It's A Fuct World

Al B. Fuct said:

If you're feeling geeky, Wikipedia has a rather good description of the theory of operation of HPS lighting and its history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-vapor_lamp#High_pressure_sodium

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Al B. Fuct said:

Of course, plant count with SoG is a drawback, but with sufficient security culture & behaviours, you can conceivably grow indefinitely without LEO contact. I've been growing for more than 25 years without a single cannabis-related legal problem.

Cannabis plants do flower for a definite, limited period. This character is strain dependent but is usually 8-9 weeks. When 80% of the calyxes have darkened (some brown, some orange), it's time to harvest. Once the calyxes are all darkened, very little new bud material will be produced. At this point, d9-THC in trichomes tends to begin breaking down into cannabidiol (CBD) & other less psychoactive cannabinoids.

If you prune off growing tips, growth will continue from the nodes just below. Pruning off growing tips is how topiary is accomplished in other types of plants. In cannabis, this will make the plant bushier, with more bud sites, but the flowers produced will be smaller than the buds produced from a natural terminal node.

Don't remove healthy fan leaves. They are the solar panels which generate sugars which are converted into cellulose matter that build more plant material, be that more root, leaf or bud.

Plants store about 2 weeks worth of nutrients. You can stop feeding in wk 6 and usually not see any signs of nutrient deficiency til the end of week 8. The only thing that removes stored nutrients from the plant is photosynthesis. This takes time and exposure to light. Despite advertised claims, there is no product which will accelerate this process. You can 'flush' plants if you want but it is unlikely to make any difference to the smoking characters of the buds. You can try it if you like, but the only result I've ever seen from withdrawing nutrients is accelerated maturation (which stops formation of bud matter prematurely).

There's a lot of urban myth around regarding 'flushing,' 'curing,' etc. Most of these myths date back to the late 1960s to early 1970s. At the time (and through the early 1980s), imported cannabis supplied for smoking was generally the whole dried plant, leaves & all- and it was usually wickedly harsh to smoke. Homegrowers tended to treat cannabis as though it was tobacco, employing curing methods used to make tobacco leaf more pleasant to smoke, but mimicked the whole-plant style of the imported product. It wasn't until cannabis cultivation came indoors broadly with the 1986 advent of the SON-T HPS light (which supplies some blue spectrum light) that cannabis bud, without leaf, became the predominant style of supply.





Cannabis buds are much more pleasant to smoke than leaf because there's a very high ratio of resin to cellulose matter in them, the opposite of leaf. Buds, particularly from pedigreed DNA, don't require any any special treatment to make them smooth to smoke, be that 'flushing' or 'curing,' but old habits die slowly. To this very day you will find people insisting upon treating cannabis bud as though it were tobacco leaf. 'Flushing' and 'curing' of buds is quite unnecessary, is generally a waste of time and done badly can (and does) invite mould, which spoils the lot.

Choose wisely, grasshopper!

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cindysid said:

Hi Al! You are a veritable fount of knowledge! I have a question. Are you saying that you don't cure your buds?

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How do you process your harvest?

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Shwagbag said:

I think with a lb laying around ABF cures whether he means to or not lol. I definitely like a cured product better personally, I notice a difference in flavor and aroma without any doubt. Potency, I'd say I notice no difference, they all make me cross-eyed lol.

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Nice shots Al, its been a long while since you've shared some photos of the op, its nice to see you active even if it is temporary. That's a great setup. It feels so good to just maintain a garden once all of the effort and expense is done up front to dial everything in.

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Have you ever thought about investing in a bud trimmer? One of the local shops rents them by the day here lol.

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Overdry buds crumble easily if handled. However, rehydrating buds is as simple as putting a teaspoon of water on a paper towel and nesting it in the buds in a plastic storage tub

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Southtexasman87 said:

Can't view^^^^^

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*BUDS said:

Al, have you tried a plastic cup just shorter in hieght than the lid (storage tub) placed in the middle of the dry buds with the damp clean tissues in it? Its clean there is no wet contact with the buds and has the same rehydrating effect.

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Swiezy said:

Al, could you describe how you clean whole system to prevent pathogens infection?

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Swiezy said:

sorry My question wasnt precise. I ment biweekly cleaning. Is mix of water with bleach, brush and pumping the mix through whole system will do the job?

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Al B. Fuct said:

Just took a minute to swing the camera around the flowering area.

