One last cry for help with these girls

[Makeminefullgrown]

Let me start by thanking everyone for the great advice given and enduring this extended grow with me. I promise this will be the last post on this grow.
Just in case there’s anyone on the planet that doesn’t know the specs, here they are:
3 Super Skunk autos, 2 very different phenos growing in 3g fabric pots w/ 100% Ocean Forest. Light is a HLG 320 LED. The grow started fairly normal, I fed very light Fox farm nutes from about week 5-6 on. I noticed they were taking a long time to progress. I continued the grow and began titrating the nutes but planned to feed until harvest. Ran my temps in the low-mid 70s.
Around week 12-13 I made a big mistake and defoliated too many fan leaves….I just got carried away and ended up with bud kabobs. The stress then caused many of the remaining leaves to yellow and/or die off.
We are now passing week 17 and the plants are just existing….one has super dense knuckled up buds, all pistils (or stigmata) are orange and receded. To me the buds look ripe…..but the trichs are not turning amber. I’d say easily 80% are milky white but only a handful of ambers on the entire plant. It finally looked ripe about 2 weeks ago and I began checking trichs daily…..same results every time….mostly cloudy but probably 2-3% amber.
The other 2 plants are more similar in that they still have white hairs popping in a few places and many more that have not turned color. The one plant has orange hairs that have been orange for weeks and won’t recede. The trichomes on both of these plants are heavier….way more big mushroom headed trichs. Most are milky white and a few ambers here and there.
I have cut the light back to 11/13, lowered my lights out temps to low 60s, and the last watering I gave only water and Recharge but it was cold water. All of these moves were made in an attempt to encourage the plants to finish up.
The only real change I’ve seen lately is more leaves are dying off by the day.
I’m keeping my RH down in the low 30s for fear of bud rot.
It would be easy to throw in the towel and chop, but I don’t want speed racer weed. Plus at this point I’ve got 18 weeks invested in the them and want them to finish like they should.
Any thoughts, ideas, or suggestions??
Thanks again for listening to my many issues since mid October.
Pics are yesterday. One of each plant.

 

[mmjmon]

Look good to me...

 

[man10101]

Hi!

I had exact same prob on last grow

tircs just werent turning amber after week or 2 late
some were but no way near 30%

had overstressed as well but with too much light

got "foxtailing" on all 3 due to stress
thought that maybe overstressed plants thc take a lot longer to ripen so waited another week or 2
stressed them even more n still hardly any amber

in the end i gave up waiting n chopped...
thought that to keep growing an overstressed plant jus wasnt worth it when i could jus chop n start again
try n learn from this one n not f**k up the next one (as much!)

jus dryed as norm then gave it a longer cure, 4 weeks instead of 2 weeks
wasnt "space racer" (nice name!) weed at all

 

[Emilya Green]

It looks like you are almost there. Since you defoliated all of the big energy leaves it is naturally taking a bit longer to finish. Be patient... it has to finish though. Be patient... you just have a long running plant and it can sometimes take 14-18 weeks on some varieties. Light feeding from the start probably didn't help in this regard either. Keep on it... the amber will rush in when it is ready.

 

[013]

Looking good MMFG,

Its not a problem - we want you to succeed!!

Patience will reward you. She will pull the fans down to as yellow as possible, but keep going with the nutes. If she’s still lingering in 2 weeks time then maybe bump lights down by 1 hour again..…

 

[bluter]

super skunk is sativa dom. a lot of sativas never amber out. if you make 10% by harvest you'll be doing busters.
there are straight up sativas that will never get past 5%. you are likely done.

 

[Makeminefullgrown]

super skunk is sativa dom. a lot of sativas never amber out. if you make 10% by harvest you'll be doing busters.
there are straight up sativas that will never get past 5%. you are likely done.

I’ve often wondered about the breeder’s description, which clearly states indica dominant. I’m not well versed on indica vs sativa and the minor details. But 2 of the 3 plants looked more sativa during the grow. They had a lighter shade of green leaves. The leaves were longer and thinner and at flowering the pistils and buds in general were just different from the 3rd plant.
It is those 2 sativa resembling plants that refuse to stop spitting out white hairs….and once they turn color they aren’t receding. I will say that despite the hairy appearance, the buds are all hard as rocks.
I did check the 3rd plant (more indica pheno) this morn and spotted noticeably more ambers. Still not close to 10% but more than even yesterday.
I had to water it as it had been a while and it was dry and the pot was feather light.
I mixed in a tiny dose of bloom nute and soaked it good.
With the onset of the new ambers coupled w/ the leaves dying off at a rapid pace, I’ll likely let it soak up this feeding and move it to a 36-48 hour dark period.
I’m guessing I’ll want to chop it with the medium pretty dry?? I dunno….remember I’ve only grown outdoors, in the ground and a long time ago.
As for the other 2, I think I can get one more week of “leaf presence” out of one, so that’s what I’ll do. The other still has a good amount and I’ll keep monitoring it. Give them both another light feeding tomorrow and wait n see.

 

[cbdhemp808]

Crazy huge buds! Some quick comments... I think it's indica dominant. If it was me, 80% milky, I would harvest, especially if you have some concern about bud rot. The logic is... next time try to correct some of the glitches, and then try for more amber trichomes. The only thing I can think to possibly accelerate more amber trichs is to stress the plants – cut way back on watering... water a little only when they look too stressed. Just guessing... I've never done that. Good luck!