“Stella” DarkStar #2

The harvest of my dear Stella was supposed to happen on August 4th, but didn’t begin actually until August 9th. I decided to allow her to dry out a bit before beginning the harvest, but I had some other difficulties which made her dry out a whole lot before I ever even got started. You can tell how dry by looking at the pics and video. Luckily, the dryness was limited to her larger leaves. She was already quite dry on the 9th when I started, and was more so by the 12th when I finished. Even after the advanced drying, her wet trimmed weight was still quite a bit. I’ll list the weights all together in a bit. It took 4 days to get the whole plant trimmed, weighed, and hung up for final drying. She was hung up from August 12th till Friday, August 19th. I got busy harvesting another plant while she was hanging up, and just let her be. On August 19th I took all of her branches down and removed the buds to get the true harvest weight of her buds alone. Let’s get to the weight of the whole thing. The overall wet-trimmed weight of the plant was 18.329 ounces with the buds and branches combined. I was a forgetful idiot and forgot to get the weight of the dry buds on the branches before removing the buds. So all we’re left with is the actual harvest weight of the dry buds alone. The overall dry bud weight, or actual “true” harvest weight of the smokable bud is: 7.317 ounces. That’s a wonderful amount of freshly harvested bud to cure. All of the buds were put into 8 quart sized jars filled roughly 3/4 full, and 1 pint sized jar, also 3/4 full. Each jar has a hygrometer as well as 58% bóveda packs to help aid the curing process. This is the 2nd DarkStar plant I’ve harvested, and both were very large plants. I used a scrog method the first time with a net that spread the whole plant out taking up the entire 4x4 area of the tent. This time I wanted to let her grow more naturally. She got so large that I had to bend almost all of her taller branches over using HST methods. I had to bend 3-5 branches over more than once. By doing that, once her buds began to fatten up she got too heavy and needed to be supported just to stand upright. Toward the end she had to literally be tied up to the side of the tent. Stella (DarkStar) was a wonder to grow, and she gave me a good amount of clones that will soon be harvested themselves. It has been a journey with Stella, and I’m happy that the journey is now complete. Happy growing everyone!

I initially wrote the smoke report for this plant while I was in the process of smoking it. It is descriptive, and maybe a little comedic. After reading it, I thought that I’d rewrite it, but what’s the fun in that? Here it is: The harvest of my dear Stella took so long, but today, I finally got her into jars to start the curing process. I had my wife pick 1 from a choice of 5 large buds in my hand (see cat’s paw pic). I took her choice too the grinder so we could give her a try. SMOKE REPORT My wife and I shared one of our small silicon cartoon pipes with the glass basin for the smoke test. (Not that it matters). First, appearance? A freshly dried bud of subdued greens and browns coated with glistening trichomes. It was covered in a light coat of orange hairs. Second, smell? Earthy pine and lemon peel. It’s not overpowering, but light and easygoing. Third, taste? It has a taste like a bitter tea with lemon. Again, light, and not overwhelming. If you like tea with lemon, with a bit of earth at the end, then you’ll love this. Now of course we get to the effects. After the first hit, I felt just a hint of something behind my eyes. Not just in my eyes, but my whole head, at eye level. I was Captain Kirk, sitting in the Chair, focused. After the second hit I felt more of the same, but starting to get intense. A slow build up, but effortless. Just sit back, strap on your seatbelt, and prepare for warp. After feeling soooo chilled, but sitting firmly (in my head, not actually sitting down) and focused… BOOM 🤯! My mind is flying all over the place! It has been so hard to focus and to write this report, that… wait, I lost my train of thought. That I’m finding it very hard to focus on just typing. I am amazed at how good this feels! My mind is blown right now, and it is wonderful! Chilled, relaxed, watching Canada 🇨🇦 play Japan 🇯🇵 in the Little League World Series; and writing this. I took the buds off the stems, TODAY! I just put them into jars. The one we are smoking has never been in a jar. I know from experience that this cultivar/strain; DARKSTAR, only improves during the curing process. Simply put; the first smoke of this DarkStar is amazing! I can’t wait to see how she improves. I hope you all have enjoyed following along with this grow. I hope that some of my mistakes help you from making the same ones, and that any of my successes give you the information needed to succeed in your own. Happy growing everyone!