When to Harvest Your Cannabis Plants

You have sweated and slaved over your marijuana plants for months, babying them with just the right amount of water, nutrients and light. If they are outdoors, you have protected them from deer, rabbits and other critters, including human thieves. Inside or outside, you have guarded them against disease, mold and countless other threats.

Thanks to your unstinting efforts, your cannabis plants are big and bushy and full of lovely flowers. Now comes one of the most daunting questions in cannabis cultivation: when is the perfect time to harvest your cannabis plants?

Don’t fret. Whether you are growing marijuana in California, growing marijuana in Colorado or growing marijuana in Oregon or somewhere else in the West or growing marijuana in Massachusetts or another place in the East or Midwest, DripWorks is here with some simple tips to help you get the most out of your hard-earned harvest.

Schedule Your Inspections

First, you want to plan ahead by knowing roughly when you will need to start closely inspecting your plants. How long does it take to grow weed? The time varies by type, location, growing method and other factors. But most hybrids should approach maturity in about eight to 12 weeks. That means you should be ready to inspect the buds to see if your plants are ready after two to three months.

A good early warning sign can be when the plant’s leaves begin to yellow. This can alert you that harvest time is near.

Harvesting Tips

One good way to figure out when your pot plant is ready without investing in expensive equipment is to use a magnifying glass to inspect the pistils, or “hairs.” These are the flowers’ reproductive parts.

When they are white, wait. You want the majority of pistils darken and turn brown before you harvest. The plant is ready when the brown pistils comprise half or more of the total. The heaviness and taste of your bud will increase as the percentage goes up.

Checking the trichomes is more accurate but requires better magnifying equipment, like a microscope or a loupe. These tiny, mushroom-like growths are impossible to see clearly with the naked eye. When you have a suitable device, use it to see whether the majority of the originally white trichomes have darkened and have bent over. When more than half are darker, you can count on higher levels of THC.