Why do I always lose all my terps? I need help!

[420Forever]

Check your attitude at the door, and keep your comments to yourself. Moderators don't tolerate that kind of attitude here

disclaimer: they're emojiz....relax ppp

 

[BII]

My plants have no or hardly any odor while growing and only a small amount at best after drying/curing. In colder months I even grow indoors with no exhausting or filtering of tent air, with no odor accumulating in the house. I've never been able to figure out the cause. Luckily every other aspect of quality - potency, yield, looks. - is rather good, so I don't worry about it, don't consider not having loud smells as a problem. I presume even with what growers complain about as low terps there is still enough variety and amounts of whatever terpenes is/are needed for the concierge effect.

For those looking to directly boost (some might say adulterate?) terpene content and odor, a number of companies sell pure terpenes and mixtures emulating the odor/taste of popular strains. Although made mostly as additives for concentrates, I presume there are suitable ways of applying these oils to buds.

 

[Son of Hobbes]

Playing devil's advocate here about adding in smells; terpenes are not just everywhere, but in many of the products we eat, drink, smoke, inhale, etc.

The real issue here is the source of the terpenes and how they are being added in. Concentrated terpenes can make you very sick, which is why it's nearly always suggested to be added in lesser amounts to help negate potential side effects (not greater amounts. Less is MORE here.)

Not all terpenes are created the same either; there are natural sources and synthetic versions.

But yes, you can 100% add terpenes to cannabis flower.

I don't think I would go to the kitchen cupboard to try to enhance my weed though. Look at vanilla extract for example; smells great right? Not a terpene. It's an aldehyde, which are organic compounds that can damage cells and DNA when smoked (lots of aldehydes in cigarettes for an example.) And that's such a easy thing to mistake based on the innocence of just not knowing, right?

So you -can- play science here, but don't play guessing games with what can potentially make you (or others) sick!

 

[Mossy]

I don't think I would go to the kitchen cupboard to try to enhance my weed though.

Not a good time to say I really enjoy a bit of fresh dried Mint in a joint every now and then...like a menthol ciggie that we can't have in Europe any more....or a wee sprinkle of Lavender.......?...

Most herbs have Terpene profiles that match our favourite cannabis terps.....so why not....?..


Don't all Shout at once..........

 

[Mozzy]

know that Sulfur will increase terps/smell/flavor in almost any plant. You could try adding a little plain Epsom salt. It is just Magnesium and Sulfur, 1-2g per gallon should make a difference. Worth a try and it won't mess up your NPK and the Mg ain't bad to use in coco

That's interesting...in organic soil would you put ~2g of epsom/gallon for every watering or is that something that builds up and messes up PH or other stuff?

 

[Entombed]

That's interesting...in organic soil would you put ~2g of epsom/gallon for every watering or is that something that builds up and messes up PH or other stuff?

I am not an organic or even a soil grower so I can't answer that with any sort of knowledge. I run coco and use it every watering. It's also the third item I add so I am not sure what effect it has on pH. Sorry man, but I bet @Waira knows. That dude is like an encyclopedia.

Let's see if the tag summons the wizard.


That said, I think adding a couple grams towards the end of flowering every other watering would do it. You do need to consider that epsom salt is just Sulfur and Mag, so you wouldn't want to over add on the Mg but I don't think it would be that much especially in good organic soil.

 

[Waira]

Here is where things already go a bit sideways - I lose terps after mid flower. My plants stop smelling as nicely. I'm not talking about nose-blindness. Others notice it too. It's as if my terps are disappearing. My tent smells like berries, gas, fruity chewing gums, everything. And suddenly, these smells just disappear. As if something just grabbed all the terps.

This happened to around 16 plants now, stretched over a few grows, 4 of them being photoperiods from Square One, called Frozen Bag. I thought I'll switch it up for once, as all my autos lost their terps & I just thought it's an auto thing, but the same happened to my photos. Seriously, my plants sometimes look like cup winning images, but once you smell them, you'll be like "what the hell, there's nothing".

