Where do you guys check to confirm it's time to harvest? I'm about to harvest my Blue Mystic and I'm curious, I know they can mature on different levels.
mine start at the bud and work their way out to the trim leaves then a little on big leaves. seems to me the bottom buds ripen first, but the cola is what i want to be perfect, so i look at tops only... you can look at the bud and see with naked eyes if the trichs have turned to milky... you can see when amber ones start too... then i just look at the buds close to the top. when these are ready, i harvest all. of course my last 3 harvests have been way early. i can't wait to see an amber trichome again.
All you have to do is look at your plant, every strains trichomes build up differently. Pick a suitable leaf check with pocket scope....mystery solved.
I ask because I've checked a few sites with differences in both. I checked a tiny bud leaf and it was all milky, then I checked a bigger leaf and there were quite a bit of amber. Thus making me a bit confused.
I've noticed the same thing. There can be inconsistencies between how much amber there is on a leaf vs how much there is on the bud. But IMO you should check the trichomes on the bud itself, not the leaves, because the bud is what we are smoking. The leaves just get trimmed off, so who really cares if they're at peak ripeness. THe bud is what matters. When I harvest I look at a combination of things. If the trichomes are ready, if the calyxes have fattened and the pistils have darkened and receded. I don't like to harvest when there are still a lot of white hairs, even if the trics are right, because white hairs mean the plant is still actively packing on weight.
You want most of your trichomes to be milky, and some amber.The main thing is that they aren't clear anymore. Clear trics give you short lived highs and headaches. Milky and amber trics just give you different variations of high (most head high with mostly milky, and more sleepy body high with more amber). How much amber is a matter of preference.