First off the seed project is coming along. I decided just to transplant the seed plants and take clones from them to save. Shit was getting out of hand and taking forever. I’ll need to dial in this process in the future. Screwing up the clones on the first opportunity was a huge set back. You live and learn.
I believe I defeated my aphid issue! Happy fkn days. No bugs in site for the last month or more!
The plants bounced back nicely after the first chop but they started to out grow my veg space so I needed to transplant them to the 2 gal container and place them in the flower room.
They look very straggly but I know they’ll fill out nicely. I’m going to wait a week, take clones, wait another few days then flip. I’ll plan on doing lots of pinching and LST to help keep things even.
Took pics of each plant at transplant for documentation purposes.
Headband x Chem D (these plants seriously stink so damn bad! All of them absolutely reek like trash can barf… so exciting)
#1 - the most variegated and looking an absolute mess… I’m calling this one “Wild Child”
So I’ve been messing around with hash making! It is both a hell of a lot of work and very fun. I can see why they consider some hash makers as “artisan”. I’m a bread and pizza guy so I know the time and effort it takes to hone those crafts and this is no different. The good thing is that I feel like this is right up my alley so I’m going to keep practicing to hone this craft. It amazes me that there are just so many factors that will determine the final outcome of the hash. It’s actually mind blowing if you think about it.
First of all, I finally bit the bullet and purchased one of those small washing machines off Amazon. It took me forever to select the right one but I ended up going with the Costway Mini Washing Machine. I believe I selected this one because it looked identical to one of the machines I saw Frenchy Cannoli use in one of his videos. If it’s good enough for him I figured I couldn’t go wrong.
First thing to do was to change out that corrugated drain hose. This proved to be a lot more challenging than I was expecting. So FAIR WARNING to anyone who decides on this machine. Every guide I could find online explained to use a 3/4” inner diameter hose. Well, this particular machine has an extruding piece of plastic at the bottom that is also 3/4”! So here’s what you get:
I needed to keep in mind the small amount of space for the new hose. Placing a piece of 3/4” hose on the end of that adapter was going to bend it too severely, so I needed to come up with a solution! What if I add a 90 degree elbow?! Everything was way to long so each piece needed to be meticulously measured and cut… So I have a small piece of 3/4” hose to connect the adapter and elbow together and a few clamps to hold it all together! here’s what I ended up with:
I attached my 3/4” inner diameter hose to the end of that elbow and everything JUST fit together once I put the machine back together. This was a long and tiresome process and a bit of a setback when I was basically just ready to start my first ever wash.
I’ll write more about the washing experience in another post.
Nicely done, it’s definitely a bit of work getting that hose sorted out but so worth it, had the same issue happen with the hose diameter. Good luck on the hash run!
Too much. I definitely got ripped off on this but after searching pretty much every corner of the interwebs for months on end I found out that every machine was pretty much the same price. At least with Amazon I have Prime and shipping was free. I paid $159.99 pls tx. I’ve had this item on my shopping list for over a year and I’ve seen it jump from $69.99 to what I paid for it and what it currently costs today. I figured it would go down but it just kep going up and up!
What a fun but also a bit exhausting process. Hash making is legit! It’s a lot of work but also super rewarding (most of the time… more on that in a bit). I can’t imagine washing by hand with a paddle. After the hose debacle, I was finally ready to wash some buds!
I went with the bags from The Press Club. I picked up a bunch of supplies during their Black Friday sale. I hold off on a lot of big purchases in the weed game on 4/20 or Black Friday, it always seems to pan out.
Since I live in the good old north, creating a cold room was as easy as opening the window in December. It was a balmy 8 degrees in there. I used a water filter on my garden hose for the water and had the sink close by for rinsing. Not the best set up but it did the trick just fine.
The first strain I washed was my Afghan Lemon hashplant. I was super jazzed for this one but it was a major disappointment in yield (as mentioned in my outdoor thread) but really outperformed in the smell department! I can’t wait to dab it. When I see how much it yielded and think about the time and effort I put into this grow all the way from seed, all the feedings, waterings, teas, care, trimming, processing, washing and sifting… it kind of blows my mind. All that time and effort for this (1/4 teaspoon for scale):
I know there’s a method for testing strains where you can shake a few grams of buds in a mason jar with ice water to see if it’s worth your time but obviously I didn’t do that. I figured “it’s a hash plant, it’ll produce…” haha… at the end of the day I had a ton of fun throughout the entire process of growing this plant and washing it. I’m experimenting, learning and smoking a few bowls here and there along the way. Either way, fresh frozen is now my unicorn. Gotta figure that one out.