My drying conditions are rather stabilized, and I tried two methods this time - Low temps (10°C / 50F) with around 55-60% humidity, and the usual 60/60 drying method. One run also had a higher temp drying at around 70-75F / 20-24°C and 55% humidity for 2 days, and then 60% afterwards to let them dry out slowly a bit more. My drying times range from 7 to 14 days depending on bud size and density. I sometimes hang up single full stems with side branches, sometimes I just quarter the main stem up and hang the large pieces. Always dry trim, never wet trim. Low airflow, one big 12" fan blowing against the opposite wall on low setting, causing some air movement, but not enough to move the plants around, just enough to feel air moving on my skin if I stand there. I dry in an extra room I have no use for.

I trim them as usual as soon as they're dry, bag them up in grove bags, and they stabilize at around 61% humidity most of the time, and go to around 58-60% over the next few weeks. Everything works out just fine here. but the terps?

I end up with wood terps. All my plants end up smelling the exact same. Each and every genetic, strain - Wood, chocolate-ish wood. It has some resemblance to weed, but it's 99% cardboard and wood, as if everything died.

Hey Kaz! ...I know this WTF mystery all to well myself, and honestly, I can't finger any one thing for cause --> effect.... Auto's and photo's, inside and out...

Big picture, terp' production is dynamic, it may cycle up and down during flowering... There are several rabbit holes to go down on this, a whole damn lecture series really, so I'll throw some broad strokes out there...

-- your grow MO seems fine to me, ditto for dry and cure... Not the cause that I can tell, and doing that right doesn't wave a magic wand to bring back what ain't there to begin with.

-- big thing missed here by some is the fade out while live, sometimes early on....

-- for a fact, some pheno's will just be inferior for aroma production, it's the inherent gamble of all seeds; solid breeding, quality lines play big roles but nuthin' is "locked in" 100%...
An example from last season: two Lemon Drizzles, usually a solid cultivar, but I got one (the better looking and more resinous) that was nose blank as a piece of paper! The other had decent aroma, but not what it should have been...

-- nutrition and particularly, the right emphasis of which ones at the right time is another strong influencing factor. Certain micronutes are very important to terpene production; you can have all the PK right, but the terp' machine needs other parts than this! Micro's are critical catalysts/co-factors in secondary metabolite production, and it's possible to have that bottleneck things even if there are no overt deficiency symptoms...
Sulfur plays some role too, but isn't literally part of terpene components, but it is part of other aromatic compounds that give that classic skunk odor, "garlic/onion"....
Keep in mind there is so much synergistic action going on with all this, cultivar to cultivar, pheno to pheno, even plant to plant, it's really quite complicated LOL

-- I have had plants very near harvest with fantastic aroma going on (at the time), and 36hrs later, morning of chop time, it goes quiet for no fucking apparent reason ....I've even delayed it because of this, but not always to good effect, and at the risk of going past prime ripeness...
What's most aggravating about this (for me) is that other plants are just fine for aroma! I grow is a sort of super soil with light amendments added in to butt-cover the things I mentioned (micro's, S, PK at the right time and amounts)...Si, kelp, humic-fulvics, inoculants...
*edit*-- spaced the follow-up -- which is here you have plants getting pretty much all the same everything, so inputs are not bloody likely to be the core of the issue for such disparities...

Environmental factors are in play too, but nothing I see in your grow, or even mine, that could be the cause of shit aroma production,... heat, cold, wind,... But some of these (and pests too) can actually stress the plant and help magnify terpenes, so again, barring extremes, it's not the culprit to finger!
Daily wear and tear (outside mainly) does deplete terpenes which is why many I know harvest in the morning...

...gotta run, but mull over this and chat some more later....

 

[Delps8]

One thing that stands out to me (not a detailed read through) is that you're slathering on the P and K. My understanding is that cannabis doesn't need much of either of those chemicals but it's common for growers to add even more when plants go into flower.

Bugbee and his PhD student Mitch Westmoreland are strong advocates of less is better in that respect.

Perhaps it's worth reducing the amount of P and K?


Re temps. Westmoreland did research on temps for minimizing loss of cannabanoids in 2020 and the magic number there is <=78° for the colas. I have not heard/read anything from that camp about reducing ambient temperature, though. The admonition is to keep the colas cool.

