Harvest questions

[anon0988]

How important is chopping before lights come on? I've heard that you should chop shortly before lights come on, something about how the starches go down to the roots at night and it gives it a better taste if you do it that way? I'm either going to chop tonight or wait until tomorrow morning and do it then.

Another question: I'm at 9 weeks and they're supposed to be done, but don't look nearly as ready as previous strains have. By that I mean the leaves haven't yellowed fully or dried up. Is it going to make a difference on finished product? Strain = Northern Soul (Northern Lights x Skunk #1)

 

[Budwhyser]

How important is chopping before lights come on? I've heard that you should chop shortly before lights come on, something about how the starches go down to the roots at night and it gives it a better taste if you do it that way? I'm either going to chop tonight or wait until tomorrow morning and do it then.

Another question: I'm at 9 weeks and they're supposed to be done, but don't look nearly as ready as previous strains have. By that I mean the leaves haven't yellowed fully or dried up. Is it going to make a difference on finished product? Strain = Northern Soul (Northern Lights x Skunk #1)

I've done both ways and have never noticed any difference. Why not experiment yourself? Take 2 plants of the same strain. Chop one before lights on and the other after and see if it makes a difference to you.

Depending on how you feed and how long you flush, you may not have yellowing leaves when they're ready. If your not an organic grower, allow at least a week, preferably two to flush the chems out by not giving them any nutes and use straight water only. Dont go by time, always go by trichome coloration. There are tons of threads on this. Get yourself a 30-40x handheld scope and check your trichomes. You will find that each plant will be on its own schedule. They will not all finish at the same time

 

[RonSmooth]

The plant is using the same "chems" wether you use organic soil or miracle grow fertilizer. You're not flushing anything out of the plant, you're forcing the plant to use remaining stores.

Harvest when the plant looks ripe. Good job using your eye, a pocket microscope isn't useful until you can read the more obvious physical cues

Let them go another week and see how they look.

Also, I believe there have been studies that show peak resin production happens before sunrise. I don't think it would be noticible difference though

 

[anon0988]

Well, I've been flushing for 1w6d already based upon the 9 week schedule. Will it have any negative effects to leave them in water for another week? Also, I chopped one tonight to begin drying early to sample, will it be bad to leave the roots in the dwc? I think they'd be hard to seperate effectively from the other plants.

A bit more info: I started this dwc as a result of starting to learn cloning. I have 2 plants that I originally set up in 5 gal buckets with promix, scrog'd. While the plants were filling out the scrog, it became necessary to top them, so I figured why not learn to clone? I ended up with 10 usable clones. I took those 10 clones and put them in a home made 12 site (4w3h) dwc setup. I made it out of a 18 gallon storage tote and 3.5" netpots. After the clones rooted I flipped to 400w HPS after maybe a week or so of veg under CFLs. I also flipped the scrog'd plants to 400w HPS at the same time. These are separate locations, not the same 400w setup. Basically trying to get a feel for this strain in various setups.

The two in the scrog look quite different than the dwc setup. The left scrogged plant has tons of dark purple in it and it's leaves are already drying/yellowing as I would expect from previous strains. The right scrog'd plant barely has any purple, and due to what I suspect was a ph problem early on, the leaves stayed fairly yellow/green the whole 2nd half of flowering, so no real major change yet. The DWC plants have no easily visible purple (haven't cut them and with as close as they are it's hard to see) that I can tell. All plants have been in flower for the same amount of time, but I've got 3 distinctly different results.

Now I suppose because the two 5 gal promix setups were both started from seed and acted as mothers for the cuttings, I've got at most two pheno's. I have no idea which clones are from which mother. It has surprised me how much variation in appearance has come from two seeds of the same genetics that have been vegged for different lengths and grown with different methods in different mediums. For example, I don't think either NL or Skunk are purple strains, yet I have it in both mothers to varying degrees. Is dark purple color possible from anything other than genetics? A difficiency maybe? Something about using promix as a medium instead of dwc hydro?

Anyway, I'm rambling now, but I think after chopping the one of the ten dwc hydro plants that I'll probably let them go a bit longer and harvest the left scrog plant first. It looks the most like I think they're 'supposed' to look at harvest. Also, I haven't invested in an optical device yet to view trichromes, but plan on picking something up before the next cycle.

 

[Ichabod Crane]

If you look at your buds before they are done they will glint like a diamond. Once they are done they will be a dull white color. If you don't have a glass to look at them this is a easy way to tell. You can then harvest some before this color change during and after. Note the color of the one you liked best and that is the color of the bud you want.

Yellowing leave just show that the plant has been starved or the nutes were messed up. This is not a good way to tell if the plant is done.