As the title suggests I was wondering about when I harvest my plants I've still got ways to go as I'm still in week one of growth but I'd like to know sooner than later. From my understanding the plants will grow those little hairs when they are about to produce buds after your buds have all produce those hairs will turn brown and dry and that's when I cut the branches down? After cutting them down they have to dry for however long, do they need to be upside to dry or can I just lay them on a rack. Do I cut the leaves of before or after they're dry?
You are supposed to cut the branches when the hairs on the colas are an amber color. When you dry the buds you should hang them upside down with no fans. The longer you keep the plant alive to naturally dry the better the flavor and overall quality. It is best to cut the leaves before the colas dry because it's less of a pain in the butt.
Just do some reading in the harvest section. There's some good thread in the sticky. It's a complicated subject and unless someone is going to write you a couple of detailed pages there's quite a bit to know. I use a drying rack. It takes about 5 days for them to go from rack to jar. There's a lot to know. I trim wet. I've cut the whole plant down before and tried to trim it later. It's much more difficult. Plants trim best fresh. I walk up to a plant I want to harvest. I remove a large branch and put on gloves. I sit and pull all the leaves I can off by hand starting from the bottom and working up the branch. Once the leaves I can remove by hand are done I rotate the branch with one hand and trim the leaf tips off with other hand. Once I have the sugar leaf tips removed and I like the look of the trimmed buds the whole branch goes on the drying rack. I only remove the buds from the large branches when they go into the jar after about 5 days. It goes on and on. There's signs to look for when the plant is ready to chop but that takes careful consideration. Do some reading.