Cannabis harvesting

[Ace]

Sphinx, that's gotta be one of the most beautiful family photos I've seen on these forums!!

[Coschi]

Thanks ace sweet isn't it

I've looked around but can't really find a really good picture of a male flower... what does a male flower look like?

Foaf found a little (well big and fat) catepillar munging into a leaf, bastard! he's been getting around and causing some damage, he used to find the little guys around but they were small, maybe 20mm x 2mm, this guy was about 50mm x 5mm and had a really wierd face! got some photos, will see how they turn out

Have a nice day guys!

[paradox]

Also i've noticed that large buds have a tendancy to develop mould, sometimes while still growing. could people give their thoughts on how best to handle such a situation? & how to avoid it in the first place?

well in my FOAF's experience this has a lot to do with the fact that flowering time is mid to late autumn and by this time the days are getting a lot shorter, the plants receive less sunlight, the weather gets less dry and the night time mists begin to get much heavier (at least in his area). my FOAF usually grows on the valley floor right by a creek which would obviously be the area most prone to these probs. he has had much better results in this regard when growing on dry sunny ridge tops, though this increases his work load considerably.

when the mould does strike, he just takes it as inevitable and picks as much as he can off so it does not spread too much, then lets the bud mature as much as possible and if it starts to get bad he cuts his losses and picks the bud, leaving all un-infected buds to mature further.

[soma_seeker]

god damn thats a pretty pic sphinx, those shrooms are VERY impressive.

mind if i ask the strain and growth medium? (i know this isn't the place for it, i dont mean to hijack the thread)

[Coschi]

Hahaha glad you like it ss

Shrooms are ps.cubensis var 'mexicana' grown of brf and verm cased with 50/50 peat moss and verm

[ENtiTY]

Mexi's ???

They don't look like mexi's. Way to pale. Might just be the way the light is hitting them though.

Nice flush at any rate Sphinx thats for sure! Well done

Edited April 19, 2007 by Harry

[Coschi]

edit; double post

Edited April 19, 2007 by Sphinx

[Coschi]

Wait.. holdon.. wait

There's been ongoing confusion about what these are..

Actually they really aren't that light at all, those in the pic matured quite a lot and got lighter as the caps opened up (maybe it's like the wriggly bit of skin on your knuckles - dark when compressed and light when stretched) eitherway, the second flush has began, actually he took a few off this morning where the veil is still in tact and they are almost as dark as standard milk chocolate (a little less dark)

IN FACT!! he had five last night before bed (stupid thing happened, lost about 1/4 of the whole cake + casing in an attempt to remove excess casing - now he's learnt just how fragile these things are) anyway so in an attempt not to waste any goodness he had five and went to bed

lucid dreams ahoy! seriously - 100% conscious, fucking amazing

Take it easy!

oh right the question, if you look at the "two questions" thread there's plenty of pics of the development of those caps and you can see just how dark some stages were (unless i didn't put those pics up yet..)

i believe they are ps cubensis but i really can't be sure on variety.. although ace does strongly suggest they are mexicana variety, i'll take his word on this one

[ENtiTY]

Yeah the pic in that thread, the one with the caps being printed look a lil pale as well. That said, they are rather largish caps as well.

Don't know, if Ace said they were from mexi genetics then I have no doubt that that is what they are. Maybe some environmental factor caused the caps to come out paler.

Edited April 19, 2007 by Harry

[cisumevil]

Happy 420 tokers & growers

I'll be chuffing a few down today

[xShiva.spacetechnology]

ahhh.sounds like a great day to go for a mission to 711 for a slurpee...and then some more

[shruman]

i'm not disagreeing w/you planthelper, but this is something that people get very passionate about. i used to believe the same as you said, but after lurking on quite a few MJ growing sites i gathered that the consensus is that a female plant that produces male flowers (even just a few) has turned hermaphrodite & that any seeds produced will also be (or have a high probability ov being) hermaphrodite.

can you, or anyone else, give your thoughts on this, especially why there is such confusion?

Also i've noticed that large buds have a tendancy to develop mould, sometimes while still growing. could people give their thoughts on how best to handle such a situation? & how to avoid it in the first place?

