Tropic Orange - Equilibrium Genetics

Hello fellow growers. Croptober is here. Still displaying flowering on the week because I only harvested 2 of 5 plants. I checked the trichromes and they were T-d off and all milky white. I will wait a few more weeks for the remaining plants. The goal is to have a couple plants at the beginning of the harvest window and harvest the rest when they are more mature and ripe. The 2 plants I harvested were the bigger ones and each yielded about a pound each. One was the tall purple nug plant and the other was the bushy one. The shorter one smelled like gas once you got all the flowers bundled together, definitely can smell the sour diesel in the genetics. The tall purple one also smelled gassy, but also fruity. I would describe it as a mango/orange smoothie kind of fruity aroma. I didn't get a lot of popcorn and even the smallest nugs looked at least like a grams worth. The bud was sticky and gave a lot of finger hash. The leaves also looked packed with trichromes so I will save them for making medicine. The plants didn't grow as tall as I expected. I've honestly had indicas grow bigger, but the quality of the herb is there. Next time I will start these seeds earlier in the year to get bigger plants. I started them in May, but usually start my seeds in late March to get the roots to develop earlier. Usually they get stunted in height when you start them early, but the roots are developing. Once they take off, they tend to grow bigger because they already have an established root system. IMO BTW. The DRY. I placed the nugs in one of those multi-level mesh containers for drying. I used the top three levels. They started off displaying around 85% humidity on the first day and on the third day are now down to 68% humidity at 76°F. They are not moldy. I handle them once daily so they don't flatten out too much on one side. This is the down side of using this type of drying technique. By the fourth or fifth day, they should be ready to start jarring. I've left them longer in the past, but they start getting really dry if you leave them in the mesh too long. Smells like it's going to be at least a two to three month cure to get that smell out, but the one I already had curing from 2 weeks ago is already smokeable. We will see how good it gets by the end of the year. I can't wait to see how the remaining plants turn out. I will let them go as far as I can to see how the smoke differs from the early and the late harvest. Sativa dominant genetics should go at least another month, but I will start with the let's check in 2 weeks rule. Thanks to everyone following. This has been a great year for growing.