Cannabis cultivation is slightly more complicated than, say, tomato cultivation. Gleaning a good, nutritious stash requires careful planning, time, and attention to detail. Harvesting is one of the most important parts of that lengthy voyage, and it occurs quite close to the end.
Knowing when it’s best to harvest: Harvesting cannabis at the wrong time is one of the greatest frequent mistakes made by inexperienced growers. Perhaps they become impatient and cut those buds off before they can fully develop. In these situations, the farmer is left with decreased potency and immature trichomes, which translates to cannabis that tastes muted. Or maybe they let their plants get too old without realizing it. Potency also plummets under these situations. With the growing convenience of ordering weed online, some may overlook the complexities of cultivation, but for growers, timing is everything. Furthermore, “you run the possibility of self-pollinating and decaying,” as Royal Queen Seeds notes. The sweet spot is what you want to shoot for. Two approaches to harvest timing are covered below: one ballpark and one that’s accurate.
Adding harvest dates with strain-specific harvest times
While strain-specific cannabis harvest periods are not entirely reliable, they can provide a useful guideline for when you should begin to pay attention. In summary, harvesting indica strains usually needs to be done eight weeks or up to two months after blooming dates. Sativa strains require a bit more time to mature; they typically have a harvest date that is ten weeks following flowering. With an autoflower, every phase of the life from seeds to field harvest can be completed in as little as eight to twelve weeks.
SEARCHING FOR MATURITY SIGNALS:
The color of the trichome: This is the most important one, and it usually provides growers with all the information they require. It entails taking out your magnifying lens and examining the sticky glands called trichomes that protrude from the bloom. Trichomes are too young to be harvested since they are initially transparent. After that, they become milky, and eventually a deeper shade of amber. It is generally accepted that cannabis buds should be harvested when the majority of the the trichomes are creamy, but some may still be clear and some may have turned amber.
Pistil Building: In case you are not familiar with cannabis from dispensaries, pistils are the orange “hairs” that are present on the bud. In case you were unaware, these are the cannabis plant’s mating organs. Similar to trichomes, pistils are initially white before developing that recognizable orange hue. It is commonly believed that when 85–95% of your pistils have gone orange, the psychoactive ingredient THC concentration is at its peak.
Yellowing of Fan Leaves: The last indicator of maturity is the aging of natural leaves. Fan leaves turn yellow when they reach their optimum maturity. Combine this sign with the other two above to get a clear signal that harvest time has arrived.