How many more days would you guess?

[Mudballs]

Sigh...only 1 person mentioned pistil receding and calyx swelling together.
I wont give you a timeframe, i will give you the things you should look for. The calyx must swell. Pistils will die back, change color, and calyx will swell and plump up.
If you harvest for trichomes only that's ok but you cant call it good flower smoke, you need to make hash out of it or rosin. Great way to harvest plants early and get psychoactive stuff to smoke....but dont do that OP, ur waiting

 

[cbdhemp808]

Sigh...only 1 person mentioned pistil receding and calyx swelling together.
I wont give you a timeframe, i will give you the things you should look for. The calyx must swell. Pistils will die back, change color, and calyx will swell and plump up.
If you harvest for trichomes only that's ok but you cant call it good flower smoke, you need to make hash out of it or rosin. Great way to harvest plants early and get psychoactive stuff to smoke....but dont do that OP, ur waiting

I agree, but some clarification on the terms: the visible "hairs" are called stigmas. (OP's are mostly still white.) The stigmas are part of the pistil, and the pistil is inside the bract. The calyx is deep inside the bract. The bract is the visible part that swells up... it's the female flower reproductive part. If pollinated, it will contain a seed.

 

[Mudballs]

The pistils recede and calyx swells. I see no need to discern a difference but it's a free world and you can do ur thing i dont mind, ur cool with me...but it's called a pistillate flower friend...nomenclature can start fights.

 

[cbdhemp808]

Yep, same diagram I'm looking at.

The stigmas turn brown and the bract swells. The stigmas are the visible parts. When they die and turn brown, that's visible... that's what we see. The bract is the visible part... it swells.

I'm just discerning the visible vs. the invisible. To me it makes more sense to refer to the visible parts.

 

[Mudballs]

May i ask you something, should we call them strains, or should we call them cultivars?

 

[luckyduck69]

I personally have never seen buds ready to harvest when the stigmas are mostly still white.

Forums in general may not be the best place for info, but this forum is!

i have if there's foxtailing, I've also seen stigmas brown weeks before harvest and is why i always go by trichomes 90% milky and 10% amber if possible, some strains can take an age to get the 10% and isn't always possible to wait, each to their own though.

 

[Wastei]

5-6 weeks if you look at the last pictures. Trichome maturity doesn't tell you much about the plants maturity. You may find 80% amber on sugar leaves 6 weeks before harvest.

If you look by loup you will automatically search for patches that satisfy your wants and needs. But it's not the complete truth and your eyes and lack of experience will choose to harvest early because you'll find amber and milky trichomes.

It's better to be patient and go by calyxes, their clusters maturity instead of trichomes. As long as you see new white pistils forming she's not done in flower. When all of them have receded and she's done with final swelling, then she's done.

 

[Canachris]

The pistils recede and calyx swells. I see no need to discern a difference but it's a free world and you can do ur thing i dont mind, ur cool with me...but it's called a pistillate flower friend...nomenclature can start fights.

Great Info, thanks

 

[cbdhemp808]

5-6 weeks if you look at the last pictures. Trichome maturity doesn't tell you much about the plants maturity. You may find 80% amber on sugar leaves 6 weeks before harvest.

If you look by loup you will automatically search for patches that satisfy your wants and needs. But it's not the complete truth and your eyes and lack of experience will choose to harvest early because you'll find amber and milky trichomes.

It's better to be patient and go by calyxes, their clusters maturity instead of trichomes. As long as you see new white pistils forming she's not done in flower. When all of them have receded and she's done with final swelling, then she's done.

Hmm... when to harvest? I would say it's a dance between stigmas (hairs) going brown (dying, necrotic), maturity of trichomes on the bracts, and maturity of trichomes on the sugar leaves. Factor into that avoidance of bud rot – mostly a concern for outdoor growers, but can also be a concern for indoor.

Calyxes are not something that we see – we are looking at the bracts... the outer, visible part. Yes, we are looking for swelling of the bracts. But ultimately we are looking for the maturity of the trichomes, because that's where the cannabinoids and terpenes are produced. Here's a good run down on trichome maturity: HERE.

 

[Wastei]

Hmm... when to harvest? I would say it's a dance between stigmas (hairs) going brown (dying, necrotic), maturity of trichomes on the bracts, and maturity of trichomes on the sugar leaves. Factor into that avoidance of bud rot – mostly a concern for outdoor growers, but can also be a concern for indoor.

Calyxes are not something that we see – we are looking at the bracts... the outer, visible part. Yes, we are looking for swelling of the bracts. But ultimately we are looking for the maturity of the trichomes, because that's where the cannabinoids and terpenes are produced. Here's a good run down on trichome maturity: HERE.

Trichome maturity is self explanatory and you could explain that to a child? What is hard to grasp is bud formation and like you say swelling of the "bracts", I don't think terminology is what's important it is to understand flower maturity and a plants life cycle. Trichome maturity is only one variable.

If a plant show amber trichome because of stress two months early that doesn't mean I should chop two months early? Trichome on the sugar leaves is the worst marker you can have for maturity, they may mature like I pointed out two months early.

If a flower is mature and has completed it's growth cycle and doesn't grow any more and consume less water and nutrients, all pistils are retracted and final swelling is done trichome will be mature and there's no need for loupe if you know how to read the plant. Like I said it's just one marker and not the best one.

 

[cbdhemp808]

Trichome maturity is self explanatory and you could explain that to a child? What is hard to grasp is bud formation and like you say swelling of the "bracts", I don't think terminology is what's important it is to understand flower maturity and a plants life cycle. Trichome maturity is only one variable.

I disagree. Trichome maturity is definitely not self explanatory – many new growers need to be informed as to how to correctly observe trichome color, and then correlating that to the psychoactive effects of the THC. It's a common, recurring theme here on this forum. For most normal grows, it's the determining factor as to when to harvest.

Sure, terminology is important, because accuracy matters in communication. It matters the same way as when a member here recently said that sugar leaves don't photosynthesize; whereas, what he really meant is that they don't photosynthesize nearly as much as fan leaves. A bract is a bract. A calyx is a calyx. The calyx is inside the bract. I know that a lot of growers simply use the word calyx, but the observable part is actually the bract.

I could understand if you used the word pistil instead of bract, because the bract is just a cover for the pistil and all that it includes, which is: the stigmas, and at their base, the style and ovule. The calyx is merely a cover on the ovule.

If a plant show amber trichome because of stress two months early doesn't mean I should chop two months early? Trichome on the sugar leaves is the worst marker you can have for maturity, they may mature like I pointed out two months early.

Give me a break. In a normal grow, trichomes are the primary indicator of ripeness. The stigmas also provide cues – usually all stigmas will go brown/orange (necrotic) before the trichomes are ripe. (Stigmas are the visible part of the pistil.)

If a flower is mature and has completed it's growth cycle and doesn't grow any more and consume less water and nutrients, all pistils are retracted an final swelling is done trichome will be mature there's no need for loupe if you know how to read the plant. Like I said it's just one marker and not the best one.

Trichome ripeness is indeed the best indicator, because: a) you can't rely on the stigmas (visible part) going brown, and b) water consumption and bract swelling are less reliable in terms of being able to detect those. Indeed, in some grows, water consumption may dwindle before trichomes are ripe. What works for you in your grows, which I can tell is highly refined and successful, may not work in another's grow.