The Peters Hangover Scale

[Avatar]

Not having one too many.

These days I find I have a very fine appreciation of when to stop...

--A

[Skyweir]

mmm... well thats no fun .. but good point

So lets work from the basis .. thats not the case

TBH I find staying hydrated definitely helps .. in the event I do have one too many. But think party, celebration, New Years, Xmas, wedding, engagement, but cos night, girls night out..

[Skyweir]

Speaking of drinking .. youll be pleased to know we smoked Trevs home grown during a wake ... and a couple of bottles of fine wine .. and it elevated me to a beautiful sense of bliss. It was very relaxing and nice.

[Avatar]

Sounds good.

--A

[Skyweir]

Oh it was

Now its a regular part of our regular HAPPY HOUR. We chill outside under the stars every night after a lovely day of Animal Minding ..

My latest is my fave ... a glass of Tennessee Fire and a homemade joint

Its a great way to see in the stars. Then a relaxing soak, dinner and we are quasi binge watching Battlestar Galactica atm .. but in small increments... as we only watch telly in the evenings .. so our binging is slow and steady.

[Avatar]

Probaly the right way to do it.

--A

[peter]

On the homegrown front I have an anecdote that is interesting:

Once we had a crop of about thirty or so good big plants, outside (ie not in a window sill or an artificial growing setup) and as they got toward harvesting size we were testing them pretty much daily. Some of the plants seemed very much stronger than others and so (in our inexperience) we harvested the weaker ones and left the strongest to grow further.

Big mistake.

Turns out that the male plants come to full (smoking) strength before the females. Suddenly our full strength plants that we had left to grow on, lost their potency almost overnight and became weak and insipid. We had inadvertently pulled the females before they had reached their full potential, and while they were smokable, they were a shadow of what they could have become had they been left to develop. What we should have done was pulled the plants at peak strength as they came into their power. That way we would have gotten all the plants at their best, which I have to say was pretty damn good.

Ah well, you live and learn!

[Avatar]

Ah, Peter, you should not be smoking the male plants at all. They have a markedly lower THC content (although usually a reasonable CBD content).

What you do is, as soon as it's possible to determine the sex of the plant(s) you ruthlessly rip out all the males, then lavish care and attention on the females.

--A

[peter]

If I recall correctly Av, there is a difference in the 'flowering heads' between males and females that shows up at some stage near the end of their development. Can't remember the detail but it's something like this.

But yes, you could have it correct about discarding the males - to be honest it was really our only go at cultivation on that scale. We abandoned it for the easier method of hanging around in grubby car-parking lots etc, in order to score our weed - an altogether lazier, if more expensive way of feeding our habit.

[Avatar]

Ah, this could be the subject of pages and pages of writing. (Having done some growing recently, (and been involved in more over the years) I flatter myself that I have a good understanding of the process.

So...in short...once the vegetative stage is complete, (whether due to age or change in light), the flowering stage begins. At this point, it is possible to distinguish between male plants (which develop stamens) and female plants which develop "buds" (pistils).

The trick is to remove the male before pollination can occur, and hence inhibit the development of seeds (and the concomitant waste of energy that could be spent on THC development) in the female.

Below I present the result of my last attempt, a Cannabis Indica strain dubbed "Blue Mystic." (Perfectly legal to grow for personal use in South Africa btw.)



--A

[peter]

That's great Av!

You say about stalling the seed development process (which makes absolute sense) but much of the weed that I used to buy (back in the day - I haven't smoked for thirty plus years now) was full of the damn things. This was not homegrown either; we're talking Thai grass and Malawi etc, and it was pretty darn strong even with the beggars in it.

One good thing was that you could use the seeds to get your own homegrown up and running, if you were so inclined - but the main consequence of their presence was to reduce the quantity of leaf in your purchase (and provide the odd explosion in a spliff if one accidentally found its way in).

[Avatar]

Unless you're growing indoor under controlled conditions, it's well nigh impossible to prevent pollination.

Even if you assiduously weed out the males the instant they're identified, the bugger growing ditch-weed a mile or two upwind of you is going to pollinate your crop.

These days it's actually pretty rare to find seeds in most things, and almost impossible to find it in quality indoor crops. If they have a good strain, "professional" growers will clone their plants rather than pollinate them.

(Or if desirous of creating a new hybrid, bring a small bag of pollen into the grow and carefully tie it over a few branches of the female, so only those branches develop seeds.)

A very seedy purchase is generally indicative of low quality and correspondingly low price.

--A

[Zarathustra]

Nice resin glands, Av!

Pete, that's what you want to look at (with a magnifying glass) to see when they are fully ripe--the white "fuzzy" glands. You want them the swell up to full size, but harvest before they start turning brown. This "powdered sugar" look to dried/cured buds is where most of the THC is. They'll develop a rounded swell at the end when they're fully ripe.

I once converted a closet into a grow room, 20+ years ago.

[Avatar]

Thanks. I had to scale that down to post it, I'm sure you'll appreciate the full size image. Zoom in on those trichomes.

https://i.imgur.com/BvfkgfX.jpg

(A makeshift grow-tent with a full spectrum "blurple" LED.)

--A

[peter]

Think my growing/smoking days are over Z. Besides which, I think I preferred the days when my Moroccan used to come gathered by "veiled dessert maidens" running through the fields of plants, their filmy gowns gathering the pollen subsequently scraped off and pressed into blocks for transport to the West.

Did such an idyllic thing ever happen? I have no idea - but I like to think so!



(Actually the truth was much more prosaic. A friend of mine took a (very dangerous at the time) trip up into the mountains of Agadir and saw the villagers harvesting their crops. They used to lay the harvested plants into mesh platforms with trays underneath and thrash them with bundles of sticks. The pollen would gather on the trays, the highest quality at the top end near the flowering heads, and of reducing quality as you went further down the trays. This was then pressed into said blocks of resin ready for 'sale' to (often unwilling) tourists who happened to be passing through the region, or indeed to the professional buyers who came to the villages. I prefer, needless to say, my more romanticised version above! )

[Avatar]

Damn, it's been years since I found decent (or any for that matter) hash.

Must really make some more BHO, closest I'm likely to get.

--A

[SoulBiter]

Man that brings back memories. I grew my own back in my 20's, just 10 plants or so spread here and there that I would cultivate every year. I had no idea that when I dried it in my storage attic that the whole thing would reek!!! LOL

Its actually been about 15 years since I've inbibed enough to get really stoned. I did have a couple of candies back in Colorado on one of my ski trips but it must have been low THC. I didn't buy it so no idea.

But retirement is coming and after that, I do plan on enjoying some smoke here and there. Never thought when I was in my 20's that this stuff would ever be legal but here we are 35 years later and its legal in many States.

[Avatar]

I think it was always a matter of time really, glad I got to see it. I'm actually smoking less and less now, it's no longer uncommon for me to go days, even a week, without smoking (weed) at all.

--A

[peter]

Think that's how it happened for me Av, until I finally just didn't bother any more. I smoked nearly every day for twenty five years - and then suddenly I didn't. I never really miss it to be honest. I don't think I'll ever take it up again though anything is possible.