Re Cannatrol - I considered getting one but found an acceptable alternative.

Over on another cannabis site, there's a long thread on converting a Koolatron fridge by using the Peltier unit from a small dehu and controlling it with either an Inkbird or, my preference, and AC Infinity controller. The fridge holds the temp, the controller runs the Peltier.

It took a bit more than an hour to remove the Peltier unit from the Pohl Schmitt dehu, drill a hole in the back of the Koolatron, run the wires, and get things tidied up. It will hold a little over a pound but it holds temperature very, very well and it's about ⅓ the price of the Cannatrol.

 

[Waira]

That is an excellent hack!

 

[DoobieGrows]

Hey guys,

So first of all - Not even a new grower. I got back into this hobby after a decade. Had lots of ups and downs, learned about all the new things, got back into being good very quickly. My grows these days are almost picture perfect, I yield tons out of autos and photos, everything seems to work out just fine, but.. I'm losing my terps. Every time. And terps, for me, are.. everything. I don't even care about yields, they just came.

I don't know what's happening, seriously, out of ideas. I know there's the fight about organics vs synthetics, but I can confirm that it ain't this. Friend of mine grew some boof, it still smelled awesome, and he grew with the same synthetic nutrients and substrate I usually use. I cannot find any connection as to what I'm doing wrong.

For some general info, I'll drop my gear, nutrients, everything I've used recently:

* Autopots, 3.9gal, airbases, sometimes airdomes
* Coco, be it Canna, Plagron, sometimes with, sometimes without perlite
* Grandmaster Tarantula Tent Ultimate 5x5 (edit: that's the LED, it's called that)
* 5x5 tent
* Big ACI 8" exhaust with an oversized industrial filter
* Two 6" oscillating fans, one 360° tornado fan for low canopy airflow
* Canna Coco nutrient line, Athena Blended nutrient line, Megacrop nutrient line, I've tried all 3 so far
* Mephisto Genetics, Speedrunseeds, Dutch Passion, 420FastBuds, even photos from Square One
* If anything else is missing, just ask!

I never have problems with growing these plants. I've never seen the well known calcium issues, I usually just run into magnesium deficiencies in the first 2 weeks, but they solve themselves rather quickly. Very light nutrient tip burns here and there as I love to push EC, but that's all there is to it.

My seedlings usually start their journey with 1.8-2EC, as I see no issues doing so. Multiple fertigations early on, after one good dryback, they grow like crazy, everything seems to work out just fine. I always float between 2.4-3.4EC with autos in mid flower, I never see any issues doing so, and I like to use PK boosts until late flower.

I run 80-84°F / 26-28°C temps from seed to early flower to get a good stretch, and then lower my temps over the whole flowering cycle, usually being at around 70-75F / 21-24°C in mid flower, all the way down to 60-66F / 16-19°C in late flower. I run high humidity in the 65 to 75s until early stretch, and then also lower it to around 45-50% in late flower. No issues, no mold, no nothing.

My PPFD / PAR range - I usually run 24/0 or 20/4 with my autos, I start off with around 300PPFD, and usually end up at around 800-900PPFD later on. Measured with a calibrated PPFD / PAR device.

Here is where things already go a bit sideways - I lose terps after mid flower. My plants stop smelling as nicely. I'm not talking about nose-blindness. Others notice it too. It's as if my terps are disappearing. My tent smells like berries, gas, fruity chewing gums, everything. And suddenly, these smells just disappear. As if something just grabbed all the terps.

This happened to around 16 plants now, stretched over a few grows, 4 of them being photoperiods from Square One, called Frozen Bag. I thought I'll switch it up for once, as all my autos lost their terps & I just thought it's an auto thing, but the same happened to my photos. Seriously, my plants sometimes look like cup winning images, but once you smell them, you'll be like "what the hell, there's nothing".

