The garden is growing like mad and now we have true buds forming all over. One thing that is blowing my mind is there isnt a yellow leaf in this entire garden due to a deficiency. The hybrids literally tower up in the air and are starting to fill out nicely with the exception of the Romulan which seems to just be slow to bud. The shortest plant in the garden is the Purple Kush and it will also be the first harvested by the looks of it today. Cannabis floral clusters are basically green, but changes may take place later in the season, which alter the color to include various shades. The intense green of chlorophyll usually hides the color of accessory pigments, Chlorophyll starts to lose its vibrant green color late in the season and anthocyanin pigments also contained in the tissues are uncovered and the amazing colors are produced at this time. Purple, resulting from anthocyanin accumulation, is extremely common in Cannabis, this color modification is usually triggered by seasonal change, and also can be influenced indoor by a temperature drop of between 20-30 degrees. That is what is taking place with this Purple Kush as well as the Bubba Kush. You can see the upper fan leaves fading and changing colors at this point.
For purple color to develop upon maturation, a strain must have the genetically controlled metabolic potential to make anthocyanin pigments and be responsiveness to environmental change such as cold nighttime temps. There are other pigments that affect the color of mature cannabis for example Carotenoid is largely responsible for the yellow, orange, red, and brown colors in buds. Beyond all this technical stuff it is amazing to watch a plant change color. In the next installment you will see amazing 105 MM macro shots huge buds forming and a plant harvested using a chainsaw, a 4-wheeler and a leaf trailer, Dont miss Part 4!!
Sept 30th
Thats the song that popped into my head as I walked down to the garden this week. The smells have intensified and as usual the progress in just a week is stunning. Buds are swelling up and some of the Kush's are getting very close. I think next Tuesday you will see some serious action shots as we start taking down the Indica's that are swollen and starting to really look close to finishing.
Lets look at what the Lord made With lots and lots of work by KA and team ODC.
As I enter the tent covering its hard not to pause and take in both the sites and the smells of this little piece of heaven. The Kush varieties are giving off a heavy musty smell that is combining with the Orange funk of California Orange and the strong Lemon Haze smell of JTR to create a very strong but pleasant odor. I take a huge breath and can almost taste Cannabis resin on my tongue. As we walk down into the center of the garden the sun is blocked out by towering colas forming.
Its hot in the garden today and Dave has been busy all week removing lower branches to allow air flow under the plants. Heat and moisture can create some really bad problems like bud rot and mold so Dave and a few helpers spend many hours each day in the garden removing sagging branches, supporting upper branches that have fallen from the weight of the buds they support and general garden maintenance. I am amazed that I dont see a single yellow leaf in this entire area and even the lower fan leaves are a brilliant green. Dave tells me that much of this is due to his constant foliar feeding with the Fulvic and Humic acids as well. I contribute much of their health to the amazing bed he prepares each season and the fact it was a horse coral for about a century before it became Weedens sure footing. These factors and the excellent care they receive combine to create the healthiest garden I have ever seen.
I have been itching to bring my 50MM and my 105 MM Macro lens down but I was waiting for a nice coating of resin to make it worthwhile. The Indicas look like theyre getting very close to harvest so you will now get to see some close ups of buds!
In the back of the garden the Purple Kush has completely changed color and is now a vivid Purple almost red grape color and should reach maturity sometimes next week.
Another plant that is showing some Purpling is of course Purple Urkle but it is also building up some nice trichomes and looking really thick.
Daves patients could really use some meds about now so we inspected the Snow Dawg and dave made the call to take her down. You can see in the Macro shots about half the pistils have turned orange and while indoors we wait as long as possible no one is going to complain about early harvested medication. Dave carefully removes some of the lower branches until he can open up the wire cage and dig down into the dirt and clear the stem. My jaw dropped as Dave came walking back from the hill with a chainsaw and fired that bad boy up. He cut the entire plant down with one quick stroke just after instructing us where and how to hold the plant. Dioxide420 helped Dave carry the plant up and I was shocked how heavy it looked, by the time we got up the small hill side thier arms were tired and they were breathing hard. We had a wood trailer near the gate and we quickly decided to use it and the 4-wheeler to carry it to the harvest barn. I followed along snapping pictures the whole way, this was so much fun to be involved with.
