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Sick of clear trichomes!!!

HempKat

Just A Simple Old Dirt Farmer
Veteran
HempKat I'm on mobile so I cant type out as big of a response as I want to, but thanks for your help and for your insight. I appreciate the fuck out of it. Since I've been growing my own I've always equated cleartrichome with being the sole cause bad buzz. I now have to reevaluate those ideas. Which leads me to another thought....all these seed companies rly ain't shit. It seems like buying a pack of seeds is like buying basketball cards back in the day, like 1 seed in every 20 might be a jordan, while the rest is bench players, and that really sucks. I guess I was naive for thinking every seed was a winner!!!

Well to be fair to the good seed vendors there are a bunch of good seed vendors but I suspect unfortunately there are many that have popped up more recently since the world stop demonizing cannabis as much as it used to and many of those seed vendors/breeders might be sacrificing quality and reputation just to cash in on the expanding market? Good quality breeders spend years stabilizing and perfecting a new strain, there is a ton of work that goes into it that you seldom see anywhere in forums other then forums dedicated to breeding. Which I suspect most growers don't check out because they can get pretty deep into things the average grower just doesn't understand. I can't name anyone specifically but I'm willing to bet there are people who take pollen from one strain and sprinkle it on the buds of another strain and called the seeds produced a finished product. When in reality that's just the earliest beginning of a quality strain. I'm sure there are literally books out there written on everything that true breeders do to produce a good strain. So basically I would say just put some time into researching the breeder as well as the strain before you buy. Every seed can be a winner if produced by a quality breeder but if you end up buying from an unknown breeder because they have cheap prices you're taking a chance. Really when you find someone who has much lower prices that's a warning flag right there. Good genetics can be a bit pricey but it's really pretty reasonable when you consider the full potential that can be achieved from each seed as well as the years of work that goes into stabilizing a good new strain. I haven't checked the prices lately but back when I last looked I think the highest price I saw was $100 for a pack of 10 seeds. More average prices but still good quality was more like $40-$60 for a pack of 10 and then there were bargains out there below $40 for 10 but those would be the ones to question. Anyway lets take the $100 seeds, now if you took one seed and grew one plant to it's fullest potential you should get several ounces of dried cured bud, how many ounces would depend on the strain and how good the environment it was grown in. What's the going price on the market for an ounce of good cannabis though between $300 - $600 per ounce maybe more depending on the market you're in. You can see right there that one seed is going to pay for the whole pack many times over if everything is done right.. So yeah if you buy a pack of 20 seeds from a poor quality breeder maybe you get one Jordon out of 20 or maybe even no Jordons at all. If however you buy from a quality well establish breeder then maybe they're almost all Jordons or at least an NBA Dream team.

Now back to the trichome thing, if they are all or 80 to 90% clear then that's going to effect your opinion of the quality of the bud because it's roughly the same thing as eating a banana that's still mostly green. That banana isn't going to taste very good or sweet at all but it doesn't mean the banana is bad, that same banana when properly ripened to all yellow with a few brown spots might be the best damn banana you ever had. So you really do have to get it to where the trichomes are at least 90% cloudy before you can fairly judge how good the bud is. That being said though even when it's mostly clear you should still get a decent buzz off of a bud. It won't be anywhere near what it should be but you should still be able to get some good experience from it. I know I've smoked bud that was still mostly clear that I cut off early because they were lower, small popcorn bud that was never going to amount to much. By trimming them off it allowed the plant to focus it's energies on bigger buds that had the potential to get much bigger. While that smaller mostly clear bud didn't get me anywhere near what the finished buds would it was still fairly enjoyable.
 

fonzee

Weed Cannasaur
Moderator
Veteran
Sure if you cut the bud off the plant or it's no problem to haul a whole plant outdoors but that seems a lot of trouble just to evaluate the trichomes and if you went with the cutting the bud off option then what if it turns out to be not ready? With a good camera in Macro Mode or a good 30X jewelers loupe you can accomplish the same thing indoors without having to cut anything off or move the whole plant outdoors. Plus I think for most of us that grow indoors, if we felt comfortable enough to take a plant nearing harvest outdoors to inspect the buds we would just grow outdoors.

Just take a small sample to view in sunlight. Its not that complex.
 

Three Berries

Active member
My last flower wouldn't turn amber. Maybe one or two on a bud. I turned the lights off and let them sit in the dark for 48 hours before cutting. They were the stickiest plants I've ever grown. Even the trunk of the plant got sticky. Hated to throw it away.
 