All cannabis plants will make male flowers under stress, the easiest & best method to do this is to grow a female plant 10-14 days longer than a usual harvest this is abuilt in safety factor to ensure its genes will b passed on, after this time u should see a few male bananas sometimes with a seed right by these bananas (are slight male flowers they almost look like a cross between male & female flowers & are yellow in contrast to the green female flowers) and any female flowers on a 100% female plant that has been fertilized by these bananas will produce 100% female plants. It is best to collect thes bananas & store them in a zip lock bag in the freezer until u have another crop that is 2-1/2 weeks into flower than polinate with a paintbrush to make 100% female seed.

I believe for a plant to b truly hemaphrodite it must exhibit both flowers from start to finish & yes these plants have a tendancy to produce hemaphrodite prodginy.

The mold u are probly talking bout is Botritys cinera, caused by high humidity cupped leaves are often a symptom indicating poor water uptake, there isnt much u can do outdoors for this, removing infected parts is bout the only thing but it often comes back.

[soma_seeker]

Wait.. holdon.. wait

IN FACT!! he had five last night before bed (stupid thing happened, lost about 1/4 of the whole cake + casing in an attempt to remove excess casing - now he's learnt just how fragile these things are) anyway so in an attempt not to waste any goodness he had five and went to bed

lucid dreams ahoy! seriously - 100% conscious, fucking amazing

Take it easy!

can you manage this often? my gnome regularly enjoys shrooms and sleeping within the next 8 hrs (let alone immediately after consumption!) just doesn't happen. This pisses him off because he is keen to explore the effects of trippin while sleeping, lucid dreaming and whatnot. He's envious of u!!

[paradox]

perhaps a gnome could drop something and try to get to sleep b4 it took effect?

[ENtiTY]

I agree SS, sleeping and shrooms just don't go together. Maybe a threshold dose would allow such a thing to happen. Semi concious is the best my smurf could manage. Awesome place to be according to my pet smurf.

[Coschi]

Re shroom sleep

This was the first time he ever tried this, it was pretty late at night and he was pretty tired, he literally at them and was in bed within a minute, asleep perhaps 20 minutes later which is right when the would have started

Ps: agreed shrooms are way to buzzy to sleep while still tripping

Just lucky that this happened as lucid dreaming has always been of massive interest!

Who has seen Waking Life?

He tried this a second time last night but he was over exhausted (about 1 hour sleep on friday night) so i think he didn't really even get a chance to enter rem stage of sleep (wiki sleep stages i'm sure you'll find info there; but basically i think your body gets the rest it needs first and progressively you go into deeper stages of sleep, after about four hours sleep you start to enter heavy rem sleep (stage 5 i think) and the longer you sleep from this point the longer you stay in this stage, but if you're physically exhausted and have a pretty large lack of sleep you might not even get to enter stage 5) SO nothing happened he will try again with about eight shrooms when he is well rested and report back

[soma_seeker]

cheers for the reply Sphinx,

and yes Waking life is my second favourite movie (beaten only by Pink Floyd's 'The Wall').

very cool flick

[ENtiTY]

Very interesting Sphinx. Thanx for the detailed explaination.

I to would love to give this a go, if it were legal

Looks like my smurfs are going to have to try an experiement for me again.

[nabraxas]

Shruman---thanks for the reply.

i wonder where the idea came from that female plants can "turn" hermaphrodite. that certainly seemed to be the majority view on AusStoners, Overgrow etc.

Edited April 23, 2007 by nabraxas

[Jesus On Peyote]

i'm not disagreeing w/you planthelper, but this is something that people get very passionate about. i used to believe the same as you said, but after lurking on quite a few MJ growing sites i gathered that the consensus is that a female plant that produces male flowers (even just a few) has turned hermaphrodite & that any seeds produced will also be (or have a high probability ov being) hermaphrodite.

can you, or anyone else, give your thoughts on this, especially why there is such confusion?

i wonder where the idea came from that female plants can "turn" hermaphrodite. that certainly seemed to be the majority view on AusStoners, Overgrow etc.

