I'm getting ready to harvest in the next week, give or take a day or two. The top buds are almost ready but the lower buds aren't even close yet. They still have quite a few clear trichs (a few cloudy) and mostly white hairs. I've heard that you can harvest the top buds and let the bottom buds alone so they can get more lights to finish them up over the next week or so. Should I do this or just harvest the whole thing at one time? Oh and this is a CFL grow. I know I need to get a HPS... I'm working on it and will probably have one for my next grow.
from the sounds of it, i would do 2 harvests. the bottom buds are not ready so you wouldn't want them to be less potent.
Stagger your harvest i recently did this myself and it worked out great! simply remove buds as they reach you standards and you will be fine. *Bonus: the lower buds will gain a some weight once the larger main cola(s) have been removed.
Yea, just take the ready ones and let the immature ones mature. Cfl's are great for veg, I like them better than Mh, you seem to get tighter node spacing. For flower though nothing beats Hps. Good luck with the upgrade for the next grow, and have a happy harvest
I'd like to do two harvests but I had planned on putting it through a dark period of 24-36 hours before I harvest. If I put it through a dark period will it be bad for the lower buds that haven't been harvested yet or should I just skip the dark period all altogether?
Well that's all in preferance to you really, some ppl say that the dark period produces more resin and trich's but there is no actual evidece (that I have come across) to really suport that theory. I think light is crutial in the late flowering stage, to get as much energy into those buds as possible, that's why if you'r fan leafs drop too early you won't have as big of a harvest because they're not there to catch the light to produce the energy for the plant. I'm not saying I'm right, just my point of view....
if thats what you want to do id do a 24 hour night cycle the day before harvest. then harvest half the plant and then put it back into 12/12 for about a week maybe 2 bc the plant mightbe pretty stressed for a few days after half of it gets chopped off lol...good lick though im prob gonna have to do the same thing with my kush plant lol bottom nugs look like they have alot of potential but theyre about 2 weeks behind the top nugs haha
I've been trying the double harvest thing and it is working pretty well. The lower buds swell right up and the trichs grow too. I've been letting them go ~3 weeks extra, basically until they stop putting on weight.
another possible quick fix for your next grow and harvest, is you can either trim all the piff off like a week into flowering, just leave the good nugs to mature, or get a few more cfls and put them on the wall for side light so the piffy stuff can get good light as it doesnt get good top light because of the canopy =)=)
Thanks for the info. I'll just keep it on 12/12 Hopefully I'll have a HPS for my next grow and I'll probably use the CFL bulbs from this grow for extra lighting lower down. I was on a tight budget for this grow.
Yep I stayed with 12/12 also. I know the feeling growing on a budget. When considering the power bill, I remind myself that CFLs are about 50 lumens per watt, 70w HPS is about 85 lm/w, 48" T8s are about 85 lm/w and 600 HPS is about 150 lm/w for comparison. To make matters worse it is hard to reflect the CFLs efficiently, but cut out soda cans are certainly better than nothing