juliachronics

This better have a bajillion reposts when I wake up!

In case you were wondering what having access to a breeders entire line up looks like- here's 9 "mother" explants of 4 cultivar that will be on hand for micropropagation. In a few weeks, we'll be able to subculture these into rooted plantlets that will just live on my 1 shelf until it's time to cultivate them,, be that weeks or months from now. I don't have to water them, I don't have to feed them.. i don't have to do anything to them. That's it. That's my "mom" tent. How many moms are you running right now? Breeders in the comments. – at Galway-Cavendish and Harvey, Ontario

So we know how the drying process works; surface water dries quick; interior flower moisture diffuses slower. So we slope up our dry vpd to maintain a consistent rate and get them off the dry rack and into cure quicker for higher PSM preservation.  Cool!. Once we hit the desired aW, we no longer want pull water out. We want to use the atmospheric pressure to slowly pull water back into the outer layers of your flower and hold it there. We do this by staying below our relative humidity equilibrium, and then sloping our cure vpd down to hold that equilibrium.  We do this, because we need our flower dry enough to inhibit the propagation of pathogens through available water for their own cellular function. But not so dry that it accelerates the rate of volotization of your aromatic compounds, and contributes to increased combustion temperatures of your dried flower, which make for a bad combination.  When there is just enough water in your flower, it allows for continued enzymatic reactions that will break down compounds like chlorophyll sugars and starches. Because of these reactions, other compounds like c02 and ethylene are being produced, where o2 needs to be replenished for these process to continue at exponentially slowing rates. This degredation of unwanted compounds is what is contributing to that "refined" flavor that comes with a well cured flower. Because light and heat are major contributing factors to oxidization, during cure, we want to get those volotile compounds into a cool preservative condition to maintain as many of those compounds we worked so hard in getting off the dry rack so quickly to get here. So the million dollar question is what are those conditions? Using the formula, 0.6-0.65  aW= equilibrium rh/100 (62%/100 ) We start with 62% 65.35f Dewpoint  52°f burping once a day, for 2 days, then raising the rh% to 64% which will lock in even moisture distribution to complete the cure for another 4 to 5 days. When burping your container, it's critical to make sure the air being replaced is within your curing parameters, not just storing the container in those conditions. – at Toronto, Ontario

Lab level-up – at Galway-Cavendish and Harvey, Ontario