Sweet Seeds Femme Fatales: Red Poison, Dark Devil, Ice Cool, Cream Caramel, and Gorilla Girl XL Autos

[delagdo]

Harvest: Dark Devil Auto contd.

I don’t usually trim very much. I think of the leaves like packaging, protecting the bud until I need it. I’m happy to pull off leaves before I grind it up for use. However I thought I might do a bit more than usual this time and reveal some of the beauty beneath. 

I’ve trimmed the main stem in this picture – the leafy bud in the background is more where I’d usually leave it previously:

Dark Devil Auto being trimmed, day 70

A closer look:

Dark Devil Auto, day 70

I took some trichome shots once I had finished trimming:

Dark Devil Auto, day 71

Dark Devil Auto, day 71

Dark Devil Auto, day 71

Anyone who has completed a grow will know trimming is a tedious job – fun for the first few minutes but the novelty very quickly wears off. It would not be so bad if it did not take so long. On the other hand it gives lots of opportunity to listen to some tunes, which I’m sure has kept many growers sane during those long sticky nights. Music is really important in my life, and hugely entwined with cannabis, in general society and for me personally. I thought this might be a nice opportunity to share some of the music which is important to me and that I’ve been listening to the past few days - just one track per plant, not the full playlist. I feel almost obliged to start with some Super Furry Animals:

 

I ‘borrow’ my avatar from their album cover Mwng which is why I feel I should start with them. I think Smokin’ was originally commissioned by Channel 4 for a TV show with Howard Marks, who they became good friends with. I love the way it begins with a fairly lazy-feeling groove, then picks up midway through upping the tempo and intensity, like a good toke kicking in, sending you soaring. I could have picked a few of their songs: Hangin’ With Howard Marks, and Northern Lites also seem obvious choices. They are a band I have loved since childhood, a big influence on me. My wife walked down the aisle to Fire In My Heart.

What’s the meaning of life?
Anything that you like!
But I just wanna smoke it…

[delagdo]

Harvest: Dark Devil Auto contd.

When I was trimming her I saw some guttation - sap oozing out due to the pressure in the xylem - I think due to her being left relatively in the dark a few days with moist coco:

Guttation on Dark Devil Auto

I had to do a doubletake when I first saw it - is it blood? Have I nicked my finger and not noticed? Another big glob squeezed out of a stem where I had cut off a leaf and I could not resist a taste. I thought it might be bitter and nasty but it was actually delicious - very sugary sweet with a nice, sweet fruity floral flavour that tasted like cannabis, in a good way.

I don’t usually trim much, and usually put the fan leaves I do get rid of on the compost heap. This time I do have a plan to do something with the remains, so I sorted it into two grades – the stuff with trichomes I am saving, on the left, and the bigger leaves on the right:

Dark Devil Auto trim

I didn’t gather lots, not enough for a decent piece of scissor hash just yet but it did make them look pretty and purple:

The plant is now hanging from a small laundry rack next to the tent, which has some of the rungs removed. Please excuse the washing I have hanging up next to her  :

Dark Devil Auto drying

I switched the oil filled radiator off and pushed this behind the tent, and I also switched the underfloor heating off when I hung her up. The room has been staying at 19-20°C for the past 24 hours, with humidity 36-43%. That’s a bit drier than ideal perhaps but hopefully will help avoid budrot.

 

From Sunday to Wednesday the temperature in the tent was between 21°C and 24°C at the canopy, and in the past 24 hours without the additional heating it has dropped to between 19°C and 21°C. Humidity had been between 35% and 46% before I switched the heating off, and today was slightly higher, as might be expected with lower temperatures, reaching a top reading of 49%.
 
Here’s a quick look at the three amigos remaining in there in a picture from today:

Gorilla Girl XL Auto, Ice Cool Auto, Cream Caramel Auto (all day 75)

Gorilla Girl XL Auto has worked really hard, the branches are sagging under the fat flowers, the leaves look awful but the buds are spectacular underneath. Ice Cool Auto looks very autumnal, pretty colours to go with her sparkles. Cream Caramel Auto is stonking now, the flowers have bulked up brilliantly in the past couple of weeks, and the tropical fruit smell is really tasty. 

