pics from after the frost. chop em?

Here are pictures of two of my three plants. There was a frost the other night and the night before (not sure exactly how cold it got, but I thought they were light frosts) and quite a bit of rain yesterday. The small-ish buds are still in decent shape, though the plants started flowering really late (they're in the middle of a field and get a TON of sunlight). Obviously I'd like to leave them as long as I can to let those buds fatten up, and there will be warm weather for a few days now, but the leaves look like they're in pretty bad shape.

Should I let them go until the next frost and then chop them the night before, or should I just cut them now, based on the fact that most of the leaves look pretty sickly and dead? Will the buds even get much bigger if the plant is in this kind of shape?

+rep for insightful answers!

oh, here are the pics

edit: it's too bad these are the only real pictures i took of the plants, they looked so good a few weeks ago... they were just getting way too much sunlight and the buds started late. that coupled with harsh weather leaves me where i am. oh well, not bad for a first grow i guess. i learned a lot and i'll end up with some decent cannabutter.

O_O ummm doesnt look good it looks like a frost tonight I hope my baby is ok she is a monster anyway should be ok!

let them go and see what happens , worst case they die , best case they recover and finish ..

korvette1977 said:

let them go and see what happens , worst case they die , best case they recover and finish ..

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i mean, they look sort of dead already... you don't think it'll ruin the buds in any way by letting them go on like this?

let em go for sure. and it's not getting too much water is it?

it rained almost all day yesterday, which would explain the wilting. that's not what i'm worried about though, it's mostly the volume of dead leaves.

the crispy yellow leaves look like they are worn out old leaves. the plant has bolted looking for water i think. needs some nutes but its prolly too late now if you harvest soon.

plant girl said:

the plant has bolted

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isn't that the goal? unless you meant something other than "bolt"

If the buds are not mouldy as a result of too much moisture, there will be no harm done letting them try to finish. This is especially true if you have some good weather on the horizon. You are going to cut it down anyway. Why not give it the opportunity to allow some good at the end of the run. Although they are smallish, they have been growing outside and it will take a real 32F night to create the hard frost that will kill the root system. I vote for letting them try to finish!

ease8 said:

isn't that the goal? unless you meant something other than "bolt"

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i thought the stems stretched looking for sun and water. they have all the sun they need but not much else...just going on what i have found

dont pull em. you barely have any buds to pull. seems like an over water problem. maybe the frost but you said its been raining quite a bit. after each rain sake out the water to prevent mold. let them grow until they die.

i doubt you will have anything youll want to smoke but you should be able to make one or two batches of mediocre cannabutter. Hint: use vegetable oil instead of butter

norcalkronic said:

dont pull em. you barely have any buds to pull. seems like an over water problem. maybe the frost but you said its been raining quite a bit. after each rain sake out the water to prevent mold. let them grow until they die.

i doubt you will have anything youll want to smoke but you should be able to make one or two batches of mediocre cannabutter. Hint: use vegetable oil instead of butter

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coconut oil works the best IMO... It has more fat content and its the fat that extracts the THC from the plant.... I have a pretty good process to making a strong butter... Especially when you have weak foliage to use. I ve put a half pound into 2 cups of oil before and hallucinated for 24 hours... Makes you never want to eat the shit again, lol. These days I dont make it so strong.

There aren't really any buds to smoke anyway. I vote for letting it go and seeing what happens. I also heard that you should put a black trashbag on it and take it off in the morning.

Had the same problem this year extrem late flowering mine only, im guessing it must of been bad strain choices for myself, i ended up making bubble out of my 20 girls

coconut oil works the best IMO... It has more fat content and its the fat that extracts the THC from the plant.

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good advice i will have to try that. does it have a strong flavor that might off set the recipe.

the only time ive hallucinated off weed was from my own brownies too!

the strain i'm growing was billed as a 50/50 indica/sativa hybrid. like i said, beautiful plants up until a week ago, and roughly 4 feet tall. just too much sun i guess, they started flowering a month too late.

i'm going to let the plants go another week or so, as we'll be having mild weather for the next week at least. hell, i might even be able to steal another week after that. we'll see.

thanks for the advice everyone.

norcalkronic said:

good advice i will have to try that. does it have a strong flavor that might off set the recipe.

the only time ive hallucinated off weed was from my own brownies too!

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Not at all. The butter almost smells just like hash when im done but doesnt taste any different that any other baked goods i cook, the end product is Very strong. Personally i hate the taste of weed, mainly due to hallucinating and having a bad trip the first time eating it... similair to the same reason I can never taste blue ringers any more... bad experiences make me sick of what ever it was that caused it and I usually steer away from those...

I do a couple things differently than others when it comes ot making butter, like using coconut oil and water.

By boiling the oil and water together you can safely extract the THC out of the plant without over cooking it as just oil can easily burn, but the water keeps the temperature at 212° F / 100° C and no hotter.
It also allows you to put more foliage into smaller amounts of butter since you are using water to fill most of the pot.

Once it boils off for a couple hours let it cool put it in the fridge and once the oil sperates from the water and hardens you can just pick it up or scrape it off the top of the water where it floats.

very easy, safe method.

why didn't you protect them from the frost? it's pretty easy to do. if anything you could have got some small posts and a plastic trash bag around it all night.

either way, if another frost is coming, try doing something about it before it hits. good luck with the plants.

poplars said:

why didn't you protect them from the frost?

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was away during the days it happened, couldn't be helped

p.s. they're looking better now that they've recovered from the rain storm that hit just before the pics were taken. still a lot of dead leaves, but the buds are getting bigger. i'll try and get some pics when i can use my friend's digital camera again.