Aside from the feeding and watering we’ve already discussed, there are several tasks that should be done on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Use a calendar to keep track of feeding schedules and other information, such as breeding characteristics or individual plant health. Use plant tags that you stick into the soil to assign plant names or numbers to the plants in order to keep track of different species. The following checklist will help you keep track of tasks until you check them automatically.
DAILY
• Pick off any dead growth on plants
• Look for insect damage on plants, or insects around lights or in the room
• Look for signs of fertilizer damage on plants
• Check room temperature and humidity
• Check soil moisture
WEEKLY
• Check pH in water reservoir and adjust if necessary
• Stake plants with bamboo and bend tips if they are growing tall
• Rotate plants around the room so they get the desired amount of light
MONTHLY
• Check vent timers and light timers to ensure they’re working properly
• Re-check timers if any adjustments are made
• Test pH and salts pens to ensure accuracy
• Test salts and pH levels in soil with a slurry solution
• Check air conditioning filters for dust build-up and clean as required
• Empty air conditioning water reservoir if necessary
• Turn off lamps, let them cool, and clean lamps and vented hood glass with vinegar and water or glass cleaner
• Vacuum and wash floors of grow room
BIANNUALLY
• Change all lightbulbs
ANNUALLY
• Change charcoal filters
• Buy new pH and salts testing solutions
• Change batteries in pH pen and salts pen
• Buy new hormone rooting powder
4
REAPING Your
HARVEST
Turnaround Time
Harvest time is also called turnaround time, since it’s when one crop comes to an end and a new crop begins. As I’ve explained, every two months you’ll need to rotate your plants: harvesting plants finished their budding phase, transplanting vegetative plants to the budding room, and cloning new plants. Here are the basic steps for that important transition:
1. Cut plants for harvest and hang to dry or begin curing process (read on for details).
2. Empty soil medium and drainage rocks from five-gallon pots into trash bag for disposal.
3. Flush the lava rock residue remaining in the plant pots in the yard or garage (to avoid clogging drains).
4. Sterilize containers with a water and bleach solution of about one cup of bleach per two gallons of water.
5. Add about 2” of fresh drainage rocks to sterilized five-gallon containers, then fill containers halfway with fresh soilless mix.
6. Transplant vegetative plants to large containers, and then fill pots with soilless mix to about 2” below the rim. Follow these steps again for one-gallon vegetative containers to prepare them for new clones.
Sterilization between crops is crucial. You can break that rule a few times and get away with it, but if you don’t sterilize your plant containers and tools between every crop you risk getting a virus or disease or pest that can destroy your entire harvest — all because you were too lazy or undisciplined to follow the correct protocols.
Harvesting Cannabis
Once the cannabis plant is ready for harvest, it must be cut down and dried. The time to harvest plants is when the buds become full and sticky with resin. If the top buds feel hard when you squeeze them, instead of soft and pliable, they are ready for harvest. (Don’t squeeze them too often because it damages the white hairs and THC glands and retards bud development.) Do not try squeezing lower buds because they often seem soft even when the plant is mature. Another sign of a mature cannabis plant is when the white hairs that split out of the flower pods turn red or brown. For the best view of the resin glands/crystals, use a 15-power magnifying glass. Resin glands start as pointed capitates, like a stiletto, and when the glands are mature they will develop fat heads. The heads are a clear transparent color when juvenile and turn cloudy or opaque when fully mature or overripe. Harvest when the majority of resin glands are still clear to obtain perfectly developed buds. Practice all of these methods for timing your harvest, and of course use your nose to smell the delightful scent of a mature cannabis flower/bud. If the plant is mature in all of the above tests and there is no scent, you have probably waited too long to harvest.
If you remember from the beginning of this book, it is resin glands or crystals that you are growing, not the plant material itself. Any part of the plant with a heavy coating of crystals is the part you want to keep. Usually just the buds are taken but there is some smokable crystal that can be harvested from associated leaf that surrounds the buds. Any green parts that don’t have crystals should be trimmed off and discarded. Those parts of the plant offer no THC, and they make the buds taste bitter when smoked.
Cutting your plants is the stinkiest time of all, so if you are concerned about odors you must compensate for them. You can use aerosol deodorizers or put some fabric softener sheets in the dryer. Brew some coffee. Bake some bread. Fry up some bacon. Do anything you can to mitigate the smell of freshly cut skunk weed. If you have properly sealed and vented your grow room, it is an excellent place to cut up your weed. The smells will stay in the room and be vented through a carbon filter or ozone generator to your catch basin, be it a chimney, garage, attic, window, or whatever. Whether you are cutting a large amount or a small amount of herb, pick your time well so that no one comes to your front door. If someone does, don’t answer it.
Here are the basic steps to drying your weed:
1. Remove all of the buds from the plant.
2. Trim each branch and remove excess green leaf from the buds.
3. Crisscross wires over your hooded lamp reflectors and hang the buds on the wires, or hang a screen horizontally over the lamp hoods and lay the buds on the screen.
4. Leave the weed to dry for a minimum of three to four days. In about seven days, the buds will begin to taste better. In 10 days, they can be stored in a baggie, although a glass jar is better for long-term storage.
Purists say you should dry your plants with the leaves on and trim the plants only after they are dry. But that is messy and in my opinion not worth the effort; I have never been able to taste any difference in drying plants this way if the buds were of good quality to start with.
Curing Your Buds
While you can smoke your bud with a basic drying method, to get the best out of your plant, you should also cure it. Cured buds taste smoother and milder than dried buds, and they are preferred by cannabis aficionados.
To cure your weed:
1. Follow the regular steps for drying your bud.