It’s a Plant so This is Going to be Specific
Like all things growing, this is very specific to the cultivars you are growing, meaning which specific plants you are growing. It’s not just about the strain; it’s about the individual plants themselves. Let me explain the difference. Let’s say you have two siblings, one is a man, the other a woman, but they have the same DNA because they have the same parents. But that doesn’t mean that the two siblings are the exact same person. Even among identical twins, there are inconsistencies like different fingerprints. So I could have ten seeds of Blue Dream, for instance, but all ten are going to be slightly different, and they might have slightly different harvest times.
The breeder descriptions about when to harvest are going to be a guide, but certainly not the end-all, be-all. It is a good place to start. So you want to make sure to read those flower times before you get close to harvest time.
Methods Are Huge
Almost as important as your cultivars is going to be the methods that you implement in your grow, as some processes will cause a quicker turnaround, and some will allow your plants to take their time more. I always recommend taking your time when growing; this is the single largest distinction between small-batch/homegrown craft cannabis and mass-produced commodity weed.
I do not expect growers to implement processes that will just get them a quicker turnaround time; that is kind of putting the cart before the horse. Rather, what you need to focus on as a new grower is really just dialing in your process to the best of your ability to get the best quality flower possible. Part of that is knowing when you harvest. If you do not harvest during the peak time for quality—which is almost always going to be the peak time for yield as well—you can spend up to six months growing a crop just to end up with subpar quality if you harvest too early or too late.
There is a Lot of Misinformation out There – It’s a Major Reason People Schedule a Consult
There is probably more misinformation online about when to harvest than any other part of this process for some reason. The single biggest misconception that I’ve heard for ages is that when your trichome heads turn amber, that is a good indication that it is time to harvest. Well, that is complete nonsense. I have been growing for a long time now, and no matter how long I wait, the trichome heads never turn an amber color on my plants.
Here is where I think this misinformation comes from. Back in the day, we did not have LED lights at our disposal; we only had HID, or “high-intensity discharge,” lights for indoor cannabis farming, and they were a nightmare due to their heat. There are two basic types of HID lighting/bulbs: metal halide (generally reserved for veg due to their spectrum) and high-pressure sodium (usually reserved for the flower portion of the plants’ life cycle). HPS gives off an amber-colored light, and I think this is where the entire “harvest when your trichome heads are amber” idea comes from. Well, most growers nowadays—if they know what they are doing—use LEDs exclusively. As I mentioned earlier, the heat radiation given off from HID lighting causes added stress, not only to your plants but to you as a grower. Typically, with HID, you have to invest in additional AC units, which can add so much power consumption to your grow that it gets very expensive very quickly.
So How Do You Know When to Harvest?
With Clones
There is only one tried-and-true method to know exactly when the time comes to harvest, and that is to grow a plant that you have grown before, meaning a clone, and then record the time that it took the first time. However, going back to what I mentioned earlier about methods, you would have to essentially replicate the exact conditions that you grew the first time, so getting your environment dialed in to the way that you grew the first time is very important.
With Seeds
Now obviously this method isn’t going to work for most people because most people don’t run clones or mothers to cut clones from. So how do we know how to harvest for peak quality and yield growing from seeds? It’s tricky because, again, every plant is different.
Let’s start with trichome heads. Under LED lighting, the trichome heads will generally get a milky look, but not amber. When about 2/3 of the trichome heads on a plant have this look—and you will need to invest in a trichome microscope to determine this—that is a pretty good rule of thumb to determine when it is time.
A way to determine your plant is past peak quality and yield is that the plant stops growing. The plant just looks sad and is clearly not producing the bud and trichomes the way it was before. If this is the case, you have gone too far.
Flavonoid Profile
This is a fancy name for foliage. When it’s the beginning of the end for your plants’ life cycle, they generally will start to turn different colors than green. Some will do this early in flower, so be mindful of that fact. If your plants’ leaves are turning yellow in veg, you’ve got other problems. But this change in color is a good indicator that harvest is around the corner – look at your breeder guides for the right flower time.
This is the Single Best Way to Determine When Your Plants Are Ready for Harvest
Drumroll please… Your plants are not eating or drinking anymore the way that they just were. Now it’s really important at this stage (especially if you are new to growing) that you are logging what you are doing. For instance, during flower your plants should be eating a lot, a great deal of nutrients. So if you are using five-gallon pots and a plant is drinking one gallon of water/nutrient mix a day, and then suddenly the pot is no longer drying out at the same rate, boom, it’s pretty much ready to go. But as mentioned earlier, get out your microscope, look at your breeder recommendations and then collectively with all of that information coming to fruition you should be in a good position to know it’s time. Now again, like all things growing—which is why booking with us is so valuable—no two situations are the same. But in my experience, this is the best way to know. Some plants will peak right before this milestone. So if you follow the advice I gave in this post, you should be good to harvest. Happy growing, y’all. One Love.
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