The Hobby Grow aka the Torture Chamber...Vertical/3x3/400w/Coco, Goal = 450g/Cycle

Thanks guys......i'm pretty happy with the results given all of the hurdles...sad that I chopped roughly 4-5 days earlier than I would have liked and never ran into the security issue I thought I had, but definitely fine with playing it safe in that regard. I'm going to try to find some batteries for my camera and get some semi-dry and dry shots today. Currently on the 4th day of overall drying, 2nd day for the black zip tie plant, 4th day for the red one. Quick background on how I'm drying...this is a bit faster than I typically like to do it, but in the interest of safety I'm trying to get these in jars as quickly as possible without ruining them. Normally takes me 6-7 days if I do it "right," looking to have the entire crop from the red plant done by tomorrow afternoon and the remainder finished by Valentine's Day. Basically, this is how it goes:

Everything gets hung in one of my spare bedroom closets, the dehuey goes in the bedroom outside of the closet with the door shut. Temps are right at 64-65 degrees, a bit chilly but definitely better than too warm. Started at 55% for the first day, knocked it to 50% RH for the second day, and from the 3rd day on I keep the closet at 45% on the dot. I break down all of my main colas and top buds to golf ball-sized buds to promote even drying...everything this big or larger gets hung, everything smaller gets thrown on an extra clean window screen I have and typically is dry enough to jar about a day before the rest. From that point on, right at the point where the stems are just about to snap but not quite there and the outsides of the buds (i.e. the calyxes, not the close trim leaves) are dry to the touch, they go through the method best described by Simon in his "perfect cure" thread, although I generally just eyeball it/do it by feel and not with hygros in the jars...after a couple days of burping, rotating the jars, and (if slightly too wet after a day or so of sweating) taking the buds out of the jars for ~4 hours at a time, they have generally reached the point at which the cure is beginning and the smell/flavor is there. I should note that this works FAR better with a very well-trimmed batch than with a batch that received a light trim, the leaves seem to throw it off quite a bit when there are a lot of close trim left on.

^I know this is nothing ground-breaking, but figured I'd throw it in for anybody curious as to my method for that...\


Anyways, more to come soon.

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The third plant (foxtailed one, black zip ties) is still a couple days from fully dry, but the final numbers from the other two were 85g (clear zip ties) and 118g from the big one (red zip ties). Keep in mind that a LOT of larf/popcorn (which shouldn't have been there at all, but more on that later) was turned into bubble and I took at least 4-5 early branches to get them out of the way throughout flowering, so I think that had I not been so heavy-handed with that, I would have hit the 100g mark on the clear one as well.

Either way, assuming that I get at least 100g from the last one (which, honestly, may not happen...I'm guessing no more than 90-95 all said and done, but I could get surprised) I will have hit my mark of 100g avg. per plant. Pretty happy with what I got overall, but another week would have done these damned things right, not just "pretty good." I'm a bit of a perfectionist and this is gonna hurt for a while, but oh well...~300g from a 400w light ain't nothing to sneeze at in my experience, so it's all gravy. However, some thoughts on how I could have increased that yield are as follows:

1.) As mentioned, I over-vegged the s-h-i-t out of these things for the space and wattage. Should have given them 3 weeks of veg instead of 5 and trained a lot earlier and perhaps even more aggressively...duly noted for next time.

2.) I'm a mono-cropper by nature, so since I clearly got at least two different phenos in the clones I received, I would definitely choose to run the big one (red) from clone with aforementioned 3 week veg and stuff at least 4, up to 6 of em in the same space. I think if I did so I could pull 1/4lb from each without breaking a sweat....

3.) Finally, as mentioned earlier.....these were cut early. I fucking HATE early-cut plants unless I have a purpose in mind, like with the first one I chopped...thankfully, these were only a few days out from being DONE done, and at the time of chop the trich profile was 80-85% cloudy, 5% (MAYBE 10%) clear, and the rest amber...the big one had a bit less amber than the foxtailed one, but the density and quality of the buds makes up for the slightly longer flowering time I think. I guess we'll see when they're all cured a bit and I can give em a real test run.

More to come soon...soon as I find my camera cord and get some new batteries I'll take some new shots and finish uploading the rest of my other ones...
 

arik maso

Active Member
cool deets. i hate chopping early too, but as long as the oils are matured enough to make hits taste dank and not hayish, its all good! a QP per plant average under a 400 is effing bananas. kudos!! :D
 

srambo

Member
Very good thread! Hoping to see more from this grower. I will definitely scrog next time i grow, once I'm not revealed ;)
 
Thanks man. LST is definitely handy, although with the intensity of training I'm not sure "low stress" is the terminology I'd have used for this run...haha.
 
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