August 1st 2021
The tall Betty Warp is inching towards the roof but growth has slowed since the flowers began sprouting of course..
August 3rd 2021
The 3 male plants that were banished to my neighbour's greenhouse have thrived and fully flowered. The female that joined them has not fared so well. The transplant didn't help and while it's alive and has small flowers, it isn't thriving. I'm still hopeful for some seeds however.
The biggest Betty Warp plant is thriving, is covered in young flowers and will be the major success of the whole crop. The California-orange plants haven't flowered yet but are healthy and growing slowly.
August 14th
There haven't been big changes during the past week. Just general slow maturation of the plants which are at different stages entirely. Two Betty Warp plants will be harvested before the end of August and the California orange plants haven't even flowered yet.
August 16th
The smallest of the 3 California-Orange plants came out as male finally. I whacked it and am down to 5 plants now.
August 21st 20201
2 Betty Warp plants have flowers with noticeable brown pistils and many yellow leaves. So they could be harvested anytime. There's a month left of summer. These early ripening varieties are my favourites now. The idea that some wouldn't be ready until the end of October isn't appealing.
September 1st
My impatience continues while my 4 plants slowly mature. Although this is only my second season, I'm starting to realize that autoflowering plants don't really mature in 10 weeks when they're outside. Two of my plants are getting very close to harvest time with quite a few brown pistils and a lot of dead leaves. But they're still a week or two away which actually puts them into the 5 month growing time and that's longer than last year! A long hot summer with good watering and the same general growing conditions hasn't hastened nor improved the yield one bit compared to the cool damp summer last year!
The California orange plants are mostly unchanged for a month......they are very slowly becoming more bushy but not bigger and very little signs of flowering.
The biggest Betty Warp plant remains the star of the 20 seed lot.
Although the flowers are immature, if they ripen in the normal way there'll be more pot on this plant than the rest combined. However, at the moment that's only the 2 other Betty Warp plants. With only a month or so remaining in the season, the 2 California Orange plants may not yield anything.
Either the seeds were not very good quality or these plants aren't suitable for my growing conditions.
September 7th 2021
Heeding some online advice about beginning the harvest as soon as possible, I clipped several of the ripest looking buds and dried them on a Chinette plate on the counter. They dried out noticeably with a fresh grassy scent.
September 13th 2021
With some city business looming and the first rainstorm forecast by the end of the week, I decided to harvest the remainder of the two plants and take them with me to Vancouver. I have a Ninja Foodi with a dehydrator function and a 5 tray rack. I dried the pot at the lowest setting of 105F for 3 sessions of 6 hours each. It dried out nicely and yielded a full sandwich baggy. A test smoke proved fine potency! After 6 months I've smoked the first of the season. The yield is disappointingly small at less than 1/2 an ounce for each plant, but the potency is very good. This isn't 1 toke dope but 3 tokes got me very stoned!
September 17th 2021
The remaining plants are flowering well but are 2 weeks away from harvest time I estimate. The largest and remaining bettywarp plant might yield another full ounce and maybe the 2 california orange plants another ounce between them.
Why did only 1 plant reach its full potential and why did they all take so long to mature despite being sold as autoflowering varieties?
This is the second year that I've used a dehydrator. It's worked very well and inspite of online posters warning about harsh smoke and decreased potency as a result, this isn't my experience. This is an excellent way to dry all manner of herbs and fruit and vegetables and it works well for pot too. The only reason I can suggest that one wouldn't do it is if the crop is too big for a home dehydrator and one has a suitable place to air dry it. This is no small thing in the PNW where cold, wet conditions are normal in October.
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