Yeah the only thing that worries me with SoG setup is the number of plants. I might still do it when I go back to the table. Unfortunately this was a freebie seed so this is the only one. I liked it though and would be interested in having some seeds of it on hand.
She just started browning up and still has some white calyxes. Never knew that was a sign of ceased bud production, but now I do. I wasn't sure what I was doing with that pruning, I topped it incorrectly so instead of forming 2 new tops the next node down just grew up and took its place to form a Y shaped stem. Then throughout the grow I was pruning the fan leaves that were covering top bud sites that weren't as high.
Do you harvest when buds reach their limit? Or is there a benefit to keeping them a bit longer? I hadn't planned on harvesting this until another 2 weeks, should I be planning sooner? Trichomes are still clear/cloudy but fully formed head, probably 50/50 ratio. And I wanted to *gasp* flush them for a week.
Of course, plant count with SoG is a drawback, but with sufficient security culture & behaviours, you can conceivably grow indefinitely without LEO contact. I've been growing for more than 25 years without a single cannabis-related legal problem.
Cannabis plants do flower for a definite, limited period. This character is strain dependent but is usually 8-9 weeks. When 80% of the calyxes have darkened (some brown, some orange), it's time to harvest. Once the calyxes are all darkened, very little new bud material will be produced. At this point, d9-THC in trichomes tends to begin breaking down into cannabidiol (CBD) & other less psychoactive cannabinoids.
If you prune off growing tips, growth will continue from the nodes just below. Pruning off growing tips is how topiary is accomplished in other types of plants. In cannabis, this will make the plant bushier, with more bud sites, but the flowers produced will be smaller than the buds produced from a natural terminal node.
Don't remove healthy fan leaves. They are the solar panels which generate sugars which are converted into cellulose matter that build more plant material, be that more root, leaf or bud.
Plants store about 2 weeks worth of nutrients. You can stop feeding in wk 6 and usually not see any signs of nutrient deficiency til the end of week 8. The only thing that removes stored nutrients from the plant is photosynthesis. This takes time and exposure to light. Despite advertised claims, there is no product which will accelerate this process. You can 'flush' plants if you want but it is unlikely to make any difference to the smoking characters of the buds. You can try it if you like, but the only result I've ever seen from withdrawing nutrients is accelerated maturation (which stops formation of bud matter prematurely).
There's a lot of urban myth around regarding 'flushing,' 'curing,' etc. Most of these myths date back to the late 1960s to early 1970s. At the time (and through the early 1980s), imported cannabis supplied for smoking was generally the whole dried plant, leaves & all- and it was usually wickedly harsh to smoke. Homegrowers tended to treat cannabis as though it was tobacco, employing curing methods used to make tobacco leaf more pleasant to smoke, but mimicked the whole-plant style of the imported product. It wasn't until cannabis cultivation came indoors broadly with the 1986 advent of the SON-T HPS light (which supplies some blue spectrum light) that cannabis bud, without leaf, became the predominant style of supply.
Cannabis buds are much more pleasant to smoke than leaf because there's a very high ratio of resin to cellulose matter in them, the opposite of leaf. Buds, particularly from pedigreed DNA, don't require any any special treatment to make them smooth to smoke, be that 'flushing' or 'curing,' but old habits die slowly. To this very day you will find people insisting upon treating cannabis bud as though it were tobacco leaf. 'Flushing' and 'curing' of buds is quite unnecessary, is generally a waste of time and done badly can (and does) invite mould, which spoils the lot.
Choose wisely, grasshopper!
Two things that really sucks about Arizona though is the super hot summers and the price gouging my electric company does. As such my question is, what is your opinion on the 12/1 light cycle for vegetative growth? Does it over stress the plant? If you have tried this method, did you notice a larger node spacing? Seems to me the cost saving in not running my ac or lights for a few hours might be worth trying this method even if i have to use some more light for supplemental purposes to stop node stretching. Let me know what you think. Also to anyone else that reads this please try to save the "this method is crazy" comments etc, I have seen this method discussed in year one horticulture books for 10+ years and its been employed by the commercial flower company's for years. So please save your breath and time on trying to bash this grow technique. However if you have real life experience and know about real life results in regards to power savings, plant stress or node length numbers then please feel free to reply. Thank you, NoOne
Looks like TF said to hell with using latex gloves, I'll just use these same ones whenever I trim! lol
