Staggering Harvest vs. All at once

[jchesmore722]

When doing a perpetual style harvest, where you put some in and take some out periodically, is it possible to achieve the same results per plant as you would get by harvesting all the plants at once???

Basically what I am trying to say isâ?¦ Will it hurt/help/not effect your yield per plant by staggering a harvest????

[zihowie]

ive thought about this alot.


everyone is going to be doing it

[Farmer Rich]

I use 2 x 1000 watt hps light in my flower room and harvest 6-8 plants about every 4-5 weeks dependent on the strain. I always have the next group vegged and ready and usually move them in as soon as the harvest is hanging to dry. With an average of 2-3 oz per plant (manicured) this works out well for me..

In veg, I have a 600 watt mh in a 4' vertizontal reflector plus 2 x 4' T-5 panel lights (1 - 4, 1 - 8 tube) that I use for clones and recently planted clones.

Peace, Farmer Rich

[Farmer Rich]

As far as the original question.. you only have so much light available and it takes so long for a plant to flower and finish... so it really doesn't affect your size harvest, just how often you can chop.. I personally like going monthly because it makes chopping/trimming easier. It takes me about 1 1/2 hours per plant to harvest/trim.

Peace, Farmer Rich

[Hempfester]

IMO, it's much easier to have a staggered harvest if you grow in soil.

With soil, you can put blocks under the newer smaller plants to get them up to height with the older plants to make an even canopy.

With hydro, the new plants you bring in will be too far from the light and will stretch up a lot to reach for the light.

I guess there are other reasons too why you wouldn't want to do this with hydro.... plants will need diff nute solutions depending on what stage of flowering you are in. It would be pretty hard to be flushing some plants while other plants are just starting to bud up if they are in the same hydro system.

[killerweed420]

I've done both. I like the perpetual growth because you can stagger your trimming duties versus wacking them all down and sitting for hours doing the trimming all at once. The downside is the nute schedule on a perpetual grow. Everything is getting different nutes at different times so you have do a little more work keeping everything straight, versus all on the same schedule everything gets nuted the same. So some and some bad about both ways.

[FunkMeister]

now from what i understand, harvesting should be done roughly around 8 weeks of flowering, when the buds are ripened to have a good mix of body and mind high, the longer the buds stay, the more amberish colored the buds get, and they tend to be more of a body high. so wouldnt a staggered harvest leave ur buds being mostly body high?

[phatsesh101]

no.

[FunkMeister]

thanks for explaining in such fine detail lol, and what evidence supports this?

[cannakeeper]

All you are doing is staggering when you move them from 18/6 to 12/12. Each strain for the most part has a pre-determined number of days of flowering and you can usually count on it give or take a day or 2. If all of you plants happen to be clones of 1 strain, say 10 purps, then you can count on the fact you will be harvesting in 60-65 days into flower. Now instead of 10, you only have 5 that you veg same # of days as usual(say 30, cut 5 clones a wk or 2 before you put them into flower. By the time you get roots, transition and veg for 30 days, than you are pretty much on time to harvest 5 at the same time you put the other 5 into flower. With more space you can get as short a time span as a few weeks in between harvesting plants but you are not shorting any one plant of any part of it's life cycle. Think of it as a car asembly line, versus taking 10 cars in a room and go circles till you have them all assembled. It's just streamlining but each car still has the same number of parts and took the same time to build. Another car is already prepped to replace one you just completed.

[killerweed420]

now from what i understand, harvesting should be done roughly around 8 weeks of flowering, when the buds are ripened to have a good mix of body and mind high, the longer the buds stay, the more amberish colored the buds get, and they tend to be more of a body high. so wouldnt a staggered harvest leave ur buds being mostly body high?
With a staggered growth you can wait to wack each plant when its ready versus wacking them all and some being perfect and some not quite ready. The longer you let them mature the higher the body high. Just don't let them go too long or the thc degrades.