Harvesting time! The most anticipated time for most growers. You have watched your seedlings grow in to full bloomed flowers, took care of them, watered them, fed them. You can almost feel the itch in your fingers to trim those nice buds, dry them and cure them. But patience is the key here. If you rush in too early, you may hurt the quality and yields of your cannabis plants. If you wait for too long, however, you might have a degradation in THC levels and sleepy high as a result. So when should you harvest cannabis?
There are a lot of arguments floating around on when to harvest cannabis. There is no exact time for every individual case, but there are some general guidelines regarding harvest time for different strains. For indica it takes about 8 weeks of flowering time before you can proceed to harvesting, sativa takes about 10 weeks of flowering. Autoflowering strains take more or less 10 weeks after seeds germinate to be ready for harvesting. These guidelines are good for determining when should your plants be fully ripe, but they are not exact, so you need to pay attention to you plants to know for sure.
Having some knowledge on cannabis plants can help you make more accurate assessment on when they are ready to be taken down. In this brief guide we will try to explain what signs you should be looking out for to make that assessment.
Fan leaves are turning yellow
One of the first signs that you might notice – fan leaves are turning yellow. These are the big leaves on your cannabis plant. They serve as solar panels that collect light and turn it into energy for your plant. If your fan leaves are turning yellow in vegetative state that might indicate lack of nutrients, but if that happens in late flowering stage it’s all good. It’s a sign that your plants are getting close to being fully ripe. The reason why they turn yellow is that your plants are putting all of their energy in buds rather than keeping leaves alive.
Pistils will become darker
Little hair-like structures on cannabis buds are called pistils. These are female reproductive parts that female cannabis plants have. If it gets pollinated by male plant, it will develop seeds. Pistils can be easily identified with a naked eye. They look white when they first appear. As time goes and your plants get close to harvest time, they will start turning darker. They may become orange, red or brown.
Best time to harvest your plants is when most of pistils have changed color. You should wait until at least 50% of them do. For best results we suggest waiting until about 60-70% of pistils turned dark. This way your THC levels on plant should have reach it’s peak. For those who prefer more of a stone high, should wait until nearly all of pistils turned dark. At this stage more of THC would have turned into CBN.
Trichomes will also change
Small mushroom-like shaped glands that can be found on both flowers and leaves, these are called trichomes. Trichomes contain terpenes and cannabinoids. While you could inspect pistils with a naked eye, these babies require magnifying tools to be seen. You can use jewelers loupe or digital microscope, which is a bit more expensive, but it should give you a clear picture of them.
In early stages of flowering trichomes may appear crystal clear, which means it’s too early to be harvesting them. If you inspect them in later flowering stage, they may appear more cloudy. That means it’s getting close to ripe stage. When they become very cloudy and almost milky color, that’s your clue when to harvest cannabis. At this stage it would have reached highest levels of THC. If you wait longer, they will turn from milky to amber color. That will make high become more physical and heavy.
What’s next ?
Hope this brief guide answered question of when to harvest cannabis. Harvesting cannabis is actually very straight forward process. You just need to cut the plant at the bottom and cut branches off. Next step is drying cannabis or trimming. This next step depends entirely on how you wish to trim your plants, wet or dry? If you’re unsure, you can read our guide on how to trim cannabis | wet vs dry trimming.