Red Hairs

[babystarbud]

hi there peeps:p

on two of my plants i have spotted literally just one or two red hairs amongst the billions of white ones, which means its all comin together now..

a couple of questions, this is the first time ive acually made it this far with plants so i dont want to mess it up.

ive read all about the hairs changing, trichomes clouding, harvesting at certain ammounts to get different results...

what i understand is that if all the hairs are red, then the crops past its best, im thinking of harvesting at 50-70% red hairs, good idea?

more importantly ( i know different plants differ ) so im just looking for a ball park figure here, what sort of time scale am i looking at between 1% red hair and 100% red hair? a week? a month?

just so i can prepare for harvest, i like to have things planned out in my mind before hand otherwise i panic, lol

if its any help, the plants have benn on 12/12/ for about 35 days and are iterally just starting to show the odd one.

thnks for any input :D

[SpiritLevel]

% in a timescale is dependent on strain, but into the 4th week around 0-10% should turn. 6th week 40-60%. 7th week should see most hairs turned. So over the next 2-3 weeks IMO. If your strain has a long flower period then I'd add a week-week+1/2 to those figures. There is an explosive growth stage which occurs during the bloom stage and a lot of changes will occur around that high activity period.

[rottenPauL]

she still has time. If your lookin for a head high, dont rely on hair only. Make sure u got cloudy trichomes coz u dont wanna harvest if thichomes are still clear. I'd say about 3-4 weeks but dont count on that, u will know when its ready. When 50% hair change, start checkin at trichome change with a magnifying glass

[Pass That Shit]

Looking good man :thumbsup:

I would wait until most of them turn color (75%). When you think they are ready, wait another week and you'll be ok. I threw my mag.glass away and just looked at them and they turned out pretty good. You can also turn off the lights and stop watering them towards the end, so they can get ripe trying to protect themselves from drying out (about a week or so). This will also speed up the drying process as well. I wish mine were that far along already. Peace :stoned:

[babystarbud]

thanks so much for the tips guys!

so i guess i should cut out the fert totally now, ive only ever given like 3 doses at half stregnth, but its resulted in burn to varying degrees each time.
ive actually had to cut off some ( quite a few actually )fan leafs because they were wasted and burnt, they just came off with a really gentle tug.

they were a bit dry and droopey, and had another really good flush today, 4-6 litres of water each and they seem to have perked up really well:)
it amazes me how fast they respond to water when they are a bit dry, dodgy looking leafs just spring back to life in like a hour or so!!!

a truley fascinating plant.

i think ill wait for 75% red then, ive looked in a microscope but it all seems a bit clinical, and i dont want to be cutting random bits of prime bud off, it just seems wrong.

funny thing is, i always thought an early harvest would be better, it sounds better on paper, but when i really think about it, all the realy grat bud ive smoked has had orange hairs, so i think ill let it ride:)

[pmorris]

go by trichomes not colors of hair...

[the image reaper]

ignore the color of the 'hairs' ... they change color depending on strain, humidity, stress, temperature, etc ... harvest according to trichome color stages ... Zandor has a good FAQ, called 'When To Harvest", in the FAQ section ... (harvest when all cloudy, and first amber ones appear, for a good balanced stone) ... :smokin:

[babystarbud]

ive just smoked a sample that i topped from one of the plants that i thought was a hermie but turned out not to be, dont ask, long story. lol

apart from the oldskool green taste, the hieght is great but short lived, so imthinkin about culling in the next week or two, im kinda buzed at he mo but im thinking i will chop them sooner rather thasn later now lol

[pmorris]

lol...

[SpiritLevel]

It is possible that the fan leaves that you are pulling off are naturally dying. That isn't a sign to stop feeding. Are you certain that the signs are of over fertilizing? A third dose of nutes per day at this stage should not be causing over fert, unless you are feeding them more than once in a day! We are having fan leaves at the base of the plant changing to yellow and shrivelling up from week 3 till the end. It is an indication that the plant is no longer vegging and is using all its nutritional resources to produce flowers. I'd never use leaf changes as a guide to harvest. You should keep feeding until 1 week before chopping, then flush with water and/or final phase for the final week. Don't chop till you are at least 4 days beyond being sure, and don't base your assumtions of what your final smoke will be like on a bit that you cut off earlier. Big changes can and do occur throughout bloom cycle, and bud with fert in it tastes different to proper clean bud.

[crazywill]

spirtlevel
you hit the nail dead on the head.Babtstarbud go to the FAQ and look for
when to harvest.I got alot of guest work out of the way.Get a radioshack
mic there hand held and you dont have to cut any thing off the plant to
see the trichones.They are out of this world to see for the frist time.You can see if you have insects eatting your plant,those little white spots on the leaves are spiders.That mic open a new world for me in the growing and the harvesting my girls.Faq

[babystarbud]

hey thanks,

ive already got a 100x microscope, picked it up a few weeks back.
all glands are currently clear...well put it this way, theres cerrtainly no amber ones. like i said, ive already read up on all the things, reason i was asking was because with 6 plants, three samples from each ( which is probably the bare minimum to get an idea of the average ) thats 18 samples that need to be cut, labled and studied....which is quite time consuming, especially as samples would need to be taken more frequently as harvest time approaches.

i felt like a bloody lab technitian the other day with an assembly line of specimins to look at lol!

thats why i was wanting to use the hairs as a rough guide, so i dont have to go through that hastle every week. resin glends are like porn films, the first few are really interesting, but when youve seen one, youve pretty much seen them all.

however, the glands are steadily creeping over more of the plants, some more progressed than others.

thanks for info, everone who replied, thats re-assured me quite a bit lol.
im guessing im about 3 weeks away from harvest now....heres some more pics

[babystarbud]

ive also noticed some nasty looking spikes,
on the edges of the leaves at 100x magnificaton, its no wonder they feel rough when i suck on them lol :p