First grow - Easy Ryders under CFLs in soil

[enonumus]

Well I finally harvested Sarah last night on day 79 from seed. Took forever to trim her up, but I'm probably really anal about trying to get rid of all the leaves but save the maximum amount of bud. All said and done she was right about 100g wet, so that will probably dry to a good 3/4 of an Oz. I'll get around to posting pics of her and Amber post-harvest later.

That just leaves Scarlett, Stella and Jennifer, the 3 large pheno Easy Ryders. Although the plants are larger though they probably aren't going to produce as much bud as Sarah and Tiffany did. Scarlett and Stella are looking really, really sad in terms of leaves, just hope they survive til harvest. Jennifer still has a good number of leaves. I'd say they're all between 10 days and 2 weeks from harvest, which will put them around day 85-90 from seed, crazy.

 

[bobhamm]

well done! thats a good amount from the smaller one... I wonder if the genetics of ER are having some issues... seems ike all the er grows from last year and before most were the standard pheno, at 72 days or even earlier.... all the newer ones seem to have a lot of the 90 day pheno, I had 2 out of 2

 

[inked]

hey mate, glad i found a thread with someone groing easyryder...i'm doing the same and am roughly 6 weeks in from seed. Mine are under 1800 watts of HPS tho lol some are over 3ft tall...check it out in my sig, peace

 

[inked]

p.s the Easyryder grow starts on page 13

 

[marlboro05]

Good job. Keep on trying. Want to see your second one. What strain are you thinking of doing?

 

[enonumus]

hey mate, glad i found a thread with someone groing easyryder...i'm doing the same and am roughly 6 weeks in from seed. Mine are under 1800 watts of HPS tho lol some are over 3ft tall...check it out in my sig, peace

hey mate, glad i found a thread with someone groing easyryder...i'm doing the same and am roughly 6 weeks in from seed. Mine are under 1800 watts of HPS tho lol some are over 3ft tall...check it out in my sig, peace

Wow, that's some serious wattage! Don't want to see that electricity bill! Over 3 feet is pretty crazy for an Easy Ryder, definitely would have to be the larger phenotype. I've seen some upwards of 30" from soil, but I don't think I've seen any over 3 feet. Can't say I'm completely surprised though with that many lumens, and I'm sure you have them in good sized pots. I'll check out your grow, hope everything goes well!

p.s the Easyryder grow starts on page 13

Thanks

Good job. Keep on trying. Want to see your second one. What strain are you thinking of doing?

Thanks. Um, I have several autoflower seeds already purchased in addition to about a dozen freebies, and I'm just waiting for my first grow to wrap up. I'm going to grow no more than 4 plants this time, and it's going to be another autoflower grow (my next grow will probably be photoperiod). Not 100% sure which 4 I'm going to grow yet, but they'll be selected from this list: Afghan Kush Ryder, Red Dwarf, Blue Himalaya Diesel, and either Sweet Dwarf or Snowryder. I'll have to do more research before I decide which one will get nixed from this grow, but I carefully selected all of these strains so I expect I'll be happy no matter what. Who knows, one of these might not germ or something, so it's good to have a backup seed anyway.

 

[enonumus]

Quick update: Scarlett was just flushed for the 2nd or 3rd time, and I just put her into darkness. I'll harvest her either Monday night or Tuesday sometime. Really disappointed with how she turned out, the loss of all the leaves DEFINITELY dealt a serious blow to her bud growth, which all but halted in the last 30 days. The stems are all a very light colored green, bordering on yellowish, and the plant looks really sad. Still, it's going to yield probably around 1/2 an oz give or take.

Stella, who's basically the mirror image of Scarlett, will get a final flush in a couple days and will get harvested at the end of the week. I expect she'll yield slightly more than Scarlett. My 6th and final plant, Jennifer, is looking pretty decent. Visually she's a 50/50 cross it seems between the large phenotype Easy Ryder and the small pheno. She still has, or at least had until a few days ago, a good portion of her leaves and they were a very nice shade of green still, but they're at the point where they're now yellowing and dying as part of the normal cycle. I'll probably flush her on Friday and harvest her on Sunday, and I expect betwen 1/2 to 3/4 of an oz.

