Is it possible my plant is ready to harvest at just 5 WEEKS in flower?

It has just one main cola & about half the pistules are orange. The ones on the top are still white though. I took a look at the trichomes & they look mostly clear, but many were milky as near as I can tell (with a near-worthless damn Radio Shack handheld microscope!).

I hope it's not ready. I'm planning to order a 30x jeweler's loupe online, for a better look, but that'll take 17 days to arrive, and I sure don't want to miss the "harvest window" for my plant. What do you think I should do?

hey mate.
has hapened to me to,but the pistils are a unaccurate method,so dont be frightend. get the microscope and keep a eye on those trichomes.
hope all goes well.. good luck to you.

bigguy

From your description, they are not ready. As bigguy said, the pistile are not an accurate guage of ripeness; I had a few plants a while back that all of the hairs turned orange at about week 5 and they weren't even close to beign finished, the pistils turned raspberry and purple by the time the trichomes were 10% amber. Depending on your strain you will have a 7 to 14 day window for harvest when they are ready, and you usually have about 2 to 3 weeks from when the trichomes are clear to milky, so I wouldn't get worried yet.

JSG.

ARG Smoke no kind before its time.
Hairs and crystal color are poor factors for determing a plants finishing time. lets asume your growing sensimilla (seedless / no males) the flower pod (bud) is going to put out 2 hairs, if not pollenated they will become dark and that pod will then burst with a new group of pods (in multiples or 2's - 2,4,6,ect) making a new patch of hairs, if those hairs dont get pollen they too will burst open a new batch of pods. 3 to 5 burst are what your looking for (or more), about that time the plant will be sucking the nitrogen out of the primary fan leaves turning them slightly yellow, the stem will also start to have red or purple ridges due to the phosphorus that the flowers are no longer using. crystal colors and hairs turning brown can be good factors but are very often mis-leading and mi-understood. plant variety is also helpfull when calculating finishing time. dont be worried about a "harvesting window", no need. if you pick late it will still be better (and bigger) than if its picked premature :)

Hate to disagree but trich color IS how you tell when your plant is ready to harvest..

You should not see clear, you should see all milky and a percentage (based on your preference) of amber trichs..

Anything below 60x will not cut it for proper inspection. A 60-100x adjustable scope can be had anywhere online for 15 bucks.

Pistils change color very early sometimes. One thing to look for is when newer white hairs don't look so vibrant, kind of shriveled.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mr_smith

Pistils change color very early sometimes. One thing to look for is when newer white hairs don't look so vibrant, kind of shriveled.

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what do you think about these?

See the newer white pistils still look pretty vibrant..

That looks like a plant should look like at about week 6..

You are doing just fine. :)