Lucas Formula. should i be adding a "bud booster" ? is lucas worth it?

[budtoker0987]

Ya man definitely. I could even go as far as doing half like a light pruning and the other half as much as you think i should. Im totally down for that. This next one is already my EXPERIMENT run anyways lol. Scrog, Top, Mainline, LST all in one

And YES. I have actually topped and pruned pretty much the whole plant on all of them. They were getting way too tall. and there were tons of side branching that was just shooting out sideways to try and find a way up to light. CUT. Ya every plant in there besides the LST in the middle, thats the small one in there, has been topped recently.

So, I decided there were enuf cloudy that I was gonna cut the lights at 530pm CST on Friday. So it's been dark since then. I'm CUTTING tomorrow I have a good feeling that I'll see many more cloudy if not all. REALLY HOPING for all. I just cant push these veg plants any further. or they just gonna be ridiculous and a pain in my ass.

SO!!! Im SO EXCITED LOL! So the plan is to chop and trim, hang some branching on lines, and i think the smaller stuff ill toss in the hanging net. You know one of those like 8 layer drying net things?

What I did was poly'd off a section of space in the basement. I'ts loosly sealed so there will be small air flow. So now, with a humidifier i can keep the humidity up and the temp is staying between 62-64 degrees. should that be good? I think i shouldnt have too much of a problem holding 50% RH either. BUT, what i wanted to ask is, if Im drying like this, what are like the RED ALERT zones? So my temp should be 62F, when should the alarm bells go off to raise or lower the temp if it starts to stray? Same for RH. You said I should hold 50% right?

Once all chopped, it'll hang in there for 2 weeks. Correct? Are there times where it takes less or more time if those temps and RH hold? Or is there something physical i should keep an eye out for like when the stems snap or something like that?

And I remember you saying you dont necessarily need curing after a dry like this if you do it right, BUT that it would still be beneficial right? I think I'll still cure when ready. Just to make sure i have the right info, should i just use jars for curing? nothing else? and fill them only like 1/2 - 3/4 full, crack them daily a few times a day at first and slowly start cracking them less and less. OH, should my jars or whatever it is i cure in be in a specific temp and RH as well? I would assume they would.. ?


I think these pics of trichs were from the day after the pics from up there, I'll take a bunch of pics tomorrow during my process. FUCKIN cant wait! lol

 

[BCOGYODA]

Right on BT!! Yes a lot more cloudy trichs should show up by the time you chop.

So the thing you have to worry about absolutely the most is being able to get the humidity down in a smaller space right after chopping because of the high amount of moisture in the flowers.
But if you have a very low ambient humidity in there already then you shouldn't have to worry about that. But the keys to a good dry/cure together is that you don't go under 50% humidity or over 64F temp.
When you go under 50% humidity you will dry too quickly and it will affect your flowers smell and cure. When your humidity is too high you risk getting mold forming as you dry especially for a longer 2 week drying cure.
When you go over 64F temp you will also negatively affect the dank smell that your flowers have and the buds will dry too quickly on the outside and they will still have moisture on the inside; making an uneven dry where you will have to "sweat" the inside moisture out to fix the problem. That is what you want to stay away from happening. Drying too cold isn't a problem if you have good control of your humidity. I have dried as cold as 58-60F before with no issues cause the room was very controlled.

If you want perfectly dried and cured dank smelling buds after harvest it is really best to have a room designed just for drying so you can control the temp and humidity perfectly with a dehumidifier and air conditioner. If you can't have that then you really have to check the rooms conditions very often to make sure your dry/cure doesn't go wrong.

The smaller buds will finish drying earlier than the larger top cola flowers. The big flowers usually will take 2-3 days longer to finish drying properly than the smaller buds.
Hang drying is best if you can leave the flowers on branches. If no it's not that much difference to cut the flowers off the branches and dry them on racks.

Yes, towards the end of the dry/cure you should be able to snap the stems on the buds. But when you feel you are very close to them being done (like a few smaller buds have the stems snapping) you can then bag or jar the buds to finalize the dry/cure process. Over the last couple days they will cure even more if bagged/jarred up and the stems will then snap after that. Yes, you can open the bags/jars once a day to let the remaining moisture out. But honestly you can do the whole dry/cure process just on the racks if you do it properly with a slow, cold dry/cure process.

