8 Week Cure - Black ASH Harsh Weed - Hard lesson learned

Put one of these fat cola's to your nose and it smells absolutely like NOTHING or Hay - Some buds when squeezed have some small amount of dank smell.

FACTS:

BIG BUDDHA CHEESE completely de-leafed and de-stemmed and dried for 4 days on a hanging drying net. BUD cured for 8 weeks slowly in jars - no mold - almost dry - see pics of my dried tops. I opened jars every day and watched moisture levels with hygrometers.

During grow - Fertilized them 1300 -1500 ppm daily during flowering until 7 days prior to harvest of tops.

Smartpots and high airflow through tent allowed for aggressive watering and feeding. Used Botanicare line during entire grow - Calmag, Pureblend pro grow / bloom - and also Liquid KARMA Also used Humboldt - PurpleMAX

Bud has been curing for 8+ weeks. I'm at 52-54% humidity in the jars now.

Currently - Bud tastes like fucking shit - caustic - horrible - NO WHITE ASH - BLACK TAR CAUSTIC CANCEROUS SHIT - WHEN I TRY TO SMOKE IT. - NIGHTMARE - tastes like smoking charcoal.

Some HASH I made with dry ice tastes OK - it does get you very high... but there is till a carbon like taste to the smoke and irritates the hell out of my nasal passages

I think I'm fucked. I learned a really hard lesson here. I fertilized DAILY during flowering at about 1300 - 1500 ppm in soil. BAD IDEA.
The plants loved it and LOOKED AWESOME and I flushed well ( 9 gallons of water per 3 gallon pot ) 7 days before the first harvest of the tops..

I truely believe that it was OVER FEEDING my plants that caused this problem. READ HERE: Beautiful Buds » Indoor Marijuana Cultivation

So what are my choices ?

1) Throw in jars for 2 months and not open .. hope things change.
2) Throw the shit in Garbage Disposal -
3) Make a shit ton of hash - hope it mellows -if not.. make a shit load of hash butter.
4) Try a sample water cure

Feedback Welcomed

It's kind of hard to see on the pics but it looks like your buds aren't well.
Are you sure you cured correctly?
Mold is easy to detect if you snap the bud or the stem it will puff out smoke like pollen / dust.


I don't think you overfed them tbh, it sounds like you used proper measurements.
1300 - 1500 ppm sounds like a lot but it could be just fine for mature plants if you use the correct EC calculation.
Do you know which one you use?

There are differences between the methods:

You missed the cure and over dried before jaring.

Happens to all of us, nothing you can do this time. when I jar the RH is 70% + I slowly bring it down to 62%.

It is far better to jar too early than too late.

FWIW does not effect potency

The buds look fabulous though.

I've seen arguments all over the net regarding how long to feed. One side say right upbtil end, others say the plants should experience 'autumn'....

drfromby said:

BIG BUDDHA CHEESE completely de-leafed and de-stemmed and dried for 4 days on a hanging drying net.

Click to expand...

thats your problem right there. 4 days is much too fast of a dry. why rush if you are just gonna cure it for 8 weeks. the dry/cure process is really one process with two steps. if you fuck the first part up the second part does not really matter. ime a 7 day dry is the minimum you want for the chlorophyll and other compounds to be released in a slow dry. the best way to do this is to only trim off the larger fan leaves and then after the buds have dried, then trim all the sugar leaves off. also you dont want to feed every time you water in soil. salts build up and then when you think you are flushing it all out there is really a lot more buildup than you think. its looks nice though, should not be too hard to get rid of to the right person.

When I initially dried them on the nets they were crispy after 4 days on the outside when I jarred them. The RH did shoot up to 70%+ and I had to keep opening the jars for serveral hours per day to get them in that curing state of around 65-60% which they STAYED FOR 8 WEEKS ! Humidity finally dropped to about 58-60% after opening jars for about 1 hour per day at first and then 10-15 min every other day. So it was a long slow dry. BELIEVE ME - I studied very hard on this part. THIS IS WHY I AM PERPLEXED !

POSITIVE NO MOLD - POSITIVE - I HAVE BROKEN OPEN A SHIT LOAD OF BUDS.. THAT IS NOT THE ISSUE.

I used a Hanna Combo meter ! I'm going to let them mellow in jars for 4 more weeks without opening at all to see if I can get better results.. however the RH is not climbing much above 55% at this point - although if I leave them closed for a week or two - will be interesting to see how much moisture needs to be leached out. They may just need to ferment more - the BRIX levels are probably extremely high with the large doses of Humboldt Ginormous they were getting a the end - so more sugars probably need to be broken down. I have heard in a few cases that it's taken some 3-4 months in jars to get the right cure.

If things don't work out - I have the following options : Water Cure, Hash, Hash Butter, and vaporizing - which has been acceptable.
Combustion is just flat out disgusting at this juncture.

Thank you everyone !

I don't understand why it would taste that horrible if the drying and the nutes aren't the problem.
I mean I don't see any other way than a disease then and you say you have positive for no mold.

Some people do cure their bud for months (or years) and the taste and smell (even effect) can improve a lot.

I don't really see any other option than you harvested too late, but even that wouldn't produce unsmokeable bud, it would just be harsh?
When did you harvest, what did you trichs look like?

