You Can Have Maximum Yield --AND-- Maximum Quality in Every Harvest

[mr underhill]

the trick is finding a hardy cultivar that yields quality and dialing your skills to the plant.
So no, I would tend to disagree that you can't have quality without sacrificing yield. I have a few plants that would back up my thinking.

 

[Dropped Cat]

Appreciate everyone sharing, it's definitely a subject with a lot of variables.

Dropped_Cat, you make good points for your style. So you're looking more for strains/phenos which really like your environment as is. Have you thought about the spectrum shifting capability LEDs bring to the table?

LED's tricky for me for some reason, I tried the screw in
type mod, but they were too hot.

The PL L lamps I use have qualities that I agree with.
2700K in flower, 11 on 13 off. 4100K in veg 18/6.

When i can flower unrestricted I'll use 600W HPS with
high ceilings, living soli.

I tried 150W HPS, but didn't care for the ballast,
magnetic type, wiring complexity, as I am not a qualified sparky.

I ran that 150w lamp for a grow and liked the results,
but I lack, currently, the climate control and head room
to fully exploit HPS.

LED's make me sad, perhaps I'll tell that story another time.

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

the trick is finding a hardy cultivar that yields quality and dialing your skills to the plant.
So no, I would tend to disagree that you can't have quality without sacrificing yield. I have a few plants that would back up my thinking.

This is interesting. What is the typical response from people when you share it with them? Do they agree it's as good or better than anything else you grow (quality wise), and beats anything else they've had from other growers? (again, in my experience most people/growers have not experienced extreme quality yet)

 

[xavier7995]

I am in the you lose a bit of yield to up quality camp. You can pump nutes hard and get big ol buds that snap crackle and pop when smoked, look nice though.

Do any of you guys running jacks or similar salts use the trace elements? One would assume those are necessary, i try to sort of hit it by throwing a few teas at the plants, but would i be better off just making it part of the normal feed?

Edit: i am basing my view on smoking buds, with extracts (thinking sifted products specifically) i think you could push nutrients quite a bit harder to reach maximum yield by maxing the surface area. Do trichromes accumulate whatever grossness from overfeeding or is that mostly in the accompanying plant matter?

 

[YukonKronic]

I’m thinking yield is sacrificed in a small way for quality as well. Especially considering the way extra trichomes can be stimulated by stress responses and dryer environments... if plants grow more efficiently in higher humidity they will have greater biomass than in a dryer environment. That biomass could translate to extra sugars available for terpene and even resin synthesis but people’s opinion seem predominantly to lean towards dryer being more crystalline.
That leads me to believe that the decrease in surface area from a plant growing in dryer environs is a greater factor to potency than any increase in sugars/essential oils from greater “health” or perhaps more accurately Bulk.

 

[rjrom90]

I am in the you lose a bit of yield to up quality camp. You can pump nutes hard and get big ol buds that snap crackle and pop when smoked, look nice though.

Do any of you guys running jacks or similar salts use the trace elements? One would assume those are necessary, i try to sort of hit it by throwing a few teas at the plants, but would i be better off just making it part of the normal feed?

Edit: i am basing my view on smoking buds, with extracts (thinking sifted products specifically) i think you could push nutrients quite a bit harder to reach maximum yield by maxing the surface area. Do trichromes accumulate whatever grossness from overfeeding or is that mostly in the accompanying plant matter?

I use Jack's at half strength with Albion amino chelated calcium instead of CaNO3. For trace minerals I use BuildASoil Big6 and Sea-Crop. This combination produces massive buds that are far higher in quality than even the best buds grown in regenerative soil. This also creates mold and pest resistance through higher brix levels. I have been able to eliminate mites, thrips, aphids and powdery mildew from infected clones without any use of pesticides or fungicides.


Pictured is Blue Dream (left) and GSC (right)

 

[GMT]

All sorts of shit left in the plant from nutes and poor flushes add to weight. Cash croppers can't afford not to pollute weed. Smokers think artificial tastes and smells from flashy buds mean better quality. So what is "better quality"? What the market demands or purer, yet low demand smoke?

 

[mr underhill]

This is interesting. What is the typical response from people when you share it with them? Do they agree it's as good or better than anything else you grow (quality wise), and beats anything else they've had from other growers? (again, in my experience most people/growers have not experienced extreme quality yet)

I think most seasoned tokers I know have experienced extreme quality and some have grown it themselves. I have been fortunate to be surrounded by cannabis culture from a fairly young age so like to think I have a good perspective. Most of my friends are the same.

I think the reality is more like most growers are running cuts and not hunting through much seed. I hunt a couple thousand seeds a year and have been for a couple decades or so. The more plants you see from seed, the higher the opportunity to find the cream of the crop.

I keep 3 moms that check all the boxes for yield, calyx/leaf ratio, flavor, potency and effect, bag appeal, and ease of growth. They are also quite hardy when it comes to pests. When other decent varieties are yielding say 2 ounce plants in a given space/light/feed, those girls will yield 100 to 120 grams each and they do it inside of 9 weeks. (no C02, no PGR's , low salt, high ca , soilless mix, gavita de lighting)
other than those 3 I am always popping seed looking for more variety.

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

I think most seasoned tokers I know have experienced extreme quality and some have grown it themselves. I have been fortunate to be surrounded by cannabis culture from a fairly young age so like to think I have a good perspective. Most of my friends are the same.

Ok, that's a bit more clear. I've been through several states, through dispensaries for 10+ years in several states, and have been sourcing cannabis for 30+ years.

Most experienced tokers I've met have no idea what extreme quality is. Some have grown very good quality from time to time, but all have had eye popping moments when sampling my top quality. Like I said, I would expect a higher level of quality from a small group of growers here on icmag, but most don't understand it yet.

