Harvesting too late when the plant's no longer stinky?

[spank0r]

Hi guys,

I had a marijuana plant that I grew outdoors and it would stink up the entire upstairs of the house in about 15 minutes if you brought it in inside.

I ended up bringing it back in the house because of the winter and after a few weeks of doing this I noticed two things:

a) The plant seemed "weak" from not being watered enough, etc. I admit I should have kept a closer eye on it.
b) The super dank smell went away in the house.

After a bit more time it seemed that watering it didn't help it much anymore which worried me, and it also hardly had any light and seemed like the leaves were curling and getting dry... so harvested it ASAP. I suspect maybe it was dying simply from old age.

The buds seemed okay still (frosty, etc) and I let it dry for a week and smoked it. I got pretty high. I also looked under the microscope and found that there was about 30% amber trichs and even some clear ones (didn't see too many white cloudy oddly enough). Some of the trichomes looked kinda scraggly and maybe even shrunken amber depending which bud you look at. Others seemed all white and mostly transparent.

So my main tl;dr question is: had I harvested back during the time it was stinking up the entire house like crazy, is it possible that I would have gotten way better bud instead of when I could hardly smell the plant? I mean as a rule of thumb because I don't know what the trichomes looked like in the past but some of me can't help but think that maybe the bud would have been 10x better since the plant stunk so goddamn much. But maybe most of the smell was actually coming from the leaves at the time? (The leaves smell like tea now after being cut off... not the same dank smell from earlier)

The dried bud in a jar smells pretty good despite it all... hmm. Any thoughts greatly appreciated. First time grow so there's an option to try again next year (outdoor again since it's easy and cheap) if I really screwed up despite the weed being pretty good. In fact my friend who smoked it alongside me said he probably wouldn't want anything more potent than that.

Thanks guys.

 

[Scientific]

Interesting story and question.

 

[spank0r]

Actually after just grabbing a few more buds at random for the microscope it seems like most of the trichomes are basically clear with a little "spot" of dark amber somewhere in the "bulb". I'm not really seeing many that are totally amber, unfortunately Google Images doesn't seem to have a whole lot of quality images that I can use to tell the difference. Starting to think I'll just have to be more careful for the next grow.

 

[Scientific]

Just a data point for whatever it may be worth since no one else has chimed in yet: I had one little indoor Dwarf Low Flyer that smelled strongly enough for a neighbor to complain about the smell wafting out an open window 30 feet away (the plant wasn't in a tent and didn't have a filter), but after it was harvested and cured it had very little smell (disappointingly so). Maybe your plant kind of went through that process naturally, stopping growing and starting to dry out and losing the volatile components as they evaporate and/or break down.

Also, a plant that has very little smell outdoors can be much more noticeable after coming inside because the odor molecules aren't being blown away and dispersing but are accumulating.

I'm going to guess that your plant wouldn't have been a lot stronger if harvested earlier. As for the amber trichs, the theory that we all seem to accept is that the nature of the high changes as the trichomes darken. I don't know whether that's actually true or whether that's just hippy folk wisdom, just like the supposed differences between sativa and indica... (talkin' heresy there, I know).

 

[spank0r]

Thanks Scientific, great story

Here's a pic of a bud at random. On looking back it's actually probably nowhere near as bad as I'm making it sound -- since I eventually saw a plant have completely amber bulbs *and* stems on Google Images.

This just seems like it was a quite late but not a disaster ... (due to my own laziness so I can't really whine about it too much), but also perhaps a decent blend. Like I said, it got me pretty good when I stuck it in the bong.

 

[Oldbear]

I expect you have gone somewhat 'nose blind' to the smell because of prolonged exposure. Your picture shows a high volume of trichomes.

Enjoy your harvest

 

[Scientific]

I expect you have gone somewhat 'nose blind' to the smell because of prolonged exposure.

I definitely had that when I was growing my little dwarf indoors with no filtration. I wouldn't smell anything until I left the house for an hour. Then when I came back through the door, dankness!