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Outdoor Kalashnicova Grow 2015 Update


gasmeter
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Just a quick update on my Kalashnicova outdoor grow, despite her poor start in life which was down to my ignorancy and a late start, Mary is not about 3 feet tall and she has been in flower for a few weeks now and I am just keeping her as happy as I can as she matures.

When the weather is shit I move her into the shed under two fluorescent lights, I replaced the existing tubes for warm-white fluorescent tubes, the light has more red in the specturm for flowering so when it is cloudy she is getting better quality light, plus if it is raining I can pop her inside the shed and control the moisture content of the dirt.

So  at the moment I am just keeping a close eye on the colour/hue of the stamens a few of which are starting to turn to a hue of brown and the trichomes on the sugar leaves by taking lots of photos to document everything so I have a reference and I can monitor progress, and I am doing shit loads of research on harvesting, drying and curing.

Due to prohibition and regulations here in the UK and me havin a bit of form I did not create a grow journal for obvious reasons, although once the deed is done and I have harvested I will create a grow journal for this grow and share my experiences and lots pics of my sweet little gal Mary.

The first image is of Mary in the shed, the colour is starnge due to the warm-white fluorescent tubes, the second image is a close up shot of the top of the plant in profile as it were, the third image is of the top flower and the fourth image is a close up of the top flower.

Thanks again to Cannabissapean and Dust for your advice when she was a sad looking seedling it was much appreciated guys.

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Hi Tokage thanks I am well pleased with her considering her rough start.

I took the first photo on the 11 oct 3 days ago after watering and feeding her after drying her out for 9 days.

I germinated 1 of 3 seeds in early July and she started to flower at the begining of September when I put her into the large yellow pot then she stretched and started pushin out flowers everywhere, so she is about week 6 of flowering now and I can already see some stamens are turning a nice hue of brown.

The trichomes are mainly clear but some appear to be starting to become opaque and milky now so she is doing the right things.

Yeah man just sunshine and when it is cloudy and or raining I put her in the shed under two 4 foot fluorescent warm-white tubes so she has better quality light, plus as I mentioned this helps controlling the moisture in the soil and watering & feeding too, which is useful considering the climate in the UK is pretty wet and cold, although where I am located at the coast the weather is mild compared with further inland on higher ground.

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Thanks Sungrown they are slowly increasing in size and making the leaves appear more sugar frosted.

A quick update, last Thursday I trimmed off a shit load of fan leaves to open her up and let more light get to the flowers on side branches and then I gave her 4 litres of PH'd plain water on Friday morning.

I know people have their own ideas about triming, but in the circumstances due to the lack of quality light it makes sense to me to remove the large fan leaves to let as much available light reach the flowers and at this point it is about the best thing I can do.

The day after she looked a bit sad, but she has now perked up and all the sites where I removed fan leaves have sealed up nicely.

Here are a 3 images from a batch I took today of the whole plant, a close up of the top of the plant and a close up shot of the top flower.

Enjoy...

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In total there was just under 400 grammes of fan leaves, I was not sure whether to throw them away, but I decided to make some bush tea with a good hand full of green leaves to see if what happened, so I roughly chopped the leaves and stems put them in a pan with 3/4 of a cup of milk and half a cup of water and simmered for 15 to 20 minutes while stirring to allow any THC to bind with the fats in the milk.

Then I strained the leaves put the solution back into the pan with a tea bag and simmered for a few more minutes, then poured it into a cup and drank it, it tasted like celery soup due to the chlorophyl with a hint of citrus, it was bleedin awful, I went for a walk to help things along and within 20 minutes I could feel its effect, I got a very mild heady high which became more intense after about an hour, and I felt very calm and relaxed for the rest of the day.

I was pretty amazed, so I have got them drying out.

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Good for you buddy. Reusing you trim is the way to go and why waste a great product that have the potential to be even stronger than the weed we grow.
With 400g of good trim and the use of gravity hash method, i would say you could get out anywhere from 15g-40g hash back. Something to think about ;)
My record from gravity is almost 50g of nice hash made from one batch of trim.
Plus if you are clever(or cheap) as Levente in this forum, you can always rewash you first batch 1-2 times and get even more back.

She was a beauty from start to finish. I want to see the next grow soon ;)
 

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Thanks Tokage for the kind words and advice it gives me plenty of food for thought, my next grow should go better now I have seen her life cycle play out and have a much better overstanding of the job.

Roll on May 2016, I have also started to think about growing indoors as well, using CFL's which are cheap to run and efficient, plus cheaper to afford up startin out compared with digital and HPS type lights.