My drying conditions are rather stabilized, and I tried two methods this time - Low temps (10°C / 50F) with around 55-60% humidity, and the usual 60/60 drying method. One run also had a higher temp drying at around 70-75F / 20-24°C and 55% humidity for 2 days, and then 60% afterwards to let them dry out slowly a bit more. My drying times range from 7 to 14 days depending on bud size and density. I sometimes hang up single full stems with side branches, sometimes I just quarter the main stem up and hang the large pieces. Always dry trim, never wet trim. Low airflow, one big 12" fan blowing against the opposite wall on low setting, causing some air movement, but not enough to move the plants around, just enough to feel air moving on my skin if I stand there. I dry in an extra room I have no use for.

I trim them as usual as soon as they're dry, bag them up in grove bags, and they stabilize at around 61% humidity most of the time, and go to around 58-60% over the next few weeks. Everything works out just fine here. but the terps?

I end up with wood terps. All my plants end up smelling the exact same. Each and every genetic, strain - Wood, chocolate-ish wood. It has some resemblance to weed, but it's 99% cardboard and wood, as if everything died.

Please, I am out of ideas. I don't know what's going on, I am losing all hope. Friend of mine recently harvested his silly looking plant, and as soon as you open the bag, the room literally FILLS with the smell of minty, lemony craziness. It doesn't even smell like weed, it smells like you chewed a lemon mint gum at a gas station. WORLDS of difference. Same nutrients, same substrate, same autopot system. His other harvest smelled like straight up fruity bubblegums and strawberry jelly. It makes no sense to me.

Lastly, I want to mention a few things that I've noticed, and may help.

Here are a few things that may play a role in this:

* I do not flush, usually. I sometimes lower the EC of my plants later on, but I never see them fade as heavily, or straight up cling to life as seen in grows by other people. Sometimes my leaves fade to a black color because of low temps, but that's it.

* My trichomes never turn a real cloudy / amber. I've pulled some autos over 90 days, and I never see trichomes turning all cloudy and bulky. I know some autos take over 100 days, but ALL of them, each and every time in my grow? My trichomes are often small, for some reason, and I see lots of trichome heads disappearing or turning a weird crinkly shape. For whatever reason, I often see amber appearing all over, but no cloudy / milky. It's as if my trichomes always decide between being clear or amber, but never milky. I use a x200 lense for my phone with an anti-glare coating to avoid mistakes by the light shining on the trichomes, I use my macro function on my phone, I can see each and every trichome if needed, in full HD. This trichome thing has confused me for a while now, as it didn't matter how long I pulled these plants, they never had this beautiful sea of milky trichomes appearing, they just turn amber after being clear, and rarely a real milky, most often just a light milky color. And never as juicy and bulky as I've seen in other grows, they seem to always be tiny and flimsy, even if there are a lot of them.

* I often use a heavy PK schedule, Canna recommends 1 week of PK, but I usually start with 25% of their dosage after stretch, ramp it up to 100%, and then go back to 0% over the span of around 3-4 weeks in flower. With Athena, I decided to fully follow the schedule, but the same thing happened, cardboard and wood all over, all plants lost their smell after late mid-flower, and then fully when drying.

* My drying room has no exhaust, meaning the air in there turns stale. I don't know if this is a problem or not. I have a dehumidifier in there, a humidifier, a fan, I can fully control the environment, but there is no real air exchange, unless I open the door and walk in there.

* Not enough stress - My plants live a perfect life in these autopots. They never have issues, deficiencies, all these problems are gone. Rarely some stress by high EC, but it's fixed quickly. I don't even top my autos, I just do leaf tucking and rarely some light LST to fix some branches, that's all there is to it. Here and there some defoliations if needed. Silly guess, but what if they're just too happy to create a defense mechanism? Who knows. A country ain't gonna build a military if there is no threat anywhere.


And that's all for now. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Does anyone have an idea?

I think your temperature for late flower is way too low My grows always get hotter as the flowering stage progresses. Also 60-70 rh is really high for late flower. Try to get the RH to 40-50 % in late flower.

But to be honest most of the terps are lost in the drying stage. You want to leave alot of the leafs on don't wet trim. Them go slow as possible. 60 & 60 has always worked for me. Make sure you don't have a fan blowing on the drying buds. And if you have a fan i your drying room. Make sure it's pointed at the floor and on the slowest setting. Grove bags are great and all but i get the best results from Mason jars. I use both but the jar is always more terpy than the bags.