So you will be giving them around a total of a day and a half of darkness before you chop right? If so take some pics of the trichs right before you chop from the same areas of the plants you took them before to compare them.
You are going to have some awesome bud there man. Please keep a careful eye on that drying room ok!! Make sure you put a humidity and temp gauge in there. Even two humidity stats is even better in case one is way off.
The ones that tell you the max and min that the humidity and temp was during the day and night are the best. We call them "tattle tales" cause they tell you what's been going on in the room while you've been gone.

 

[budtoker0987]

Well right now in my area, its very cold and very dry. in pretty much any basement around here the humidity is hovering at like 25-28% so ill actually be needing a HUMIDIFIER depending on how much the plants themselves put off. I DO also HAVE a portable AC and a DEHUMIDIFIER as well IF I NEED them. And YES this room i was saying I Poly'd off (poly beeing large sheets of plastic covering) is its own room SPECIFICALLY for drying buds. And i have MULTIPLE hygrometers going to be in there. So OK cool. I know I have to stay UNDER 64 degrees. And where is my cushion for RH? I know to keep at 50% but taking into account that naturally that space would be around 25-30% RH already is it "MORE OK" to have it be a little higher than 50 or a little lower? I imagine I'll be able to keep it PRETTY CLOSE. But its going to sway, theres just no way around that. It's just a plastic'd off room lol.

Oh just going back up to your comment you say if you go under 50 its bad bad. So i assume a little above woudl be preferable?

And to your darkness question. pretty much yes, they will be getting ALMOST 48 hours. I will probably BUST thier room open anywhere from 6-3 hours before their 48 hour time is up. ANd HELL yes ill take many pics of trichs, plants (excited to actually take pics of them in normal light. Havent been able to this whole time especially once i realize the roots were growing all thru the tubing. So icouldnt take them out of there or rotate them), the mess, the cleaned up mess, everaythang lol. It'll probly take more than tomorrow tho. lol.. Last time i harvested. me and my bud worked 8 hours straight no breaks thru the night on a fuckin work night on 2 and a half plants! lol... The two full size ones were like the size of the ones I have now. And there was one smaller little one. Fucker still produced just under a QP tho! i was impressed lol. So i can only imagine how long this shits gonna take lol.

How long does it take you guys? Any tips on trimming? lol I'm the kind of dude that takes the extra time to get as much of the leaves out of there as i can. until it gets to the 8th hour with no breaks at 5am and im supposed to get up for work at 630am.. THEN IS START BUZZIN up pretty damn quick lol

 

[BCOGYODA]

Hey BT sorry it took me a couple days to reply man busy few days! Yes you want to be at 50% humidity and lower than that is bad and higher than that is bad too cause you can get mold to form if the buds are too wet for too long a period of time. So when you start getting above 50% humidity you aren't really removing any moisture from the buds at all.

I'm glad you are going to take some trich pics under normal light. I'm very curious to see the difference.

Shit ya that sucks having to trim on a work night. My wife and I spent many a nights doing that back in the day. It's tough but worth the work when its done!

Hand trimming gives you the best quality end product no doubts about that. Unfortunately with large rooms and lots of plants we can't hand trim everything so we use spinner bowls for our lower smaller buds and hand trim the top larger buds only. I have a crew of workers so we can blast thought the work pretty quick.

Let us know how you made out! Pics of the chop down and on the racks?

So I took my good camera to the place where we just pruned the younger plants (they are in week 2 of flower) but when I got home to transfer them onto the computer I noticed the cf card was in the reader and not in the camera so that was a waste of time.

So I took some pics with my i phone of the other place that's in full flower; a week from chop. You can see in these pics how pruned my plants are with barely any leaves on them. They just have the small leaves on them that are more attached deeper in the flowers that aren't easy to pluck out.
But as you can see my plants are super tight together in very tight sogs and only vegged 2 weeks so each plant is small with a lot of bud on it in relation to the size of plants they are.
It's a grow style which maximizes yield per watt and yield per sq/ft. Yields of 2-3 lbs per light are the average with this type of growing.
But for staying legal there are stacked licences which allow for higher plant numbers..

Very different style than growing typical "medical trees". Each way has it's advantages. Large trees with multiple rooms revolving the plants in different growth stages is also a good way to maximize yield per year growth time.

​

Let us know how things went man!!!

 

[budtoker0987]

Ok so started the chop on sunday. then worked on more last night. and will finish tonight. man dude, by myself it takes me almost 5 6 hours do do one of my plants... by myself. with my buddy, about 2.5 -3hours. granted i take my time making shit perfect lol. temps holding at 59-63F and about 45-53% is that OK?