I just need to weigh up whether to buy a grow tent or build my own which is not a problem, it is just a case of deciding how to deal with this, do I want a static set up of something I can adjust or move if necessary.

Hopefully next year the prohibition and regulation ting will start to change around the world, Jah Bless

Tide risin...

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I use a 300w cfl for my seedlings and they sure love it. This grow i got now i decided to veg her the whole period with only cfl. It did the trick but the stems and branches are not as strong as with my normal light and now i need to support the soon-to-be-huge-buds or risk breaking the branches. 


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Hi Tokage that sounds like the sort of thing I am thinking about doing, what sort of light do you use for flowering?

I have been checkin out lots of grow journals here and on the 420mag site and I see lots of people using CFL's throughout the plants life cycle for vegging and flowering, but they are usually auto flowering strains which are typically smaller plants which I suppose makes them easier to grow in this way, compared with a photo period strain which will need and use more light.

I am wondering if it is possible to get a decent yeild from a photo period strain like Kalashnikova with CFL's, for example a single plant with a 600w or 1000w CFL

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The flowering main light is a 600w digital hps. Before when i could use my full equipment i also had 1 or 2 600w magnetic ballast plus a 400w.
I guess you can get a decent harvest with only cfl. Use a more powerful version like 200-300w and with some nice spectrum. I guess methods like scrog would help out growing with a weaker light.


 

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Hi Tokage that sounds like a nice set up, for me the main concern is power usuage the cost of electricity here in the UK is too nuff

I found a 300w dual spectrum CFL on Amazon here is a link you can copy and paste

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spectrum-Hydroponics-Energy-Flower-Pendant/dp/B00KW640RG/ref=sr_1_3?m=A1Q4M25MNPDDSX&s=merchant-items&ie=UTF8&qid=1445615599&sr=1-3

In the description for the lamp it says it costs about 2 pence an hour to run which is great.

In a grow tent the light will be contained and reflected inwards so this should provide enough quality light to get a decent harvest from a single plant and if the running costs are correct I would not be painful adding a second light.

I just need to get me head around whether to buy a grow tent or buiild my own.

It would be nice to get an idea of what the cost of running an HPS is from anyone here in the UK using them.

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If you know the price on your electricity it should be simple to do the math. If you have a 600w light and know your price it will be simple.
If math is not your strong side (like me) you could go Goggle and search for it.
Like this page. You can change your electricity rate to what ever instead of choosing one in the list. 
http://darkskysociety.org/lightcost/index.php




 

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Thanks for the link I have bookmarked it, that will be useful, maths is not my strong point either simple additions, subtractions and divisions are about my speed.

Remember calculators are your friend.

I dried out the fan leaves I trimmed recently and used them to make some qwiso, originally there was just under 400 grammes of wet fan leaves, I used a good handfull to make some green tea then I strung them on cotton and hung them in cardboard boxes to dry out, the dried fan leaves weighed about 75 grammes

I had just under half a litre of isopropyl alcohol so I got another litre can to make sure I had enough to cover the leaf material, I crushed the leaves by hand and then used scissors to chop the stems, some were pretty chunky, then I put all the dry material into a large instant coffee jar that I had previously cleaned, poured in the alcohol, waited 30 seconds, then I shook the jar for 30 seconds and then poured out the contents into two sieves place one inside the other with two layers of coffee filter paper between them.

Then I used a large metal spoon to compress and mash the leaf material to help squeeze out the solution into the bowl below, I then popped the leaf material back into the jar and repeated the process, this meant there was nearly a litre of alcohol to evapourate, it took two days, plus it is always best to keep the washes separate and not be a bumboclatt like me and dump them in the same container.

In the images below you can see the dark stuff on the sides of the dish was obviously the second wash, fortunately I was able to scrape all the decent product out of the dish first, the dark stuff I squished it together and it looks like charas but it is waxy and wont burn, the green stuff from the bottom of the dish is OK and definitely contains THC it is powdery so I have been smoking it in a pipe, I was pleasantly surpirsed the hit is mild and heady but it lasts a few hours.

 

 

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So those photos show a second wash?
I have never done a quick wash. It is really hard to get the right kind of %alc where i live.
But it looks like a clean and true method.

You made me smile when you wrote "calculator are your friend". So damn true, maths is a side of me that is almost non existent.
 