They are all looking ripe and ready. I started flushing them last night with plenty of tapwater (EC 0.4, pH’d to 6.0) until I had a couple of litres of runoff from each. I did the same thing again today. Hopefully I will be able to start the trimming process tomorrow and work on it over the weekend.

 

Thank you for looking at my diary! 

[Wacky Wardrobe]

Stunning buds in here.

I wouldn't know whether to suck them or smoke them.

Yummy either way judging by the look.

Enjoy your fruit.

[delagdo]

Thank you very much @Wacky Wardrobe - most of this lot is getting vaped! I smoked for 20 years, a bong or pipe most days, but I have not smoked since 2018, besides one joint in 2019 and one pipe in 2020, neither of which were as good as they used to be. Dynavap and Mighty are my number 1 recommendations now, that's what I am going to struggle to decide between with these 

[delagdo]

Harvest: Ice Cool Auto

I harvested the three remaining plants over the weekend. I switched the light off on Saturday morning, which was 77 days since they all sprouted – 11 weeks of light. I trimmed leaves off over Saturday, Sunday and Monday, before I chopped them down and hung them up on Monday evening, day 79.

Here’s a look at the Ice Cool Auto before I trimmed:

Ice Cool Auto, day 76

I took a lot off the main cola, but I was a bit lazier with the sidebranches. Here she is after:

Ice Cool Auto, day 78

I took lots of budshots before trimming her. Here's a couple of the main cola:

Ice Cool Auto, day 76

Ice Cool Auto, day 76

 

I liked the leaf colours, the leaves were not good by the end but not as terrible as the others. Some sidebranches:

Ice Cool Auto, day 76

Ice Cool Auto, day 76

Ice Cool Auto, day 76

I took just one budshot after trimming, of the main cola:

Ice Cool Auto, day 77

[delagdo]

Harvest: Ice Cool Auto contd.

She looked just about perfectly ripe to me when I checked the trichomes. Most of the trichomes are milky white, there are a few still developing but there’s at least as many that have reached full maturity and have started to die off. 

 

Ice Cool Auto, day 77

Ice Cool Auto, day 77

Ice Cool Auto, day 77

Ice Cool Auto, day 77

I love the rows of trichomes growing up this very fat calyx:

Ice Cool Auto, day 77

I hope it will be the knockout smoke that it looks like it should be. She looks very similar to the one I grew last year with these very big calyxes stacked up, covered in frost. The smell is similar too, sweet and sugary, almost vanilla, but this one has a slightly lemony edge I don’t remember.

The images above are all single exposures, each captured in one release of the shutter. I have been learning recently about the technique of focus stacking, where multiple photos of the same subject are combined to produce one image. The camera is adjusted or moved between each shot so that each photo is focussed very slightly differently, then they are overlaid on top of each other using software, to create a wider depth of field in the final picture. I had a go at this for the first time and my first attempts are here.

They’ve taken on a strange ethereal quality with the light. I think the sparkle of the trichomes has been captured in a weirdly pretty, but not very realistic way. The first image is my favourite of all the stacks from all the plants, and is composed of 20 individual shots (more than any of the others):

Ice Cool Auto, day 79

Ice Cool Auto, day 79

Ice Cool Auto, day 79

Here’s some more music which kept me going through the harvest period:

 

I picked this one just because it is cool as ice, an amazing uplifting record with an incredible video by Cyriak.
 

[Wacky Wardrobe]

16 minutes ago, delagdo said:

Dynavap and Mighty are my number 1 recommendations

I have a Dynavap but haven't used it as much as hoped I would. I'm slowly working on getting used to it as a smoking replacement but the baccy is my downfall.

I did use it earlier this evening and I may now spend the rest of the evening with it on your recommendation.

Cheers

[delagdo]

Harvest: Cream Caramel Auto

Cream Caramel Auto was the biggest overall plant, end up at 79cm tall, with several sidebranches almost as high. Dark Devil Auto finished at 74cm, whilst Ice Cool Auto was 70cm. Gorilla Girl XL Auto was shortest of them all at 68cm.

