It’s that time of year, let’s check in with the textbook.
These are just some helpful tips and tricks for the process!
The flower you just spent almost the entirety of your year so far, holding a spot in your brain always thinking about the final product, it is time to come forward and do the deed of cutting the plant down. There is a ton of nitty gritty material on specifics and measurements beyond just this, but this is a proper guide to what makes the growing experience fool-proof.
Identifying the flower
To ensure your bud’s ripeness, the peak of THC concentration is key to keep your eye on, as well as the readiness of your pot to make sure it’s not losing any of its qualities! From seed, generally speaking an autoflower takes about 100 days to harvest, while an outdoor feminized seed will take closer to 150 days to harvest. That’s a takeaway from the start, keep it in mind, this is all due to your growing conditions, it is average statistics for cannabis. The sticky little fuzzy trichomes are a key indicator to the maturity of a flower's growth. It’s tricky getting up and personal with the little trichomes, we suggest using a handy 40x magnifying glass; although the higher the magnification, the better the view! The trichomes of your weed will begin growing from clear (immature flower) to then develop into a cloudy haze or amber tones (matured flower), this is the plant storing more cannabinoids and terpenes to maximize the potential. It’s generally recommended to harvest your plant when all of the trichomes have turned to become cloudy/amber.
Investigation on the flower
Coming up to the date, it’s important to help your plant out! To simply know your local climate to better identify your variety’s growth cycle and to strategize your growth and adapt your strain to the environment. Keeping up with the prune work is tedious but precious for the plant to blossom. Stop any fertilizer feeds about 2 weeks out from harvest date for a clean bud and gradually slow down the water intake to avoid overwatering. About 2-3 weeks out from harvest, a lot of growers tend to treat their plants with root stimulators to prevent diseases and fungi from potentially overtaking growth.
Harvest
Cut your plants down into stalks about arm's length with hooks like a coat hanger to better help your hanging process. Hanging your plants, there’s not much to it, you’re safe with some string tied up, proper spacing between branches, and let them do their thing. Ideally a dry room while maintaining conditions of 18-22 degrees celsius with 50-60% humidity levels will treat flowers well. The optimal drying process ultimately goes to the grower themselves and their preferences with experimentation. Forgot to mention, dry-rooms almost always consist of being a cool, dark, dry and well ventilated place to be nice to the reefer. Cannabis normally takes a week in these conditions to dry.
Have fun with it!
At the end of the day, it’s a plant and it’s really a beautiful process to propagate your very own cannabis. Yes, it can cost a whopping total at the end of the process, but it’s also almost easy enough for a monkey to follow along and learn the process as well, so don’t stress. Beyond harvest, you have to cure your weed with a further drying tactic to put the finalizing touch on your nugs. We’ll talk about that some other time. Take care of your plants’ nutrients as well as yours, keep in connection with the routine.
