Hello Everyone,
I'm a little late bringing the harvest post due to life being life and things getting in the way, but better late than never.
At least I got this harvest done on time... Day seventy of the flowering cycle. Here she is:
The lights were off when I started the harvest, because I am a night time harvester.
I've always maintained this belief that cannabis is best harvested under the moonlight. Of course I don't know how true this is, and of course there is no moonlight overhead in a grow tent, but the idea is that the cannabis is going to give some better effects if harvested at night time. I'm not sure if every cannabis grower believes this or not, and for me it's not a big deal one way or another when I harvest, but I just like night time harvests.
I feel like the camera flash in the dark gives a special photographic visual aesthetic to ripe buds. It really exemplifies the plump density and overall shape of the nugs.
At a certain point during the harvest I was able to reach the outlet where the lights are unplugged in the back of the tent, and decided it would make my life a little easier to utilize them. I love the dark cutting, but this was more akin to surgical extraction because of the double layer netting, and seeing better really helps in this regard.
In the next photograph we can see the sheer massiveness of these branch sections. This branch section alone is probably 1-2 ounces of bud after drying, there was a lot of sections harboring fat heavy well developed buds like this.
These two photographs above are shots of the same bud, one with flash and one without.
It was one of the nicest buds I spotted for a capture like this, and the point is to show off how caked with trichomes the bud is, and this is critical for a strong potent end product.
In the end I filled more than an entire clothing drying rack full of dense plump Crack Mack buds.
There was no point in using my little net drying bag, it would have hardly fit even these branches in the back of the tent.
For drying I'm keeping these buds in the tent with indirect airflow running at all times and the lights completely unplugged and not turning on.
Temps get pretty low in the grow room without equipment running with how cold it is outside, and that is actually perfect for the drying. With chilly temps and indirect flow I'm getting a nice slow dry that will help me preserve terpenes and produce a great tasting end product that smokes well and packs a psychoactive punch.
I was almost a week late with getting this post out, and the last photograph was taken right before posting this. We can see the bud has already dried a bit and has shrunk down in size.
It's not completely dry. Some of the upper smaller buds are crispy and seemingly dry to the touch, but the massive lower buds still maintain a sticky spongey feel, which means they still have plenty of time left to dry before trim work begins.
It might be a couple weeks before I have new cannabis content, because I need to clean the tents and prepare for the next grow. It will take some time.
Thank you for all the amazing support and for helping me learn how to cultivate cannabis more efficiently. I'm always learning new things from the plethora of amazing gardeners of every sort here on Hive. We have an amazing diverse ecosystem of awesome communities and there's really no other place like this on the internet.
Now it's time for me to get back to work preparing for the next grow, I'll be back soon with more..
Thank you all for following along with my cannabis journey!