View attachment 2217214
Clones at the end of week 2. This set is doing very well.

View attachment 2217216
Tray 1 at the end of week 2.

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zem said:

hey there Al, very nice grow! I have to ask, what's this white medium?

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When did 'chemical' come to mean the opposite of 'natural'?

Chemical scientist Uta Wille defends the demonised substances that make up the world around us.

By Uta Wille

Recently I was browsing in a shop for a perfumed candle. The sales assistant came up and started assuring me that the candle was made entirely from natural ingredients, and contained no chemicals.

In reply, I asked her whether she had ever thought about what those natural ingredients were, and whether they might also be chemical compounds?

This was obviously not a fair question, but the whole conversation made me wonder why, in the view of the general public, substances which are 'natural' and those which are 'chemical' are seen as two different things. The former seems to stand for something positive, things that are healthy, mild or 'good for the environment', whereas the latter (chemicals) are often viewed as the opposite: toxic, dangerous, or unhealthy.

Why is there such a large discrepancy between the daily, ubiquitous use of chemical compounds and their public image?

A common definition of a chemical compound is 'any substance composed of identical molecules consisting of atoms of two or more chemical elements'.

We are surrounded by chemical compounds, both in and out of the lab. Apples for example, contain sugars (carbohydrates), vitamin C (an antioxidant), malic acid (which contributes to the sourness of green apples), and ethyl 2-methylbutanoate, which creates that delicious apple odour.

All these are naturally occurring chemical compounds made up of carbon (C), hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O). These same elements (and others) are also present in many man-made materials such as synthetic fibres, plastics, rubber, perfumes, fertilisers, preservatives and, not least, pharmaceutical drugs.

Of course, our negative view of chemicals is influenced by the fact that some are used in dangerous man-made materials such as Agent Orange, DDT and napalm. Other manufactured chemicals are responsible for environmental problems, for example air pollution and the ozone hole.

Nature not always safe

But nature can produce dangerous chemical compounds too! The sea wasp from Northern Australian, for example, is the most lethal jellyfish in the world. The venom from a single animal could kill about 60 adult humans.

The fungus Aspergillus flavus, which contaminate grains, produces aflatoxins which are among the most carcinogenic substances known.

The bacterium Chlostridium botulinum produces the botulinum toxin, the most powerful and dangerous neurotoxin known (and a benign version of which is injected in cosmetic Botox procedures)

But while most of us would agree we want synthetic drugs to treat cancer, HIV, dementia and Parkinson's disease, we get far more emotional about including chemicals in our daily life, such as in food and beverages, skin care products and cosmetics.

But what is the actual difference between 'natural' and 'chemical'?

In foods, for example, there are several kinds of flavourings. One type is the group known as natural flavours, which are extracted directly from plants or animals. Another are so-called nature-identical flavours. While these compounds are made by chemical synthesis, their molecular structure is identical to natural flavours. This means both have the same taste, colour, odour and feel.

In contrast, artificial flavouring substances (such as the sweeteners aspartame and sorbitol) are not identical to natural flavouring substances. They are derived by chemical modification of naturally occurring compounds, or are even synthesized from raw materials such as crude oil or coal tar.

It has been suggested that these artificial flavours may be safer to consume than natural flavours. This is because natural flavours can contain impurities, whereas synthetic flavours must pass certain standards of purity and consistency, and are also tested before being approved for human consumption.

Perfumes may also contain either natural, nature-identical and artificial fragrances. A synthetic version of the 'real thing is commonly used if natural sources are hard to come by.

Interestingly, synthetic fragrances are often considered less harmful to some people than natural aromatics. This is because synthetic fragrances consist primarily of one chemical compound, whereas a fragrance derived from nature may contain thousands of different chemical compounds at very low concentrations. Such a cocktail of unknown chemicals, which are often not tested, poses the risk of causing allergies.

So next time you're shopping for a fragrant candle, remember that 'natural things' contain chemicals too. I believe we should not demonise synthetically-derived chemical compounds. It would be more useful to classify chemical compounds according to their use, such as fragrances, herbicides, flavourings, paint pigments, etc, and remember that all these can be obtained from both natural and synthetic sources.

