Hawk's Granddaddy Purple & THC Bomb Grow Journal - 2023

10/27/23 - More of the same. Just waiting for some of the trichomes to turn amber...

10/29/23 - Disaster Strikes!! This is easily the scariest thing I could have seen for Halloween!

Watered them. Trichomes still don’t look the right color for harvest. I should be very close though.

Noticed a lot of leaves with issues. Trimmed them all off. While trimming I saw what must be spider mites on the top of one of the top colas. WTH?! Spider mites in my garage just before harvest? Unreal.

Please give me advice on what my next steps are. I’ve now read everything from:

• it’s no big deal if you’re close to harvest (which I am)
• it will be ok if you wash the buds
• OMG! Your harvest is destroyed. The End is nigh. Give up now.

10/29/23 #2 - Looking back at pictures, I should have noticed the damned mites on a bud back on 10/25! Was too focused on the trichomes and never even noticed the spider mites. Yet another rookie mistake!

Curious about advice for future grows, but I’ve already moved past the spider mites infestation issues on this grow. Story coming soon.

10/31/23 - Noticed quite a few more spider mites on both plants. Used a sticky to wipe away all the visible spiders and webbing. Started to trim the hell out of them both. Noticed a few branches where the buds had really started to dry up – so dying off. Will wait til tomorrow (to hopefully get advice from Forums) before chopping them both.

Game Plan: chop them down; bud wash and then start to dry them in the tent. Hopefully, I’ll finish off with SOMETHING after all this time and effort! Put the big fan on them.

PS. there is NOT a huge ring of spider mites behind the right cola in first picture! That's a wreath on the wall.

11/2/23 - Chopped both plants and trimmed as many leaves as I could. Then did a bud wash. Three 5 gallon buckets of water with: 1. Hydrogen Peroxide; 2. Lemon Juice & Baking Soda; 3. Plain water. Think I’ve lost at least 90% of the THC Bomb to the damn spider mites. Hung the bud stems to dry w. a strong fan on them. Will start a proper dry tomorrow.

11/3/23 - Started the Drying process. Put the hanging flower stems in a tent w. fans in it. Fans Not blowing directly on them. Covered the tent so it was dark inside. Will check daily and hope I can Cure these in 1-2 weeks!

Place loose buds on a drying rack inside the tent. Debated putting them in a food dehydrator, but no idea if that is insane, so held off!

11/4/23 - 3 fans inside tent. None blowing on the hanging buds. The garage smells very strongly of pot. When I opened the tent – damn, it Reeks in there! Strange that it wasn’t a pot smell, but a cut grass stench.

11/10/23 - This is one week of drying. Did the stem test and got a very strong cracking. Might have over dried the THC Bomb? Started to trim the THC Bomb. Gotta admit, I don’t find trimming as hellish as described, but I still had an extremely difficult time doing it. First time attempting to trim wasn’t easy just cause even w. glasses on, very difficult to see what exactly I should be trimming off! Stopped after two hours. Had more than enough buds to place in a mason jar to start the curing process. Will try to trim all the rest tomorrow.

11/11/23 - Spent the day in trim hell. About 6 hours! Need to find a light w. a magnifying glass so I can see what to cut better! Filled 3 large mason jars w. a Boveda 62% pack and a cheap hygrometer w. the THC Bomb and 2 of the Granddaddy Purple. Still a lot more GDP to trim. Trying to get the Humidity to 62%. What should I try to get for the temp? Put the jars in a dark cupboard.

Will have to weigh when done. Curious how much I’ll get out of this.

How do these buds look? Did I do an acceptable job? Is there anything that I should I do differently?

11/12/23 - Finished trimming the Granddaddy Purple. Put buds into mason jars w. Boveda 62% pack.

Burped the mason jars for 20 minutes. Humidity went from low 40s yesterday to 50% today.

11/13/23 - Burped the mason jars for 20 minutes. I’ll do this twice today. How long should I burp the jars? I’ve now seen anything from 20 seconds to over an hour! Humidity in low 50s. Smell is still pretty horrible to me. Don’t think the stench is from mold. Any ideas??