BobChronic6505

Active member
My last flower wouldn't turn amber. Maybe one or two on a bud. I turned the lights off and let them sit in the dark for 48 hours before cutting. They were the stickiest plants I've ever grown. Even the trunk of the plant got sticky. Hated to throw it away.

Do you normally get alot of amber? Do u have any pix
 
HempKat do you have any recommendations?

Personally i would recommend any breeder found on realgorillaseeds or seedbay or seedboutique. Chimera is also a good one. U might want to chose sum indicas first for their shorter flowering time and maturity.as far as amber trics i always have them outside.hope that helps
 

BobChronic6505

Active member
Personally i would recommend any breeder found on realgorillaseeds or seedbay or seedboutique. Chimera is also a good one. U might want to chose sum indicas first for their shorter flowering time and maturity.as far as amber trics i always have them outside.hope that helps

Thanks I'll check and see what they have
 

BobChronic6505

Active member
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BobChronic6505

Active member
I think the above photos is the most cloudy I've ever had. I'd almost swear that a few have this orange tint like they were just about to turn completely amber. I was able to keep the temps around 69 for the last two weeks before chop and I kept it in darkness for 2 days before I actually chopped.
 

wunderbra

Member
I recently harvested my plants a few weeks early while the pistils were still clear. Mouldy leaves from cool CFL vegging turned brown and burnt under HID, and it was not worth continuing the grow with no leaves, so I decided to chop. The buds were good sizes after only 6 weeks of the stated 10 weeks flowering time. After drying, the bud was noticably milder than similar full term crops. The bud is good and strong but it is much less harsh. It doesn't need curing, can be used immediately, and results in a better smoke.

If you can afford to chop your plants a few weeks early this seems to be beneficial. Younger bud is like tender steak. Not over-ripe bud gone harsh from too much ripening. You are only missing out on a little extra bud growth. IMO, this is a great hack to a much milder smoke. :biggrin:
 

Douglas.Curtis

Autistic Diplomat in Training
Please dont chop ur plants early.worst advice ive ever read.

This cannot be repeated enough times.

Chopping early is a triple whammy against you because:

The majority of the resin weight is produced the last few weeks
The potency is significantly increased the last few weeks
The length of effect is significantly increased the last few weeks.

So, when you chop early, you get less and have to smoke more of it more often. No issue if you're already growing 3 times what you need.
 

Douglas.Curtis

Autistic Diplomat in Training
On a side note:

"aridity favors resin production." and I highly doubt Clarke considered 40% RH "Arid." The most fragile monoterpenes begin vaporizing off at 70F. When you can smell them, they're not going to be around for polymerization at harvest time.

68F max canopy temp
<30% incoming RH air

Below 65F you slow down the sugars in the plant. Over 70F and you're losing terpenes. As the temps increase, terpene and cannabinoid production can even cause overfilling of cells in the trichomes. When these cells burst, the terpenes and cannabinoids within those cells are exposed to oxygen. Whether you can smell them or not, they have begun breaking down before harvest and will negatively affect the end result. I'm researching a theory on this process creating additional CBN (the sleepy stuff) in the end product.

The 'cure' involves the polymerization of terpenes. It is extremely difficult for enzymes in your cannabis to polymerize the terpenes which have been making your grow room smell nice for weeks. ;)
 

Three Berries

Active member
My last grow I shut the lights off and no heat (~55-60F) for two days before the cut. It was massively covered in resin even the trunk. Going to do three days next harvest.
 

Old Piney

Well-known member
I suspect this will get you where you want to be but I would caution you from shooting for that 50/50 cloud /amber mark. The reason I say this is on my first harvest after I learned about examining the trichomes (I had harvests before where I didn't have the ability to examine trichomes and didn't really know too much about them) I tried to shot for 50/50 and I found myself going a frustratingly long time past the suggested harvest date and the closest I felt I got was about 85% cloudy/12% Amber/ 3% clear and I was completely satisfied with that result. The thing is I felt like I hit the 85% cloudy first and then the last extra bit of time was when the amber came in. Of course what was really happening is that some of the cloudy was turning amber while some of what was still clear was turning cloudy. So from that I realized that really what you want to shoot for is mostly cloudy and just don't worry about the amber at all.

If you were trying for that 50/50 cloudy/amber because you heard that would give you more of a couchlock/body high then just grow Indicas or Indica dominant hybrids as it is Indica strains where you really find the couchlock/ body high put you to sleep early effect not in amber trichomes which is just degrading resin. If you shoot for almost completely cloudy I think you'll be very please regardless of the strain.

