A question of taste...

Hi guys,


i've been growing in hempy pots, using the Useless schedule for about 4 years or so, both indoors and out. This would be 6 grows of the same phenotype. My problem is that the taste is very inconsistent and it's pretty clear to me that it's something I'm doing wrong. My latest harvest has enough nutes left in it to taste bad, burn poorly, and give my a headache, so it will need water curing. This was after a 17 day flush, using Clearex for the first few days. A lot of water got flushed through those plants.


At one point in the past, I thought that the problem was related to the plants being root bound and hard to flush because of the nutes being trapped in the perlite. But the next grow in the same sized bucket seemed to taste ok. The latest grow didn't appear to be too root bound and the perlite looked intact. One thing that I did do was to check the ppms of the runoff water at the end of flush. It was still 150 ppm higher than the pH'd tap water I was flushing with, at 500 ppm. The plants seemed to be deteriorating nicely and a sample bud didn't taste too bad, so I chopped. Big mistake.


I looked at GH's website at a chart for their 3 part nutes, using drain-to-waste and it recommends a much lower ppm than Useless does throughout flower. I thought that the theory was that once I figured out at what ppm that plants were happy with, as long as I stayed below that and didn't burn them, life would be good. But it's not. (If I were to follow GH's schedule, my tap water looks like it would be too "dirty".)


The reason that I know that the taste can be a lot better has to do with one plant a couple of years ago that actually died during the final flush. As I was rolling in dope at the time, I chopped the plant, pulled off the fan leaves and left it sitting in a cardboard box for about 9 months. I totally forgot about it. When I found it later, it tasted really, really good. I can't say whether the plant would have tasted good without laying around for 9 months, as I didn't try it at the time. The other plants in that grow tasted ok after jar curing for a couple of months, though not quite as good.


I'm kind of committed to hydro, as the cabinet is nicely set up to make that happen and I've got all the stuff. I figure that if other people can make this work, i should be able to also.


What am I doing wrong?


Thanks,


OS

 

I always found that with hempy or tables and the useless formula that I had to run the nutes 20 to 30 percent lighter than recommended, no matter the strain, and I was always having to fuck with the ph. Now I use the lucas formula and I like it much better, mainly because you use less nutes and with my water i don't need to use any ph up or down at the initial mix of the nutes. i add the recommended amount and my water goes right to 5.8 and stays that way for at least 3 to 4 days in the res before I have to fuck with the ph. I have only grown I hydro plant in the last year though because i switched back to soil and am really liking the final results in so far as taste goes, I think it tastes better than any hydro, but that's just me. as far as I am concerned, the only thing hydro ever did for me was add weight to whatever I grew relative to the same strain in soil.

 

How did you know that the nutes needed to be 20 to 30% less? Did the tips burn? The reason I ask is that pretty much throughout flower the Sativa-leaning plants were getting 1500 ppm (which is 100 ppm higher than Useless suggested) and they seemed pretty happy, at least they were until I had a dumbass moment and gave them 1670 ppm for a couple of days, mid-flower. They were none too happy about that, but other than a few burnt tips, they appeared to recover ok. Would something like this screw the flavor up?


The "powers that be" has issued an edict: There will be no "dirt" in the house. Perlite's ok, though. So it looks like I need to improve my hydro game.


Thanks for your comments,


OS

 

The water curing went decently well. At the end of the first 12 hours the distilled water was at 3500 ppm. After 5 days, it was close to 0 ppm. If I ever have to do this again, I'll explore doing it for only 3 or 4 days. It would be interesting to know if that yellowish-brown liquid could fertilize plants. (Not MY plants...)


fetch


OS

 

I've never water cured weed but i do wash fresh cut plants [one branch at a time] after harvest... I use 3, 5 gal. buckets.. First bucket warm water with 1/2 cup sodium bicarbonate.. Second 5 gal bucket, warm water with 1/2 cup of lemon juice added... Third bucket plain water rinse. I remove the fan leaves first... I use each bucket about 30 seconds for each branch..... Nipple you're right about the bud drying faster after being wet... The plant must absorb some water into the leaves, and I think the water evaporating off the surface helps start the drying of the plant... They do seem to dry a day faster than unwashed plants.... Also when the branches are dry enough for trimming, the small leaves seem to stand up... If i have sprayed the plants with anything i always wash them..... I can see this being a problem if you have a lot of plants.... I only grow a few so it's not much of a chore for me...