My pen pal, Hans from the Netherlands had been growing a bubblelicius strain a year or so back and was growing em from from female clones (which he got from seeds) with no problems for a few grows.

Then one fateful grow he had been neglecting them abit and during flowering one of them turned into a hermy and he dident notice untill he started finding seeds all over not only the herm but the others aswell,only one of the 4 plants actually had male flowers (turned) which polinated the others. shocked, he started picking the seeds and male flowers off but couldent get em all off.

anyways, out of the seeds that he let go all the way, the majority of them where hermies so he ended up doing what any loving person did,put the strain out of its misery and killed em all off

I cant be certain but i think the reason for the turn might have been because either stress (compared to his other grows ) or some other freak anomaly that happened.

And nice pics there Sphinx, your friend should be proud. And yea, not much more to add to whats been said, but i think Hans always cut his anyware from 50/50 to 75/25 in regards to the hairs.

Edited May 4, 2007 by Jesus On Peyote

[PD.]

All cannabis plants will make male flowers under stress, the easiest & best method to do this is to grow a female plant 10-14 days longer than a usual harvest this is abuilt in safety factor to ensure its genes will b passed on,

Considering it takes at least three weeks to set seed, how is it benificial for a plant to try and set seed so late in the season when there is less chance for survival?

i gathered that the consensus is that a female plant that produces male flowers (even just a few) has turned hermaphrodite & that any seeds produced will also be (or have a high probability ov being) hermaphrodite.

can you, or anyone else, give your thoughts on this, especially why there is such confusion?

I believe for a plant to b truly hemaphrodite it must exhibit both flowers from start to finish & yes these plants have a tendancy to produce hemaphrodite prodginy.

A plant with male and female parts is a hermaphrodite regarless of the amount of time a flower has been on the plant, these plants in turn will produce herm offspring and so on.

It only takes one male flower in a room to produce a few seeds, not heaps but a few. These seeds, once grown will show the same charcteristicsas the parents, ie, mostly female hermaphrodite.

It takes a 100% female and a 100% male to produce seed of both sexes, considering males are the unwanted of the two, the 100% male genes in cannabis seed are slowly becoming less and less

due to the fashion in which the plant is grown and because more and more ppl are growin the "good" seeds they find in their filthy hydro, which are more than likely mostly female hermaphrodite.

and to all you growers out there thinking you are "creating" strains, just remeber, to create a nice stable hybrid you need good males as well as females.

The boys need love too.

[naja naja]

Ths leads me to a question I have which : Is MJ pollen illegal?

[Greeny]

Sorry If im repeating anyones advice but I cbf reading the entire 4 pages of posts.

First Id like to say those plants look real nice. What strain are they?

I've had a fair bit of experience in the weed growing buisness but after my landlord busted one of my crops on an inspection I've had to put it off until I move out again. Gotta hate living with parents! I'll give you a few tips I've learnt from trial and error.

First of flushing: Hydroponically grown plants use alot of chemicals which arent partically good to smoke and also clog up the stems with nute impeeding plant growth. You'll notice if you flush them properly that after drying the plants stems will be hollow. Flushing will not only get rid of all those nasty chemical that you don't want but will also give a surprising boost to plant growth. More bud will appear during flushing than any other stage of growth. Its best to flush in the last 1-2 weeks of growth replace all your resevior with clean water. If your using tap water make sure its filtered which you should be using the entire grow (they hate chlorine). Just feed them water only and keep an eye on the plants crystals surrounding the buds (Trichomes I think thats how its spelt anyway). When you start noticing them beginning to turn from white to yellow/browny colour that is the best time to rip. Its alot easier to manicure before drying once they've dried out the leaves crumble and you end up leaving excessive amounts of stem.

