Increasing Yield & Quality

[Guest]

1st thing is 1st, to any of the moderators etc....please feel free to move this to a more appropriate section of the forum.

I was listening away to Part one of the title above. Thanks @Keeno & @GMO for these. Good listening whether you're a newby or a master. Anyone should go back to basics and never stop to improve and learn.

....anyway, rant rant rant....... Keeno brought up a the idea of cooling down the temperatures during the last weekor two of flowering. I think this makes total sense when you think about it logically.

• As the plant would naturally pack on weight and/or want to seed, the temperatures imitating "fall season" would naturally get lower anyway

• The less you smell the better, terpenes are like a solvent, they evaporate with heat very quickly

• I cold cure now and my terps are now incredible

One question though that springs to mind. Wouldn't this compromise the ending weight a little bit, or is there always to much emphasis on the last two weeks of flower packs the most weight?

[seymore_budz]

I'm gonna grab a seat and wait for the replies :) Good question @DIY.Rik

[Keeno]

Im gonna make a cuppa and be back. I've literally just looked at a plant and had a idea about this very thing.

[Keeno]

It was Pete on Operation Grow who said it to me. "If you can smell your plants then they are burning off terpines". It made 100% sense in my head and also plays into cold curing. Ive definitely noticed more undertones when getting temperatures down for the last couple weeks. More delicate subtle flavoutlrs and smells.

As for the question on weight. Without trying it as a side by side its difficult to tell. And I wouldn't want to harvest a plant at week 7 or 8 anyway. But we will all have noticed what I call "the death swell" on finishing plants. When a plant is no longer producing bud sites, they just swell and get all bulbous.

My question is a follow on from @DIY.Rik's question. How much of that final swelling we see in the last 2 weeks is water weight. We all know when drying buds will loose up to 80% of weight which imo is water weight?

We dont harvest on size, we harvest on trichomes being ready. So if my rabbit hole thinking about a lot of the swelling we see in the last 2 weeks being water weight then in theory lowering temperatures to retain the volatile terpines/oils within the plant shouldn't effect weight to much.

And I would rather a far more flavour heavy bud that a more bland one with bit more of it. Imo lowering temps but doing so without stressing the plant won't effect yield much anyway. The plant thinks its autumn by this point in its life cycle, temps as low as 16c wouldn't be the end of the world for it.

As for ripening buds. LED for me produces happier plants and better smelling snd tasting plants. I think this will also be down to lower temps amoung other things. And we now have access to UV type LED lights to further ripen without needing to add more heat.

[Guest]

@Keeno in reply to your last......

This has become more of an interesting response to this topic than I origionally thought. Thanks everyone

So Keeno. Basically the last couple of weeks they are like a weight lifter using steriods It's all water retention. If you are right that brings me onto a whole new subject and theory around stem splitting in the last week or so.

If you are correct about the buds packing on water like that, the stem splitting technique would stop the plant from feeding and watering, which would send that signal you talk about on the podcast too? Becomes even more intersting then? I think you're right. How much time gets wasted in the last 2 weeks, swelling them out with water to then spend an extra 3 days drying it off?

It may be an interesting theory to lower temps like you say, then after a day or so, to give the plant time to respond to temp changes, or even after a week, then stem split, give another few days maybe? This would stop the water retention in the bud site while retaining tepenes, favanoids and flavours in general?