The trich check low down.

Ok.. I consider myself a fairly technical person. Before I make decisions I become as informed as possible and draw the best conclusion from that set of data I analyzed.

I read many people talking about percentages of clear, cloudy & amber trichomes but no one ever actually tells how they sample this. I find it hard to believe one single flower is used to be examined. If this is the case the "readiness" of the plant would determine on what you're harvesting, if not the whole plant. I doubt with a loupe or pocket microscope that someone would go over a complete set of flowers on a plant accurately enough to determine the precentages they throw out in threads.

If you have a method which you employ please let me know. Its obvious that when looking at one flower what its state might be, but this doesn't appear to be the case for the rest of the plant. Are you examining one branch at a time and harvesting them indidivudally? I read and only believe a "select few" that actually say they do this just based on their past post history and detail oriented updates..

What do the rest of you do?

paulio's trichome guide radio shack has a microscope with a light for about 12. bucks this is how i check mine look at the guide for the tricks

I checked mine out with a few representative spots on different flowers and a note pad where i mark down the amounts of each. its damn near impossible to get there and look at every trich, but just like a survey or poll you just gotta look around getting a decent sample and then estimate where your plant is at the time. the more you look around the closer your estimation will be.

an0dyne said:

I checked mine out with a few representative spots on different flowers and a note pad where i mark down the amounts of each. its damn near impossible to get there and look at every trich, but just like a survey or poll you just gotta look around getting a decent sample and then estimate where your plant is at the time. the more you look around the closer your estimation will be.

Click to expand...

I should have posted this being a little more detailed. I use the same method sandmonkey does with very high-resolution SLR photography to see a whole flower at a time. This method allows you to nearly count every trichome visible, one by one, on a whole bud. This would easily prove to give decent percentages on plant readiness vs. any other methods. I have read A LOT of people talk about percentages and giving advice, however without using a similar method I just don't see how it could be valid information if they're merely taking a single glimpse at one portion of a flower on the plant. Even if you did analyze a few at a time, I just don't see this being reliable enough to base a harvest decision off of for "peak" time for optimum potency desired.

I apologize for the confusion, its mostly to help others be sure when they're checking trichomes they're doing it properly with as best of tools available to them at the time. In this regard is what I meant for each person to perhaps write a brief dissertation on how they went about it.

Thanks for your replies

Very valid points, caddy...

one of the reasons I hate those microscopes and loupes (got 3) is that they only show fractions of the "whole picture" regarding trich's. Not enough to make a sound decision IMO.

Different buds, and different parts of the buds are likely to finish at different times. This becomes clear if you employ a method like ours.

For me anyways, microscopes just aren't good enough...