It's now been between 1 to 3 weeks since I harvested my first 3 plants, Tiffany, Sarah, and Amber. They've all been dried and curing for some time now, and they've definitely reached their final weights. Final yield was: Sarah - 21.5g, Tiffany - 15.2g, and Amber - 9.1g. Amber's buds (auto Onyx) were incredibly hard and compact, as opposed to Sarah's and Tif's (Easy Ryders), which weren't all that tight or compact. That could have something to do with how Amber developed, since she was extremely heat stunted and basically didn't have a veg stage, so all of her bud was formed in a very, very small space.

 

[thermol]

Good job on the grow and thanks for the updates on the yield. I can't wait to watch your next grow.

 

[sonar]

Nice job on the grow man. Any new pics? How's the smoke? I thought the tall phenos had sort of a fruity smell and taste.

BTW if you are taking votes on what to grow next, I cast mine for Sweet Dwarf
I don't see many people growing Advanced Seeds gear. I grew their Low Girl this summer and curious to see what Sweet Dwarf is like.

 

[enonumus]

Thanks Sonar and Thermol. I've actually been taking pics before and after harvesting each plant, I just haven't been able to motivate myself to edit them and put them up. I don't do anything unless I do it right lol, so before I put up any pics I have to bring them into photoshop, optimize the colors, size and sharpness, and save them out. Basically they all look identical to Tiffany's pics after harvest, and the plants all look pretty horrible just before harvest because they don't have any leaves, which makes it that much harder to get motivated about putting up pics of plants that look terrible lol.

Both phenos definitely have a fruity sort of smell to be sure. My biggest disappointment about this whole endeavor has been the smell of the bud after drying and curing. While they were growing, especially during the first 4-6 weeks of flowering, the Easy Ryders had an incredibly powerful skunky smell, the kid of smell every pot smoker loves , but that smell faded dramatically in the final weeks. By the time the girls were harvested, dried, and cured, they basically had none of that skunky smell, and instead had a sort of slightly pungent, fruity kind of smell. You can tell it's pot, but it isn't my idea of what really great bud smells like. Still haven't smoked any yet, I'm letting it cure good and I still have a supply of chronic I'm working through, so I'm not rushed.

As far as my next grow, I'll take the sweet dwarf vote into account. It's actually lowest on my list, mostly because of the pics I've seen, but I haven't made up my mind or anything so we'll see what happens.


OK, on to today's news, and the reason I logged in... I chopped and harvested Scarlett tonight, on day 84 from seed. I took before and after pics, but as usual I'm procrastinating about putting them up. I promise I'll put up all the before and after pics from each of my girls at some point though. Final wet weight, with a lot of stems, was 90 grams.

My experience so far has been that the dry, de-stemmed weight of all my plants has wound up about 20% of the wet weight with stems left on for hanging. As such I'm expecting Scarlett to come in somewhere around 18 grams dry. I've been projecting between 1/2 and 3/4 of an Oz. from all of my plants (except Amber who I projected about 1/4 oz), and so far I've been right on the money. I expect similar results from my final two girls, Stella and Jennifer, both of which are going to get harvested Saturday or Sunday.

 

[enonumus]

Day 87 from seed and I just flushed Stella for the 3rd time and put her in the dark. I'll be harvesting her tomorrow night after about 36 hours of darkness, on day 88 from seed. I prefer to do 48 hours in the dark, and she actually still has a pretty fair amount of new bud growth so she could have gone another week probably, but I have company coming Sunday or Monday and staying through Thanksgiving so she has to be harvested tomorrow night.