Now a couple of more observations on amber trichomes, just because you harvest the plant doesn't mean the trichomes will lock into the state they are in, especially if you dry and cure them slowly (a week or two of drying and 1 to 2 months curing). As long as there is moisture still working it's way out of the harvested bud I feel the trichomes will continue to mature. The reason I say this is I've had bud that when I harvested were almost all cloudy with a few amber triches here and there (less then 1%) but when I examined the same bud after a full cure there were definitely more amber triches in them then on harvest day. Also when I noticed the most development of amber it was always at the point in my grow when the outside temps were bringing the grow room temps down because circumstances basically forced me to grow from fall thru early spring. I never had to mess with the lighting other then on occasion if I felt a plant was unusually slow to finish I might bump it down from 12 on/12 off to 11 on/ 13 off but that only happened a few times and with sativa dominant hybrids. The lighting change may have influenced the development of amber triches but to me it always felt more like it was cooler temps and with cooler temps you also tend to get lower RH. For the plant one of the main purposes of the resin is it acts like an insulation to protect from falling temps and humidity commonly associated with the fall when growing in cannabis' natural habitat, the outdoors.

Ultimately I feel amber triches are overrated, the medicine is always present in the resin it's just when the triches are clear the medicine hasn't fully been activated. I have serious doubts based on my experiences that cloudy = just THC nor do I believe you only have CBD with Amber Triches. To me cloudy = the medicine contained in the triches is fully ripened and at it's peak. Amber = that the medicine inside is fully ripened but now starting to degrade so slightly less potent. Given my experiences over the time I've been examining trichomes I would have to say now that I would never want to have 50/50 cloudy/amber. 100% cloudy would be the ideal state for me but I'll settle for as low as 85% and then give it a good slow cure.

I do hear you on the way it's different when the triches are mostly clear,. There's still a buzz but it's just not right somehow. Given your reaction to what people have said is why I think you'll get what you want from reducing the light and temps. Your reaction suggests you've held those two things steady thru out your grows which usually is a good thing but maybe at the end is not triggering the flowers quite the way you want. Now if you know this already don't be offended I'm just mentioning it because I don't know what you know. When you are judging whether trichomes are clear, cloudy or amber, you're just looking at the round head on the top of the trichome, the shaft or whatever you want to call the part the head sits on (I believe there is a proper name for it but I forget at the moment) that part generally stays clear.

Below is an example of what the triches usually looked like when I harvested:


As you can see it's mostly cloudy triches with a few amber and a few clear scattered here and there. Definitely no where near 50/50 and yet it was some very satisfying smoke later on.
Amber .waiting until the cows come home
 

grayeyes

Active member
I cannot get trichomes to turn amber. People talk about 50/50 cloudy/amber but I'm doing good just to get 50/50 clear/clowdy. Every bit of bud I've grown that had alot of clear trichomes gives me the worst headache, and the buzz is terrible. I dont even know how to describe it, but it's terrible.

If it's true what they say about the trichomes, then I can only assume the clear trichomes are the reason why my bud sucks and the reason why the buzz is terrible.

Here is a picture I took from reddit.
wAAACH5BAEKAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw==
Am I correct in assuming these trichomes are loaded with way more medicine (even tho it may be degraded into cbg or whatever), than clear trichomes??? How do I get my trichomes to turn amber like this?!! And these trichs are completely cloudy also, how do ppl do this?

Here are my trichomes
View attachment 17972411 View attachment 17972412 View attachment 17972413


Does anyone in here really get amber trichomes?? How can I get trichomes like the first picture?!

Thanks in advance
Don't harvest so soon.
 

Greenheart

Active member
Veteran
imo early harvest equals headache literally.

I agree with Douglas. Triple whammy and then some. If you want a "tender steak" buy a good cut and prepare it properly. The green banana versus yellow banana is a much better analogy.

@Douglas.Curtis...The CBN sleep factor. Did you ever notice it seems stronger during the early stages of curing say 14-21 days as opposed to after 30?
 

Douglas.Curtis

Autistic Diplomat in Training
The bud is good and strong but it is much less harsh.
If your full term crop is more harsh than at 6 weeks of flower, you are overfeeding.

Now that it has been a few weeks, would you care to share how long the effects of smoking some lasts? I'm guessing around 30 minutes to 45 minutes. Correct?
 

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