have also become affected.
After walking around with my pocket microscope and checking the buds. It was time to harvest based on the results.
I used a washing system of three buckets.. one with around a 1/4 cup lemon juice inside and two with just plain water.
Cutting the cannabis I dunked them and swished them around in the buckets, going from one to the other. I got them all clean.
Under the microscope:
The most definitive way to tell when cannabis is ready to harvest is by looking at the trichomes (crystals) using a pocket microscope. Mine has USB and I captured its output using OBS.
We can see orange/amber crystals meaning its ready.
Searching the other buds I see the same, milky white to amber.
Once you see amber its time to harvest. From there it does not get any better.
I checked all the plants, the four of them were ready based on this.
Some more ready than others.. lol
Being this strain is a hybrid, we want a mix of amber and milky.
Spotted one of those seeds I talked about in a previous post.
I went from plant to plant checking with the microscope, it tells me everything I need to know about ripeness.
Hopefully it will be a good smoke
Honestly I was surprised to see crystals form so soon. I was expecting to see all clear crystals and a few milky. But they are further along than I thought.
It is hard to get a super close up, but those crystals are what is inhaled when vaping or smoking cannabis. They are full of THC and other goodness.
Drying after wash:
I brought the wet buds inside and hung them on wire.
Quickly I ran out of room on the one wire I set up, so I strung up a few more.. many more.
More rooms full of bud.. what a life.
All strung up, they will drip dry over night. And then the next day I will do what is called a "wet trimming".
Trimming the buds:
I set up my workstation, a bowl and trimmer and got to work. My trimmer lets me just load the rough cut buds, I turn the lever once closed and rotate 15 times in each direction. Once done I usually have nice buds ready to dry, sometimes they have to go in for a second time but usually done on the first.
As I preped the stalks for trimming, I removed any areas with bud rot. See above for some rotten bud.
Yucky stuff.. no good. Sometimes the whole nug goes in the trash.. heart breaking.
So over the next few hours, I collect stalks from the wire. Look for rot, cut it out. Trim and place in the bowl.
The wires can be used again for next time. I like them because they are flexible and hold the shape I want. So I like using them whenever I can growing.
It is a slow process, I must look over every stalk and decide if its too far gone to save or not.
More bud rot to cut out.
Sometimes I can save little pieces but other times I must toss the bud.
Just not worth the risk of getting sick. Next year I plan on doing better growing outside though.
Slowly but surely I trim all the buds. And will place them in net bags to dry further. The smell at this time is strong, lol..
Placing hand fulls of cut buds in the bags. Then I space them out the best I can.
They will need to dry in the bags for a few days, weighed and then will get jarred up.
All of these buds really smell strong, and will for a few days. Smells like fresh cut grass right now.
As long as the buds dry well, we should be in good shape to move onto weighing and jarring them up.
But over the next few days the smell will go away mostly. And when the buds are not wet to the touch they are probably ready to jar up.
For those who have been following my previous grows, you know what is next right?
Another guess the weight contest! And the person that picks the closest will win Hive.
Once they dry out I will weigh them, jar them up and do a contest post.
New seeds will be sprouted soon, so expect a new grow journal post for my next strain I am growing.
Previous posts on this grow:
@solominer/zsweet-inzanity-a-closer-look
@solominer/zsweet-inzanity-day-20
@solominer/planting-the-zsweet-inzanity-outdoors
@solominer/zsweet-inzanity-day-66
@solominer/zsweet-inzanity-day-78
@solominer/zsweet-inzanity-day-92
@solominer/zsweet-inzanity-day-130
@solominer/zsweet-inzanity-day-152