ive read like a million threads, and i have no idea. i must be close...but i have no idea when i should harvest.. if some one could just tell me what to look out for or what ever...the "tricome" thing doesnt really help.. sorry about the pictures, i dont have the greatest camera in the world, i know there not the best.
First off your pictures don't work. Second the trichs tell you when its ready, so go get a 20x lense or jewelers scope and look. We can't tell you.
When it starts to swell up looking almost like it's gonna make seeds,(really it's just those little pods filling w/ delicious resin). That's your last big swell. You want the hairs to recede into those little pods that swell up. Basically, you want the shit to look so good you could smoke it, still on the plant, then leave it for another 2 weeks. Just don't even fuck around. Wait until the amber trichs are apparent. Check out my journal in my sig and you can see a good progression of what the trichs ought to look like. It's one of those things you look at 10 times, then all of a sudden say...OOOHHHHHHHHH.....I see.
There are two methods to determining when to harvest. The first is to check the trichomes under magnification, whether you believe that to be the case or not. The second is everything else, which can all be lumped together because none of them are anything more than guessing.
fuck, i dont get this shit at all... wtf is a trich? the THC? or crystals? are they on the bud or the leaves? i seriously think im retarded sometimes because it doesnt seem like it should be this hard. i 100% know im not going to be able to afford a microscope.. so it all left up to assumption?
The trichomes are the "crystals", which are glandular secretions that cover the bud and some of the leaves and contain the THC and other cannabinoids. The Radio Shack pocket microscope is about $12. You can get a jeweler's loupe off eBay and such for only a few bucks as well. Stay in the 25x-75x magnification range.
Yea radio has them I got one a few years ago. You can also order a jewlers loop on ebay for a similar price. Basically I always say it should look like Autumn. You start to get those Autumn colours in the leaves and it just looks like Fall. As opposed to when the bud is new and it just has that Spring look to it. You'll know when you look. They look like glass bulbs and you can see they are clear to start and then start to turn milky and they start to brown. I like to wait till they are at least all milky and some are already starting to turn brown. The best way to tell and easy, really.