I'm going to flush my 6th and final plant (Jennifer) later today, then she'll be going into the dark too. I'll be harvesting her tomorrow night or early Sunday morning, day 89 from seed, right after I harvest Stella. That will complete my first grow!

All of my plants except Amber have yielded between 1/2 and 3/4 of an oz. (about 18-19 grams average), which isn't as much as I was anticipating when I started my grow, but it's what I've been expecting for the last 6+ weeks so I'm happy. All told I figure I'll probably wind up with about 105 grams dried and cured, maybe a little more, which is just a little shy of a quarter pound of what should be some really great bud. I'd definitely call that a success .

Oh one last thing... I had complained about how I'd dried Tiffany too much, even though I only hung her for about 3-4 days and put her in a bag for another day. I know the best thing you can do to re-hydrate bud that's too dry is to throw one or more nice healthy fan leaves in a jar with it, but of course I haven't had any fan leaves at all for weeks, much less nice healthy ones. I opted to try another method I'd heard about, which is to put a nice piece of lettuce in there. I left the piece in there for around 14 hours or so, and when I checked the jar the bud was MUCH better, not dry and brittle anymore but not wet or anything. I removed the lettuce, but of course the only downside is that there's a slight smell of lettuce in the jar and on the bud now. I can live with that though because the bud didn't have a great smell anyway, and I'm sure that smell will dissipate in short order. The important thing is that the bud isn't ultra dry and brittle, and of course it won't affect the quality of the high.

 

[Aspyre]

A quarter pound! Not bad at all! Did the smell improve at all? I cut, dried, and cured a very small bud... and it smells a little like hay.

So just to get something clear: you started flushing 2 weeks before harvest, you flushed 3 times total, and then put in darkness for 2-3 days after the final flush? Entering my final phase (NPI), in the next few days, and want to use a method that i know will work. Your detailed journal has been a life saver. Thanks E!

 

[enonumus]

A quarter pound! Not bad at all! Did the smell improve at all? I cut, dried, and cured a very small bud... and it smells a little like hay.

So just to get something clear: you started flushing 2 weeks before harvest, you flushed 3 times total, and then put in darkness for 2-3 days after the final flush? Entering my final phase (NPI), in the next few days, and want to use a method that i know will work. Your detailed journal has been a life saver. Thanks E!

The smell is a little different for each of the plants that I've harvested. Scarlett still smelled a little skunky after I harvested her, even after I had let her dry for about 36 hours and I was trimming it down to the buds, but now that it's dried for a few days it really doesn't have any of that skunky smell anymore. I guess they smell a little bit like hay, but not like they're bad or moldy or anything, just not the smell normally associated with good bud. I can't imagine what I could possibly do differently that would affect the smell of the final product, I can only assume that it's just the strain.

Yeah, my procedure has been to flush the plants at least twice before harvesting. Starting at least a week before removing from light, preferably 10-14 days before. You flush really good with water the first time, then put her back in the light until the soil is ready for water again (probably will take 5 to 7 days), then flush her again. If your plant is ready for harvest, then move it directly into darkness and keep it there for 2-3 days ideally. If it's not ready, put it back in the light and repeat the process when it's ready for water. Bottom line is that you want to flush at least twice before harvesting, ideally over a period of a couple weeks, and you want to go straight into darkness after flushing the final time so that the plant doesn't absorb any nutrients.

I let my plants stay in the dark for 2-3 days usually, then I trim the plant as much as possible while it's still in the pot (a luxury of growing a small auto). The reason I like to do that is because it's a little easier to trim imo when I don't have to use one hand to hold the branch, and because the bud doesn't start drying out immediately if you trim while it's still on the plant. I use surgical gloves to keep from getting a mess all over my hands, and I try not to touch the bud anymore than I have to as I'm trimming, because it degrades the quality.

