I returned to my apartment and opened my computer case to find my plant slightly yellowy and generally not looking too great. About 60% of pistils were receded and brown and it looked like there was no real return in sight, so I'd have to chop her.
I decided to forgo the live stream harvest for reasons of security. I hope this is understandable.
As I chopped, trimmed and manicured I learned many new things about the way my plant grew, and I started to develop a plan for my next grow relative to this information. The plant had quite a bit more undergrowth than I realized. I had tons and tons of little popcorn buds around the base of larger colas. A lot of these buds didn't get much light over the course of the grow, so they looked a bit less developed and they were a very light green color; some of them were almost white. But everything was super fuzzy and sticky! Yum
. I don't want to put the new plan in writing yet because I don't have it completely finalized, but know that next time these immature buds won't be a problem, and I should get much more filled out top buds. A lot of the reason for this was simple horizontal overcrowding.
After I finished the chop, I decided to smoke a little bit I had plucked about two weeks ago before I began travelling. I rolled it up into a ~.2-.3 gram joint (I didn't weigh it, purely estimation). Here's a preliminary smoke report:
The taste was slightly plant-y due to having been plucked so early and not being cured at all. It's surprisingly not very harsh, and I enjoyed the whole joint without feeling an overwhelming need to cough. I started to feel some effects about three or four tokes in. I finished roughly two thirds of the joint and put it out. The high is very cerebral (my favorite kind!) and pretty intense, but in a fun way. I can't see myself getting tired of it.
Anyway, this much got me to a solid [8], just about the highest I've been in quite a while. About 45 minutes later after I had finished getting a wet weight I was at about a [6.5] so I decided to finish the last third of the joint. It easily got me right back up to an [8]. Now it's ~2 hours later and I'm still just coming down to a [5] or so. This is really great stuff
. And the best part? What I smoked was cut almost two weeks ago! Imagine how good it will be now!
I was slightly skeptical as I was chopping her down, but after experiencing the high she gave me I'm completely satisfied with this grow. I could have done things a bit differently to get a slightly higher yield and slightly denser buds, sure, but I now have plenty of cannabis that gives me my favorite kind of high. What more could you ask for? I'm a happy guy.
Plus! I have a huge box of trimmings and smaller popcorn buds with which I'll be able to make a decent amount of hash! Any suggestions on what kind I should make? I'm thinking iso hash because it seems the easiest.
Without further adieu, I present pictures!
Here are a couple from my travels today
. First, from the shuttle:
and then from the plane:
I got home and took the last pictures of my plant alive. You can't really see the yellow coloring on the leaves, but believe me she didn't look too great.
Here she was roughly half way through the chop:
And here she was after, along with her root system:
Here are pictures of the finished product, set out to dry. The pen is for scale.
I decided about five minutes ago (roughly two hours into drying) to take a picture of the largest bud on the scale, and found that it had already dried up from 13.67g to 11.89g! Wow
. Hopefully most of it will be ready to enjoy and/or jar in a few days.
The total wet weight is 168.55g, or roughly .37lb == 5.92oz. I expect to end up with a dry weight of at least an ounce. Huzzah! I'll let you know in a few days. (Plus, I'll have whatever hash I get as a bonus.)
Thanks so much, everyone, for all of your support, advice and encouragement. I really couldn't have done it without you all backing me up.