 

Cutting Edge looks interesting and it looks like they've got some good charts too. Might be worth a look, even though I've got a years worth of GH.


I'm not so sure about the chlorophyll thing. The water curing bud maintained almost the same level of "greenness" throughout the cure. It wasn't until drying after the water cure that the bud turned brown. The bud went from sopping wet mush to fully dry in 12 hours, fan dried at 75F and 30% RH.


The bud smelled and looked really tasty at harvest, the usual flowery, fruity smell of Killing Fields. Dried for 4 days, then into the jars for a month, burped daily. Still smelled good. But it burned so poorly that it was almost fire-resistant, even when left out to fully dry overnight. When it did finally burn, it was all about black ash and sparkles, followed by a headache a half hour later. And it tasted a bit like nutes. So that's why the water curing of what should have been tasty smoke. Now it burns well, leaves a nice grey ash and smokes with only a faint odor and a minimal taste. No headaches though. As a "stealth" smoke, it would be awesome.


I grew up smoking a lot of water cured brown stuff as that was the stuff that was available. The first time I saw green bud, I thought there was something wrong with it.


I'd much prefer the taste of a proper jar cure than what I ended up with, but it had to be. At least it works. Sorta, kinda. The effects seem to be a cross between vaping and combustion, but are adequate.


I do intend to make some edibles with a little of this, but it didn't start off that way. Oatmeal raisin cookies do sound good.


Anyway, next grow I don't want to have to do this again. After a bunch of thought, I suspect that my flushing really has been ineffective as by the time my tap water is pHd, it's at 350 ppm. Maybe time to try RO...


Try it with a little bit Nippie, in the smallest glass bottle you can find. When I was experimenting the first time, I used a small plastic pill bottle and the bud ended up with a plasticky taste.


OS

 

mytwhyt, weirdly enough this is the first time I used absolutely nothing on my plant's foliage. No foliar feeds, no insecticides, no nada. The only rain they'd seen was from the spray bottle before they rooted in the rock wool cubes.


I will keep your advice in mind for when I do spray.


Thanks,


OS

 

Nipple do you use RO with Cutting Edge?


OS

 

More questions, Nippie, if you don't mind...


Do you use all six parts of the Cutting Edge? Their "Uncle Jack" is some pricy stuff.


How would you rate the taste of the finished bud compared to GH?


How does CE's growth compare to GH when it worked properly?


What is the highest you'd ever go with ppm?


How long does it take for the mixed nute solution's pH to stabilize after "the big drop"?


They say they don't use dyes. Can you identify the concentrated solutions just by their appearance?


Thanks,


OS

 

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, Nippie.


I just checked out your thread about CES from earlier this year. Something that I'm still puzzled about: If you mix up the solution and don't feed it to the plants immediately, will the pH eventually stabilize at 5.8 or will it remain in the 4s for a while? Using GH, I make up enough veg nutes to last for 2 weeks, and store it in half gallon milk jugs. Does CES settle out or become unhappy if stored that long?


A big RO filter got ordered last night... Now to figure out where to put it.


OS

 

Thanks for your help, Nippie. It's encouraging that they'll talk to their customers and take the time to help them out on the phone.


Lots of acronym stuff to do before the next grow... Gotta hook up my RO, sort out the AC and get some CES.


Thanks again,


OS

 

I just recently switched to Botanicare pure blend pro grow veg mix. Plants seem to Love it! I'm adding cal/mag as a supliment and silica too

 

Hi Mr. G,

Are you using their bloom nutes too? I spent some time playing with Botanicare's nute calculator. Pretty cool. This actually looks like it might be a little easier than CES.

OS