After I've removed all the leaves, and trimmed it down to where I want it, I go ahead and cut the branches, tie them all to a hanger, and then I hang it up to dry. I let it dry for about 36 hours, then 24 hours in a paper bag, then into a jar to cure. I live in So-Cal where the RH is very low, and it's always warm in my house, so the bud seems to dry very fast. You might want to let your bud hang a little longer than I do depending on where you live.

That's about it. Hope the grow turns out well!

 

[enonumus]

Ok, I know it's been a long time coming but I'm finally getting around to posting harvest pics, weight totals, and a 2nd hand smoke report since I'm not smoking currently. All 6 of my autoflowering plants (5 Easy Ryders and 1 Onyx) have been harvested, thoroughly de-stemmed and de-leafed, dried, and cured. All weight totals reflect pure, dry, smokeable bud. I weighed some of my plants wet but not all of them. The wet weights that I have I will post next to the dry weight, so people can get a good feel for how much their weight will drop after drying. My wet weights would actually be higher I'm sure if I'd weighed each branch immediately after I cut it, but I didn't weigh anything until the whole plant was trimmed and chopped, and the bud starts to dry very fast once its cut.

One last thing, you might notice that I actually trimmed the plants while they were still in the soil. I did that for a variety of reasons, but I just wanted to point it out so people didn't wonder why the heck the plants looked so bare even though they hadn't been chopped yet lol. And now, without further adieu...

Tiffany(Easy Ryder) - Harvested day 70 from seed (15.5 grams dry)


Sarah(Easy Ryder) - Harvested day day 80 from seed (100 grams wet, 20.5 grams dry)


Amber(Onyx) - Harvested day 70 from seed (Severely heat stunted about day 14, only 9.5 grams dry)


Scarlett(Easy Ryder) - Harvested day 85 from seed (90 grams wet, 21.5 grams dry)


Stella(Easy Ryder) - Harvested day 89 from seed (27 grams dry) (already trimmed in these pics)


Jennifer (Easy Ryder) - Harvested day 90 from seed (31 grams dry) (already trimmed in these pics)


Total dry weight = roughly 125 grams! That's about 1/4 lb. plus 12 grams, so I'm definitely not complaining .

I'm not overly impressed with the smell of any of these plants once they were dried and cured. My last plant that I harvested, Jennifer, has the best smell of all, and is the only one that I find "enjoyable" to smell. The rest of my Easy Ryders mostly have a sort of slight hay and general MJ smell to them, nothing bad or offensive, definitely not moldy, just not the kind of bud that you can't wait to open up and smell. Gone is the wonderfully pungent skunky smell that they had at the peak of their flowering stage, which is disappointing.

My Onyx has a very strong smell to it, but it's totally indescribable. It definitely doesn't smell like hay or anything like that, it's a very strong and biting smell, not one that I enjoy actually. Imagine smelling a strong spice that really assaults the senses. It's something like that, but with a general MJ odor to it. My Onyx wasn't normal of course, for reasons I've mentioned repeatedly, so I can't say if this is a normal smell for this strain or not.

As far as a smoke report goes, I'm on the wagon currently, and only a very little bit has been smoked so far, so I can only provide early second hand smoke reports. I've been curing each of my plants in individual jars from the moment they were harvested, so the smoke should get smoother and smoother as time goes by. Only 2 of my plants have been smoked so far, Amber (my Onyx), and Tiffany (my first Easy Ryder to be harvested). I was going for a heavy Indica couchlock effect, and by all accounts I've achieved it .

The person that smoked it suffers from severe insomnia and chronic neuropathic pain. Not only did it get them very stoned, but it dramatically helped their pain and definitely helped them sleep. I was told that it was definitely harsher than the chronic I've bought at a local pharmacy, but that person doesn't smoke much at all and hadn't smoked for at least a month, so I take it with a little grain of salt. However, it wouldn't surprise me at all if my bud was harsher than $50 an eighth stuff that was grown professionally, especially since this was my first grow, and the bud has only been curing for a couple weeks.

