Timing the harvest is Paramount to the final quality. Harvest your precious buds in the dark, just before the lights normally come on.
Nighttime harvest can provide fruit that retains significantly better internal and external quality: sugars, acids, flavor compounds, color, firmness, etc.
Based on this natural chemical fluctuation, many growers believe that keeping the lights off for a few days allows cannabinoid and terpene levels to peak, ensuring their weed is as dank as possible when they harvest.
When the plant approaches maturity, the pistils change color and take on a brown or orange hue. This is a sign that the biological functions of the plant have slowed and it is no longer seeking pollen for seed production. Guideline #2: Harvest marijuana when 70% of the pistils have turned brown or orange.
Timing is crucial here, as the ideal moment to harvest is when approximately 50-70% of the pistils have changed color. If a significant number of white pistils are still visible, it's too early to harvest. Keep in mind that the higher the percentage of color-changed pistils, the more potent the high is likely to be.
Recommendations for When to Harvest Cannabis
The best way to tell when to harvest is by using a microscope; if you don't have one, wait until its pistils are more or less all brown and then wait another week or two.
Because bud formation starts after 7 hours of dark period, it is also wise to always maintain a minimum day length of 17 to 18 hours during the vegetative period. A dark period of 12 hours is used as a standard in cannabis to ensure a smooth flowering process.
To move to the flowering stage, you need to increase the time the plant is in the dark. This requires at least 12 hours of darkness. As long as cannabis is exposed to light for 13 or more hours a day, it will be in a vegetative state. This rule applies to indoor as well as outdoor growing.
Flush your plants with ice water to boost trichome production. Cold shock adds icing to the cake of training protocol. We advise using ice-cold water when flushing your buds during the late flowering phase.
If you're growing in soil, begin flushing between one and two weeks before harvest. If you're growing in coco, flush your plants for up to one week prior to harvest. If you're growing in hydro, your plants only need to be flushed for one to two days.
Experiment With Days of Darkness – Some growers report enhanced resin production when they give their cannabis 1-3 days of complete darkness before harvest. This is thought to work because it's another way of slightly stressing your plants.
These dark periods often extend from 24 - 72 hours. The thought is that by leaving the plants in complete darkness, it will create a stress response that encourages increased resin content — the sticky substance that contains cannabinoids and terpenes — essentially giving your plants a final boost right before harvest.
Most farmers want to keep ahead of the weather, catch up with the workload, and just get the job done. Harvest, equipment transportation, maintenance, and pesticide application are also made at night because of high temperatures during the day that are equally damaging for humans and crops.
Don't Harvest After Rain
Food safety is the one of the most compelling reasons to harvest before rain, rather than after. Research published in 2015 indicates that after a rain, soil conditions are right for the development of Listeria monocytogenes. The Listeria bacteria lives in moist soil.
The carbon dioxide gas obtained is utilized for photosynthesis. The root hairs present on roots are essential for the uptake of nutrients. Plants absorb nutrients throughout the day, all day and night and irrespective of whether light is present or absent.
Best Conditions to Dry Cannabis
Also, now that your cannabis no longer needs to transfer light energy into plant energy, you do not need to provide your dry room with special grow lighting. In fact, we recommend keeping your dry room dark, since light can actually begin to damage your cannabinoids.
You can remove fan leaves during flowering in much the same way you do during veg. Prune away large leaves that are overshadowing bud sites, as well as dead or dying fan leaves. One thing to keep in mind is that you should prune in intervals, giving at least a couple weeks between each session.
The ideal drying room must be dark, as light can damage the THC in your buds. While it does not hurt to have a light source inside to check on the progress of your buds, you should keep it off most of the time, and block all other passages of light that can enter the room.
Plants might drop flower buds if there is too much water in the soil and roots are suffocated, or if the soil too dry. Note: It's a good idea to know the specific moisture needs of the plant you are caring for.
Cannabis needs more nitrogen (N) when vegging and more phosphorus and potassium (P & K) while flowering. If you give then too much nitrogen during bloom, it'll slow down bud growth and result in lower yields of fluffier buds. That's the exact opposite of what you want!
Week 4. At week 4 of the flowering stage, your cannabis plants will likely have stopped growing altogether and are now spending all their energy on growing buds. There will still be white hairs sticking out from the buds, but the buds themselves will become bigger and fatter with each day.
Beware of overripe cannabis buds
Plants given a little too much bloom time may have a general appearance of overripeness. Trichomes may be all amber, the terpene profile may be past it's best (possibly with a light aroma of fermentation) and the buds/leaves may take on a browner, less inviting, appearance.
The telltale sign of harvest-ready weed is when the hairs of the plant, or pistils, have fully darkened and curled in. If your buds are looking thick and dense, but there are still some straight white pistils, it's not time yet. However, opinions on harvest time vary.
Milky/Cloudy Trichome
Trichome heads slowly become white or cloudy, probably the best moment to harvest most available hybrids. The milky colour represents that cells inside the trichome have partly turned into cannabinoids, terpene, flavonoides and other useful compounds.