I arrived early and after helping get the heater running in the drying barn we started thinning some of the plants to allow more airflow into the garden, and supply meds to others waiting and take down the most mature plant in the garden.
This is what we awoke to. (Rain dripping see enclosed picture 70 and resized raindrop)
This is when the fun part stops and the hard work and tough choices begin, just a few days ago the garden was clear of botris and only a few signs of mold but Dave tells me it will come on fast and that is time to harvest the garden as soon as possible. Some seasons the rains hold off and some they dont. Its warm and wet in that tent and a lazy grower can loose his whole crop to bud rot so we decided to get to work on the double. The Bubba Kush came down the same way as the SnowDawg did but it was a smaller plant and we didnt have to use the trailer. You can see the spots of Bud Rot or Botris and every piece is painstakingly removed and tossed onto the floor of the trim room and smashed under foot. Everyone is instructed to leave the Floor Bud alone and it is just considered part of growing outdoors here, some years as much as 50% of the crop can be lost if a grower doesnt stay on top of his work.
Each day more people travel to the garden to lend a hand and take part in the harvest and I met many interesting people, some in wheel chairs and some on ventilators and even one person was there on a gurney so please dont think this is some stoner party, while many of us enjoy herb for many reasons make no mistake that the majority of these meds are given to those that really need them absolutely free of charge. There is one catch though, if you are fit enough to trim you help out and at the end of the day your welcome to a cooler of Un-trimmed branches not the ones you trimmed that wouldnt be much help to Dave.
In these shots you can see both rot buds and buds at perfection.
The fun didnt stop when the camera wasnt clicking and they took down several plants and made Bubble hash before I could get back out and do some more documentation. I was greeted by a drying room of completely different strains drying and it was great to know that many people were now medication on buds, hash, tincture and medibles made from the harvest bounty. We took time to enjoy some of the lemon tasting hash that was made using the Chocolate Chunk plant and it was divine let me tell you. Dave told me next year he plans to do half his garden with this strain and just make lots of concentrates like the bubble shown. It would cut down on the trimming time significantly. When we went down to the hill I was happy to see many of the TGA strains still growing and I completely tripped out seeing strains I created and grow indoors towering over my head with branches as big as an entire indoor plant. The Memorial day mix (pic 358 & 362) the only plant from seed was now over 15 feet tall and almost touching the top of the tent!
The TGA plants left in the garden, Dannyboy, Jack the Ripper, The Flav, and the memorial Day mix which turned out to be Jacks Cleaner 2 just dripped with resin and looked like sky scrapers to me. Dave and one of his crew came down and started taking down the massive Proud Mary plant. I was surprised how much work these huge plants were. Unlike the short Indica bushes there is no way to cut one of these down so branches are chopped off and placed in buckets to be carried up to the trimmers that are working fast and furious feeding the hash makers it was quite an amazing production. In the drying room every string was at capacity and even sagging under the weight of all the branches hanging.
In the final chapter we will see the holdouts like Romulan, JC2 and The Flav as well as an in depth look at what the Hash makers were up to along with some final harvest shots.
Dont miss the End Game.
I would like to kick of the final chapter by thanking everyone that has followed us along this journey. Weeden is one of my favorite places on earth and I hope I have presented in well enough for you to get an idea how special it is to us and to everyone that benefits from the medicine produced there.
October 15th
On this trip to Weeden it was a beehive of activity with people trimming in one area. Bubblehash was being made in another area and down in the garden branches being cut down and brought up to the trimmers. Above everyones heads on hemp strings are long trimmed branches being dried by warm air. Dave likes to get all the harvested material up to 80 degrees for the first 24 hours to kill any spores that might remain on the buds. Now that about ¾ of the plants have been harvested I was able to get much better shots of some of the remaining plants. The Flav was the most impressive plant towering over our heads and as wide as a mini van is long the weight of the colas made them curve over head. Buds literally blocked out the sunlight and since these last plants were experiencing an Indian summer over the last few weeks they have swollen with mature baseball bat sized branches. The Romulan didnt hold up as well under her own weight and is now a sprawling mess laying almost horizontal to the ground and no amount of support or staking can help at this point. The Jacks Cleaner 2 originally tagged Memorial Day Mix was the tallest plant I have seen before in person and was every bit of 12 feet of solid bud. You could smell the lemon haze if you just walked close to her and to brush up against filled the air with a thick Lemon smell almost like lemonade. It was really cool to see buds curing in one area while plants still grew strong down in the garden.