So to sum up... It appears that all of my bud is VERY stoney, and great for medical use which is primarily why I grew it. I'm not disappointed with the harvested amount at all, although I did anticipate somewhat higher numbers when I set out on this project. This has been fun and rewarding to be sure, especially in the first month or so when you can see changes and growth every single day, but it's also been a LOT of work! In fact I never imagined that it would be so much work growing 6 small plants. Harvesting them alone was one major pain in the butt, and on average took about 5 hours per plant to trim, chop, and hang the branches, plus another hours or so to de-stem each plant after they had dried for a day or two. My shoulders were killing me by the time I finished trimming each plant, it's VERY tedious!

I've already bought more seeds and I'm definitely going to grow again, but I'm not going to grow more than 4 plants next time, maybe 3. I'm going to wait until right after XMAS probably, since we'll have company over for the holidays. I'll post here in this thread when I begin, and I'll start a new thread just for that grow. Not going to take quite as many pics in the early stages next time, but I'll try to take a little more in the later stages. I pretty much stopped taking pics when my plants started losing all of their fan leaves after 30-40 days.

Thanks to everyone that has followed my grow, I hope all of my time and effort helped a few people out there in some small way. Stay tuned for my next grow!

 

[sonar]

Nice job and excellent report man. Yeah trimming can be quite tedious. It's awesome the first time you do it, but gets old REALLY fast, lol. Keep us posted on the next grow. Is that going to be with the new LED light?

 

[enonumus]

Nice job and excellent report man. Yeah trimming can be quite tedious. It's awesome the first time you do it, but gets old REALLY fast, lol. Keep us posted on the next grow. Is that going to be with the new LED light?

Thanks. I don't know how in depth other people get with their trimming, but I literally tried to remove each sugar leaf entirely whenever possible, rather than just trimming flat along the side of the bud, leaving a lot of leaf buried inside. VERY tedious, but the result is as close to pure bud as I could possibly get. I also tried to preserve as much bud as physically possible when I trimmed, which slows things down. I'm sure when someone is harvesting a much larger quantity they're not nearly as anal as I was with my 6 small plants, especially if they're trimming for someone else.

I'm actually returning the LED because it was allegedly an RMA model sent to me by mistake. They sent me a UPS return label, and I decided I'm just going to just get a refund on it for now. I had some unexpected car expenses come up RIGHT after I bought the light, and between that and that holidays I think I'd rather save the money for now and wait and see how yours and the other guy's lights do over the next several weeks. I figure I'm going to use CFL for the first couple weeks anyway, and I'm not going to start my grow until after XMAS sometime, so there's no point in buying the LED right now and have it just sit around using up my 90 day satisfaction guarantee. I'll see how you guys like it, and if it works as well as it claims I'll probably buy a new one about a week or so after I start my next grow, sometime in early January. I haven't bought the grow tent either yet. I'll use my homemade grow box to start my plants, just like I did with this grow, and if I decide to go with the LED I'll transfer everything to a tent 2-4 weeks into the grow.

Thanks for following my grow, let me know occasionally how that light is working for you, I'm very anxious to know.

 

[Aspyre]

Amazing E! Great job on a successful first grow. The buds look tasty. Too bad about the taste, but at least the smoke gets the job done. Thanks for taking the time to do this journal; it's helped me a bunch.

 

[sonar]

Well I actually cancelled my order a day or two later. Similar to your situation, I didn't think it was the best idea dropping that kind of money on a light right now. I figure the best thing to do is work at paying off some of my college debt and save some money to eventually move. I love growing, but It's going to have to wait I think.

Yeah I'm pretty anal on my trimming too. The ER weren't as bad, but my bigger plant, (3-4oz worth) took me a good 8 hours to trim. I cut the sugar leaves depending on how thick they were and how much resin they had. That was the biggest problem with the small pheno ER. The sugar leaves were absolutely covered in resin, but they were really thick. By the time I got done trimming the small pheno, there wasn't a whole lot left. There must be different variations of the "big" pheno because the 2 I had smelled pretty good after drying/curing. Had kind of a hard to describe skunky sweet smell even at the end of the jar. The small plant on the other hand had that "slight hay general MJ" smell like you were talking about, but as it cured a little bit of mint came out.

