Backyard grow

Grow and dry now completed.  Now comes the easy part, curing and then the fun part....smoking it. 1.4kg of wet weight once trimmed, leaving most of the stems attached. 240 grams once dried and manicured further.   Basically I managed to partially fill two 3 liter jars with good bud and a smaller 1 liter mason jar of shit bud, to be used for either Tincture or E-liquid plus a nice little ball of hash from the scissors.  I didn’t bother doing anything with the trim and in the bin it went.  Maybe a little wasteful but to be honest I have got way more than I need so really didn’t need to worry about it. Now considering this plant was less than a meter in height I’m pretty happy with the return.  At approximately 10 weeks into the grow she was getting way too big, so ended up cutting the top 1/3 of the plant.  This is something not recommended I realize but as this was a stealth grow, from the coppers, my neighbours and more importantly from the wife and teenage kids I had no other option.  So short and fat, and more importantly out of site she was for the entirety of the grow. Alot of time was spent training the plant, and also keeping the plant out of sight. As she was stealth, and I couldn’t care for her when the wife and kids were around I did all my maintenance during my lunch breaks from work and only watered early in the morning when no one was up.  I guess I am lucky working so close to home otherwise she wasn’t going to get much love at all.  But plenty of TLC I gave her and she gave me the expected rewards.  Once this COVID-19 lockdown is over I will at least be able to go back to my old ways of being social again with people in the office during my lunch breaks instead of going home most days to garden. Happy to say an issue free grow this was.  No bugs until late into the grow, when tiny bud eating caterpillars took hold.  I hand picked whenever I found them however there was no stopping them from turning a few buds into mush.  Lucky they only liked the shitty undergrowth buds so at most a few grams were lost as a result.    When harvesting I found one nice big bud with serious rot.  I have been moving her undercover when raining for the last 3 weeks, if it wasn’t for this it could’ve been alot worse as things really got cold and wet when finishing her off. Drying took 6 days to complete.  I was drying on a herb drying rack in my grow tent which is stored in my tin garden shed, things got really cold for 3 days with temps below 15c which really slowed the dry.  I had plenty of air moving around so she’s dried nicely anyhow.  The stems aren’t quite snapping as yet so I could’ve dried longer, so I will need to check constantly and air frequently for the next week and will then will use bodeva packs while finishing the cure.   Unfortunately really cold and wet weather is on the way again from tomorrow and drying further in a cold shed may be impossible. As far as the quality of the buds, very sweet sticky and solid they are.  I am still vaping a bud I picked 3 weeks prior to harvesting and it is really nice with true FUBAR potential.  What I’ve harvested is only going to have even better potential .  It was dried better, will be cured well and was harvested once ripe. Well sort of ripe I as I would've loved to have left it a little longer, but I suspect further issues would've been experienced with buy a and bud rot. Overall I couldn’t be happier with this grow.  Achieved a good return, but most importantly without my wife or teenage kids realizing I was growing.  As I’m lucky to vape a little over a gram most weeks I will now need to offload some of it to mates or otherwise prepare for long term storage once cured.  I was thinking of using a couple of ounces for e-liquid, a couple for ounces for tincture and will still end up with over 4 ounces to vape.  If I don’t give some of it away it will last me 3 years at least, something I don’t want as then I will have no excuse to grow again.  Yes, I think I enjoy the growing aspect as much as I enjoy consuming the product. Last time I had a big grow I vacuumed sealed and refrigerated and stored for several years which worked, so may do the same again.  When it’s your own smoke pristine looking buds aren’t really high on the agenda, once vacuumed sealed they will become little bricks that’s for sure. Oh well, signing off on this grow now.  It’s been fun.  My original intention was to do a few indoor autos later this year but may now put that on hold till next year, or year after that or after that. Thanks for all of you who have commented, liked or followed this grow.