Nice!
Any chance you have a link?
Some of us old school guys have been saying this for years.
Weed growers are fickle, they love their amber trichomes and cal/mag.
Stalk length ect is a good indication of ripeness.
Some of these camera happy folks are looking at the heads to see if they become cloudy and get wrinkled and even burst as an indication of ripeness.
I donāt mean to answer for him but yes.
Really any kind of sugar will work the same way.
Table sugar is fine, but the more natural the sugar the better.
It is hard to think of a more natural sugar than Maple syrup.
Hereās a screenshot of the discussion section that talks about their results relevant to stalk length as a predictor.
If no one can find it as a pdf for free let me know and I can get a copy up, but it would be a compressed file because of the size and that may seem shady from a new boyā¦
If I have lots of trichomes growing early on a plant - could I scrape them off the leaves with a razor ( or something.) and smoke etc, and would they grow back again - and if so , would they be bigger etc .?
Anyone have any ideas on this .?
Just curious ā¦ . .
@Gaz29 definitely try it! And report back to us! Call it live live extract.
Seriously though, charas is a similar thing,
involving the stroking of live colas to collect resin on bare hands. Not sure if they are able to go back to the same plants for more at a later date though.
I am inclined to agree with you. Trichomes are energetically expensive to make and are full of secondary metabolites. They are called secondary because they are not vital to plant function and reproduction but represent an excess of nutrients the plant can spend. Once a plant gets into flowering, its focused on making seed and any secondary metabolites take a backseat.
All this talk of trichomes. How do you guys feel about particular trichomes?
Do you prefer the dry sandy type?
Do you prefer the super sticky type?
What about the really greasy oneās that arenāt really sticky?
I find the dry sandy oneās are really good for making hash. Makes sense
The really sticky flowers I find make me cough a bit more or at the least, they arenāt as smooth as some other, not really sticky, flowers.
The Greasy flowers though, those seem to be really really smooth smoke regardless. Iāve been leaning towards trying to breed for the greasy flowers specifically
I have no idea what makes the trichomes greasy or sticky or dry and sandy. What say you? What do you prefer to smoke? Have you noticed a difference?
I tend to agree with this!! In my experience, feeding the exact same program to everything I grow, itās a genetic trait like calf muscle size. One could probably influence the expression of it +/-, but Iāve had greasy ganky flowers growing right next to ādryā feeling flowers and itās justā¦ trichomes under the scope.
My early bet, is that some strains have trichome caps with thicker or more resilient cuticles which pop less. Less popping, less resin (grease). The idea of sticky vs. greasy is something I feel is āa real thingā but I would say if anything, that distinction comes down to how much the resin has polymerized vs how much is liquid oil and to some extent, what concentration of terps (VOCs, think paint thinner) exist in the resin.
Silica mayyyyy contribute to a more resilient cuticle and this, a drier more hash-friendly plant.
The common signs of good bud (greasy stinky) are also signs of weak cuticles.
Would I be right in thinking weak cuticles, that offer stanky buds would in fact be a lesser quality overall product? The weaker cuticles allowing terps to volatilize, while stronger cuticles would keep more of those terps in the trichome?
Meh, they all feel the same. I took a small piece of parchment to test for stick. I used a single finger to squeeze and rub the bud, then I stuck the parchment to it and counted the seconds it could defy gravity.
Each plant has a vastly different hash yield though.
If we assume that preservation of trichome caps is paramount, yes any leakage is a loss. Hash makers would completely agree with this I suspect. They want rugged caps to wash/sift.
But a lot of people include the sensory experience of opening a jar in the overall āWhat quality means to meā and I cannot blame them one bit. They may want to be assaulted by evaporating terps, and covered in greasy resin.
So really I think flower, jarred, for the ritual of opening, grinding, consumingā¦ thatās where we might want a nice sticky/greasy experience. Sensory adders! For hash, we might want the caps more intact.
All of this stuff exists within the margins and is really the upper 99th percentile of quality difference to most of us, me included, itās all good in the end!!
BTW I greened-out for the first time in a lonnnng while off of one hit of Bodhiās Lazy Lightning. The lemon cleaning agent terps are too much. I start thinking that maybeā¦ maybe too much terp isnāt a good thing. Especially if thereās something my body isnāt agreeing with!
I know why you mean about your olfactory senses and ritual being a part of the effects. My climate shifts a lot between winter (cold/dry) and summer (hot/humid) and depending on what time of year bud is grown and dried, I believe, makes a difference on the level of smell coming off the buds. The winter crops always smell less and it makes me feel like the bud is lacking somehow when it is mostly likely exactly the same or very similar. By my reasoning the buds should be āstrongerā somehow but itās not the case in my perception of the experience
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I think about this a lot. I spend a lot of time cultivating and protecting trichomes and then I grind the crap out of them at the last minute
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