Second Drying and curing: I found its best to dry in a cool well ventalated area with as minimal light as possible on mesh. In aus you can get specially desighned rask that are all mesh allowing optimum airflow alternativly you can grab a flyscreen and lye it down with each end on a chair so that it is suspended. Don't make piles of bud as the buds at the middle may get mould. After about 2 weeks they should be dry and crispy. Now time to cure (optional) get some airtught jars and put your buds inside them filling them about 1/4 to 2/3 full depending on how much bud and jars you have. Leave them in the jars out of light for 8-12 weeks opening the jars and juggling the buds around once a week. Make sure the jars are airtight tho get the ones with the orange seals. The last part about the jars doesn't have to be done but it does add a little THC content and makes your buds last longer.

Thirdly HASH: Your offcuts can be make into hash just pick out the leaves that have trichomes on them and the little buts of but that have come apart from the rest and put them into a bowl. Wait until they have dried using the same drying method as the buds. Then once dried put them in the freezer overnight in a bowl this will make the trichomes brittle. Then get a 47T silkscreen mesh and lightly work your "scuff" as it is called over the mesh. Be as gentle as possible the more time and care you take the better quality the hash will be. I find using a mirror under the mesh to catch what falls thru is best. You should notice a pile of whiteish yellow powder forming under the screen on you mirror this is called "polm" Gather this up it should be 10-15% of the weight of the scuff you started with depending on the scuff quality and put it into a celophane packet like the plastic wrapper around a ciggi packet. Pack it tightly into it then fold up the celo and seal it with celo tape. Wrap this package thickly in newsprint paper and drench the paper. Put this package into the oven at 180 degrees C for 5-10 minutes then withdraw the package and pit it on a hard surface like granite or a tile and with a rolling pin roll and roll and roll and roll and roll and roll and roll and roll and roll and roll making sure to keep even pressure along the package use as much force as possible. You can rewet the package and repeat the process if you wish and it does help. Once your finished rolling place the package in the fridge for a couple of hours then unwrap you lovely hash.

Hope I was some help and not too late. Happy smoking..... Sigh wish I could still hit the Damn Psychosis

Greeny out

[shruman]

"Considering it takes at least three weeks to set seed, how is it benificial for a plant to try and set seed so late in the season when there is less chance for survival?"

I think I answered this Q already read the underline section

"All cannabis plants will make male flowers under stress, the easiest & best method to do this is to grow a female plant 10-14 days longer than a usual harvest this is abuilt in safety factor to ensure its genes will b passed on, after this time u should see a few male bananas sometimes with a seed right by these bananas "

Sometimes u will get 2 or 3 seeds per banana probly more the longer u let her go, & I guess passing its genes to just a few seeds is better than dying & not passing on any genes.

"It only takes one male flower in a room to produce a few seeds, not heaps but a few. These seeds, once grown will show the same charcteristicsas the parents, ie, mostly female hermaphrodite."

Foaf has done this & the seeds produced female plants with no hemaphrodite tendancies unless they were stressed.

"and to all you growers out there thinking you are "creating" strains, just remeber, to create a nice stable hybrid you need good males as well as females.

The boys need love too. "

Too true u also need a lot of time, patience, & to make a realy good strain u need a lot of plants to pick the best phenotypes or a shitload of luck.

[PD.]

shruman,

What i meant was man, a plant isnt going to "turn" herm, the genes are already in the plant from the word go, so the plant is always a hermaphrodite.

Foaf has done this & the seeds produced female plants with no hemaphrodite tendancies unless they were stressed.

Dont believe that.

Was every bud on every branch of every plant plant checked for male flowers??? Like i said, hermaphrodites can be 99% female and 1% male, that could be ONE male flower on a whole plant. It is hard to look past all those beautiful trichomes though to see the lil fuckers.

Just because the parts are small and hard to find doesnt make them any less. They are still there and that makes em hermaphrodite.

Im sure if you took a lady home and found she had a spare teste hangin off her you would assume she was a hermaphrodite of some sort or would she have turned that way due to the stress of being in a compromising situation with a beast like you shruman:P (kiddin man)

If you ever come across a 100% male grown from seed found in sum commercial hydro let me know. I dont know anyone that has ever grown a 100% male from hydro seed, plenty of hermaphrodites of all percentages but no 100%ers, have a guess why.

Find that lady and clone clone clone.

Edited May 6, 2007 by Passive Daemon