Woohoo, almost harvest time! (Pic)

BigDog

Active Member
DSCF01173.JPG


DSCF01182.JPG


I'm going to cut the girls on friday/Saturday and hang them to dry. This will be my first harvest (first grow), and my main concern is that some of the colas are really thick, and I 'm worried about bud rot. What is the best way to avoid this?
 
I would not cut on friday. It looks like your buds have more room to fill in.
 
Look really nice bro...Great job, but I do agree with Closet Farmer...If you have the time, wait...Have you looked at the trichs under a scope??? Oh yeah, what strain is that????
 
Yeah, I was basing the decision to harvest on the trichs. Right now they are all mostly cloudy with a couple of amber thrown in.
These plants are a little weird because they had almost stopped growing, and I transplanted them and they burst out in little budlets all over the main colas. The cola in the picture with my hand is as wide as a coke can is tall.
 
You could harvest just the tops of the plants and let the bottom buds get more light and wait to harvest the rest of the plant after a few more weeks. The bottom buds will get bigger and fill in more.

Your plants do look great! Every grower ends up doing what works best for them.

I like my weed to be as strong as possible. So I usually wait till I have at least 60 to 80% amber. But the weed I end up with is not the weed you smoke mid day because it will force you to do lazy things like watch TV and zone out!
 
You could harvest just the tops of the plants and let the bottom buds get more light and wait to harvest the rest of the plant after a few more weeks. The bottom buds will get bigger and fill in more.

I'm toying with the idea of doing exactly that, but I'm starting to run into time constraints. If I do that, should I start fertilizing again after I harvest the bigger colas? It has been about a week and a half since I last fed the girls.
 
I'm toying with the idea of doing exactly that, but I'm starting to run into time constraints. If I do that, should I start fertilizing again after I harvest the bigger colas? It has been about a week and a half since I last fed the girls.

My last few grows I have chopped the top buds of the plant and let the bottom buds fill in and harvest them later. Ed Rosenthal recomends this in his grow book.

I can tell you worked very hard with these beautiful plants and to me it would be a shame to harvest too soon and not get the full potential for all the work you have done.

What do you mean you are running into time constraints? Is it you are in the middle of the final flush or you have to move your plants?

Your plant has nice large buds with a lot of female hairs. If you could possibly let your plants grow another month you will notice those female hairs showing more color and the buds will get denser, also you could end up with 25% or more yield and a stronger smoke.
 
I'm going to try taking a couple of the larger top buds and then refertilize. My time constraint is that I have more plants vegging that are outgrowing their current housing and need to move. These strains are supposed to be 7-9 week strains, but Friday will be the end of Week 11 in 12/12, it has thrown off my planning! ;-)
 
I'm going to try taking a couple of the larger top buds and then refertilize. My time constraint is that I have more plants vegging that are outgrowing their current housing and need to move. These strains are supposed to be 7-9 week strains, but Friday will be the end of Week 11 in 12/12, it has thrown off my planning! ;-)


I know. I no longer have any faith in the estimated finnish time supplied by the seed companies. My first grows I did like you are doing. I would start my veg cycle on the new plants when my flowering plants were getting close to the estimated finnish time.
I do not do this anymore. I now wait till my plants are fully mature before I start the new crop. Believe me. I have been in your same situation before.
If it was me. I would still let this plant finnish proper. You could chop a few riper buds to tide you over if you need smoke. This is the critical time of your plants life when it is getting fully ripe. If you chop now you will end up with a smaller yield and a less potent smoke. It would be a great idea to find a way to keep this one in 12/12 longer. It really has room to grow and it looks very healthy.
 
I'm toying with the idea of doing exactly that, but I'm starting to run into time constraints. If I do that, should I start fertilizing again after I harvest the bigger colas? It has been about a week and a half since I last fed the girls.


You can always refert again!!
 
Hey man your girls are looking phenomenal :high-five: . Also I completely agree with Closet Farmer on the whole situation, If you can dude, let your girls go for at least 2 more weeks minimum before you harvest because you've come this far already and you don't wanna have premature tasting bud.. trust me it sucks Ive harvested early before thinking it was done and was a really harsh smoke even with the curing.. So please let your beautiful girls thrive for a few more weeks.. You will seriously be glad you did, Also just keep checking on the trichs with your microscope.. If you have any other questions bro feel free to ask :peace:
 
This evening I decided to start the harvest with my Snow White plant because it was starting to look funky. In the picture below you can see a soda can sitting on top of the largest cola. I started by cutting right where the buds started to grow out from the stem, not as tightly clustered (basically about half way down). When I started trimming this cola I found that the middle was eaten up with bud rot! I basically cut up the cola and cut out the rot agressively, hopefully it will still be good. In the third picture you can see the cut up cola to the left of the soda can.