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A closer look at a “100% natural” product

During a recent trip to the supermarket, I saw a line of “100% natural” cleaning products on a shelf. I took a closer look at a few of the products – kitchen cleaner, toilet bowl cleaner, laundry detergent – curious as to its ingredients and the presentation of its naturalness. Some products had a rather long list of ingredients, but the natural provenance of every single one was listed – while interesting, this doesn’t really make a difference in terms of the product’s effectiveness or potential toxicity, since a chemical coming from a natural source is just as safe or unsafe as the same chemical coming from a synthetic (man-made) source. The product itself could be very effective, but marketing a product as all-natural allows these companies to further perpetrate this myth.

One product that caught my eye was a “pet stain and odour cleaner”. As the owner of a big dog (albeit one who very rarely leaves stains), I could imagine having a small bottle of this in the house, in case of an accident. I flipped the bottle and read the ingredient list of this product: deionized water and hydrogen peroxide. While water itself can be considered “natural”, deionization is not a natural process; the most common approach is to use an ion-exchange resin, which trades metal ions such as sodium and calcium for hydrogen ions (H+), and halogen ions such as chloride and bromide ions for hydroxide ions (OH-).

Hydrogen peroxide has a similar structure to water, but with an extra oxygen atom (H-O-O-H); in fact, the prefix “per-” means that the compound contains the maximum number of oxygen atoms that the molecule can accommodate. The oxygen-oxygen single bond is not very stable. A concentrated solution of hydrogen peroxide is highly reactive, and is used as a propellent for rockets. Two H2O2 molecules can easily decompose, in the presence of light, to form two water molecules and a molecule of oxygen gas (O2), along with a release of energy.

Looking at the MSDS sheet of this product, the concentration of hydrogen peroxide in this cleaner is between 3-7%. A solution containing 3% hydrogen peroxide in water?

That’s familiar… So I walked over to the pharmacy section, and found a bottle of 3% hydrogen peroxide – the same bottle that many people have in their medicine cabinets to treat minor cuts. The stuff that makes a cut bubble and momentarily sting. It’s also the stuff that is used to lighten the colour of dark hair. This bottle did have a third ingredient – sodium stannate, a stabilizer which is safe for humans and added in very low quantity, to keep the hydrogen peroxide from decomposing too quickly. I should note that this cleaner bottle was clear and transparent; the hydrogen peroxide bottles in the pharmacy are typically opaque, and the user is recommended to store it in a cool place, since the darkness and coolness will slow its decomposition.

The advertising on the company’s page claims that this cleaner is a “solvent-free formula”. In fact, there is a solvent in this formula – the water. A solvent is simply a compound in which another compound (known as the solute) is dissolved; in this case, a small amount of hydrogen peroxide is dissolved in water. Perhaps they meant that the formula is “free of organic solvents”, which would be a more accurate description.

The company also states that this cleaner is “non-toxic”. Hydrogen peroxide has been touted as a safer alternative to bleaches, and certainly the by-products of its decomposition (water and oxygen gas) are safer than the by-products of chlorine-based bleaches. But the assertion that a formula of 3-7% hydrogen peroxide is “non-toxic”, and that it is “perfectly safe for both pets and children”, must certainly be addressed. It is true that the lack of an organic solvent can be good around children, but calling this “perfectly safe for children” is quite a stretch. A solution of 3% hydrogen peroxide can cause burns, breathing a lot of it can be irritating, and it is very dangerous to drink it. The label does state to “keep out of reach of children” – which would be a hint that this product is not, in fact, “non-toxic”.

I noticed something else when I went over to the pharmacy to check their version of hydrogen peroxide – it sold for $1.99 per 450 mL (which is $4.42 per litre), while the 1 L bottle of pet stain cleaner sold for $7.99 (but it was in a spray bottle!). So if one finds that using dilute hydrogen peroxide is good for removing pet stains, they would save money by going to their pharmacy and buying the pharmaceutical version.

Please note that in all of this, I have made no comment on how well this company’s products are as cleaners – I haven’t tried any of them, and they may well be fantastic products. A product that is touted as “100% natural” can be great at removing stains. My point is that advertising that emphasizes “100% natural” can be misleading, as it relies on myths and improper expectations from many customers. Some companies may use improper terminology under the guise that “most people know what we’re talking about”, but misleading labels such as “chemical-free” can lead to further misunderstandings and distrust about chemical products.

Always read labels and do some research. Material safety data sheets (MSDS) are excellent resources for safety information about products. There is no need to fear chemicals, but proper information will allow you to know what is safe, what needs to be avoided, and what needs to be handled with care.

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