When to Harvest

I've read everything available about when to harvest. As I'm sure you know everybody says right when the trichomes start to turn amber or after half or so of them are amber depending upon what kind of high you want. I got a 30x microscope to check my trichomes and have been looking at them daily, but it is kind of tough to tell exactly when to harvest when you're new to this. This is my first grow BTW. I think some of the trichomes along the edge of the leaves look like they may have a little amber to them, but I'm not sure.
I have three white widow plants that are exactly 6 weeks into the 12x12 cycle. It took 10 days from the start of the cycle for the plants to start showing flowers. A lot of the stuff I've been reading says the buds will swell a lot in the last week or two, so I definitely don't want to harvest too early. I have no idea how to tell if they're swelling up either. One of my plants has a pretty fat bud and the other two are skinny. I haven't noticed any sort of swelling over the last week or two.
I took some pictures so you can see some of the buds. The pistils have started to turn red over the last week or so. Probably 20% of the pistils are red on one plant and maybe 50% or so on another one. I need to switch over to water to flush my plant before the harvest date so I need to get some idea of when to harvest. Can anybody look at these and take a guess. Again it's been 6 weeks since I started the 12/12 cycle. I know they say 8 weeks, but I'm second guessing that.
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Since you know the days since you started to flower you probably know when a white widow is supposed to be ready. I thought they were like 9 week plants. So if that is true you have 3 weeks left. I also notice a good percentage of fresh new pistels and not a lot of dead hairs so I would say they are still growing.
I would start flushing if I were you to get rid of any nuts still in the soil.
Good luck

White Widow is usually ready in 8 weeks. You definitely have at least 2 more weeks looking at those pics. The hairs will get really red, it's the trichs you want to make sure are amber. It looks like you are doing pretty good though. I'd keep the nutes going another week and then flush the last week. I just harvested some white widow....great smoke! :jointsmile:

So will all the pistils be red before it's time to harvest? I know to watch the trichomes. It would just be nice to get some other frame of reference. Like a week after all the pistils turn red is ballpark when it is ready.
Can you tell if the buds still need to swell up more? Sorry to be a pain in the ass. It's just that after all of this hard work I don't want to botch my harvest at the end.

you want to wait till pretty much all of the hairs are red. Just looking at your pics...you have another 2 weeks. They will swell alot in the last two weeks...ww is super sticky and will be covered in crystals.

I hear ya man, it's a lot of work and you want to get it right when you've got this much time involved already. This forum is great....lots of experienced growers.

Give em a full 8 weeks and you should be happy! White widow is a indica strain and finishes pretty quickly. Good luck! :jointsmile: