Amber Hairs

D

damifino

Active Member
Hi All. I have a question that I am hoping someone can answer for me. The hairs on my buds were all white and now about a quarter of the hairs are amber colored. They kinda look burnt. Are they??? Or are the hairs suppose to turn amber colored. My trichomes are still clear/cloudy. I am trying to wait until all my trichomes are milky white. I am hoping nothing is wrong here with my buds and that I don't have to cut it down. Any advise is grrrrreatly appreciated.

Love and Peace
Karen
 
You're alright, the hairs turn orange/brown a few weeks before the end (I'd say about 2/3 into flowering or earlier) but the tell tale are the trichs.
Also, some new white hairs will start to grow again near the end, it's the last effort the plant makes in order to capture airborne pollen. That means the buds will get bigger, so you can leave the girls flowering for a little longer if your trich preference will allow it.
I've had very good results when I leave the a bit longer.

Hope this helps.

Good luck and happy growing! :Namaste:
 
Hello Antics. Thanks so much for your advise. If I may, I'd like to show you some pics I took today. I am wondering about when (weeks?) that I should be looking to harvest. This is my first time at gardening so please bear with me :) Also, I have been reading other members posts and I hear a lot of them saying things like White Widow, Sour Diesel, etc., how can I find out my kind. The tall plant smells like your typical "skunk" but the smaller plant, which btw is only 14" tall, I have no idea what happened there LOL and it has such an unusual scent. Kind of like "lemonade". And to touch the buds you fingers get all sticky and stuck together, not so with the other plant. I was told by a member that my small plant is a hybrid predominately Indica if that helps any. The seeds were given to me so I no idea of their heritage. Thanks again my friend
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I forgot to ask, should I be removing the leaves from the small plant as I have done to the tall plant?? There seems to be a lot of them.
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LOL - its been an good day :), one more thing, the branches on my smaller plant has different leaves (only 3 fingers) than my taller plant (5 fingers). Any reason for this??
Danka
 
Ok first, when harvesting the best and most accurate way is by looking at the trichomes. The frost you see is made up of tons of trichomes. These contain all the cannabinoids that our bodies need.

I recommend a 30x-60x magnifier or microscope. You can also use binoculars turned around and looked through the wrong side.

Knowing the strain helps you narrow down the window of harvest time, but we can still get a good harvest. Do you have, or have the means to get a good magnifier?

In the pictures they look close, but close can mean 1 week or 4 weeks. But you're getting closer.

The smell is absolutely intoxicating. And you'll find that strains can have very different smells too. That's a benefit of resin on your fingers. They'll smell good for hours.

As for leaves, I only remove them if I can't tuck them out of the way. The plant uses the leaves for several purposes, so the more you can keep on, the better your plant can do.
When I do need to remove the leaves, I remove as few as possible to allow light to hit all the main bud sites, and sometimes just moving a whole branch a little bit one way or the other can help.

3 lobes on the leaf is nothing to worry about. There are occasional mutations in Cannabis, as with all plants in nature.
 
Ahhh your the best :) - thanks so much for helping me. Your knowledge is impressive and I will certainly use it in my endeavors here. I just finished making myself a dark room if you will where I can hang my plant to dry. I also bought a hydrometer for when I put my buds in their jars. I bought the ball jars with a rubber seal. RIGHT?? I also read that I am to hang my branches or the entire plant to dry and when the outside of the bud feels dry but the inside isn't that is when I cut off the buds and put them in the jars. RIGHT?? LOL
And the buds on my smaller plant that are really really sticky and yes I too love the smell, I didn't even want to wash them they smelled so marvelous :) - anyway, the buds are really really thick. Like solid I guess is a good term. The buds on the other plant you can kinda squeeze them easily but the others are very firm. Good thing or not??? I cant hardly wait for Christmas as I am assuming that will be puff time. RIGHT?? As always, thank you so very much.

Peace and Love
Karen
 
damifino said:
Ahhh your the best :) - thanks so much for helping me. Your knowledge is impressive and I will certainly use it in my endeavors here. I just finished making myself a dark room if you will where I can hang my plant to dry. I also bought a hydrometer for when I put my buds in their jars. I bought the ball jars with a rubber seal. RIGHT?? I also read that I am to hang my branches or the entire plant to dry and when the outside of the bud feels dry but the inside isn't that is when I cut off the buds and put them in the jars. RIGHT?? LOL
And the buds on my smaller plant that are really really sticky and yes I too love the smell, I didn't even want to wash them they smelled so marvelous :) - anyway, the buds are really really thick. Like solid I guess is a good term. The buds on the other plant you can kinda squeeze them easily but the others are very firm. Good thing or not??? I cant hardly wait for Christmas as I am assuming that will be puff time. RIGHT?? As always, thank you so very much.

Peace and Love
Karen
Click to expand...

Don't be so impressed! It only took about 6 months to learn this much while growing and hanging out on the forum here. The real credit goes to the growers that shared that knowledge with me, and to 420 Magazine for giving us all a nice mature place to learn and share information. I love this place!

The dark room will be great for drying. Just don't pull them out too early, you can end up with a grass/hay smell to your Cannabis. The buds should feel crispy on the outside, and the stems should break, not bend. (This took me a little while to do.. I kept wanting to rush and put them into curing lol) Total time will take between 4-7 days on a small to average sized plant at about 70 degrees with a little air circulation.

The canning jars you have are perfect. You can fit about 1 ounce into the 16oz size jars (I'm still growing small yields lol 2 ounces is my best so far)

You can hang the whole plant, or just branches. If you hang the whole plant I suggest removing as many leaves as possible no later than 24 hours after cutting the plant down, if you wait too long, it gets more difficult to remove the leaves, and they can stick to the trichomes on the buds.
BUT... some people keep the sugar leaves, and only remove fan leaves, and leaves with very few trichomes. It's a preference thing, there's no real wrong way to do it.
After they're dry, you can snip the buds off, and let them fall into the jars. I like to start at the bottom of the branch and work up to the top, that way I can stop once I reach the cola/big nug of the branch.

Sticky is good! That means you have great trichome production, which means you should have a nice potency in your plant.

Density is VERY good! lol you're asking me things I wish I had in my first grow. But dense buds will take longer to dry than smaller buds. Smaller branches/buds will usually be done in about 3-4 days. The big ones will take 7days, sometimes more, depending on how dense they are.

Do you have a strong magnifier for looking at trichomes? That's going to make the job of harvesting on time 100000 times easier.

And don't forget about the 420 Magazine contests. As a member here you can enter your plants or buds to win awesome prizes. So make sure you take some good pictures, plants and nugs! Entries are accepted from ANYONE, between the first of the month up to the 14th, on the 15th voting begins. There's a link in my signature if you want to check out the contests and see how they all work. Each contests outlines the rules on page 1.
 
Hello there Antics. Yes I got a jewelers loop and WOW is all I can say. I got a really good look at my trichomes and they were white!!! So, Mrs. Hybrid (LOL) died last night. It took me about 3 hours to trim the buds and hang them up. I have a cubby hole in my house so I strung up some line and hung them. I put a fan in there as well. I figured I will cure them in the mason jars until Christmas Eve. Does that sound like enough time for them to cure??? From what I have read here on 420 the longer the stronger and better taste your buds will have. My house has a nice scent going on. I am going to attempt to make hash out of the leaves, I read here on 420 how to make it. I concur that 420 and their members (YOU) have been terrific with the knowledge shared. I tooooo love perusing the site. Here are some pics of my buds after their trimming. I hope I did it correctly. My other plant is still growing outside, getting very skunky and very sticky :)
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Oh Antics, I think I have a problem with one of my buds but I am not sure. I was looking at one of the buds hanging out to dry with my jewelers look and I noticed on just one of them it has what looks like dirt on the leaves and inside the bud you can see it as well. It looks rotted. The brown area looks like crumbly dirt and you can see the same dirt on the leaves surrounding that bud. And it was growing so there is no way that it got dirt on it, so what is that?????? I checked all the other buds and none of them have that. You have to kind of spread open the bud and look inside of it to see the brown dirty area. Should I throw that bud out???? Or just leave it to dry??? I really don't know what it is or how it got there. Can you please offer me some advise on it. I really appreciate your taking the time to talk and teach me. Thank You
Karen
 
OMG I just googled "BUD ROT" and the pictures look EXACTLY like what I see on that bud. It says it MOLD!!!!! what do I do with that bud?? Will it spread to my other buds that are hanging to dry?? Oh I am soooooo upset and worried its going to spread. I am going to remove it from my drying room until I hear back from you. DARN DARN DARN!!!!!!!!!!
 
Major drag. You might be able to salvage some of that bud... but any bit discolored by the bud rot needs to be eliminated. Get any affected plant mater out of your drying area. It's no good... toss it. Keep a HUGE close eye on all your other stuff.
Clean your area with bleach. Clean your hands well before touching anything after you might have handled the bud rot material.
 
Ok lots to reply to here, wowzers. Time for a toke lol.

In order from top to bottom:

Congrats on the harvest! You will have plenty of time to dry and cure them.
And yes, longer cures = better buds. Some guys have buds cured over a year.

Thanks for the compliment, but without 420 I wouldn't know what I know, so I owe it to this site.

The pictures look great, and I don't see the bud rot, post pictures any time you have a problem, we can help you a lot better. But it's also pretty easy to diagnose when comparing pictures, and it sounds like you have unfortunately confirmed it.

Tead has covered everything for handling the buds very well, so I'll leave it at that.

Next we need to find out what caused it.

Were you spraying/misting water on the leaves/buds?
What is the humidity level in your grow area? (In flower 40%-50% is ideal, 60%-70% in Veg)
Were the buds touching each other on the plant?
Did you have a fan in the grow area for airflow? A small oscillating fan works fin for a few plants. You don't need to produce hurricane force winds, just enough to move air around, and make the leaves of the plant move around.
 
Tead said:
Don't forget to go over an other budding plants you may have.
Click to expand...

I will do just that. I cannot believe this. Thank goodness I only see one area on one bud. I will Clorox the heck out of my dark room and PRAY. Thank you sooo much for your advise. Off to clean!!!!
 
OK. I cut out the mold, all that I could see. There really wasn't much there but enough that I noticed it. I did closely examine the other buds and I didn't see anything. Its hard to check out the buds because they are so dense and very firm. Not to mention I have a bazillion amber colored hairs that keep tripping me out thinking OMG not more mold.

Yes, I did within the past 4-5 days mist it with soapy water because I saw holes in my leaves and read online to do that to kill any mites or pests. However, I had it growing outside in a large pot. I dug a hole and put the pot in it so that I could turn it each day. Had I just planted it in the ground the area I had it in is up against a large pine tree and the back wouldn't get any sun and when I cut the plant down last night, the dirt in the pot was soooooo wet that it was half way between dirt and mud. I am guessing the pot didn't have proper drainage like the other plant I have. That one still has nice fluffy dirt. So do you think it was from misting it or from the saturated soil. It was really really soaked. I ask this because I was going to mist the one that is still growing because I see some critters on the leaves when I look at it thru my loop. The trichomes on that plant are half clear and half milky and the hairs are still light purple. No amber hairs yet. Shall I keep growing until the hairs turn amber or shall I cut it so my buds have pretty purple hairs? LOL
I have attached a photo that I took before I cut the brown mold out. Its at the very top of the bud, brown area. Also a few pics for you to see my clever hanging area LOL. I am one of those people who are very book smart, I was valedictorian of my nursing class finishing with a final grade of 96 BUT haven't got a lick of common sense sometimes LOL. I did the best I could tho. What cha think???
 

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