Supercharging Your Infusion

 I expect like most folks, I do not use Top Shelf flower to make infusions and tinctures. Cannabis edibles are kinda like hotdogs, they taste pretty good and do the job but what goes in 'em is not pretty. It's mostly popcorn buds, leaf, some stems and a occasional nice bud. The THC starts to get pretty thin by the time you get down to "trim". That's the bad part, the good is THC is THC and if you can get to a decent mg/ml ratio your infusion/tincture will work. This is where the Ardent FX earns its keep. With the FX it is very easy to run multiple infusions using the same oil piggybacking each step to increase the THC mg/ml ratio with each step.

An example from today. I needed a 1/2 cup of oil to make Brownies. Once made the pan will yield 16 servings and I would like each serving to have 100mg of THC (just because I called it a serving doesn't mean you have to eat the whole thing at one sitting). To get there I would need the THC ratio to be close to 14mg/ml.* 

I started with 16g of Nova OG trim in a little over ½ cup of MCT oil. The first infusion cycle gave me 1/2cup of 3.9mg/ml of Canna Oil. A long way from the target of 14mg/ml.

The second cycle I stuck with the Nova OG trim using 15g in the first cycle Canna Oil plus ~15ml (1 Tbs) of fresh MCT to replace the lost oil. The second cycle raised the THC/ml ratio to 4.3 mg/ml. Not a lot of help but still better.

I was out of trim from the first harvest so I pulled out some Jack Herer left over from last year's crop. Used 15g of pretty good bud plus added 15ml of MCT oil to the 4.3 mg/ml Canna Oil from the second cycle.

This time I hit close enough to the target of 14 mg/ml (13.8mg/ml) to call it good enough.

Let me show you what happens when you have your head stuck up your ass and do that most male thing of male things...Read the damn directions. I started the crop using a very good Nutrient program but it was complex with many different bottles and doses to keep up with. I decided to change to a simpler system by Ventana Plant Science. First mistake, don't change horses midstream. Second mistake skimming the directions. The old nutrient program (and most nutrient programs I've used) use tsp/gal of water. Ventana uses ml/gal. There are 5ml in each tsp. It was a damn good try at killing my harvest. I say again: Read the damn directions, don't skim.

Take care,

ken

*1/2cup ~118ml X 14mg/ml = 1652mg/16 pieces = 103.25mg/piece.

Curing In a Grove Bag

 No more "burping" Mason jars. Just put your dry flower in the bag, seal it with the "ziploc" and put it away until you are ready to consume. If you plan to store for awhile you can "heat" seal the bag as well if you like "belts & suspenders" but it is not necessary. The only problem with heat sealing is the bag is now single use. The bags come in several sizes, I just ordered a box each of 1lb, ¼lb, and 1oz bags. Cheaper, easier, may even work better than Mason jars, what's not to love.

You can see in the window I do not like a close trim. BTW, click it to big it.

Plants will be maturing on a rolling schedule with the Photo plants bringing up the rear. As posted earlier I've been really rough on this year's crop and these first three plants show the results of that bumbling with only 235g (8.3oz) of good bud plus two full Nova sleeve of trim and popcorn bud for making Cannabutter. What follows should do better,

ken

Cold Winter Day

 Tucson doesn't have many cold Winter Days but today is one of them. I know 10F above freezing doesn't count most places but here...I'm freezing my butt off. One good cure is a bowl of chicken and sausage gumbo over rice with green onion and a touch of gumbo file.

  Damn that was good.

Yesterday I was hit upside the head with a 2X4. We are so fucked, there is no way to stop the heating of the earth if we keep doing what we are doing and I do not see a way to stop before hitting the wall. 

I can still remember when I first started flying in the late '50s the only visible pollution were yellow domes over Houston and Dallas. The domes didn't go very high and once you were either above the dome and/or twenty or so miles away from the city most days the visibility was greater than 100sm. By the time I retired the pollution dome covered the States and extended into the high Flight Levels most days. 

The 2X4 was a small, maybe 2lb bag of Cherries. Damn good Cherries BTW which is part of the problem. The Cherries were from Argentina and about the only way Cherries from Argentina can be good is if they got here in the back of a 747. I hate to think about how much greenhouse gas was injected into the upper atmosphere to bring 2lbs of cherries to me. 

ken

Second Harvest of 2023

 One of these plants (Pandora Auto) is from the first seeds I popped this Fall, the other (AK-47 Auto) germinated a couple of weeks later. Neither grew to expected size, that's the bad news. The good is both made large heavy colas. Go figure.

The Pandora (on the right) has an excuse for its short stature. Just after it had started to flower, while moving its pot I dumped the whole thing onto the ground breaking the main stem and a couple more. After scooping up the mess and failing to reattach the broken stems I figured it was a goner but it fooled me and made a good amount of flower.

I've been tough on my plants this year. There is this one that I dumped on the ground, a Peyote Gorilla that a tent fan fell on and the other day I noticed one of the side grow Super Lemon Haze had gotten a little leggie and thought I'll take care of it in AM. Overnight it fried itself on the light panel.

There will be rolling harvests until the first of April or thereabouts. Spreading the harvests out I think will be good. My least favorite part of growing is the after harvest processing when there are a dozen or so plants to be dried, trimed and cured at once.

First Harvest of 2022-2023 Grow Season

 Nova OG Auto planted Oct 8, 2022. Harvested Jan 4, 2023, week 13 seeds in ground. Ninety one days from seed popping to harvest.

 The other two plants in the Auto Tent are a couple or three weeks behind the Nova OG.

There are maybe several things I've learned from this grow (I need to wait until the plant dries and the rest of the crops are in before I'm close to certain they are true). First is I believe a couple of hours of UV-B during the last few weeks before harvest will increase your Trichromes. You can see how "frostie" the buds on this plant are.  Second and on this one I could easily be full of it, I'm thinking to get full growth you need "full spectrum" LEDs or at least different lights than the ones I'm using. I've had my high end* Blue/Red LED grow lights for a couple of crops and on each the size of the plants disappointed, tending towards the low end of expected height and production. Bud weight was good for size of the plant and the buds are tight but... Third I've worked out a water/feed schedule that works and last, within reason, bigger pots do not make bigger plants. My current thinking is 3 gal fabric pots for Auto-period plants and 5 gal pots for Photo-periods.   

I've several Auto plants outside the Photo Tent with very cheap "full spectrum" LED lights that are impressive. When this grow season is finished and stats are in, the Blue/Red LED panels may move to the greenhouse to supplement the full spectrum Winter Sun. 

*read expensive

ken

Super Lemon Haze Auto

 I've six Super Lemon Haze Autoflower in the grow area outside the Photo tent:

SLH is listed as a Sativa dominant cultivar with approximately 20% Indica. Of the six plants only two at five weeks show as Sativa dominant, Two show as strong Indica and two as somewhere between Sativa and Indica. It will be interesting to see how they finish.