High Ends and New Beginnings

Enjoying the Harvest

[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]I[/dropcap]t’s been more than seven weeks since the winter/spring crop of “Ed Rosenthal Super Bud” has been harvested. It was left to dry in an unheated room with ambient temperatures in the low 60s. After it dried, the plants remained in the room under the same conditions. During this time, the smaller plants disappeared under suspicious conditions, leaving in their place only ashes and temporary conditions of stoned joy. The result: Only the four “larger” plants now remain. These plants will be manicured and destroyed using controlled burns.

Expert manicurist, Darcy, soon completed the task. Testing followed. The testers’ evaluations:

Marisa: “A deliciously pungent nose: Pine, citrus and melon; sweet and spicy. It has a weird upper high, uplifting, cerebral, in-the-clouds feeling.”

Darcy: “Sweet and tangy. One of the totally unique varieties. Now when I smell it, I know what it is, because it’s unlike anything else. Newer strains have lost something that’s in this. It’s more funky, has more terpenes. It’s more crystally and more potent. It tastes like an individual strain. It’s good.”

Starting the New Garden

Today we’re germinating an unnamed cross of feminized seed, London Pound Cake x Watermelon, by Loud Seeds. I’ll be testing an oxygenated water system that I built and will describe in more detail next month.

For now, we are covering germination. One-hundred-and-thirty seeds were soaked for 12 hours in a solution of two ounces of tap water and one tablespoon of three percent hydrogen peroxide for sterilization purposes. The solution was switched to a very diluted compost tea for another 12 hours before being inserted into a small piece of rockwool so it would stay put, rather than fall through the large spaces between the pebbles. The seed holding rockwool was pushed into a two-inch cup a filled with pea-sized hydro-clay pellets.

These pellets hold a small amount of water on their surface, but they also have colloidal action, meaning that they wick up water, much like a tissue. As they lose water to roots or evaporation, they can pull it up from a pool below and transfer it between pellets. I’ve placed the cups in a two-foot x four-foot tray that was filled one-inch deep with a three-part germination solution, as recommended on the fertilizer label.

A four-foot, four-tube HO (high output) T5 fluorescent reflector hangs over the table and provides bright, but not intense light.

I’ve placed a cover consisting of plastic wrap over the top of the tray to keep the germination area moist. It will be removed after as soon as the seedlings appear.

In a few weeks the plants will be ready for more intense light and a stronger fertilizer mix.

The four plants were part of a larger group that were just past clone stage when they were replanted and placed in a natural light greenhouse in February. Since the dark period was more than 12 hours they were triggered to flower immediately and were ripe about eight weeks later. They didn’t have a chance to grow branches before budding.

The dried buds being manicured.

The pile of dried buds. A nice little treat that took virtually no effort.

Jarred buds with a moisture pack to keep them fresh.

The seeds were placed in pieces of rockwool.

The rockwool was positioned between pebbles in the cup.

The cups were placed in the tray and an inch of nutrient/water solution was added