Harvesting cannabis plants at the right time is crucial. Too early and you may get little to no high, too late and you will have lost the potency. It's not hard to tell when the best time to harvest is if you know exactly what you are looking for. The most valuable tool for this is a jewellers loupe. These are readily available and cheap online. A 60-100x magnification loupe is perfect.
I've seen many people asking if their bud is ready, they are going on the basis that they have purchased seeds and the breeder states the plants will be ready to harvest by a certain time. Never go purely on what you read on a breeders website or seed packet! Different cannabis strains have different phenotypes, meaning that a pack of 5 seeds of the same strain may show 5 different sets of characteristics, some may be more indica dominant while others may be more sativa dominant. This means that they will finish at different times.
The only way to be sure of a cannabis plants finishing time is if you are working with a tried and tested mother plant and clones, but even then stress or different growing styles/lights can influence when a plant is ready to harvest. So don't leave it to guess work, follow the below guide and get it spot on.
There are a few different opinions on when to tell if a plant is ready for harvest, the 2 main opinions are the colour of the pistils and looking at trichomes. The issue with checking the colour and stage of pistils is that some strains will continue to throw out new white pistils up until harvest, or stop producing them and then throw a new set out close to when a plant is ready for harvest. This can be confusing and misleading when it comes to the chop.
Trichomes, more importantly the stage they are at is the best way to check if a plant is ready. While great big hairy buds look great they are not what get us high. The trichomes, and more importantly the THC they contain is what gets the job done. These are tiny, which is where the jewellers loupe comes into play. It's possible to get a different kind of high from the exact same plant if harvested at different stages.
Harvesting a plant at different stages of trichome colour will produce different effects.
Clear trichomes – Your plant is not ready, it may have some effect but not the desired one.
Milky trichomes – This will produce a more head high, more a creative and social effect. While this may be the effect you are after in order to achieve maximum potency you will want to see a few ambers, as trichomes turn amber they are just going past their peak of THC content, harvesting when you have mostly cloudy and some clear trichomes will mean you are not getting the full effect of your cannabis.
Amber trichomes – This will produce more of a body stone, the term couch-lock is used to describe this. While this may be the effect you are after, all amber trichomes will mean your plant has peaked and gone past the maximum THC content.
So....We don't want clear trichomes, most growers will want a mix of both cloudy and amber. Some preferring more cloudy than amber, other more amber than cloudy.
Always remember when growing anything other than organic weed that you need to flush your plants prior to harvesting. The best time to start your flush is when you have around 10% amber trichomes, a flush takes a week minimum. So once you have 10% amber trichomes you are looking at about a week before your ready to harvest.
Always check trichomes in different locations around your plant, continual touching of a bud while growing may cause trichomes to look ready before they are. Always check trichomes on buds not sugar leaves as the trichomes on sugar leaves will often look ready before the ones on the actual bud.
Like many things with growing patients is important. And unfortunately after all your hard work and now harvesting your plants at the correct time you are not done. The next steps are as important as any, please follow the following link to see how to dry and cure your buds to get the very best from your plants viewtopic.php?f=12&t=44
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