It was a great season except for the early rains that came and I was told only about 35% was lost to mildew and mold. If you havent grown in the PNW dont rush to judgement, it is not easy and one thing I learned is I will stay indoors. I am so lucky to have Dave as my friend to learn from and visit Weeden but this was more work than I could have possibly imagined and he has done this for 19 years now. It has taken its toll on his health for sure but thats just who he is, he cares much more about those around him than his own health and I have seen him to the point of exhaustion many days before noon working solo in the garden. To say I respect what this man does is the biggest understatement I could make!
Our good friend Happy Hunter came up that weekend and brought his large Bubble now machine and 15 gallon Bubblebags and I wanted to tell you about a technique I had no idea would actually work. When was made Bubble we allow the leaf to dry reduce in size and dry slightly before processing through the bags. This allows the resins to cure somewhat and allows us to fit more leaf matter in the machine while still using what we call damp frozen sugar leaf. So Dave starts tossing lower buds to small to trim into a pile and Hunter runs them through his set up. I am amazed after a few moments he drains the bags and there is a large pile of pristine lime green resin heads in the bottom of the bag.
. All that day the machine kept running and the ice kept melting and at the end of the day they had made a massive 69 gram pile of lemon smelling hash from the Choc Chunk plant. While it was a bit leafy all of the leaf was covered in large heads and produced a large ratio or hash to leaf. The quality of the hash was off the chart which is why Dave may run several of these this year and just skip the trimming and hanging. This hash makes great medibles and tincture with almost no waiting for cured dry cannabis for meds.
I returned to the garden once more to visit Dave and give him a signed copy of Dank that had just come out. We visited the now empty garden and I took a silly pic of Dave standing where massive plants used to grow but was now only a few yellow leaves that were surly composted over the winter. Dave showed me the last of the hanging bud and the massive plant skeletons that were now on the burn pile. They had cleaned up all but a few of the last plants and only a few lower buds remained for the late comers to pick from but still Dave was busy making sure everyone he knew that needed meds got a full limit.
This was also the first time in 4 months Dave didnt look worn completely out, the guy works his self too hard and I witnessed him have a seizure down in the trim room one day that scared me really bad. Dave has Bells Paulsey and when he doesnt rest and eat right I found out he pays for it dearly. It was so nice to see him sit down and relax for a bit and I had brought him some nice cured indoor meds and we smoked 3 joints before I saw his face relax and after I left he called me and thanked me as he felt a whole lot better. Before leaving Dave had a surprise for me, seems he had been stashing nice buds of this and that for me to photograph and more importantly to enjoy and share with people I know that have cards and welcomed free bud. He gave me a full case of jars full of buds and I came home and took a few shots for you guys before diving into the samples.
It was a great season except for the early rains that came and I was told only about 35% was lost to mildew and mold. If you havent grown in the PNW dont rush to judgment, it is not easy and one thing I learned is I will stay indoors with my growing. I am so lucky to have Dave as my friend to learn from and visit Weeden, but this was more work than I could have possibly imagined and he has done this for 19 years now. It has taken its toll on his health for sure but thats just who he is, he cares much more about those around him than his own health and I have seen him to the point of exhaustion many days before noon working solo in the garden. To say I respect what this man does is the biggest understatement I could make! It is supposed to be nice this weekend here and I can guarantee Dave will be out tilling the soil bed working his butt off. I think I will visit him and drop off some meds I know he is out and no one deserves it more.
See ya Sunday Dave
Daves Not Here Man!
Tommy Chong
The End
