September 25 > Harvest at dawn for the big girl. The usual routine... except I shot a time-lapse video this time to play with the camera I won last year. Clipped the top buds first - then the base. Took me 2 hours to wash all that -rinse - repeat. ---------------------------------------- Well this was an interesting summer with this pair of girls. I learned that I don't really need a container larger than 10 gallons in order to grow very large plants (in my neck of the woods anyway). Now when I say large I mean how much space they take up on my patio. I'm allowed to grow 6 legally but 4 eats up pretty much the whole patio. And the reality is I don't need to grow plants that large. The outdoor yield will last well into next year for me and everybody I know. So next summer I plan to do much more serious pruning to limit the scope and shape of the girls I grow outdoors. I also learned that I don't need an inverted tomato cage style support if my container is larger than 5 gallons. The Durban I grew last summer was in a 5 gallon container and there's not enough weight in there to keep her grounded. Once up to 10 gallons you won't want to lift the container much and there's enough weight in there to keep things stable. At the moment I've listed 450g as a dry weight for both plants (updated to 458g final). I haven't actually weighed the 2nd plant yet and won't even trim her for about a week or so (I'll be back to update diary). The first girl came in at 235 grams. I got pretty ruthless throwing away small budlets and trim this morning as it took me 4 hours to take this big girl down and wash her up. That's only because I spent half a day yesterday trimming Cream & Cheese and moving Northern Lights around... and it's been over 95 degrees both days... so I'm ready for a rest. Cannabis harvesting is not easy labor. Diary note > There was a software malfunction a week or so back and I was unable to add a new flowering week, whereupon it was determined there was a limit of 26 weeks at that time... so I didn't add any more weeks after that until the harvest week. When I added the harvest week, it appears the malfunction had been corrected because I COULD HAVE added a new flowering week at that time. I think there's only a week missing. Differences can be noted with dates on the photos. If I had a problem this summer it's because I was too anxious to get going after a long winter nursing shoulder surgery and I didn't pay proper attention to the lighting ramifications when the instructions were there for me, and subsequently started too early. Next year I plan for an early crop of auto flowers to keep me occupied until the proper time for a regular crop. --------------------------------------- September 30 > Trimming and processing complete. I really manhandled the big girl with the Trimbag, largely because I knew I was gonna have a pound of herb on my hands (way more than I will personally consume) and I wanted to minimize my hand trimming. So when I say manhandled here, I mean I ran it through the process TWICE, using about 40 rotations/spins each time. It probably would have helped to be a tad drier, but we're entering a cool spell now and we've run out of time. Mother Nature has decided to turn off the heater... which has turned my Purple Berry Kush a nice shade of purple... but that's tomorrow mornings's harvest... <sigh>... anyway... where was I... oh yeah... AMNESIA... <hehe> Trimbag generated trim on 1st pass = 217 g Trimbag generated trim on 2nd pass = 90 g Trim generated by hand after that = 186 g Final bud weight for big girl = 223 g Clearly, comparing weight of trim generated by hand vs by the Trimbag here you can see the result of my "manhandling". Little girl was in a 10 gallon pot and generated 235 g buds and 360 g trim. Big girl was in a 15 gallon pot and generated 223 g buds and 493 g trim. Final total bud weight 458 grams for both plants. Hope anybody following along learned something this summer. I did. 😎 The trick is to not make the same mistake twice. That's kinda why we're all here. Kinda. ✊