2) Barney's / Wedding Cake Auto / Micro

Now this is a Dry and Cure diary, as far as I'm concerned. So.... Dry Day 1) She went into the tent at 75/55 which was exactly where the last dry was. The last dry went 6 days in those conditions, but she was a little too overly dry that time, so I'm aiming for 5 days this time. Things might get colder soon around here (it's 62 degrees F at night in December around here right now - not what you would normally expect.) So maybe when the colder weather hits, I should be able to get better results those days. Dry Day 1 Later:) Now I got 73/60 in there. I'm not going to try to lower the humidity. I think that's a good sign. I remember with my first grow that a day before I trimmed and jarred, the relative humidity in the tent struggled to get above 50%. So this time, I'm going to not open the tent at all to check anything until I notice that the humidity is struggling to get higher in the tent. In a tent this small, the biggest provider of humidity should be the plant itself. So in effect, the relative humidity of the tent IS the relative humidity of the plant? Maybe? Continuing with the theme of the effort - testing things learned with the first grow - I'm going to test that theory this time. So if the humidity is high in there right now, then great! It just means I just put her in there. It will come down on its own. If I start running the exhaust fan to lower rh, I'm just drying out the plant faster. I have the exhaust fan running at its lowest setting - 10%. That's 10% of 200 CFM. Twenty CFM for a 12 CF tent (2x2x3), so running at that level should just perfect. I have the humidifier for my apartment going. But it's not terribly powerful. Eh. We'll see how that goes too! LOL. Dry Day 3) Temps and RH at 73/59 respectively. Still humid in there but that's what I'm testing this time, right? Maybe I can get a better dry/cure this time. Maybe I won't. Maybe I'm gonna learn what bud rot looks like! LOL! 😂 Might check her tomorrow night. If not, the next night without question. Dry Day 5) Just got my head out of the tent. She was closed in there for 4 days before I just checked her. The grassy smell was overwhelming when I opened the tent. Taking lessons from my first grow, this means she's at least a couple days away from being dry. But I have to admit, this drying stage of the process is the part that concerns me most. I mean, I bent some stems. I bent some buds. All the branches were pretty flexible. No snapping or breaking anywhere. From what I hear, this means she isn't ready yet. I guess I just don't like how un-scientific this process is. But if she isn't ready yet, it wouldn't surprise me. It's been pretty humid in there. The rule of thumb I've been using is that the difference between the temp and the rh should be less than 20. For example, my last reading was 75/58, so a difference of 18. As I've been tracking this difference over the last few days, it has been getting wider. This is why this is my favorite indicator. My guess is that as the plant gets drier, the humidity in the tent gets lower for any given temperature reading because the vapor pressure from the plant gets lower as it dries. Until I see that the difference widens out beyond 20 consistently, we'll prolly keep this process going. Dry Day 5 Later): I checked the humidity and RH of the tent an hour or so again and saw that the temp/RH difference had grown to 24. After raising the hygrometer on my dehumidifier, I was able to get the difference to 20, but that was it. Not only that, the humidity in the tent is only a few points above the room humidity, so I think this all indicates that she's ready to go into the jars. I think this all indicates that the vapor pressure from the plant is low now. I could be wrong, but this is only my second grow. If you've read my diaries you know that I do this expecting to have failures to learn from. So if I'm wrong, instead of smoking good bud, I'll be smoking some good new knowledge. I'll take it too. Weed and knowledge are both good for you!! LOL! 😜 Another reason why today is a good day to trim is climate change. It's hotter than I'd like in there right now because it's hotter than I'd like OUT there right now. It's 60 degrees out and slightly humid - not winter weather (at least no Xmas tornadoes.) So she's cooking more than she should right now. Combined with the low vapor pressure described above, there's little reason to be hopeful for more. And finally, though dense with buds, she's a tiny plant. Why would you expect a tiny plant to take two weeks to dry? So at 4 pm today (point when the dry reaches exactly 5 days), I'll take her out and start trimming, I think, unless I see strong reasons no to do it. I'm hoping she goes into the jars with a RH of 60%+ because I'd like to cure without boost packs this time. Cross your fingers with me? 😊 Have a great grow day..

