Week 7 of flower - Amber Trichs! Harvest already??!

Hey all,

I have an urgent question. My plants were put to flower March 18, 2011. One or two plants were showing pistils about a week before that.

In the last 2 weeks the upper leaves have all gotten pretty yellow and crispy, like a Phosphorous deficiency.. I think i might have burned them, although i'm using pretty forgiving organic nutes. In that time the buds have swelled up pretty well though and there are lots of trichs visible.

In the last week the trichs have turned milky and then tonight i noticed lots of amber trichs on the leaves. You can see in the pictures attached.

But two things:
- buds still have new pistils coming out
- Only in week 7 of flower(almost week 8)

Pretty quick flower, and there are still new hairs coming out? Should i harvest the top buds now? I'm growing with CFL's and didnt move them around, hoping to harvest in stages. Is the burning of the leaves causing the trichomes to turn faster or something?

I attached pics, hoping to get feedback on when to harvest. Good thing i flushed the plants heavily about a week ago(when leaves started looking terrible).

Thanks for the advice,
Int

Wish I had this problem, always takes me 10 weeks to see color like that. The trich pic is blurry, but I can still see enough. Personally, I prefer to harvest before I see a lot of amber for 2 reasons. I don't like the drowsiness of late harvest bud, but more importantly amber indicates your THC is beginning to break down. With respect to fan leaf edge browning, looks like something other than heat due to the fact it is mainly on lower leaves. Normally, I would advise filling out troubleshooting guide here to correct, but in this case I would harvest. BTW, do you have a side profile pic to correspond w/your last 2 of the top?. I ask b/c you mentioned stages...which is how I always do so as well.

nice buds!

I'm 70 days into flowering and have clear trich's but the hairs on my buds are 50% + orange/brown, two indoor and four I moved outside a month ago but have kept them on 12/12 moving into the dark every day at 6 p/m. So one day they are clear the next they could start looking milky then amber shortly there after? Two days ago they were crystal clear, I'm in no hurry but man they have to be just around the corner.

Thanks sunbiz for the input.. Ya, you can see in the first 2 pics even, there's tons of amber trichs now. I'd really like to flush it again though so i'm going to try to wait and harvest in another 6 days after flushing today. Hopefully they wont be too far gone then.. i cant believe how many amber trichs there are.. i hope its not from some abuse of mine.. I'm a novice and a little too "experimenty"... I'll post side profile pics soon and show you where i'm going to cut them. Only the top leaves are burned actually, around the top buds that are close to the lights. The plants are about 2 feet tall, i'm just going to cut the top 8 inches i think. CFL's just dont penetrate very far...

Purple Daddy, no thread jacking! So, i recently saw a post from Stinky Attic about that - if ur going by pistils, harvest time is around when more pistils are turning orange/brown than being replaced by new pistils. Basically they will start turning orange/brown, and new pistil production will start to slow and then ur close to harvest. but she and everyone else says the best why is by trichs. you'll have to ask someone else about how long it takes for them to turn.. mine seemed to go fast - they were clear for ages, then started turning milky, and in the last 2 weeks i started seeing amber. Now you can see there's quite a bit of amber, like 50% of the top buds..

Hi IS,

I see the edge of another plant to the far right in pic #5?, looks severely burned or just dead?. I'm at day 60 of my last Spring plant. She nannered on me about a week ago, but the pods have no seed development(just cut one open)only empty sacs. Therefore, I'm going let it go another week(and eventually smoke the nanners...lol). I agree w/attic b/c it is the pistils that produce the product, and the more the better!. My last plant stopped producing pistils over a week ago, now I'm just letting the buds thicken up. A few years ago, someone gave me one plant that I managed to reproduce. I'm using it outdoors b/c the flowering cycle(unlike sativa's)is 8 weeks max. Don't know the name of the strain, so I call it skunk piss!. Also, I'm a big fan of molasses teas during flowering...different topic but love the added taste.

Look forward to the pics,

Have a good week.

Just skimmed through this but i would definitely harvest now. The buds only going to be worse in six days. Depending on how good your flush was initially a one week flush is fine - ive done it before one week before harvest with only 2 litres of water and my bud was completely chem free and smooth.

i see what you guys mean.

I wouldn't harvest for another week or two. Leaf trichomes are not a good indicator of flower trichome ripeness, as leaves tend to form trichomes before the flowers get them.