 

[budtoker0987]

It is MAINLY hovering at 50-51% tho. It seems i can try to keep it pretty steay within like 3% range. so would 47-50% be best you think? I we got one plant left to trim tonight. Clean the bud room real good. Check out all my lines and make sure they clean. Then im transplanting veg to flower ASAP. Give them 24 hours of darkness then start thier flower time. IS that something you do as well? 24 hour darkness between veg and flower. ALSO, do yo ulike to flush between V + F? or might i say, do you hydro buddies like to? This last run i only did it at the end.

Nice pics too. Thos things look beautiful! they get damn tall for only two weeks of veg!!

 

[BCOGYODA]

Ya 45-51 is good but 45 is a bit low. But way better than getting in the low 40's that would be much too fast of a dry. As the buds dry more the humidity will want to go lower quickly. So keep an eye on it.

Flushing between veg and flower is not necessary at all. They can finish off their veg nutes while "transitioning" to flower. It is better for the plant too converting it's energy into creating growth shoots with veg food then flower food when they have "switched" over to use their energy into filling out those flowers.

I don't do 24 hrs of darkness when flipping cause I use an additive to help quicken flower on set so the 24 hr darkness is un necessary for me and I found no difference when doin that. But if you aren't using a flower onset additive then it may be beneficial for you to do.

Fuck my shades look dusty in those pics!! Gotta clean them up after this round

Yes the OG likes to stretch up cause of the Sativa in it. My friend grew it outdoor in a greenhouse last year and they got to 14 ft tall!! We can't go more than 2 week veg indoors with it with 8 ft ceilings. With 10 ft ceilings I can go 3 week veg and have monsters lol.

 

[budtoker0987]

Damn man those things look fuckin great!! are those all 1000w's?

Well, veg has actually been getting an EXTENDED period of the same res for about a week more than i was normally doing. So when I switch them over, I was PLANNING on a new res. Is that still ok? I was literally going to just give them the same feeding they last got in veg cuz they look great in veg right now. After those two weeks (knowing now that these are going at least 10 weeks) i was planning to start introducing the sweet and liquidkoolbloom. Sound about right? or no?

Right now, in the drying room i have 5 lines hung. will be 6 or 7 when done. But i didnt want too much of a verticle difference in where they hung due to differnces in temp and RH. They are basically hanging at 4' from the ground and 6' from the ground. Those temps and RH for the most part stay exactly the same. Sometimes i may see ONE number difference in RH. Trying to keep as close eye as i can.

Oh ya, i was noticing too, that right off the bat, while trimming and going into the dry room where buds are hanging, i dont really smell like dank bud smell. More like plant smell but you can smell the it IS bud plant smell. Does that make sense? When you trim and hang, do the buds smell basically the way they are going to smell when dried almost right awaY? Like does the room STINK like skunkyness? or does that come with slow dry and curing? There were times during thier flower that they jsut smelled like a fuckin fruit basket. Now, when trimming and smelling them, they dont seem to have TOO MUCH of that anymore.. Once cool thing tho, a bunch of the tippy tops have like purpleish color probly dissapear when dried but i looks cool My bottom buds deffinetly are less mature than the tops. It seems the further down the stalk, the more "planty" they smell. I dunno. I HOPE im being too critical about it.

Is there an additive i should maybe use for my hydro system? To onset flower..?

 

[BCOGYODA]

Thanks man yes all 1000 watters.
Ya new res when you switch them over would be fine.
If you are going to use an additive to quicken flower on set you should use that for the first two weeks of flower then start using your regular booster after that. Remember the formula you did the last time and lower the booster dosage a bit to try to stay away from that bit of burn you saw last time.
Add the Sweet when the flowers are starting to form actual round shapes to them when they are properly formed. Not when they are crowning and just starting to form.

Ya you have the right idea keeping the lines for drying at the same height for an even dry of all the flowers.
Sounds like your temp and humidity levels are great right now. Yes keep a close eye on it for sure man. When drying things can change very quickly in a non sealed room without an a/c.

The plant smell you may notice can be from the branch part of the plant that is now cut off the plant and technically dieing. This is normal and the flowers will still keep their flower smell. A good way to tell is to squeeze a flower on a branch and smell your fingers. You should smell the fruity or skunky smell.
I don't hang dry because I don't have the room for it. We take the flowers off the plants right away, trim them, then I put them on drying racks in a sealed controlled room. The smell in the drying room is overpowering flower smell.

