Lots of amber tricomes but small buds and only 6 weeks in flower

When to Chop

  • Chop Immediately. Bud Quality is Fading Fast

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Hold off a week...

    Votes: 3 50.0%
  • Just chop the tops where the amber is. Let the rest finish.

    Votes: 3 50.0%
  • Kill em' all. Unstable grow :(

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    6
  • Poll closed .

1ofaKind

Well-Known Member
Hello,

Looking for some help here.

Burmese Kush. Soil grow. Sprouted Nov.1. LED lights.

Flowers present since December 9

Buds are still smaller. Calyxes seem small.

Only half the hairs on the buds have changed to orange on one plant.

On the other 2, almost all the hairs are still white.

I will lead with this: I tried to force them to 12/12 after 21 days. They did not preflower for 14 days and a few more to flower. That is from November 21 - December 9.

I am curious if that time affected the tricomes.

Here is a similar case to my own. Same plant and having stuck the plant back in Veg after being in flower, very early amber tricomes.

https://www.---------.com/community/threads/trich-pics-20-amber-maybe.39907/

I am having a very hard time discerning between clear and cloudy with the tricomes. Definitely have a lot of clear, some cloudy, and 20% amber....

I started to see the amber as much as 2 weeks ago, but just thought I was stupid and didn't know what I was doing.

Now that I am cutting off leaf clippings and looking at them on a stable surface, I am sure.

I know these pics suck, but at least they are something.

I also notice a lot if inconsistency with the tric heads. Some of them are a point, not a ball.

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They are not ready yet. I would give them another few days to a week. But damn they look good! :goodjob:

What you want is to wait until you get 70% amber and most the hairs are curled. You're in the home stretch, but not quite there yet. Keep her going and she will do nothing but please you more with every passing hour! :Namaste:

You do not want to partially harvest your plant.. Just have patience and wait. You'll get there kemosabi! ;) Also try in the last 48 hours keepin her in tottal darkness. This will give her a nice white trichome coat. ;)
 
Thanks for the thoughts so far, everyone.

Let me try to clarify: I have so much amber on the top bud sites, patches of it are visible to the naked eye.

I have been able to see some amber with the naked eye since 2 weeks ago.

I would love to, and I have the patience to, let the buds fill in more for weeks and weeks... But I am looking for some experience from other growers with a similar situation to mine.... Having early amber.

Will that degrade the quality of the tricomes / buds from this point further?

That is what I have read, so I feel like I should chop one cola from each plant and speed dry it to test.

Or fully chop the one with the most orange hairs...

I know the pictures of BuKu as a plant show it with all brown hairs, and again, I am willing to wait for that, but my case may be unique or something went wrong.

Again, I have tried to contact TH Seeds with no reply. For a company that loves to show videos of their grow room, a policy of not discussing growing the plants their seeds turned in to is total BS. I would like their advise above all else :(

Let me show some tricomes from the least formed bud. This plant is almost all white hairs, very tiny calyxes, its the tall plant at 53".

I would love to let it grow a few more weeks, but look how much amber I have...

Do LEDs cause this? I don't think so, because one plant is mostly cloudy with very little clear or amber...

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I'm guessing you're hunting for ambers, based on the low light level in the last three pics. Try cranking the light up and looking for clear vs. cloudy instead, I bet you'll see far less that look amber.

They look early to me, by at least a week. But I don't have the deep well of personal experience others like kidgrow has.

@kidgrow. I'm curious how emphatic you were about not doing a staged harvest. I've heard it's a reasonable strategy, so I'd love it if you could expand on your thoughts.
 
I am in no way trying to show the ambers and not others. Those are just random leaves bent in half

I can't help the image quality. Without the flash it has the white light in the middle and all you see is the edge.

With flash, it comes darker, but you can at least see the leaf part. The darker pic does not make any more of the trics look amber than the bright ones.

But 20% are definitely amber, and some people say that is the max amount of amber before it loses quality.

The picture in just a small circle from the microscope. Then I crop it to make it look big.

All I'm saying is I have found lots of clears, ambers, and cloudys at the same time.

It becomes confusing, as I hear they should be mostly clear, then cloudy, and then all turn amber at the end. That is far from my trics.

I feel they have gone straight from clear to amber in a lot of leaves I have looked at.

Frustrated and disappointed.
 
@kidgrow. I'm curious how emphatic you were about not doing a staged harvest. I've heard it's a reasonable strategy, so I'd love it if you could expand on your thoughts.

For sure Arteekay.

First thing is first, It is good to partial harvest don't get me wrong here. Ive done it with great success over the years. . But only outdoors, because there is ample enough space for you to finish the grow. And your not wasting your time on waiting for the plants to finish before you can plant your next round. Your basically just going to be waiting on the smaller less ripened buds. Most of the main colas that are reaching up in the sky will be done before the little guys.