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Not want to bust your bubble BUT with fan leaves + stems you won't get anything decent vs the work and costs of alcohol etc. Better use those BHO oil cans with a lighter fluid soaking out whatever THC is in there. Other methods require sticky leaves, resinous but too fluffy buds or best of all REAL BUDS, if you got the quantity. I fooled around with fan leaves way too long myself and even with the Pollen shaker the outcome may look like Hash but it is l bad quality. Wait till the big girl is harvested and put aside all fan leaves, stems + sticks  and big leaves with nothing sticky to them. I am sure that girl will deliver lots of trim, keep the  remains of the bud leaves you trimmed off seperate and let all dry out nicely. Add any pop corn buds, grind 'em up and you can make excellent waterhash, BHO oil or the wash from alcohol you did before. The stuff on the pictures does not look like the real thing to me. If you want to use the rest use it for cooking or canna butter, peanut butter etc.

My 2 cents

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HI Tokage, yes and no, Im an idiot and dumped the second wash into the same container with the first wash, but the tar like stuff which I assume was from the second wash stuck to the sides of the dish so it was easy to keep them separate, also the coffee filter papers were crappy and small I had to cut them up to line the bottom sieve which did not help thing either.

Glad I was able to give you a laugh and brightenate your day, me and maths have always been strangers.

Although when I started to learn the basics of programming I soon realised that when I was a kid at school the teachers did not overstand the subject enough to provide an example to clearly demonstrate the logic and path to the result they could only use the examples provided in the book they worked from, if the teacher really overstood the thing they would have been able to work out which part I was not clear on and provide an example to make this easy for me to see and overstand

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Hi Bam-Bhole, yeah I agree man THC content is very low and the return for the cost of the alcohol is pretty poor and the product very low quality, as you say better to use it for cooking in future

I have been checking out the BHO videos and one about Rosin Tech using hair straighteners, I like the BHO method it is effiecient and much quicker not having to wait for the alcohol to evapurate, I would say the Rosin Tech method is definitely not the new way, just another was to extract the good stuff.

I was thinking about trying the BHO method, but when I checked out the labels on the cans it did not say what purity the butan is, only that it is highly refined, which could me anything really, in one of the videos the guys make a point about the purity of the Butane gas used, so I decided it would better to leave it until I know more, but I will definitely try the BHO with the trim when I harvest.

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The quick wash i have seen looks like shatter and it seems very clean. I would love to try that method. I also agree with Bam, he always have some good input.
I also saw that hair straightener video. I guess one would need really good trim and much of it to make a good weight worth having?

 

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Sounds like they used some good quality trim, the coffee filter papers I bought were small like pre formed cups, so I had to cut a couple up to use them to line the first sieve and then use the second to trap it, so a lot of leaf dust obviously seeped through into the dish below.

Yeah I have read a few grow journals and Bam-Bhole always provides good advice which always makes sense and is obviously learned from lots of hands on experience.

With the Rosin Tech video he mentions using good quality trim as well as buds, I would think that trying to squish even good quality frosty trim would be hard work and would take hours, compared with using buds and you can even smoke the squished bud there will some THC still deep inside, it is one of those things to try if you have enough bud to spare to experiment I suppose.

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Well today the weather was dry with light cloud so I brought Mary outside into the yard and I noticed a funny area on the top bud, so I got a magnifying glass and checked it out only to discover she had some bud rot.

It has been pretty wet over the past few days since I posted, I was going to wait and give her at least another week, but I decided it would be best to just give her the chop and harvest, rather than dig out the affected buds and then risk more damage buds or even losing everything.

I was thinking about hanging the whole plant upside down, but due to the circumstances I cut off each stem and trimmed it as well as looking for any affected buds which I removed and threw away, then I hung the trimmed stems on a clothes rack and laid out the loose buds on a board resting on the bottom of the rack along with the trim in two cardboard boxes inside a sort of cupboard in darkness with the door ajar and a fan running in the room to keep the air moving and slowly dry everything.

Here are some images the first image I took on the 4th november 3 days ago and everything was fine, the second image is the boxes containing the bud and trim and the third image shows everything drying.

Now this grow is completed and the deed is done I will sort out a grow journal I just need to trawl through all the images I have taken.

I have certainly learned a lot from my first grow and I am pleased with the fact I managed to harvest something and definitely looking forwards to the next grow.

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Thanks it is much appreciated, I am well pleased that I managed to get her through her life cycle and I have learned a lot reading grow journals on here which has given me lots of food for though about indoor growing during the winter as well, so I can become self reliant I am sick of prohibition and paying stupid prices for commercially grown weed.

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