A newbie question

How exactly do you know when your plants are mature, and ready for harvesting and curing? Also, which strands should I get to start out with? I am going to be growing stealth at first, but once I get a bigger place, im going to have a grow room in a section of my basement. I am going to need to pick a strand that doesn't grow very high but has a lot of potency.

Search please

first sign of maturity is alternating nodes, usually happens around 5 weeks (unless you start with a clone, which will be as mature as the mother it was taken from)

best strain for stealth, ease of growing and great hign is Northern Lights

This is how I started, exactly. I found a strain that fit my criteria. It had to stay short, I didn't want it to reek up the place so I picked a low oder strain, and I wanted it to be mucho buzzo. I picked amnesia lemon and aurora indica, they both worked great. I'm still stelth growing but I got more room now. When I started, I found an entertainment cabinet in the trash and put cabinet locks on the doors, ran a few wires and boom, stelth cab. I still got it and could take som pics if you need help. There are so many, low oder and sweet smelling strains available, theres no reason not to grow. I grew a plant to maturity using 1 cfl bulb for vegging and one cfl for flowering, as an experiment, got about a quarter. pretty cool. as soon as I put my plants into flower, I mark my calender, then I go forward and mark it two months in advance. For my strains it takes two months to finnish ,so I know thell finnish around that day, and they do. Let me tell you this now. start a plant now. thats how you learn, and you learn fast without trying. If you pm me, I made some apollo11 seeds and some apollo-aurora cross seeds. Get goin,lol