Truly nothing personal, just observation from a rather large sampling time and area. In 30+ years, I came across superior quality once and it happened to be from a dispensary (yeah, shocker to me as well, since they've been a constant source of disappointment). Even though I'd been growing for 5 years at that point, (and now over 15) I have never seen it's equal before or since, except possibly in a few photos photos on icmag. It took me a few years of R&D to learn how to grow something very close to the same quality.

That single experience caused an epiphany regarding quality. Cannabis quality from others has been a constant source of disappointment ever since. It's one of the main reasons I post online, it's an effort to improve the quality of cannabis anywhere I can.

Those of you who understand what I'm talking about, the 1% or less who've experienced superior quality cannabis, you are the ones who know quality means a small sacrifice to yield.

Micro nutrients, balanced availability, premium element sources, it's going to be years before even the basics on this are hammered out. The anticipation of what's to come 5 years and more from now is delicious.

for contributing.

 

[mr underhill]

if it helps for perspective, I started my first grow when I was 14 in a forested area behind my junior high school. Was only 6 plants I found in tin foil wrapped lid of brick weed. My friends dad gave us clones the next year and we had 30 or 40 plants every summer between burns bog and delta watershed park near Vancouver BC. Got married and had a kid and worked and grew with a buddy in a 10 light shop on a farm property for 2 decades straight and every summer 600 to 1000 plants in the mountains around the fraser valley.
never been popped and other than a few breaks here n there I have been growing for over 30 years now and breeding among friends for 25. Most of my closest friends I met in my 20's and we all grow and travel for cannabis related tourism.
Not bragging, everyone has their perspective but I do not believe that quality needs to be sacrificed to bring out the best yield a plant can offer. It depends on the grower and the plant and those plants may very well be 1 in 1000. 1 in 5000?
I have 3 and one was found by a friend a couple years ago in some packs of Bodhi seeds, the other mums I keep are home bred... kush poly-hybrid types.

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

Not bragging, everyone has their perspective but I do not believe that quality needs to be sacrificed to bring out the best yield a plant can offer. It depends on the grower and the plant and those plants may very well be 1 in 1000. 1 in 5000?
I have 3 and one was found by a friend a couple years ago in some packs of Bodhi seeds, the other mums I keep are home bred... kush poly-hybrid types.

We'll have to agree to disagree then. In my opinion, it does not take a special plant to produce superior quality. Every plant can be grown to be superior quality for the genetics they are. This may turn out to be lower THC, terpenes, yield, whatever, than other strains in comparison, but it will be the utmost quality for those genetics. What you describe is looking for genetics which can power through your grow methods, and still produce a product people notice.

Yes, everything is relative to experience. No disrespect, but time in the game does not mean much to me. I've smoked a LOT of cannabis from 20+ year experienced growers. Most of it was pretty bad, with some very decent offerings scattered in from time to time. Prohibition has been very good at keeping cannabis fairly dirty, through restricting the flow of information.

Ask yourself: When did you first experience cannabis SO amazingly well grown, it made you completely rethink everything you'd ever thought about growing cannabis? If the answer is never, there's a strong chance you've never had anything close.

 

[Drewsif]

Yield is irrelevant, yield is subjective. Yield is a myth. Yield in non binary and fluid.

Most growers don't know their yield. You dont know your yield until your bud has been cracker dried and extracted,and 'graphed for weight bearing contaminants in the form of latent grow product and environmental uptakes.

I grow for proteins. The yield of fatty acids is high, the quality is high. The high doesn't even require thc. The yield of fiber is not high. If youre growing for fiber, or to flash off gallons of terpenes into the air before harvest..) First off, why, and second, youre still doing it wrong if you shop at a grow store. If you want to hone your hemp fiber skills, there's an actual legit industry behind that. Sadly theirs no industry for quality vaporizer grade Cannabis.

We've got people lighting the shit on fire in 2019 and thinking they've experienced the Holy grail. Son, you wouldn't light the Holy grail on fire, you'd vape it after a 6 month honeymoon, at the perpetual living wake of your human ego, and hold a daily funeral for the Abv while mixing it back into your soil after every vape session.

 

[hayday]

I'll have what he's smokin^ er...vapin

 

[TychoMonolyth]

Once? Yes. But only by accident. Every? No way.

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

I switched to LED and soil, so I've started with plain soil and water while slowly building knowledge on it. My yields are way down, because I am underfeeding a lot of things, but the simplicity is up and the quality is definitely still there.

Looks pretty too..

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

Correct me if I am wrong, but you can dial in a plant to perfection in quality and give her clone more than optimal nutes. The clone will (unless seriously overfed) pack on more weight, while quality goes down. The smoke will be hotter, the ash will be darker and heavier and the resin to plant ratio will be lower.

No?

 

[stoney917]

I don't believe you can have maximum yield for your wattage... AND maximum quality possible for your strain. In my experience the two are mutually exclusive.

In my opinion, you can have great yields of excellent quality, while you lose some of the extreme quality.

What's your opinion?

It’s called a dialed in room and knowing your feed can’t over feed the plants there is a perfect middle where the rooms run like a well oiled machine

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

It’s called a dialed in room and knowing your feed can’t over feed the plants there is a perfect middle where the rooms run like a well oiled machine

So, if adding more nutrients to a 'dialed in' room there will be no additional weight added? In my thinking, if no additional weight can be gained through overfeeding, the plants are already overfed and quality is lower than it can be.

 

[Petrochemical]

I don't believe you can have maximum yield for your wattage... AND maximum quality possible for your strain. In my experience the two are mutually exclusive.

In my opinion, you can have great yields of excellent quality, while you lose some of the extreme quality.

What's your opinion?

I think your right doug

 

[Petrochemical]

Rock dust pirates concur lmaopp