Took down both of my outdoor SSH ladies today before dawn. I hung them in my shed and a few hours later, started trimming the biggest fan leaves. This took at least an hour before I felt like I made a dent. Then, I started working on smaller leaves that were not interstitial to the buds. That took forever. Break for life a bit, then back again for a couple more hours. Dinner, then back out for a couple more hours. Am I this bad at it?
My potential mistakes: I was trying to cut most of the leaves with snips so that I could cut the leaves flush at the main stems. I tried to reach the snips into the buds to get the smaller leaves out, which took forever. I was working while they were hanging from the ceiling (instead of cutting lengths and sitting at a table). I was on a ladder.
OK, so I made a lot of mistakes. I’m really disappointed with the end result considering the time I spent, but here are a couple of pics of my yield. I’m going to have to do a dry trim on these as well once they’re dried out. I cut a few colas off and hung them in my tent with the fan moving. I have the rest still on the plants until I can properly separate them tomorrow. I did find bud rot on 3 buds, which I cleaned out thoroughly (probably a little too aggressively) and removed from the area.
Here are some harvest day photos. I realize there are plenty of larger leaves in some of the photos (far right group in the tent) but I did go back and clean some up. And I truly did try my best.
@nostril, I think your buds look yummy and you made it successfully to Harvest Yeah!!! I feel your pain literally , my thumb is actually bruised from where I was holding the scissors for so long. I have havested 4 out of 8 and have learned something to make the process easier each time, Removing as many of the fan leaves before chopping is a must!! I will not make that mistake again, if you have more trimming to do try to
Get it done before all the leaves get to dry another thing I learned, dry shriveled leaves are even harder to trim I will never dry trim again my eyes feel crossed from staring so long
congrats and once you get most of the trim done you can always go back and clean them up a little at a time to make them extra good
I have got agree the the guy’s on this one. Looks good to me and what are you using to trim it ? Regular scissors are what I used my first grow then I got a cheap spring loaded little trimmer and cut hours of time and 1 sore thumb out of the work . They are just about 12 bucks and have a curved blade got mine on amazon
And yes trimming is the worst part except the wait for your cure to get ready to smoke . I started on my last grow just snipping off all my fan leafs before I even harvest the plant and let them fall to the tent floor harvest the girls hang em up and then vacuum the tent and start spraying it out with alcohol. But for a first time you did great
Thanks, @chinacat, @suctionmed, @Countryboyjvd1971, and @Oldstoner for the support. @latewood, thanks for the support _and_early morning laugh. I’m not disappointed in my harvest! I just like to be better at jobs than I was at this one.
One thing that I noticed is that my “natural” (non pruned) outdoor grow resulted in a LOT of small buds outside of the main ones. This slowed me down tremendously as well due to bud trimming them, and because I had to decide which of those were trim and which could be left on the colas. I decided unofficially that anything smaller than about a dime in diameter would be trim. The problem of course is that I’ll have some uneven drying. Some of these small buds will be dry well before my main buds. Perhaps I’ll snap them off and jar them when they are.
Sounds like the consensus is that I should have trimmed the big fan leaves in situ a day or two before harvest. I’ll do that next time! I will also consider a training/pruning method for my next outdoor grow to limit the tiny buds all over the bottoms.
I’m about to germinate for an indoor scrog (second grow) and I’m hopeful I can carry some trim lessons forward.
Yep, like the others said…wet trim the big stuff, and then give them manicure once dry. Trimming is a pain regardless, but it’s also a beautiful kind of pain.
@nostril a seed! Sweet. When you scrog your buds will be more uniform because your trying to keep them all at the same height. You won’t have all the popcorn bud.
You’ll also find that different ways to approach the plant can help. I cut the branches down and peroxide wash so each branch can sit in my lap and I can trim without fatigue. I just trimmed 5 3/4 lbs green by myself a week ago.
I may have overdried my buds (5 days in suddenly very dry conditions) but I’m generally quite happy with my first grow. Cleaning the buds dry wasn’t bad except they were slightly brittle. I’m hoping some hidden moisture will slowly migrate out during curing.