I too.. brother.. have no idea why this is the case. I'm an engineer by trade... I followed all the sticky instructions and read meticulously prior to this 1st grow. I too am a bit perplexed at this point - but willing to be a bit more patient - I have very high resolution photo's of pictures of the curing buds with my first post to this thread and when I look very close .. there still seems to be some green and swelling withing the bud.. so it just might be sugars that have just not broken down. Some of the dryer buds are starting to come alive.. meaning when I squeeze them - I get some skunky juicyfruit - some of the larger or less dry - squeeze it - nothing - HAY - I went 8 1/2 weeks and flushed heavily at 7 1/2 - The only thing I know I did.. was feed the hell out of these babies 1300-1500 ppm week 6-7 of flowering. Mostly Humboldt Ginormous and they sucked it up like candy and my buds looked like candy.

Regarding how the triches looked... - These pictures are 1 week prior to harvest when I flushed. They were getting mostly cloudy and the tops were pretty mature.. all of the pistols were extremely red and most had full retreated back into the bud when I did my first harvest. I harvested the top at 8 1/2 weeks and the bottom around 10 weeks - using plain water till final finish.

drfromby said:

When I initially dried them on the nets they were crispy after 4 days on the outside when I jarred them. The RH did shoot up to 70%+ and I had to keep opening the jars for serveral hours per day to get them in that curing state of around 65-60% which they STAYED FOR 8 WEEKS ! Humidity finally dropped to about 58-60% after opening jars for about 1 hour per day at first and then 10-15 min every other day. So it was a long slow dry. BELIEVE ME - I studied very hard on this part. THIS IS WHY I AM PERPLEXED !

Click to expand...

just because they are crispy on the outside does not mean they are ready to go into the jar. thats why the humidity jumps back up on you. at that point you should have taken them out to dry more. i like to manicure and jar my nugs when they snap of the branch cleanly without stringing. the buds should not have a hay smell when they go into a jar, if they do then they were dried too quickly.

1300-1500 isn't that uncommon mate.
I know people who use up to 1800 ppm during flowering.
It all depends on your setup and the plants size.

The best humidty for drying bud is around 45% - 55%.
Or you will, as said many times in this thread, get moist bud that might develop mold and other disease through curing.

It's hard to see mate, you need a microscope or loupe to see the trichs properly.
They look mostly cloudy to me (but the light could be tricking me, one needs a microscope or loupe to see the trichs properly and determine if they are clear, cloudy or amber), so you have not harvested "too" soon or "too" late.
I prefer cloudy myself.

I manicured right after harvest at it is easiest to do at that time - I felt that i had done a very good job drawing out the drying process - there were several times humidity was approaching 70 or 70 + and dumped out for several hours and then back into jars - ebb n flow - it took me about 1 week after first jaring - to not have to dump them out. They have been in jars - burped and slowly descended from 65% humidity to about 54-55% -
very very very very very very slowwwwly - did I say very very very slowwwwly - yeah .. I said that. - Again perplexed.

i think it maybe was overfed,black ash? sounds bad

How long did you flower that strain for bro? does it smell like pine cones when broken apart?

Sativa's and even Hybrids are commonly taken early and could be attributed to this.

I noticed the white pistils still bursting out of some of your nugs only reason I ask.

I flowered for about 8 and 1/2 weeks Big Buddha Cheese - and Blue Cheese.
Harvested tops first - then the bottoms at about 10 weeks.

I think i might have the answer for why this happened to your buds, but i'm sorry to say that i don't have a cure for what ails your buds...

Since you were feeding your plants every time you watered, yourgirls didn't have the necessary time to leech the nutes out of yhe soil, and then get a pure watering with just water to help rmove salts and other wastes that the plant will exert into the soil. Since this cycle of cleaning and feeding did not occur, i'm starting to see that your girls might have had too much waste, salt, and nutrient build up over time that was still residing once you harvested. Personally, i think stopping nutes around 2 weeks prior to harvest (and i say "around" 2 weeks because all plants differ with their harvest windows, you just have to feel out by what the plant is telling you when you're getting close to harvest. The other thing that i feel is needed is MULTIPLE flushes, about 3 in the last 2 weeks, to further rid all of the waste, salts, and nutes that are not only left in the soil, but left in the plant ITSELF! The reason for flushing is to force the plant to use up IT'S OWN nutrients that it stores in itself, because these nutrients will cause horrible aromas and weird smoking properties (such as the weird ash). So i'm thinking that since you fed your plants so much more nutes than usually called for (in a weekly point of view) that you would've also needed to flush them more than usuall what's is called for. And flushing only once at about a week and a half to your main part of your harvest probably wasn't nearly enought. So in tye end i believe that your buds were retaining too many nutrients and salts when harvested, and i've heard bad stories about how there's not much you can do to fix it unfortunately... . But i will let you know if i read up on anything you can do to help them. If not, i'd say your best move would be the hash!

Peace -Darwood

I'm on my first cure here, just harvested a few CFL plants. I threw my buds into jars after 4 days of drying as well. I had airier buds due to CFLs so I think that was sufficient to almost fully dry the nugs and just draw the moisture from the stem for the cure. If what Darwood says is true, I've been looking into a water cure that might actually fix your problem. Apparently if you use RO water or distilled water and soak your buds in it and change the water every 2 or 3 days, the osmosis actually draws out chemicals and waste in the buds and produces a much more mellow smoke. Some people use a water cure instead of flushing their plants. That might help. I'd try it if I was u. Rather have that black ash dissolved in the water than on my lungs. https://www.rollitup.org/harvesting-curing/102641-greenx-how-tos-how-water.html