Gardening: Cannabis Flowering Stage Week # 9

                      

Welcome to my cannabis micro-garden! I am currently in Week # 9 of the flowering stage, which means that the plants are still receiving 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness. These are my last 2 plants standing from the original 4 that were planted in soil, at the beginning of May.

More Specifics About The Grow 

All the seeds were sprouted and planted at the same time, but if you recall, I did have a male plant which I banished to the nether regions of "outside" as soon as I could visually verify what "it" looked like. It turns out that a male cannabis plant, produces round balls in the apexes of its stalks while a female plant produces hair-like structures. At any rate, the male was successful in pollinating the 3 remaining females and the females have all produced seeds as a result. 

General Growing Information According To Me (Please File Under: Today I Learned)

For those of you who might not know, a cannabis plant can either be a male, a female or a healthy mix of both. When it's both, the plant is referred to as a hermaphrodite.

Skilled growers typically only work with female plants because they produce the most medicine in their trichomes and they don't produce seeds, (unless they are fertilized by pollen from a mature male plant, which culminates in seed production). Separating seeds from plant material is a very labour intensive task and adds an additional processing step to an already very lengthy process. Many consider a crop that has been pollinated to be a complete waste and it's usually destroyed. I think this is largely due to the fact that the finished, dried product can't easily be sold to a consumer without being heavily discounted. The consumer wants a nice clean bud, not a bud that's been broken to remove the seeds. or, buds that they (themselves) have to take the time to de-seed. 

To the naked eye, the medicine containing trichomes look like fine filaments or hairs. They cover the flowers and the leaves directly surrounding the flowers. (When people refer to using sugar leaves or trim, these specific leaves are what they are talking about. The leaves on the rest of the plant don't usually contain trichomes. ) When we examine what these trichomes look like under magnification, they resemble very tiny translucent mushrooms that have a definite stalk and a rounded cap. As the trichomes continue to develop (over time) they transform in colour and turn white and more densely milky in their appearance and they start to resemble a trumpet in shape. They can also turn an amber colour. The resin found in and on the trichomes is exceptionally sticky and crystal-like in appearance. Under good lighting a well grown, mature female plant will appear to sparkle.

Growers get very excited when they see a strain of cannabis that is just dripping with trichomes because it is a marker of a successful grow and is a good indicator that the finished plant material will be medicinally beneficial to the people who will ultimately be consuming it.  The special molecules of medicinal compounds found within the trichomes, are called cannabinoids. The cannabinoids (along with the terpenes and favinoids in the plant) give the plant, the majority of it's medicinal value.

What Happened Next (???)

A curious thing happened at the beginning of week #8, I noticed that one plant seemed to be naturally dying. Her leaves all wilted and I took that as a cue that I needed to take more intense action. I made the executive decision to start flushing her with 10 litres of water daily. The flushing lasted for 8 days. My goal was 14, but I really thought that I was going to lose her altogether. On day 9, I harvested. I cut a bud off its stock and trimmed it right away, so that I could show you what it looked like. I took this on a macro setting, without additional magnification. This bud is now hanging upside down with the remaining stocks that I harvested from the dying plant.

     

The plant that I harvested produced 13 stalks that each contained multiple small buds. These stalks have been trimmed and I saved the sugar leaves that were growing around and very close to the buds. Then I hung the stalks up to dry and I gently dried the sugar leaves on a very low heat (95 degrees F) in my food dehydrator for 18 hours.

    

The humidity is 53% and the temperature is 26 degrees C.

The Curing Of The Sugar Leaves

I have placed this dried trim or sugar leaves into a sealed mason jar  along with some desiccant. I am opening the jar (a few times a day) to let any gas or moisture escape (as part of my curing efforts) and I'd planned to continue to do this procedure for the next 2 weeks.

        

The Plan For The Remaining two Queens

The remaining two plants are still doing alright and I have continued to fertilize them with Dutch Nutrient's organic bloom formula, mixed at the correct ratio, three times a week. My goal is to get to week 12 with them in the flowering stage, before I start the flushing process. The flushing process should take another 2 weeks after that.

        

Buds At 9 Weeks Under 45x Magnification And Captured With An LG3 Cell Phone Camera

    

You'll notice all the milky white trichomes on the buds and the leaves. These buds may have an odd shape or appearance to them and I would attribute that to the fact that they are full of seeds.

The Handling of Seeds

I was able to harvest some seeds that naturally fell out when I was trimming the sugar leaves away from the bud clusters of the plant that I already have drying. I am saving these seeds in a sealed mason jar with some desiccant also.

    

All the buds that I have and will be harvesting are loaded with seeds so I should have plenty of seeds going forward for future gardens. I decided to test one of these new seeds by checking to see if it was viable by getting it to sprout.

                                                                  

As you can see, it worked! It took 24 hours to sprout the seed and then, I put it in soil at 48 hours old. It's now 72 hours old, in this photo. It does not take long for this herb to grow.

Week 7, 8, & 9 of The Flowering Stage

      

You'll notice the colour changes from one week to the next. Although I am not noticing any amber colouration in the trichomes yet, the last picture seems to be more orange in hue.

I will do my best to keep you up to date on my very first attempt at growing a cannabis micro- garden.

I welcome your comments and I invite you to follow me on my journey.

 

~ Rebecca Ryan