So it is 'reasonable' to do a partial harvest. It actually in some cases helps swell the resin glands and induce trichome production. ( Another example that is on the borderline of this topic is, to cut the base of the plant in half ((or almost in half)) with a sharp knife (just hack at it lol 0-o) about 48-56 hours before harvest. This will make resin glads swell to the size of grapes,(Because the plant thinks it's getting eaten by bambi 0-o) and if used in conjunction with darkness, say 8 hours light 16 hours dark (Or just 48 to 72 hours of complete darkness) then that tells her that winter is closer then she first thought and to hurry up and finish her life cycle, which sends her into overdrive, you'll end up (if done properly and at not to soon before harvest, cause she will nanner if you do this to early), with FAT resin glands that are blanketed in 'frost'. Now, as these are techniques a cultivator can use to help boost quality, size, and bag appeal to there buds. If you get caught up doing partial harvests indoors, then your just wasting time, money and space. Unless of course you're only growing one plant at a time, and your not planing on growing another plant(s) immediately after. Or you just have the patience and are willing to wait it out. Then sure, go ahead and partial harvest :thumb: But the reason why I suggested to him "not" to partial harvest is because, as indoor growers,, do we ever stop growing? Or do we have a more centrifugal approach? ;)

So I'm sorry for not explaining in further detail exactly what I meant. & I thank you for asking the question and bringing it up:thumb: Because this is something for all the new curious "partial harvest" people to go over and understand. Tho it is, and can be utilized to optimize quality and look of the budz. Do you really want to set back your schedules just to let a few popcorn buds fully grow? To me it's a waste of man hours on my lights just for popcorn buds. & if you do this on the regular, you'll get wayyy less harvests per year. In some cases it takes a extra 4 weeks for the popcorn buds to fully ripen. In my line of work that just can't happen. I have to be pushing out a certain amount or # every 60 days. But like I said above, if you have the time and patience and are only growing for your own medicinal purposes. Then go right ahead, it's a great technique and will work very efficiently. :high-five::Namaste:

I hope this has cleared up what I meant in the original response. :passitleft:
 
I am in no way trying to show the ambers and not others.

I'm sorry if you took me to mean you were only showing us ambers, not my intention at all. I just knew from our experience that we saw more of what we thought were ambers when we turned the light level on our microscope down.

We were in a very similar place a week or two ago, convinced we were waiting too late and it'd all be amber before we could get it finished. Once we harvested and dried for a day, it was clear it was the opposite, too early.


I feel they have gone straight from clear to amber in a lot of leaves I have looked at.

Frustrated and disappointed.

Ah man, I hate that I helped make you feel this way. You have to remember it's not unlike just about every other crop out there. They pick a day to harvest a field of corn, but some of it will be overripe, some underripe, and hopefully the majority are in the middle. The tomatoes on a plant don't all turn red yet are still firm on the same day.

My understanding is Cannabis is no different, between nugs on a plant, and even between trichomes on an individual leaf. They are being created, filled with THC and the rest of the good stuff, then they start to degrade throughout the flowering lifecycle. Even if the one's you are looking at are truly amber, there's new clear ones being developed just behind the ones that are being filled with THC.

My personal opinion given honestly is you'll get a much bigger harvest in a week or longer and will still have tons of cloudy trichs, more in fact as the surface area on which to grow them has increased by so much.

I'm brand new, so my opinion should be taken as informed but very inexperienced.
 
No need to say sorry Arte'

I know you.

I'm interested in personal experience.

When you say a day after harvest you knew it was too early, how did you know?

I am afraid of couch lock. When I get home after a long day of work, it is very easy for weed to just put me to sleep, but I can fall asleep fine at the end of a day. I don't need weed for that. But if I smoke that same weed in the morning, I will feel creative and inspired and want to clean the whole house or go out and do something! So the same weed, different times of the day, different effects. I really want this weed to be uppy, even at the cost of weight, as this is just for me. I ain't no drug deala'

So when you say you knew it was too early, was it too uppy of a high? No high at all? A headache?

Just curious.
 
No need to say sorry Arte'

I know you.

Sorry for the excessive apology then. :)

See, as a Canadian, I have a daily apology quota to make. We get audited all the time!


I'm interested in personal experience.

When you say a day after harvest you knew it was too early, how did you know?

I am afraid of couch lock. When I get home after a long day of work, it is very easy for weed to just put me to sleep, but I can fall asleep fine at the end of a day. I don't need weed for that. But if I smoke that same weed in the morning, I will feel creative and inspired and want to clean the whole house or go out and do something! So the same weed, different times of the day, different effects. I really want this weed to be uppy, even at the cost of weight, as this is just for me. I ain't no drug deala'

So when you say you knew it was too early, was it too uppy of a high? No high at all? A headache?

Just curious.

Too underdeveloped. Once the first day or two of drying was over (at 65f and 40% RH for day one, 72f and 60% on day two) and they shrunk by half, it was clear that she could have definitely used a week or two more to develop some more swelling in her calyxes.

For that particular plant, she had suffered so much over her short life and we weren't sure she could survive another two weeks even though she was immature.
 
Thanks a lot to everyone for their input, knowledge, and experience.

I read 1 too many articles about trichome color as the end all of harvest time.

I will hold off at least another week and have watered with plain water and some mild worm castings (Big Bloom) today.

So I am sort of flushing, and will stay open and aware until harvest time comes to me!

:high-five:
 
I also reduced the light to 11:30 on / 12:30 off, and will decrease to 11 / 13 in a couple days. I hope that will help the ladies finish off.

Thanks again.

The last two days go completely dark. no light. You'll get a nice white coat. ;)
 
I am having the same issue today. On a Jack Herrer Auto. It is 9.5 weeks and on the main colas I have about 20%+ amber. Lots of milky, very few clear, but very obviously amber. I also wanted the uplifting sativa effect and am also very concerned this will be ruining them. I am planning on cutting 4 or 5 of the colas to keep them from going couch lock. It seems about 2.5 weeks early but I am fine to take the top 4 and leave the rest.
1ofaKind, you decided to leave yours alone. How are the trichs looking to you now?
 
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