The second time I washed I decided to do it outside. I waited for day where it was near 0 degrees out and went to town. I washed a huge mixture of buds. I had some dry cured stuff and some fresh buds too. A mixture of four strains I grew outside last summer: Sour D x Sweet Skunk, Snow G, Japhy and some Goji OG I believe. This wash DUMMMMMPED, it was nice to see! This is the first run:
The way I would work was I’d process the hash in the bags while the machine ran the next wash. It’s time consuming and a lot of work but I had a lot of fun doing it. It’s a bit of a learning process and I’m sure I’ll get more efficient with a bit of practice.
The more difficult part for me was the sieving process. I’m not quite at the level yet when I’m buying a freeze dryer so my option was to sieve this onto parchment paper that’s sitting inside of a pizza box, then into the freezer for a week. It took a bit of trial and error to get the chunk of hash cold or just frozen enough that it would sieve well without clumping or sticking to my strainer. This was the hardest part IMO… I can totally see why people just splurge for that freeze dryer. Either way, I had to work pretty hard for this hash! It was very sticky and my hands were cramping but I got all the hash sieved into pizza boxes. Having the sieve and spoon in the freezer helped a lot. I guess I was too busy with that I forgot to get pics but here’s the result after a week in the freezer.
Sadly, I couldn’t press it right away so I had to vacuum seal it and store in the freezer for a few wks during the holidays. This made it completely clump and bind together…
I’d love to know what’s going on at a microscopic/scientific level there, it’s amazing. Brings me back to my hash smoking days when I was a teenager, only we never smoked anything close to this quality level. I wanted to eat it! This was right before I pressed it.
So this was basically a large bar of hash. I cut off about 20 grams to the size of my rosin bags and just went for it… again, just sort of experimenting here but it totally worked out.
Rolling this into a ball was super difficult and an interesting learning experience. I did this in my kitchen and I won’t be making a habit out of that unless it’s super cold in there. I got this hash EVERYWHERE!! Lol literally everywhere… it’s just amazing that it would just turn into syrup in my hands suddenly, then I’m sitting there with my hands in the freezer trying to cool it off until I could roll it back into a ball. Obviously I was wearing thick black nitrile gloves for this but still… having a cold room would have been a lot easier. I’d cool the hash ball enough that it would pick up the stickiness off my gloves but made the mistake at times touching the fridge and freezer door handles, all over the counter and floors and stepping in sticky hash with my socks was a lot of fun. Good thing I had a lot of iso on hand lol… anyway it was an interesting learning experience. I did two presses of a little over 20 grams each and ended up with two nice hash balls. I put them into this stupid jar for some idiotic reason.
Here’s a pic of the last hash ball that I decided to weigh without a piece of parchment under it. This ball absolutely melted to the surface of the scale… it was fun!
I used the thread by @ReikoX called ReikoX's Solventless Hash Rosin Cartridges for the next process of getting this hash into carts. Thanks again for posting that homie! If you haven’t checked it out yet I highly recommend it.
I used a sous vide method to heat the hash to 140F for about 36 hrs. I also didn’t do this the most efficiently. It I did it again I would use a Ball or Mason jar with a metal lid and I wouldn’t vacuum seal it. I’d submerged the jar in the water just enough so that the water level in my sous vide vessel was just above where the hash came up to in the jar.
The hash got a bit darker than I wanted but I’m sure it will improve in time. It’s terpy as all hell!!! Like flavour explosion! It almost tastes like soap hahaha it’s strong too! I’m loving it so I’m chalking this up to a win.
This post is getting a bit long but I wanted to tell this tale in full. If you’ve been tossing around the idea of making hash, I highly recommend you try it! Some of you will love it, some of you will hate it. It’s a lot of work but the results are worth it or will be worth it if you take the time to practice and learn. I can’t wait to try to make a temple ball and smoke some bubble hash out of a chillum!
If you’re just getting started, here are the resources that helped me get prepared for Hash making:
Typically I’ll read through just about as much info as I can and note down the similarities in the procedures. I also note down the things that aren’t similar and try to figure out if they’re useful to try or leave out of my own procedures, what procedures and practices are best, why and why not… then I’ll try them out if I think they’re beneficial. For instance, the video with Jeremey from BAS and Pedro. The way he explains how he folds and tucks his rosin bags… that’s very valuable info that a beginner could use. Instead of wasting time blowing out bags while pressing. Little things like that.
