Grow Stories

Angry Weather Gods

Rain, rain and more rain is a good summary of the month of September 2001.  I had raised four lovely K2s outside with much love through spring and summer. Although the K2 is not an outdoor variety they had done marvellously in that far from poor weather. They had grown like crazy and towards the end of the summer I had myself four plants of a meter high and the same across. Real beauties with a strong stem and dark green leaf cover. They were given several litres of feed water each day, and once every so often given a splash of phytomin to help promote extra chlorophyll production.

They had developed many side branches on which I hoped a large number of fat buds would soon develop. Nothing could be further from the truth. This had been shaping up to be my first outdoor planting that had gone without problems, thanks to my previous experience with indoor growing. Halfway through August the K2s began to bloom and everything appeared rosy-tinted and promising, because it was still a warm and sunny Summer. But by the beginning of September the weather gods had other ideas. The floodgates were opened and it began to rain stair rods. At first I thought it was just a short bad spell, because we usually enjoy a pretty soft end of the summer.
But when no end was in sight two weeks later, I began to fear the worst. For many outdoor growers, September 2001 was a black month. Many lost their crop to mould or had to harvest too early. Personally, I did my best to keep the plants out of the rain and thereby reduce the risk of moulds. After it had rained for nearly a month, fate finally dealt me the hand I'd been expecting. Mould ripped through my crop and there was nothing left to harvest but some piddly little buds that had managed to develop under the dark, rainy heavens. I can say I was amazed and happy that even they had managed that and had survived even this long. A top harvest this was not going to be, but also not a disaster. From something good, came something good.

Problem

The thing about growing is you're always learning on the job, with much falling down and getting back on the horse. The best growers, I reckon, are those who had made plenty of mistakes and had the chance to learn from them - better at any rate than growers who by luck or green fingers have never put a foot wrong. You have to be able to solve problems as and when they arise. So I had a problem: the sickly, under-developed little buds had to be cut, then trimmed and that was going to long, tedious and fiddly work - and I didn't much fancy it. Everyone who has had a harvest knows that it is no fun at all gathering and preparing loads of all-but-weightless buds. But thanks to what I had read and my previous experience indoors I had found a neat solution to my problem. Via the Internet I had bought myself some ice-o-lator bags from an online grow shop. With these bags I could make water hash, the problem would be solved: I'd just make water hash out of all those outdoor plants because I had no desire to go trimming them all. That would be a soul destroying task. The buds in the meantime were not very large, but they did have plenty of THC hairs on them. A week after I had placed my order, the bags arrived. So handy, that Internet.

Water hash

Water hash.....I harvested all my outdoor plants and let everything dry. Trimming is not necessary, though you can do it. Normally we use only the better trim waste full with hairs to make water hash. But given that I had no intention of trimming all those little buds I simply let them dry thoroughly and then pulled them apart so that the hairs were fully exposed. This is necessary so that they can be more easily removed and thereby produce a better yield. What's nice about water hash is that when you have a disappointing (outdoor) harvest you have a huge amount of leaf material from which to make a superior quality hash.
Another method is to sieve the dried material and make skuff out of it, but the machine you need to do this is far too expensive if you're not going to use it a lot. In my opinion it is far nicer, cheaper and easier to make water hash. You only need the ice-o-lator bags, ice cubes and a big (20-25 litre) bucket and a mixer. The ice-o-lator is simply two bags with a sieve between them. One bag hold the leaves in it but lets the crystals through it. The American version of this is the bubble bag, but the principle is the same; it just uses more sieves, so you get various qualities of hash. So I let the buds and leaves dry out for a few days so that they were not damp but not powder dry either and then I stuffed them in a bag and stuck this in the freezer for a night.