 

This was how Cream Caramel Auto looked before the trim:

Cream Caramel Auto, day 77

Once the leaves were removed, you could see she’s fairly loaded:

Cream Caramel Auto, day 78

She’d really suffered from being too close to the lamp, some of the leaves are just awful at the top, but the buds look alright.

Cream Caramel Auto, day 77

Cream Caramel Auto, day 77

The buds themselves are pretty dense, and they have a fantastic tropical fruit smell with pine overtones. I am really looking forward to trying this.

Cream Caramel Auto, day 78

Cream Caramel Auto, day 78

 

Cream Caramel Auto, day 78

[delagdo]

Harvest: Cream Caramel Auto contd.

She was very ripe by the end of the grow. I couldn’t see that many clear trichomes, though there are still some. The majority were cloudy or amber, and a good number had browned off.

Cream Caramel Auto, day 79

Cream Caramel Auto, day 79

Cream Caramel Auto, day 79

Cream Caramel Auto, day 79

I have a couple of focus stacked images from Cream Caramel Auto. The first one came out quite nicely, composed of 10 individual photos:

Cream Caramel Auto, day 79

Cream Caramel Auto, day 79

I picked another video so you can see the sort of thing I was listening to when cutting off leaves and taking photos:

I chose this because it is another excellent video and great song. Dan Deacon was one of the last gigs I went to in 2020 before the pandemic struck. He has some other incredibly inventive videos, and his live shows are entertaining and unconventional too - there are some amusing recordings online as well. I hope you like it too.

[Clumsy]

Love the stacked shot, absolutely superb

 

The plants look great as well, top work.

 

 

[Openairbud]

Mate sorry for the like bomb, I've not been in for a while and see I've missed lots! I think you've excelled yourself here this time, your last couple of posts are superb, with some absolutely stunning photography. Loved inspector ganja too! 

[delagdo]

@Openairbud Thank you very much!! It's really kind of you. I'm struggling this week, I have a case of man flu. That's a very welcome boost 

 

I've been busy and not keeping up with other's grows either. I dread to think what I do to some people's notifications some times when I do get stuck in! 

[delagdo]

Harvest: Gorilla Girl XL Auto

Gorilla Girl XL Auto may not have been as tall, but not as top heavy as the others, and loaded all the way down. The best yield must be between her and Cream Caramel Auto but I can’t guess yet which is top. 

The leaves really were a state by the end of it – main colour: autumn brown.

Gorilla Girl XL Auto, day 78

Without (some of) the leaves you can really see the flowers, as well as the supports I had to add over the last couple of weeks as the sidebranches started sagging:

Gorilla Girl XL Auto, day 79

I did not bother with budshots until I had removed those ugly leaves. Here’s a couple of the main cola:

Gorilla Girl XL Auto, day 79

 

Gorilla Girl XL Auto, day 79

The flowers have swollen and ripened all the way down, and the sidebranches look just as good as the main stem, just not as fat:

Gorilla Girl XL Auto, day 79

 

Gorilla Girl XL Auto, day 79

[delagdo]

Harvest: Gorilla Girl XL Auto contd.

Gorilla Girl XL Auto has a potent odour, smelling strongly of pine and earthy tones. There’s a hint of lemony citrus but it’s not very fruity or sweet at the moment, however these flavours might just be overpowered while it’s fresh, and some more sweetness might come through in the cure. 

I’m not sure if the buds are quite as dense as the Cream Caramel Auto or Ice Cool Auto. They might be, I’m mostly assessing by eye though, as I don’t like to handle them too much. Maybe they are, but even if they aren’t quite, they more than make up for it with the thick covering of trichomes. 

Until I came to it, I wasn’t sure she would quite be ready, however looking closely I was satisfied. There still seems to be a fair few clear trichomes developing, but there are many cloudy, and many brown or amber ones all over the plant.

Gorilla Girl XL Auto, day 78

Gorilla Girl XL Auto, day 78

Gorilla Girl XL Auto, day 78

She just has lots of trichomes, of every type.