There are basically two types of strong smells that come from different mj strains; fruity, or skunky. Some people like fruity strains and some like skunky. I like deep dank skunk myself but I've smelled some pretty killer fruity strains too. It's something you can experiment with different strains over time and reading reviews about them to see what you like more.

Ya the purple colors are cool and they can come with the strain or you can bring them out in most strains by cold stress or other stresses. When you lowered the temp by putting them in complete darkness that would have brought those colors out. The colder you go the more purps you can bring out in the flowers.
The reason the lower ones don't purp up as much is because they aren't as ripe as the upper ones and they don't get as much cool air as the tops that are more in the open cool air up above.

I use Bud Blood for my flower onset booster. It's a powder though so read up on it to see if it's ok for hydro. Bud Ignitor is supposed to be a similar product and it's liquid but I've heard growers say it's not as powerful and doesn't work as good as Bud Blood. You can run Bud Blood for the first 2-3 weeks of flower.

Here's some pics of how I dry:

​

 

[BCOGYODA]

Hey BT I hope you save and dry your trim too man. I can help you use your trim to make some extracts with for some added medicine! Check out the concentrate section of Roll It Up some time to see what I mean. Lots of great info over there for extracts!!

 

[budtoker0987]

lol!!! i love the screen doors used for drying dude lol classic! I might have to adopt that. lol. I am acutally hanging as you know. Before I jsut used the hanging net with like 8 levels on it. I cant remember but I THOUGHT you may have told me to hang over drying in nets. I may be wrong..?? Nets are obviously a little easier to fit more in one area.. AND it makes it nicer to trim if I jsut cut buds off and dont have be all nice with the stems and shit

And YES YES YES I DO SAVE THE TRIM!! I LOOOOOOOOVE making butter!! Cookies are so far my favorite, but I havent made much else. Made some carmels with my last butter. but they turned out like hard candy's. Not what i wanted. And they didnt fuck you up like the cookies. I could literally eat a cookie and decide to pass out in an hour or chill just nice a baked. OR i eat two cookies and im sleepin hard in couple hours! love it lol.

I was thinking with these ill have a shit load more trim. I'm gonna make some hash oil. butane way. my buddy, all he does is smoke that shit now. hes a pro at making it lol.

But HEY MAN< im totally sitting here with ears open. Let me know how YOU ROLL

SOO here's some pics from Sunday to tonight. couldnt get more pics like i was posting of the trichs. pc got effed up over there.

 

[BCOGYODA]

Awesome man!! YES hanging is the best for an excellent even dry cure! I have to do the screens cause of room but if I could I would hang dry.

Right on BT you went the extra mile to make a good drying area. Some guys don't give a shit and just throw their weed in any old room with no thermostats or humidistats then they wonder why their weed turns out crappy. When you take care of weed properly it takes care of you!

Ya I've been making BHO and recently started running dry ice keif and dry sift keif. I've made edibles for a long time and they help me sleep too when I need to crash good and hard and are great for back relaxers.

The BHO is honestly too powerful for me but I make it for other people. I make shatter and honeycomb. I'm going to start running some ISO extracts too soon.

Let me know if you want help with any of that. If you like powerful meds I don't think there is anything more powerful.

 

[budtoker0987]

Ya BHO, that's what my buddy called it ya he's got a sweet little bong and rips you up! lol. I also got one of these with the concentrate attachments, pretty sweet to take to work and go out and have a puff Just looks like an Ecig, only problem is I DONT NORAMALLY SMOKE lol so i still kinda gotta hide out lol http://www.ebay.com/itm/Atmos-Raw-Vaporizer-GREEN-BRAND-NEW-KIT-Newest-Version-ATMOS-RX-/271348990454?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f2da901f6

I think i got the BHO part down with my buddy being a super nerd about that shit lol But as far as edibles, how do you go about it? make like bud cooking oil? or butter? and whats your method? So far what i have done for making butter is take 100g dried trim per 1lb of butter (4 sticks) aslo add enuf water in a big pot, enuf water so its like a thick liquidy soup, put butter in, let melt, simmer for i forget how long, maybe like a few hours or something. Strain it, put in fridge overnight or for a day, bust a little hold in the hardend butter cap, let water drain out, then im left with my green butter.