My next experiments will be temple balls, curing bubble hash and rosin, jar tech curing (cold vs hot), whipping vs not whipped, etc etc. If you have any resources you’d like to share, please don’t hesitate to post a link, share some tips or whatever you think I might be interested in.
I went with the 6 ton Dabpress with the bottle jack. There was a Canadian warehouse so shipping was free. After looking around, this was the absolute BEST VALUE in Canada in my opinion for a rosin press. It’s a quality unit. Eventually I’ll upgrade to the 10 ton with hydraulic hand press but considering I was just starting out, I couldn’t justify the extra $300 it costs for that combo. The thing I love about these presses is that they have these “drip tech” extended legs you can screw in and tip the unit forward to allow the rosin to flow directly into a glass jar. I’ll be playing with that on the next round. Other comparible units were pretty much 1.5 to 2-3 times this price. I don’t really know how they get it to be so cheap but the 6 ton is a really well made press for someone just starting out. Heck, you could even go for 4 ton and get pretty great results if you were just producing head stash.
The seed project plants (Headband x Chem D, GMO x Obama, Guerilla Fume) have rebounded nicely in the flower tent. Still keeping them at 18/6 while they settled in and grew a bit more material for me to take more clones. They’re looking a lot healthier now. A few compost teas really had them rebounding hard. The HB x Chem D plants are wild and stinky! The G Fume plants are monsters, it’s my opinion I’m going to have one or two males in that lot and the GMO X Obama Kush plants are very lush with thick, dark green fans. They’re filling out nicely.
I’ve top dressed with earth worm castings, ground malted barley and my home made Bokashi bran at transplant and a few weeks later. Seems to be helping getting things cycling.
I’ll take clones tmrw morning after a watering tonight. I stepped up my clone game and bought some Flora Flex incubator plugs made from coco, peat and bio char. I also picked up a small jar of Rootech cloning gel. I’m done messing around! Getting so frustrated with my lack of success with cloning and think it has something to do with those terrible jiffy pellets!
I also started a micro grow last week in the 2x2. I got a heater for the lung room along with a humidifier so I should be in better shape this winter. Since I’m still testing this process and this is the first time using these small pots, I popped a bunch of Attitude Seedbank freebies and a couple seeds I had plenty to spare.
Here’s the list or brave souls for the micro grow test run:
When I got the tray of seedlings in the tent I figured I might as well pop 10 more since I had room for another tray! I mean… why the F not right?! Lol I hope I haven’t but off more than I can chew here but these plants are basically going 12/12 from seed so they should be pretty manageable in that space.
For the next tray I popped:
Trumps Candy #7 x Obama (Founding Fathers) x5
Lone Star’s Sharon White Widow x C99 (Dominion Seed Co) x5
I had to look up who Lone Star was and ask around. Apparently he was this badass old school grower on IC Mag and he had this plant he found from a pack of White Widow seeds that was mind blowing. I looked it up awhile ago so I kind of forget the details but I think he named it after Sharon Stone… I could be totally wrong here. Anyway the plant is legendary 10 or 20 yrs ago… Duke decided to throw some C99 pollen on it so let’s see what we get!
2 weeks later I ended up with a 38/40 germination rate! The only seedlings that didn’t make it up were 2 of the Trumps Candy x Obama. The second tray was 24hrs behind the first and you can really notice a difference in growth rate. Since I had to keep the light on 24 to let the second tray of seedlings break the soil, the first tray got a few days of extra light and it really made a difference. Once they all broke soil I flipped to 12/12. They’ve been flowering for about 7 days now. I think there’s something to be said about letting them establish themselves for a day or two, then flipping. I’ll make a note for next time. I didn’t intend to pop more seeds but it’s just so damn fun! Lol
Very cool my friend, looking forward to seeing how this works out, I went micro for a few years but missed my trees, always seem to come back to 4g soilless no matter what else I try. To each their own right.
What’s up!? Thanks for popping in. Ya I do love to go bigger but I just don’t have the space. This is just a small test to see if I can do some micro breeding and pheno hunts in small pots. Hoping to upgrade or move soon but we’ll see.
You disappeared for a little while there, good to see you kicking around again.