Anyway, congrats on the grow! It's been fun to watch and the journal is very informative.

 

[enonumus]

Amazing E! Great job on a successful first grow. The buds look tasty. Too bad about the taste, but at least the smoke gets the job done. Thanks for taking the time to do this journal; it's helped me a bunch.

Thanks. Heck, the way I see it, it was a miracle that I even germinated and sprouted 6 seeds out of 6, much less grew all 6 of them to maturity and produced some very stoney bud, in pretty decent quantities considering my pots were only (mistakenly) about 1 gallon. I take the harshness report with a big grain of salt, because the person that's smoked it has barely smoked any bud at all in their entire lives until very recently, and they always complain about everything being harsh. Unfortunately I'm just not smoking right now so I can't give a personal report, but as soon as I do I'll post my feedback.

Well I actually cancelled my order a day or two later. Similar to your situation, I didn't think it was the best idea dropping that kind of money on a light right now. I figure the best thing to do is work at paying off some of my college debt and save some money to eventually move. I love growing, but It's going to have to wait I think.

Yeah I'm pretty anal on my trimming too. The ER weren't as bad, but my bigger plant, (3-4oz worth) took me a good 8 hours to trim. I cut the sugar leaves depending on how thick they were and how much resin they had. That was the biggest problem with the small pheno ER. The sugar leaves were absolutely covered in resin, but they were really thick. By the time I got done trimming the small pheno, there wasn't a whole lot left. There must be different variations of the "big" pheno because the 2 I had smelled pretty good after drying/curing. Had kind of a hard to describe skunky sweet smell even at the end of the jar. The small plant on the other hand had that "slight hay general MJ" smell like you were talking about, but as it cured a little bit of mint came out.

Anyway, congrats on the grow! It's been fun to watch and the journal is very informative.

Sorry to hear you changed your mind about the light, but I understand. It's a lot of money, and there's just so much uncertainty surrounding LED. I may well buy another one, but I'll wait and see.

I agree about the pheno variations, and the different smells. It seemed like I had 3 phenotypes when all was said and done, and each pheno was distinctly different, including the final smell. The smaller phenos were covered in resin, and definitely had the slight MJ/hay smell to them. Although, I harvested Tiffany first so it was my guinea pig, and I dried her too much/too fast, so I put a piece of lettuce in the jar with the bud after it had gotten too dry. It worked perfectly, rehydrating the bud nicely, but it left a lettuce smell on it that hasn't gone away lol. Still smokes great, but it smells like a salad . Prior to that it had the same hay/mj smell that Sarah had, and both were the small, heavily resin'd phenos.

My two large phenos, Scarlett and Stella, had a better smell after drying and curing and they don't have that hay smell, but they don't smell skunky really. My 3rd pheno, Jennifer, seemed like a 50/50 cross between the two. She had more resin than that taller phenos, but less than the smaller ones, and she was right in the middle in terms of height. She's the one that smells the best, and there's definitely some of that skunky smell to her, although not super strong like I like. It's noteworthy that Jennifer was the only plant that was really still growing and had a lot of bright green leaves at the time of harvest. As I've mentioned repeatedly, I had a severe problem with my plants losing their leaves early on, and most of them were almost completely devoid of leaves by harvest time. Maybe they lost a lot of their smell as a result? The most important thing of course is the high, and in that department it seems like I was very successful, so it's all good. I wish the smell matched the quality of the high, but hey, for a first grow who am I to complain?

Anyway, thanks again for following my grow and chiming in!

 

[Nice Ol Bud]

Those look so damn good.
Great Harvest!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!