Merry Christmas everyone and welcome to the #kvetut 2016 Christmas gift page! Since Sarah and I got together over 4 years ago we have always made our own Christmas gifts. We have made jam, olive oil and last year we did BBQ sauce. This year? Its marijuana. 🙂
Oregon passed Measure 91 passed in 2014 legalizing recreational marijuana sales. In addition, it also allows Oregon residents to be able to grow up to 4 plants per household. Me being in the marijuana space with our SaaS company providing retail and inventory tracking, I thought this would be a great chance to learn more about how all of this works.
Sarah and I spent the last 6 months growing, harvesting and curing your present and below we walk through the entire process of doing so. It was quite the endeavour.
May 2016 – STarting with Clones
In early May of this year, I headed over to 5-0-trees to grab 4 marijuana clones. These clones range from $15-$25 each depending on the types you get. One of the things I hate about this industry is the ridiculous naming schemes; hence we ended up with:
Yeah, you can’t make this stuff up. In any case, we got some great starts and we were off to the races.
6/26/2016
By mid-June, I had all of the plants transplanted in large 20 gallon containers and they were growing insanely fast. Fertilizing started right about this time and I was amazed at how green these suckers look like.
7/13/2016: You can see the plants continue to thrive. During this phase they are in the vegetative state meaning there are just growing as quickly as they can and adding as much leaf as possible. Each one is a little solar panel that will help the plant in the Fall when it flowers giving it the energy it needs to make the buds that ultimately have the THC.
8/26/2016: Here we are in late-August and the plants are going nuts. This was right before Sarah and I headed to Burning Man and my wonderful Mother was willing to take over the watering duties. Unfortunately, the weather turned a bit. 😦
9/8/2016: Well, upon returning from Burning Man it turns out I hadn’t planned ahead on how heavy these plants get. Especially with a little rain. My Mom was a trooper and did her best even though two of the plants basically imploded on themselves. I got a little wonky and shored it all up with garden stakes and netting. You can also see the 5 gallon jug there that is full of nutrients. You start with nutrients that grow greenery and then later when the plants start to flower you change it up to encourage flower growth. Towards the end of the harvest I was having to fertilize at least every other day.
9/18/2016: And so it begins! You can see the tiny flower starts appearing on the tops of the plants. This was really exciting and the flowers are the magic that makes marijuana marijuana. By now, I was focusing on trimming smaller flower starts on the bottom of the plant so as to focus energy to the top colas (flowers). I was not as diligent as I should have been on this in the early days and wasted a lot of plant energy. Later in the process I got focused and the results were fantastic.
9/18/2016: This was quite possibly the worst year on record for weather when it comes to growing marijuana. The Summer was plenty warm but during the flowering phase, the plants have to stay dry (well the flowers do; you still have to water like mad). We had a bunch more rain coming in so Sarah and I had to build this make-shift shelter for the plants from a bunch of plastic. My lord what a pain. It rained a bunch and the humidity was high and the concern was the plants starting to mold. The flowers themselves are very sticky with what seems/looks like sugar but is actually the trichomes (see below). These are magnets for mold and mildew.
10/1/2016: Now we’re talking. Those little white hair looking things? Those are the trichomes and they make the magic happen. This is early ahead of the harvest as you want these to be about half brown and half opaque. Early here but looking so good. This is a close-up from one of the plants that my folks grew and my Mother took the picture.
10/1/2016: More of the plants as we head into the home stretch. You can see the tops of the plants getting heavy from the flowers. It’s a sight to see.
10/1/2016: I swear this was like the very last sunny day we had and this was our Sour Diesel. I had focused on removing the flowers on the lower branches and you can see the results above. We’re still at least 3-4 weeks out from harvest here but we had to harvest a bit early with the weather taking a nosedive.
10/10/2016: Harvest day! We were so lucky to have help from a bunch of our friends. Turns out harvesting is like a boatload of work. Like a LOT of work. You have to tear each plant down, trim each flower and then save the useful trim that we’ll turn into oil later. I’m still trying to find someone to help with the oil but we’ll figure it out. Oil is the stuff that you put in vape pens and its a much easier/friendly way to consume.
10/10/2016: I had to build a makeshift drying room in the garage and Sarah was kind enough to park out in the driveway for a few weeks while the plants dried. The key to drying is keeping it dark and at the right humidity as the plants give off a lot of moisture as they dry. Those flowers up on the left are about 8 inches long. Insanity. Drying took about 7-9 days depending on the plant. Every single one of those flowers had to be hand-trimmed.
11/2/2016: Once the flowers have been dried, they go into glass mason jars with little packets that help keep the humidity at the ideal 62% while in the jars. Also, you have to burp the jars every single day in the first 3-4 weeks which I did and it was amazing to see the change in the smell of the flower during this process. This is what will make the smoking of these flowers much more smooth and it also helps enhance the potency as well.
11/20/2016: The final product. Thanks to Holly and Jason Glaspey, they whipped up some labels for us that we had printed out and then got these great little 4 oz jars to share with our friends.
11/20/2016: You can see the final product here and it looks like it turned out really well. We will be looking forward to hearing what everybody thinks!
All-in-all, this was a fantastic experience and I loved learning more about this industry. We will most likely do this again next year but with more like 2 plants; 4 was just an insane amount of work. 🙂
Merry Christmas and hope you all enjoy! If you have feedback by all means drop us a line at us@kvetut.com!
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