2018 Outdoor Cannabis Grow Harvesting Day

2018 Outdoor Cannabis Grow
Week: Forget the week...Today we are harvesting
Strain: Super Silver Haze

Last plant to be chopped down. Wanted to put together a quick video to pay homage to all three of them. It was quite the journey this summer and fall. That actually started way way back in early winter of 2018. When all three of these plants were selected from a cloning rig. They were the lucky ladies out of a group of ten cuttings.

All three of these plants had a slow start because of the cold temps through the spring and summer. But all of them took off once the temperatures started remaining above 70 degrees. And turned into giants that just didn't want to flip into flower mode.

They didn't need a lot of care and support during the vegetative stage. SSH strain grew tall during this stage and the stems were plenty thick to support them reaching heights of 13 feet. It didn't hurt that the summer saw very few high wind occurrences.

During this period we didn't need to provide them with any nutrients. Our soil was pre-mixed store bought 55 cubic liters and we then mixed it up with coco coir that was left over from our indoor grow.

We felt this was needed to help stimulate the root growth and allow oxygen to get and the excess water to flow out of the medium without pooling.

Although it was fun, it wasn't all happiness and orange sunshine.

We learned pretty early into August that these ladies were going to need either a meteorological miracle where weather remained mild and dry through October and maybe into November. Other option would be to physically manipulate the plants light cycle.

Unfortunately due to the heights of these plants any kind of tent or cover was going to be impossible for us.

So we were left with the natural option and had a wild ride watching the weather get progressively worse over the next 2.5 months. September went by without any major issues, and for the most part October's temperature didn't drop too much. But the constant humidity in the fall months was severely damaging to the bud development.

Some weeks the temperature was hovering in the 60's but it was either raining all day and on the off days the humidity was still >75%. That promoted a bud rot to form on all of our plants. And try and we might to remove the diseased sections, it wasn't always successful.

Given our experience with just three outdoor plants. We gained a new respect for any groups that professionally run farms out in the other legal states.

We also didn't use any pesticides this year. Another factor that promoted bud rot was the caterpillars we didn't realize were in our buds until harvest time.

Yeah Bub. I'm talking to you and all your friends. Next year it's on, like Donkey Kong.

Fun fact as we were trimming the leaves off the buds. This one caterpillar had an aphid riding on it's back. The aphid is just out of focus in the back but you can see it's body outline.

So this may sound like the grow was a total loss, but that's not true. We had pests, rot and harvested all three of the plants well before full bud development. And all of these facts are not ideal.

But we did learn a lot, and now know true sativa strains like SSH will need help converting over to flowering to make go full term before the season ends in New England.

And we have a lot of bud to work into oils, concentrates and edibles.

I have to say we are still perfecting our skills at the Ice Water Hash Bubble Bags. Our first run was good, but all other runs have not yielded anything great.

Here is a photo of some scissor trimming and finger hash formed into a little ball. Although it's small this was the first time i've been able to get nearly all of it all my fingers. Usually I would just scrub that stuff off and accept the loss. Again just another example of the small victories from this grow season.

This shot is really poorly focused and I don't have the caterpillars in the shot. But I took the photo because they would slowly start climbing the bag, even reaching the top after a little while.

Kind of felt like I was playing a caterpillar version of Tempest. Where I would need to knock them back down to the bottom or they would escape into the house and I'd be in trouble.

We have a ton of the pre-developed popcorn buds. If you can call them that. :(

Now all we have outside is around 100 gallons of soil and stems and roots which will be composted and spread around the gardens. Lots of experience gained this year, and a new approach to the 2019 grow season.