11/14/23 - Burped the mason jars. Still a stench to them. So, put all the buds in paper shopping bags, folded the bags up and put them in a dark, cool cupboard. Will check again tomorrow morning and hopefully put them back in the mason jars.

When I jar bud after I let it hang dry I like the humidity to read right around 62% after the jar has been sealed for 3 hours or so. Then I open the jars for maybe 30-60 seconds, give it a slight shake to move the bud around. I continue this process for a few weeks and the humidity should slowly drop to 58-60 percent. I go from burping them daily at this point to every other day. Once ot gets to 58% only then will I throw in a humidity pack. Then I normally just open it when I need some bud. After reading all through your posts here you definitely ran into a lot of issues. So just being able to have any sort of smoke able bud at this point is a win. Just continue to research and learn from your mistakes next grow

@Reptilians Anonymous - Thanks for the suggestions! Greatly appreciated.
Of course, it's a huge understatement to say I've run into a lot of issues.

Even though I've read / watched hundreds of articles / vids, I still ended up have a difficult first grow. Was fairly smooth til the weather changed and I brought them into the garage. Then all hell broke loose. As you said, the only thing to do is learn from my rookie mistakes and hopefully improve on the next attempt.

The more I read, the more I think I know why my buds smell bad. I dried them within acceptable Temps and Humidity. I had fans blowing to circulate the air, but the tent wasn’t open enough to allow much fresh air in. Also, a few of the branches were touching each other. I’m guessing that the lack of fresh air resulted in the lovely stench I have now? Is there any way to save this harvest? I’ve taken them out of the mason jars and placed them in paper bags in hopes that this might help “fix” them. I’m in no rush to smoke these, so, if it takes a while to get them in good shape, I’m ok with that. I should probably try a small bud just to see…

As always, any advice / suggestions are greatly appreciated!!

11/15/23 - The buds smell much better today after time in the paper bags. I’ll put them back in the jars soon – probably tomorrow morning.

11/16/23 - The GDP paper bag didn’t have a stench anymore, so filled up the 3.5 mason jars again. Placed a Boveda 62% pack in. The THC Bomb paper bag still had a bit of a smell, so decided to just wait til tomorrow to jar them.

Hawk518 said:

The more I read, the more I think I know why my buds smell bad. I dried them within acceptable Temps and Humidity. I had fans blowing to circulate the air, but the tent wasn’t open enough to allow much fresh air in. Also, a few of the branches were touching each other. I’m guessing that the lack of fresh air resulted in the lovely stench I have now? Is there any way to save this harvest? I’ve taken them out of the mason jars and placed them in paper bags in hopes that this might help “fix” them. I’m in no rush to smoke these, so, if it takes a while to get them in good shape, I’m ok with that. I should probably try a small bud just to see…

As always, any advice / suggestions are greatly appreciated!!

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Next time put a small 4" exhaust fan pulling air out of the tent while they dry. That's a good way to lose all your harvest to mold. I also wouldn't put them in paper bags overnight if the humidity was in the 40's. Some bud stinks bad. I have a pineapple express, and a purple punch I grew outside this season, they smell like feet and old man pillows. 3 weeks in the jars now at %60 and the smell is starting to sweeten up. Once your buds get that dry, the curing process stops. You either should stagger your harvest so you have what you can trim for one day at a time, or get speedy with trimming.

Sorry about the mites right at the end there, that sucks, fuck mites. When you brought them into the garage, you gave them an environment they can thrive in. Along with no natural predators in the garage, or very few. I plant spearmint, lavender, rosemary, thyme, and mums around my yard to keep the bastards away outside. Inside is a different story.

11/17/23 - The THC Bomb buds didn’t smell horrible anymore, so put them into 32 oz mason jars. Added a Boveda 62% pack since they seemed a bit dry.

A few hours later, I took them outside and burped all the jars in the hopes that the humidity would be higher outside than inside. The humidity rose to 50% (+/- 2%).

At this point, just hoping that I have SOMETHING that is smokeable...

1/6/24 - My GDP has been curing since 11/11/23. Decided it was time to finally try it. Used the new pipe and it just didn’t hit very hard. Knew I’d smoked, but it seemed pretty mild. A bit disappointed that after all my effort since April, it just wasn’t that great a result.