Need some wisdom and advice!

Hey all! Been lurking a while, this might be my first post.

The main question:
I have these three OG Kush plants at 9 weeks of flower. They have plenty of cloudy trichs but also some clear (10%) and some white pistils still growing. They are pretty chunky but I can tell they could develop even more if I let them.

However, yesterday I noticed the first signs of PW forming on the larger fan leaves. I hastily defoliated all the fan leaves to control the spread a little.

I’ll be drying in my not climate controlled garage. right now it’s rainy, and then for the next 5 days it should be sunny/less humid. Then the long term forecast says rain (and humidity) for like a full week.

I’m mostly wondering whether I should chop and hang today to prevent PW and take advantage of the dry days coming this week or if I should let the plants grow more and risk PW ruining everything.

Secondary question:

All the sugar leaves are still on. Given the circumstances would you dry with them on for better smell/taste, or would you play it more safe and fully wet trim when I chop/hang?

Final note:

You’ll probably notice that there are two plants in one pot. This is my “bonus pot”. I’ve already grown and harvested 4 other plants (mid-cure now), and I tossed a couple into one pot as an experiment to see if two sisters would grow differently with the exact same treatment and soil etc. basically seeing how phenotypes can vary. It was interesting to see one grow faster/bigger but mature more slowly. The smaller one looks a week ahead of the bigger one in terms of trich/pistil maturity.

thanks so much in advance. This forum seems to be friendly and knowledgeable so I’m looking forward to your replies!

Welcome to RIU

Cheers and thanks!

I may be right, I’m sure someone will say I’m wrong. But I’ve always gone with a 2 week window rule for harvesting.
In my experience you’re always going to see “some” clear tricholms. When I see mostly milky and “some” ambers my two week window starts.
I’ve heard that if you harvest with mostly milky you’re going to get a more uplifting high, and the longer you leave it the more couch lock high you’ll get. That’s open for debate too.
The other factor is PM, bud rot or pests. I’ve always been able to stave off minor PM issues by spraying affected areas with milk. Bought me 1-2 weeks.
The other rule of thumb to live by with growing good weed, is if you think it’s ready and the weather will cooperate, give it another week.
If you can’t and you think you’re going to lose it, chop it, at this point it’ll still get you high.

Thanks for the info! Generally reflects a lot of what I read, but I didn’t get a clear idea of what you meant by your two week window. Does this mean “harvest within two weeks” or “harvest in two weeks?”

my questions are definitely more oriented towards avoiding bud rot/mold/pm but also getting the most out of my harvest in terms of smell/flavour.

Part of this question revolves around loss of smell/taste/terps but I think that is for another post. I’ll ask that in the right forum and link it here shortly.

Edit: here it is. Basically my trim smells “right” and my bud doesn’t smell much of anything specific. I’m wondering if they dried at different rates and that’s the difference. I want to figure this out before I chop the next plants.

Jontornblom said:

Thanks for the info! Generally reflects a lot of what I read, but I didn’t get a clear idea of what you meant by your two week window. Does this mean “harvest within two weeks” or “harvest in two weeks?”

my questions are definitely more oriented towards avoiding bud rot/mold/pm but also getting the most out of my harvest in terms of smell/flavour.

Part of this question revolves around loss of smell/taste/terps but I think that is for another post. I’ll ask that in the right forum and link it here shortly.

Edit: here it is. Basically my trim smells “right” and my bud doesn’t smell much of anything specific. I’m wondering if they dried at different rates and that’s the difference. I want to figure this out before I chop the next plants.

Click to expand...

What I meant was, once I have mostly milky and some amber I’m in that window to harvest. So if I have really shitty weather coming, I’m dealing with pests or see bud rot setting in, I’ll chop, if I’m not dealing with those things I leave it two more weeks.
As for smell and taste? I dry in my garage. I have a mini split in there so I can keep it at 70 degrees until it’s dry, usually 3-5 days. A lot of times it doesn’t smell great after hanging for 4 days or so, but I put my stems with buds still attached into big plastic bins (totes) with the lid on it, this always brings the smell back and kinda acts as a cure as well, I usually end up having to pull them out and turn them over, my stems are usually about 18” long., I’ll leave them in the bins for several days before I start my final trim, it usually takes me a few weeks to get to all of them, so they seem to be fine leaving them in there, and then after the final trim I put the buds into gallon jars to cure.