Leaf material

About the leaf material, trim waste or buds. Personally I generally let the leaf material dry out for a couple of days to make sure it ends up dry but not bone dry. You can make water hash from fresh (wet) leaves or dry leaves, like one used to make skuff. If you use fresh leaves the water hash is of very high quality because there is very little impurity in it but then the yield is not very high. What's nice about using fresh leaves is that within a few hours of harvesting, a good or a bad crop you've got a good, smokable hash, and while your buds are drying you can already be enjoying your own shit. if you let the leaves dry right out then you'll end up with more, but of a lesser quality. I choose the golden middle line. Let the leaves dry for a few days so that they're half way dry - not too dry - and then you get a good yield and a good quality smoke.

DIY

The next day I took my 20-25 litre bucket and filled it with iced water. This is very important - the water must be really cold because the temperature issue is crucial. It must be kept as near to zero degrees as possible, as it is the cold that will make the sticky crystals fall off more easily. I set several bottles filled with water in the deep freeze for a few hours before I begin, just to make sure it is really cold. Then I take the frozen leaf material prepared the day before and put it in the iced water, then cover this with ice cubes. Put a lid on the bucket, punch a hole through this to let the mixer through, and start to mix. Mix for 15 minutes, then let it all stand for five minutes for the crystals to gently settle, then mix for another 15 minutes, wait five minutes...Thanks to the friction the crystals come loose and fall through the first bag to be caught by the second bag.
After an hour and a half, stop and remove the first bag with the leaf material in it. Make well sure that no leaves fall through into the mass of crystals, and if there are crystals adhering to the bottom of the sieve bag, wash them off above the bucket and not above the sink!. Now you should see a golden brown-to-green coloured water, and that's a good sign. if it is green that's a sign that you have probably mixed for too long and have stirred the chlorophyll into the water. But this is not a problem and the colour will disappear as the water hash dries out. Then finally we remove the second bag full of crystals from the bucket and let the water drain from it slowly. This can take a while depending on how full the bag is. If you gently wave the bag back and forth, this will speed things up as the crystals will move about and let the water through more easily.
What you see once all the water is out is pure gold; top quality hash that's somewhere between a light blonde-to-white and dark brown-black colour. It is a lovely feeling to know you've made this yourself and it's good. It's a bit like being a gold prospector with a sieve who suddenly sees gold nuggets. Then take some kitchen roll and press the rest of the moisture out of the mass. The result is then a reasonably dry lump of hash. You can knead this ball of hash more to make it into the shape you want, or you can leave it in the freezer until all the water left in it has risen to the top and can be just wiped off. This water hash is now ready for use, and only a few hours after harvesting. Like I said, pure gold!

Quality

I'm no hash expert but the water hash I made was absolutely the best shit I have ever smoked. The best taste and definitely the most effect. I had never, ever smoked any shit that had such a strong high. Really an overwhelmingly clean high, rather than a stoned, wasted high. We're talking seriously strong stuff and not to be underestimated. I smoked my first water hash with a mate who at that moment also had a few plants. I laid my fresh water hash above a 400w bulb for a minute to dry it and then we smoked it. We were both astounded as neither of us had had water hash before and so had no idea that it was of such high quality. We were soon enjoying being as high as kites under its influence.
We both generally prefer to smoke weed because hash is usually too light, but this water hash was precisely the opposite. After such a smoke you don't want or need to smoke weed. Other hashish I had smoked only gave me a light high. I know that water hash can be bought for a high price in the coffee shops of Holland. Making it myself was obviously far nicer. The yield depends on how much you put in the bag, and you cannot expect a decent yield if there are too few crystals on the leaf material. If you get 10% of what you put in then you're doing pretty good. Anything above that is excellent, anything under that leaves room for improvement.
So you can see, setbacks do not necessarily have to be a bad thing. Although I would still prefer to have had a good crop of outdoor bud, I could at least console myself with a large quantity of good quality water hash. If you ever find yourself in a similar position, first think what you might be able to salvage from the situation. For example, if your plant breaks its stem during the flowering phase you can strip it of its vegetation rather than just throw it away. In most cases not everything will be lost and it will be a learning experience for the future. Learn from mistakes. And what do I have in prospect? More on this next time....