Fun times ahead for sure. I am doing the small pots pollen thing right now. It is a blast. Mix in an auto or 4, and my hands are full. Looks good in there, pleasure to see.
Haha yep, it’s funny how fast things can get out of hand when you’re having fun, popping seeds!
So back to the main grow… I topped and cloned everything today. I took two clones off each plant and levelled the canopy as best I could. Despite the Wild Child, who looks absolutely bonkers, everything is looking pretty healthy. I’m seeing a few droopy leaves and maybe a sign or two of what’s looking like a magnesium deficiency here and there but I should be able to correct the issue with a few epsom salt foliar sprays and dialling in my water regime. This is my first time with really finicky genetics so I’m learning and taking notes. I can’t seem to get them to be too happy either way with watering less more often or more water, less often. So I’ve just been giving 500ml per 2 gallon pot every other day. They seem to really perk up and pray after my compost tea feeding and sprouted seed tea feeding. The SST is every two weeks on roughly Tuesday’s. The aerated compost tea is every Friday. The compost tea is composed of worm castings which have been moistened with a sprinkle of ground malted barley seeds and left for several days in a small Tupperware container with the lid slightly misaligned. Mycelium networks build up on the surface of the castings and increase the fungal dominance of the tea, I believe this is called “Blooming” the castings… at least that’s what I’ve been calling it.
Once they’re nice and bloomed up I put them in a little mesh vegetable bag I got from the dollar store (best $3 I ever spent!) and mix in some molasses, insect frass and sometimes a bit of alfalfa meal and kelp powder.
Went off on a bit of a tangent there but I’ve just really noticed these plants praying after this feeding.
I watered the plants last night and took clones this morning. Here they are before chop.
I used Flora Flex plugs with Rootech gel. My first time using these products but I’ve seen and heard good things. I added a bit of aloe and fulpower to the water and soaked the cubes. I placed the clones in sandwich bags… also my fist time trying this. Too many new factors, I know I know… when will I learn.
Those photos were from this morning, when I went in the tent at lights on tonight the tips had already grown a few cm’s on most plants! Always nice to see the vigour. I also believe I see balls starting to set in on the G Fume 4! We’ll see…
Anyway, these babies are getting flipped on Monday! It’s about damn time. I stared this grow at the end of September!!! I can hardly believe that. It’s time to get moving!
I wanted to dedicate this post to the assholes at Petra Tools. They want $135 of my hard earned Canadian dollars for their mini fogger PLUS $35 for shipping through FedEx. If you’ve ordered anything across the border using FedEx you’ll know they charge a brokerage fee and randomly will hit you with duties from time to time… I guess whenever their bank accounts get below a few million in profits they feel the need to stick it to the little guy.
So let’s do some quick math…
$135 + $35 + duties/brokerage fee probably around $30-$40 = TOO FUCKING EXPENSIVE FOR A FOGGING GUN!!!
What the actual fuck is going on in this society when they want people to pay over $200 for a very simple battery operated spray gun?!
Here’s why I’m so mad. I like to consider myself a savvy consumer. There are rare occasions where I would bite the bullet on stuff like this because honestly, I can’t seem to find a reputable sprayer that will last longer than 5 minutes. I mean seriously!!! Let’s stop sending ppl to space and figure this problem out immediately!!! Why are spray guns so difficult to make??? Call Elon! Fuck twitter, we need help ASAP!
Anyway… I was like “HELLLLL no I ain’t spending no $200 mutha fuckin dollahs on no simple ass sprayer!!”.
Enter AliExpress… cue the angelic singing.
I found THE EXACT SAME spray gun (without the fancy Petra Tools sticker) for $36!!!
I ordered it. It’ll be here in March. I’ll keep you posted.
If you don’t know about AliExpress, check it out! I recommend the App over the website but both will work. I’ve purchased so many small things for my garden from there for DIRT CHEAP!!! sometimes 50% to 80% cheaper than I will find the product on Amazon or other websites. The drawback is the shipping times. It will typically take a month or two to get your order and there are rare occasions where it will just not show up but they always refund you no matter what! Check out the app, I highly recommend.
I’ve wanted one of these for a few years now but can’t justify the expense when I can move my plants into the bathtub for a pressure-type mister that’s not as gentle.
This fogger would be a game-changer for everything while still in the tent!
Edit: at that price point I’d have asked you to order 2x!