TRIM RECAP: So she's in the jars. She was very sticky and full of resin. No shame if you keep some sugar leaves with this strain, because many of them were covered in trichs. How weak a smoke can they be? The jars already smell like lemons. 7 hour trim. Long trim for only 3 ounces. Why? Well that's actually good news about this grow. There was very little larf to throw out. Either this is a strain characteristic or my defoliation strategy was more or less on point. Looks like a good amount of light got to buds lower on the branches early enough to make a difference. Leaf stripping in early flower will be something I do from now on. But this meant trimming away at many tiny buds though, so it took a while. And the last time I rushed the first trim because (a) I didn't know what I was doing at all and (b) I was hungry during the entire trim. This time I did more manicuring with a tiny nail scissor than I did last time. In fact, last time, I did most of my manicuring a couple weeks later. I'm proud to say, though, that I am not a good trimmer and that I probably never will be. I only grow for personal consumption, and that's a good thing. Removes some of the presuure to trim beautifully. Trimming is probably my least favorite part of doing all this, and I bet many of you can relate.I'm so tried. My eyes are shot. And I still need to stick hygrometers to the lids. I'll have more to say tomorrow, and will edit this review. Cure Day 1) So I woke up and immediately burped the jars. My humidity in the jars varied from 60% to 65%, so I'm happy with this result! I burped the jars for 15 minutes. But I have BurpLids (not the actual BurpLids - but fermenting jar lids I found on Amazon that were a little cheaper but the same), so I will be using them once per day instead from now on, hopefully. I don't smell much grassiness in these jars, so maybe this all sets up a good cure this time. Very exciting. After a couple hours, I noticed that the rh in the three jars were different from each other. 58%, 62% and 68%. Makes sense. You fill the jars sequentially as you remove buds from the plant. First jar gets buds closest to the outer part of the plant. Third jar gets buds closest to the center of the plant. One is naturally drier than the other. So I emptied all the buds into a large bowl, but I did it while shuffling the jars in order to mix them up a bit. I poured a third of jar 1 into the bowl, then a third of jar2, and so on - on the theory that when I filled up the jars again, each jar would have a little dry, wet and just-right in it. I took the opportunity to get an accurate read of the weight of the grow. So I put the large bowl on the scale with all the buds in it. Then after refilling the jars, I took the weight of the bowl without. 2.96 ounces! (83g). Not a bad yield at all, I think. And there was room for better, and my second attempt at this strain is now growing beautifully in the seedling tent on Day 4. Very exciting. Cure Day 2:) Used the vacuum pump to burp the jars this morning. (You pump out the old air, then release the button to let new air in. Burping automated.) Noticed they smelled great before I even opened the jar because burp lids are basically designed to release a little air . Anyway, the humidity in the jars are in a perfect range - 60% to 63%, so two things worked, right? I got the timing of ending the drying right, and I got the shuffling of buds in the jars right. Right? We'll see. So I'll burp the jars twice a day for the next couple days. Then once a day until the end of two weeks. Then back into mason jars with actual lids for the remainder of the cure. Cure Day 4:) I'm going to try to not use Integra Boost packs this time. And the buds are stable in the range I wanted - 61% to 65%. So I don't think I'm going to need them if I bang out a good schedule for burping them over the next week to 10 days. That being said, I'm not sure I'm going to have anything else to say about this grow until I smoke the buds. I still have plenty of my last grow to smoke left (and less of a schedule to do any smoking), so these puppies have plenty of time to cure. I'll be back when the first smoke happens or something terrible happens to the buds inside the jars. SMOKE REVIEW: So she was cured for 8.5 weeks and I just tried her. She grinds a little leafy, and a little sticky too! She smokes mostly smooth with average thickness of vape. And the feeling? This strain is STRONG. Feeling mild euphoric uplift. Like being on a happy cloud in a Bob Ross painting. 😋 Good stuff. Even though she yielded only 2.96 ounces, this yield seems more potent than my first. It may end up lasting longer cuz I can already tell that this strain is a one-hit wonder (that's a great thing in this case. LOL). Have a great grow!