Gorilla Girl XL Auto, day 78

I do have some focus stacked images. They aren’t fantastic but at least you can see a larger number of trichomes in one picture, so are at least useful in a sense. The Gorilla Girl XL Auto were the very first ones I shot with stacking, using between 5 and 8 images for each of the three pictures below. After making these, I decided to use more exposures to shoot the other plants.

Gorilla Girl XL Auto, day 78

Gorilla Girl XL Auto, day 78

Gorilla Girl XL Auto, day 78

The three plants are hanging up now. The Gorilla Girl XL Auto and Ice Cool Auto are hanging in the tent, and I have hung the Cream Caramel Auto outside. 

Gorilla Girl XL Auto and Ice Cool Auto hanging up to dry.

I’m trying to keep it at about 20-21°C. The last couple of days with the lights on in the tent but no additional heating, the canopy was between 19°C and 21°C and the room was only slightly colder with a low of 18°C. Once I switched the light off on Saturday, the temperature dropped over the following 24 hours to a low of 16°C which is too cold, and could lead to budrot. 

I don’t want a repeat of a couple of years ago, where I lost a whole Crystal Candy Auto and the best part of a Mohan Ram Auto to grey mould at this stage. I found out recently that whilst the latin name is usually given as Botrytis cinerea, an old alternative is Botrytis fuckelania – nowadays a name that’s (I’m not making this up!) just used for the sexual anamorph, when it's more commonly the asexually-reproducing type which ruins our plants. It was actually named after the German botanist and mycologist Fuckel, but Botrytis fuckelania was very similar to what I said when I finally realised what was going on. I do have a diary of that if you want to re-live my pain 

This time I don’t want to be caught out like that, especially with these ropey leaves, so I put the underfloor heating back on, and the oil filled radiator, to bring it back up slightly. Over the past few days since I did this it’s usually 20-21°C, with maximum of 22°C and a minimum of 19°C. Humidity has been between 40-46%.

Dark Devil Auto is basically dry, she was very crispy on the outside today and some of the stems are brittle. I took her down today, 7 days after she was hung. I cut her up a bit, not completely but into long stems, and put these in a shoebox just to even out any remaining moisture. There’s hardly any wetness in her still, the buds were not dense but I won't put her in a jar quite yet.

One last song, to go with the last harvest report. There are loads of great videos I could post and I do listen to some amped up, aggressive stuff too – I nearly treated you to some Run The Jewels because that’s been on a lot here - but I decided to stick with some relaxed and posi vibes in my thread.

 

 

I picked this live version of Continental Breakfast by Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett, I hope you like it. Hopefully the link will work and skip (I'm not sure it will!), it's the second song which starts at about 5:55 I am trying to link to, but this is also a sneaky way to get a few extra songs in [edit: no it didn't work - you'll have to skip (or enjoy the full set!)]. This one is mostly about being a musician travelling and touring, meeting likeminded people and bumping into them and hanging out and forming friendships. I just love the relaxed friendliness of the song, and this performance between them is just magical, and reminds me of all I’ve missed this past year about playing music with other people. 

I picked it because it’s a song I love by two great songwriters, and also because it makes me think of my other passtime too – that is, growing plants and talking to people about them online. It’s the idea of people brought together through their hobby, working together, helping each other, or just hanging out and goofing off, wherever they are, “somewhere on this sphere, around here…” This place can be like that 

Edited April 1, 2021 by delagdo

[jadenugs]

Some nice looking buddage mate, theat Cream Caramel looks to have yielded well and there's plenty of frost all round  

 

Nice focus stacks, I've been playing about with image stacks myself lately, but not focus. Just stacking a few photos of different exposures to get rid of noise in the background from shooting on high ISO.  I really struggle with light up in the attic.

 

I've had a focus rail for quite a while now but it's a cheap one and not very good. I'll be digging it out soon and trying it out again. The last time I used it I found that after moving the rail and locking it up it moved to the side so my plans are to leave it loose in between movements and see if I can make it work that way if I don't move around too much. The attic floor boards are bouncy and there's also a carpet on them so I struggle to get sharp close ups at the best of times as the tripod moves when I move. Can be very time consuming and frustrating  

 

Great work man, it'll soon be time to enjoy your rewards