I feel like there should be a better way. Not that my way isnt easy. I just sometimes feel like maybe the butter is a little gritty. Not a lot, but a little.

I am interested in the Dry Ice Keif and the Dry Sift Keif tho Do you suggest youtube on those or might you have some tricks for me!!?? lol

 

[cyanarnofsky]

great thread, read this bad boy start to finish. Fantastic info guys!

 

[BCOGYODA]

great thread, read this bad boy start to finish. Fantastic info guys!

Glad you found it helpful cyanarnofsky. Post any questions if you have any

BT that is pretty much the way we make the butter too. If it is a bit gritty you can try using more cheese cloth when straining it. But yes ours is a tiny bit gritty too but very little.
Yes youtube is great for making keif vids but recently I have tried the dried ice like I was saying but I think I'm going to stay away from that process for now because I think it freezes the trim too much and the trichomes and trich stocks end up shattering into tiny glass like shards.
I just bought a dry sift keif extractor machine to help me process larger amounts of trim at a time.
Here's a link to the machine I got and the dry ice keif I made: https://www.rollitup.org/concentrates-extracts/760099-dry-ice-bubble-frozen-undried.html
Here's a link to a great BHO thread: https://www.rollitup.org/concentrates-extracts/624465-bho-vacuum-oil-wax-tutorial.html

 

[budtoker0987]

Ok, so its been 1 week of drying. Some of them feel PRETTY dry already though. Like especially the couple we got done that first night. The last one that got cut still seemed a little moist like it had some wetness to it.

I dont know if its the strain, or something im doing, but honestly, i think SINCE they have been hanging they have just smelled planty like. It jsut DOESNT smell like i got a room full of BUDS hanging in the basement lol... i dunno. I got some purple paralysis seeds i wanna pop sometime but i feel like these last two runs of the Fruity Chronic Juice have NOT turned out how i THINK they should. There's no way the way I have been doing them or the END product i should say, has really NO like awesome bud smell. I dunno, i'll be seeing them tonight again.

I tghink I may already have to jar some tho. the RH has fluctuated from 46-53% so some shit is drying more than others..

 

[cyanarnofsky]

I feel like I am running rather low, for my size plant but the tips seem to be little crispy. I was following lucas formula and feel like the N is lacking a little bit in my plant. I have started adding in 1 part Grow again. Following his conversion I got for a 4gallons of water 22.4 Micro / 44.8 Bloom. 5.6ml Micro/ 11.2 Bloom which gives me a PPM high 700's (760-780). You can see in the image the lack of green in the leaf, which is rather wide spread, can see the crispy tips tho as well.

 

[budtoker0987]

I've steered away from lucas for that reason actually. I know this thread has a lot of details so ill make it short lol. Basically Im running a 1/1/1 ratio now, per suggestion by BCOGYODA. So basically figure out what PPM you want and jsut start light and add 1/1/1 tilyou hit your mark. No cal mag needed unless you see the plants are needing more. I do also add silica blast, as per bottle instructions. Run that thru veg and into flower. Once preflowers start showing, start adding in your bud booster, koolbloom is what i have. and also start adding your sweet. Man, i have to look bback again, but i think once your at about halfway thru flower you should be at whatever full strength is of your booster plus sweet. and in the last week before your going to flush, adjust to a 1/2/3 ratio. BC can confirm this for me if he sees it. hope that helps man!

 

[BCOGYODA]

Hey BT I think when you remove the buds from the branches and bag/jar them up you will smell a different smell. When they hang dry on the branches you get a combo smell in the room of branch plant smell and flower smell.

If you are in the low 60's temp and 46-53 humidity you shouldn't have any dry buds yet after only a week. Are they snapping when you fold them or just bending? Are they very small buds that feel dry?
They can feel a dryish on the outside but still have a lot of moisture inside them still.

Yes BT you described that right to Cyan. Once you do that formula you can go further to see what your strain you are growing can take for strength of nutes by experimenting more very gradually.
You can also go a bit longer than just one week at the end with the 1/2/3 ratio if you have a longer flowering strain. With 10 week and 11 week flowering strains you can do 2 weeks of the 1/2/3 ratio at the end of flowering before the flushing..

By tweeking what your strain responds to best without burning them and locking out nutes you can maximize your plants yield potential.

 

[cyanarnofsky]

so you guys believe in the boosters? Tend to see people down talking bloom additives.