After finding bud rot on that large cola, I took half of the large one that is in the pics above. You can see that bad boy on the right of the can. I will probably let that plant continue for another week or two.

DSCN00272.JPG



Bud Rot!

DSCN00493.JPG


Half of the Snow white plant and one of the White Rhino Colas.

DSCN00532.JPG



I am in the process of building a new home for the plants that are vegging so I can probably keep these guys going for another couple of weeks.
 
Wow, you have really grown some biggun's there. I know you are a few weeks ahead of me so I am most appreciative of seeing where I am going. I like your tags on the buds. I am sure it's easy to get confused once cutting begins.
Good luck with the extended grow.
 
Thanks! I'm a little bummed out by the bud rot, and I think a cola on one of the White Rhinos might also be having the same issue. I'm not sure why as the humidity in the tent has never gone above 52%, and usually stays at 40%, and the temps are at 75 during the day and 66 at night.
 
Quick update:

After 5 days of drying, I took the colas down, broke them into individuals buds and put them in some brown paper bags for the next couple of days or so. I also weighed them and I'm pretty happy!

The big White Rhino cola that I have my hand on in the first pic yielded 54gr or 1.94 oz. The Snow White plant yielded 123.5 gr of bud and another 32 gr of popcorn. I ended up harvesting the entire plant a couple of days ago because it went into shock and was dying.
The bud is pretty dry but I'm sure I will lose a little more weight to drying in the weeks to come. What I'm really excited about is the White Rhino plant. The one cola had a tremendous yield, and the plant has at least two more similar in size plus a couple of slightly smaller ones. I will probably harvest it in a couple of weeks.

I was disappointed with the Snow White bud rot, I will have to watch for that in the future. i think it might of happened when the top broke of the plant in early vegging (stoner move on my part), and the 4 buds started to grow out of the top and grew together. I think.
 
Thanks! I'm a little bummed out by the bud rot, and I think a cola on one of the White Rhinos might also be having the same issue. I'm not sure why as the humidity in the tent has never gone above 52%, and usually stays at 40%, and the temps are at 75 during the day and 66 at night.

I have had a little bud rot on every one of my grows too! I usually only have to cut out about a gram per plant so it is not too bad. I always notice it on the thickest buds.

You might want to try some of the mold resistant strains. I notice that most of the pineapple strains claim to be mold resistant. I am thinking about going with a mold resistant strain after I run out of my free seeds! :roorrip:
 
Yeah, I was basing the decision to harvest on the trichs. Right now they are all mostly cloudy with a couple of amber thrown in.
These plants are a little weird because they had almost stopped growing, and I transplanted them and they burst out in little budlets all over the main colas. The cola in the picture with my hand is as wide as a coke can is tall.

I agree with the above. I would give it more time. The trich's color I believe is a false. The pistols should fully retract into the calyx. This is when the buds really fatten up.

If I went on color, I have some plants that amber at 4 weeks! I still run them 9-11 weeks. None of my strains have a couch lock effect! If that amber stuff were true, all my weed would be couch lock and/or sedative. It's simply not true.
 
Quick update: I finished harvesting the big white Rhino in the picture, and after line drying for 8 days, I harvested 6.4oz of dried bud. I still have one more of the White Rhino plants growing, I'm going to let her go a couple more weeks before chopping. I will update then.
 
Well I chopped and dried the last White rhino and ended up with another 6 ozs of bud and shake. Again, the buds never really matured and they weren't growing very fast if at all. I found the cause of the problem after I harvested the plant. It turns out I waited too long to transplant from the 3 Gal containers to the bigger ones, and the plants became root bound. Even after 5 weeks of being in the larger container, the root never grew outward, they were still in the shape of the 3gal pot.

For this next grow, I transplanted earlier, and into a 10gal Smartpot, so I'm looking forward to seeing if it makes a difference.

For my first grow I ended up with just over 16ozs of mediocre bud from 3 plants. Can't wait to see what I can do in the future!
 
Back
Top Bottom