Last night I took the plants out and cleaned up the bottom shoots that were too close to the top of the soil, top dressed each of them with a half teaspoon of craft blend and an inch or two of earthworm castings and finished it off with a sprinkle of Bokashi bran. They’re heading into the third week of flowering so I just wanted to get on top of things.
I forgot to take a full tent pic last night and they’re sleeping now so they’re already looking a lot more full than that pic above. I’ll have to update again later. They’re really starting to burst out of the pots!
This Trump Candy 7 x Obama just decided to top itself haha… always fascinating when that happens.
@Oldtimerunderground I’m starting to see some roots shooting out of the clone plugs so I think your omen worked!
The main grow and seed project plants were flipped on Monday! I thoroughly cleaned all the bottom sucker shoots last night. I crept up real high! Not trying to grow any ball sacks up in here!!
I’ve been scouting for pests and issues like crazy. I don’t want to get caught slipping like a few of my other grows. They took in a few insecticidal soap sprays the last few wks too.
I’m really trying to get better at plant diagnosis and gave a few listens to the Cannabis Cultivation & Science podcast by Tad Hussey. I was sure I had a magnesium issue but after listening to episodes 103 and 107 about phosphorus and magnesium I was a little more certain. It was really subtle in a few of the plants but consulting this guide I found on his Instagram kind of confirmed it and also made me believe I have a phosphorus deficiency. I think it’s a really great visual aid!
The lowers on my plants looked exactly like this P and Mg deficiencies shown in that pic. I foliar fed epsom salt mixed with thermx 70 last night and tonight will feed with a rock phosphate tea I fermented for a few days with LAB. I also too dressed with more worm castings. The deficiencies are not too bad but I just want to avoid issues later on.
Lastly I just want to say that this little pipe absolutely RIPS!!! It’s got a nice resistance to the airflow and it’s really filters and cools the smoke down quite nicely. My other bong has much to fast of an air intake! You’ve really got to take it easy or you’ll choke yoursef lol… with this one it’s great because you can take nice smooth tokes without inhaling the entire bowl at once! Highly recommended. It’s called the Canada Puffin Arctic Bubbler.
Plants are healthy and are budding nicely. Micro growing is fun! Things are moving along so fast. It’s fun to grow that many strains at once to compare and contrast. Most of them look very similar but the devil is in the details. It’s been fun learning about the small nuances that set different strains a part. That will become more apparent over the next few wks.
The seed project also has some developments. Two of the Guerilla Fumé plants are males. I chopped their branches and stuck them in a cup of water. I’ll harvest the pollen for another potential seed making project.
So that is fan-freaking-tastic (I’m trying not to swear on these posts as much ).
The only thing I’ll say about sandwich bag tech is that the plants get used to that super humid environment so when you remove them you have to place them in a humidity dome or some kind of high humidity environment for a few days and slowly introduce them to the air. After potting my clones they were super sad for a few days but are slowly bouncing back. I’ll have back ups of everything except the males.
The other thing I wanted to mention was to have a listen to the latest Podcast interview with Sean from Flying Lion Research. This was a mind blowing episode. I especially enjoyed his chat about terpenes and their effects and how the conversation when you go into a dispo should mostly be about the dominant terpenes of a plant and not the THC percentage. The average consumer would benefit so largely from this. Anyway, there were just tons of great info tid bits in that episode and I loved it. That guy just gets it! Talking about how they’re should be a global cannabis market (like the wine industry) where ppl could chose to buy their cannabis from certain areas with certain terroir… etc etc. omg it just makes so much sense! His knowledge about hash making and genetics was also very impressive. Made me feel like an absolute assclown for even attempting to make fresh frozen from a plant I had never grown before. Anyway, what a learning experience!
GMO x Obama #3 is a tall, stretchy pheno, which I’m thinking is the GMO leaner. The other two are a lot more stout and probably Obama leavers. I’m stoked to have a both representations, I can’t wait to see how they turn out. Here’s #3:
Sorry if the pics are a bit dark. Trying to take shots that aren’t so over exposed.
The micro grow is filling in very nicely also! This is day 34F. Not the best group shot if I’m being honest but I’ll get a better one tmrw or something.
I already have a clone of it but it can’t hurt to take another)
What if I add a 90 degree elbow?! Everything was way to long so each piece needed to be meticulously measured and cut… So I have a small piece of 3/4” hose to connect the adapter and elbow together and a few clamps to hold it all together! here’s what I ended up with:
).
