My Buds are not tight

I have had a fairly good year, my yields may not be as much as I hoped, but its working out just fine. Even smoking, it seems to be good stuff. One concern I had and my buddy brought it up. My plants are good, my harvest is good, but my buds dont seem to be thick and tight. What do I need to do next year to improve on this? I am growing in 10 gallon pots, plenty of sun, and using fox farm 3 step. Any help with bigger and fatter buds would be great!!

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Sometimes genetics plays a role. If you had a strain prone to loose or airy buds that would do it. Light and nutrition/space are the big determinants. I will say my outdoor grow people use much larger fabric pots: 35 up to 800 gallon. Being careful to follow a nutrient lineā€™s grow schedule is important too. Without pictures and data itā€™s hard to tell why. If it was indoors I would immediately point to your lights.

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Bang on! I have found sativa doms are light and airy while indica doms tend to be more compact and dense. I grew outdoor Alien rift and the pheno I got was sativa dominant, the buds were smaller and light and airy, terpenes of pine gas and lemons, the high is clear and stress free. I purposely harvested at the cloudy gland stage rather than amber to keep the high clean rather than couchy. Iā€™m sure if I grew this strain under lights I could have beefed up the buds considerably.

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If you grow strictly outdoors the key is direct sunlight. If thereā€™s a spot that gets direct sun for most of the day, put them there.

Indicas do typically grow denser than Sativa, but thatā€™s not set in stone. There are always pluses and minuses.

Lots and lots of light. Thatā€™ll help.
Also, be sure youā€™re not harvesting too early. Cannabis puts on a lot of weight in the last 2-3 weeks.

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Yep I was generalizing for sure, and yep more light means more dope! As I said once the nights start getting cold and the days cooler, you donā€™t get much growth, thatā€™s a drawback of farming weed in the north. What we do get is glorious fall colors in some weed.

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Having played a lot with cool temps and cannabis, I can attest to the beautiful colors.
Iā€™m not sure if it helps the potency, and the majority of the hues get trimmed off, but they do get pretty when itā€™s cold.

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Imo every outdoor bud Iā€™ve sampled has been a little more spindly that stuff pulled out of a decent indoor setup. I agree genetics will play a roll in this, but also a product of environment.

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Those are beautiful! That last image is solid and candy like. Good job!

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Really amazing @Drinkslinger the colors look terrific.

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I like the one before the last. That is a beautiful frigging bud!

But here in the southā€¦ still 75-80 and gorgeous! Screw that ā€˜winter is comingā€™ crap :joy:

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Ya gotta admit though there ainā€™t no light like sun light! Combine that with the natural elements and an organic soil and BAM! The best tasting bud in the universe! I prefer outdoor weed to indoor.

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want thicker budsā€¦ice them.

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@Larry815 DJ short talks about putting buds in paper shopping bags for the last part of drying. Having them lay on each other ā€œdensesā€ up the nugs.

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So I guess making a huge pile would work too? I like doing that anyway lol itā€™s like making it rain with weed!

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Yep. I was thinking you could roll the bag work a little pressure.

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Go for broke, use it as a pillow!

I disagree about sunlight. The only advantage it really has is that itā€™s free. But weā€™re absolutely entitled to like different things.

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it is outdoor grow. In 10 gallon pots. Plenty of sun and water. And as far as fox farm, I followed it. I will just have to keep a eye on it for next year.

Someone around here vacuum seals their qps/lbs. I know the consensus is thatā€™s bad, but damn her buds are dense and sticky. If I had a machine to experiment with I would.

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What I do agree with you on is a perfect environment, sunny every day, the whole time the light is on. This makes for bomber buds, really powerful smoke! I find the terpenes are a bit nicer with outdoor. I donā€™t like my weed too strong anyway. Save that for the Chronics, those days are behind me now because of my work.
That being said, now that weed is legal Iā€™ve taken to growing indoors. Many of my buds ( pun intended ) grow indoors so I get to see what they do and donā€™t do. Strangely around here they still go old school with the street lights? Iā€™ve tried to convince them of the merits of the new LEDs but they arenā€™t convinced. Fools I say!!!

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