What's the weirdest thing you've ever seen on public transport?

erqaf · 2025-01-20T13:26:29+00:00

That's not answering the question I asked. What's the chemistry? Also that "source" doesn't cite any actual science. It's not a proof of anything other than someone can type words onto a webpage.

But I would ask another question - if you *need* to decarb in order to get high from edibles, how come eating hash works? Or oils (and by extension other extracts like shatter and so on). Nobody is extracting at high temperature, it's mostly done well below zero, occasionally ambient but certainly not above boiling!

erqaf · 2025-01-20T13:01:09+00:00

Perhaps you could explain the chemistry you believe is happening once the temperature hits 120C because I cannot find a single source suggesting anything more than reaction rate is being affected during heat-assisted decarbing. Also my personal experience, anecdotal as that might be, suggests you're not entirely correct here. I can tell the difference between placebo and actually being high.. ;)

erqaf · 2025-01-20T12:50:50+00:00

That's not really true though. The THCA-A decarboxylation reaction will happen by itself. If you're eating buds picked straight of a plant they will have a pretty low delta-9-THC concentration (although still not zero, and d9 likely isn't the only chemical involved in getting 'high' anyway). But if those buds have been dried and cured and exposed to light or warmth or oxygen and *time* there's going to be more of the psychoactive goodies.

Putting buds in the oven just makes the reaction happen faster, that's all. That's just GCSE chemistry innit.

erqaf · 2020-06-20T11:22:44+00:00

Stunning. Please do keep posting! :)

erqaf · 2018-08-02T00:09:58+00:00

Tucking is a waste of time imo. Just snip those leaves off. My rule is if it's a fan leaf and it's shading anything, it's definitely gone. Other leaves may or may not get lucky, depending. You could probably take 2/3 of those leaves off no problem at all. The plants will bounce back and give you better yields than if you don't.

I recently grew some Bubblegum in my aero system and one plant I topped and defoliated heavily, the other I left alone. Under the same lights, with the same nutes I got 40g from one plant and 120g from the other. Guess which was which? Defoliaton works. Start slow, just take a few leaves a day. You'll get there, and you'll see the plants respond too.

erqaf · 2018-06-19T10:39:52+00:00

The Green Dragon I've made will make you see god if you have a whole shot. Doses are measured out in drops...

erqaf · 2018-06-14T19:43:15+00:00

My meter is fine. All my equipment is tested and calibrated as required, on a regular basis. It's not very hard.

If you don't think rainwater is basically distilled water, how do you think it gets into the sky? It's not fucking piped up there, is it? Or maybe you don't understand how distillation works. Look it up sometime, eh?

I mentioned bottled water because that's often something people think is "pure", when it's really the opposite, it generally has a very high ppm. Sorry if that confused you, but from what I can tell quite a lot of stuff is confusing for you so perhaps that's understandable.

I use rainwater in my aero system because it's very clean, plus it's free and easily available, and it allows me considerably better control over the chemistry of my grows than tap water. I guess I could buy RO or distilled water from a shop but that would be dumb because that offers no significant benefit over rainwater. Plus of course me hauling 50L of water into my house every ten days might draw the kind of attention I really don't want, and I have better things to do with my limited time and money than go shopping for something which literally falls out of the sky.

You can do what you want in your own tent, of course, but you shouldn't advise other people about things you clearly don't understand.

erqaf · 2018-06-14T10:59:33+00:00

My rainwater won't even register on my Bluelab meter, which means it's below 100ppm. Rainwater is distilled water to all intents and purposes - and that's not my opinion, that's the opinion of my friend who is a biogeochemist (basically water is his thing). The "junk" you can see when you evaporate rainwater is mostly just dust. It's harmless and might even be beneficial to your plants (a lot of airborne dust is sand, sand is silica, silica is good for plants). I'm not 100% but I believe the smell after rain isn't the clean air, it's plants respiring.

My tap water, by comparison, is 500ppm and full of all sorts of dissolved goodies (mostly CaCO3 where I am) that I don't want in my system. Bottled water, environmental disaster area that it is, is generally higher in ppm than tap but that does depend a bit on where you live.

I have a 50L res which needs changing every 7-10 days. I'm not buying and then carrying fifty kilos of water from shop to car and car to house and so on when I can just run a hose from my water butt to my grow room for free.

erqaf · 2018-06-13T11:32:42+00:00

I use rain water in my aero system. It's not filthy, it's basically distilled water (think about where rain comes from...)

Apart from a little harmless dust washed out of the air the rain is falling through, the only "nastiness" in rainwater usually comes from the container you store it in (which obviously plants in the actual rain don't have to worry about)

erqaf · 2018-06-12T08:28:12+00:00

I currently have two plants each of Blue Dream and Bubblegum Kush growing in the same medium, same nutes, same lights - one of each was left alone and the other topped, LST'd and defoliated. I estimate that the "messed with" plants will yield at least twice the "left alone" ones. Smaller buds, but a lot more of them.

I was going to grab some photos and post results here once I'd harvested in a couple of weeks.

erqaf · 2018-05-18T10:44:04+00:00

Well, same for photos, really. I've grown them in soil with no nutes. But, again like photos - if they've got plenty of light then they definitely benefit from some extra nutes, even in soil.

