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  • When you begin your harvest, You must start by leaching the soil and the plants for at least a week ahead of time. Harvesting on the spot leaves undesired chemicals and nutrients in the plant's buds and leaves, and often is responsible for bad taste, inability to burn correctly, or poor psychoactive qualities. Take a gallon of water per plant, and rinse it through, repeat so it comes out the bottom of the pot nice and clear, and not at all yellow. This discoloration of the water is plant wastes and fertilizer salts which in nature would leach away into the surrounding soil.
     
  • We pick up the story late in the season, at about 8 to 12 weeks into the flowering phase. (Depending on the strain) It's well known that the northern Indica strains have a shorter flowering period, usually 7 or 8 weeks, while the equatorial Sativa can flower for three months or more, both because of their acclimation to the varying light cycles of their respective areas. The whole last few weeks have been spent with a magnifying glass in your hand gawking at the glandular trichomes on the plant. Even the secondary leaves are covered with Glandular Trichomes. They have now turned from clear white to amber and cloudy.
       Most of the fan leaves are golden, and they hang downwardly, because there is little water, and the whole plant is wilting as you have let them dry out four days. The calyxes are swollen and dripping with resin, and a close inspection reveals a layer of frosty looking crystals. About 80% of the hairs have turned red or brown, and more of them dying off than there are being grown by the bud. The smell is horrendous, and has been for a week, as it fills your grow-room, your house, and wafts out into the street, sending you into a frenzied panic. The time is now.
       Take a look at the bud size on various parts of the plant, and notice the lower buds still looking healthy, but they are quite small. You can harvest the top buds first, and leave these unripe flowers on the branches for another couple of weeks to size up and finish ripening.
       Start with the meri-stem of the plant and cut it off about halfway down the plant. Leave all the buds on the branches and cut each branch off near the bottom. Then, selectively harvest the lower branches, leaving the unripe buds behind. I leave the fan leaves intact to protect the flower buds from being bruised while hanging. Only leave them hanging long enough to dry on the outside layer(2 days) then clip the fan leaves, and go on to the curing process.
     

     


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