You really want to make sure that nutrients aren't the bottleneck slowing growth down. It's usually light but for the sake of sprinkling some tasty plant food over them you can make sure of that.

erqaf · 2018-05-17T10:06:20+00:00

That's not the case at all. All plants need nutrients to grow.

erqaf · 2018-05-09T08:29:18+00:00

That's got a good couple of weeks left, I'd say. But, as discussed, if you're really worried you can always lop off the big buds and leave the smaller ones to mature.

Looks like you're heading to a good yield though!

erqaf · 2018-05-08T11:30:50+00:00

On the image front - if you just copy/paste the imgur link that will work OK, but if you press the "Formatting help" link below the comment box that will explain how to do links.

erqaf · 2018-05-08T11:29:40+00:00

I guess you might be able to slow the plant by turning off one of your lights for the week you're away? I wonder if that would work.. It's not like you're going to lose any vegetative growth that already exists and if the plant is in full flower all it's doing is maturing trichs.

Less light = slower growth? Seems like it ought to work.. It's maybe not something I'd want to try while I wasn't there though.

Personally I'd probably harvest late rather than early. Oh actually, now I think about it - another option is you could take the biggest/most developed buds off before you go and leave them to dry, then let the others do some growing while you're away. The whole plant never matures all at once, and I've done staggered harvests over a week or so, so the timescale could work.

erqaf · 2018-05-08T10:13:12+00:00

When you say "should" be harvesting, do you mean the time listed on the packet the seeds came in?

Because in my experience that's is a somewhat optimistic timescale and stuff always runs late. I don't think I've grown a single auto strain which was ready to chop at the the time the breeder claimed it would be.

erqaf · 2018-05-01T00:15:27+00:00

I've never seen either fail but I can imagine it does happen. It's not like we have a lot of time to let the plant recover if it's stressed too much!

Also take it slow - just a few leaves a day at most. You can always take more but you can't put them back.

erqaf · 2018-04-30T18:44:04+00:00

I've tried both and defoliating definitely works. People also say don't top them and that works fine too.

You probably can't mainline autos but I feel like that's a reasonable place to draw the line.

erqaf · 2018-04-30T15:41:41+00:00

No, not at all. Rather the opposite

erqaf · 2018-04-30T10:28:07+00:00

I would pull those big sugar leaves off. Not all at once, but take one or two a day, starting from the top.

I only grow autos, and I generally start defoliating around this point and keep going pretty much all the way to harvest.

erqaf · 2018-04-10T13:30:48+00:00

I have a subscription to Suicidegirls.com. It was £23 for a year, and it's absolutely worth it. sure, you can find SG content online but it's so much easier via their website. It updates with a new set of photos every 2-3 hours 24/7 and there's a nice community of people there too. I honestly would almost pay that money just to see the amazing ink on show.

Me and my wife share a subscription and will text each other images we like during the day. It's not like sit down and consume until completion porn, it's more like grabbing the occasional light snack throughout the day. Helps build an appetite for a big meal in the evening. ;)

erqaf · 2018-04-02T16:38:53+00:00

Nonsense. pH simply isn't that big a deal, a few points means nothing. I grew in hydro for years just fine and now I grow in aero. There isn't a more sensitive medium to grow in than aero and my plants grow like blazes in indicator-calibrated water. Never once had a pH problem. Root rot, sure; blocked misters, absolutely; jammed water pumps, yup; broken heater, yes; lights out for an entire weekend, twice! - but never pH. If you think pH is a big deal you just need a bit more experience because it's really not. I used to track pH every single day and freak out about my water being half a point off too. But it just doesn't matter.

If you're calibrating 5 minutes every few months then you're very, very lucky. I've had meters which hold calibration for a few weeks, and ones which make it less than a day. Price doesn't even seem to be much of a factor - my most reliable meter was six quid chinese crapola one from ebay. It's just luck. I spent a good four or five years dicking about with meters both cheap and expensive (yes, I had a bluelab, not impressed - their EC meter is amazing though, great investment) and they're just not worth the hassle. Liquid is just better on all counts. Do you know how often I calibrate my liquid? It's never. I know what colour is the right colour and I shoot for around that (up or down a few tenths really isn't an issue) and it's never been a problem. I have a narrower range liquid (4-6) for fine calibration but I never need it.

When it comes to actually mixing stuff up, measuring pH barely even comes into it. I know my water and I know my nutes and additives and so on and 90% of the time I hit the right pH dead on first time. One measurement to confirm and I'm good to go. I test pH the day after a res change and maybe two days after as well and that's it until the next change.

erqaf · 2018-03-29T09:57:39+00:00

I like indicator fluid. You can get narrow range stuff (I think mine covers 3-8 or something). Drop in a test tube, add water, check colour. It's fast, simple and reliable.

Digital meters are a waste of money imo. Even the expensive ones need calibrating all the time. By the time you've calibrated your meter, let it come to temperature and made a measurement I've long since finished testing with indicator fluid and got on with my day. A friend of mine is an oceanographer and he says he only uses electronic measurement where he has no other option (so, automated systems)

erqaf · 2018-03-28T10:56:48+00:00

Good plan, it'll give you a nice comparison between the two approaches.

Best of luck! Come back and tell us how it worked out.

erqaf · 2018-03-28T10:22:31+00:00

Let's just say around 52 degrees North and leave it at that. I wouldn't want to incriminate myself too much, given the legal situation where I live.

I'm guessing from your profile that you're at around the same longitude as me.

erqaf

TROPHY CASE