giantcola
Well-Known Member
Hi Ladies and Gentlemen, i would like to discuss here about what i thought to do with my single (enormous) baby daughter, doing a two timed harvest on a single plant, meanwhile i'll may give someone some right tips and i would learn something from some real top growers.
Hope the trip won't be boring!
Let's take the case of a declared "8 weeks flower" strain, starting the water flush around week 5-6 in soil and around one-two week before estimated harvest for hydro/coco (obviously it is all relative to grower's preference, i'm in hydro so i like to start gradually lowering the EC after around week 5-6 which is peak ppms, but it's always all related to how i feel about that specific plant in that specific moment of her life, these are just hypothetic reference values and nobody should ever look at the time passed from the flip to determine how is the flowering going, just look at your babies and at your medium, runoff or solution EC to see what they tell you, depending on the system u are operating).
Overfeeding (i think mostly excess of phosphorus causing NPK unbalance) can make pistils turn orange even from the first weeks of flower so be careful not to do it, as you will end up with small buds that taste like crap in hydro, as well as too much light or heat stress, so growing hydro you can take flower pistils color to figure out in couple days if you are doing something wrong. When it is possible try to keep em white as long as you can, white meaning growth and more final weigh.
So, i've got two ideas to experiment with different plants, the first being less ambitious, and the second idea being risky, but maybe the most worth it!
FIRST
The first harvest being on the less lightened up branches and the lowest point of the plant (most likely they will be in a less advanced state of maturation and offer mostly cloudy trichomes with a 10% of amber, hypothetically around week 9), taking away like 1/4 of the total properly flushed canopy bud.
This would be your "high thc" weed.
This is obviously going to stress the plant but hopefully not to a point that stops the swelling of the bud, and it should give the plant the signal to produce resin to protect herself, resulting most of the times in a massive explosion in resin production that makes your weed a lot more potent. I always do massively stress my plants in their last days and (don't think about flushing, i've done things i am not proud of, like stabbing the main stem in the center and leave the poor plant to die in the dark without water and love, for an additional last week from that designed harvest day when she had about 10% amber... at the end she fought hard and it was literally frozen in 50% amber trichs, slowly starting the drying process by herself) somehow i found out it really works
The second and final harvest being when u feel comfortable that the plant is ready for your ideal level of couch locking effect, meaning around 10%, 20% amber trichomes for a potent but super psychoactive weed, 30% for a more " body stoned" effect and 50 to 60% for a bomb that will make you go to bed in couple hits.
These values are referred to the trichomes inspected on a single bud, and not to all the trichs present in the canopy, as different buds will ALWAYS
show different maturation stages as well as size, depending on the light that specific bud is getting, how well is that specific branch trained, how equal is the environment.
Think about the sub-units that we have in our grow : starting from the environment the canopy is in, the canopy is composed by single plant individuals spaced together in most of the cases (or by just one big plant in mine), then we have the single branches, the single leaves, stems and bud nodes, and all of them respond directly to the environment and the training like single, small autonomous regions.
The "privileged" regions overgrow the others, one leaf that is more exposed to light and has plenty of space, before sending her photosynthetic energy to the plant she thinks about herself and gets bigger and bigger, ending up shading other stuff.
So the buds which are in the best environment with the right amount of light grow bigger (not too much light, 700 PPF can grow bigger buds than 1000 or 1200 PPF in some strains and conditions, past that you're gonna burn them even with co2 at 1500ppm).
Even with training techniques that allow for an equal canopy heigh, branches grow differently: for example, a little side branch that before flip was covered by one large leaf or some other plant mass, can stretch like a motherfucker cause of the lacking of light and become the tallest (and weakest) of the canopy .Thhat's why i would recommend LST, manipulation, even supercropping, during the flower stretch but a little bit more carefully then if you was in veg, this means training a small amount of branches in separate days to get an equal canopy at the end of week 3 or when she stop stretching (i like to give the canopy the shape of the inside of the Colosseum, to maximize light absorbtion, leaving taller branches on the edges), combining with very light defoliation so she doesn't get stressed, plus defoliating when she starts focusing on bud production .After that gets treated like a queen for a couple weeks.
Training also tighten the space between bud sites, definitely increases weight and potency as much as it is applied the right way.
But even a perfectly trained and lollipopped plant with perfect and equal light distribution from the top and the room walls, will show bigger and more mature buds on top, and less on the bottom right? Buds show different stages of maturation on the same plant.
So WHY are we used to harvest the plant with one tragical chop?..
HERE is idea Number 2
This would work a lot better on strong hybrid phenotypes, the most resilient you can grow, top breed genetics only.
Chopping the most mature TOPS on the plant with the highest potency at their THC PEEK, with less possible clear trichomes and mostly cloudy as first parameter, then if you want to be super high and you are lucky, you end up with 5% amber and all milky 20%THC mind blowing shit, if you are not you can always harvest till an ideal 15-30% amber for this example, aiming to obtain the most psychoactive effect as possible or a more balanced high as you let the bud mature.
Half of the properly flushed canopy is gone, now all the low bud sites that were not swelling are the top of the plant. She will go into shock, and will react popping out tons of new trichomes. Are the bud sites still gonna grow in your opinion, presuming they would be still covered in white pistil shoots? here we return to experiments and playing around with how much plant you chop and how much stress to apply,
surely she would continue to mature and desperately try to maximize chances to reproduce.
Maybe if she is a fighter (marijuana really is
) and continue to fatten up and at the end 
You end up with one harvest of cerebral weed and one of super potent and swollen couch locking bud, and the total weigh is increased.
this idea was theoretical, but i'm going to do it soon.
Back to reality.
Heat or too much light can cause the closest bud sites to the light to show orange pistils even from the first weeks of flower, and usually end up small if condition are not fixed.. I've grown week 10 flowering clones, which in week 12 were still shooting off new white pistils and fattening up, somehow in some conditions i've not completely understood yet you can manage the duration of your flowering cycle, playing with enviroment, food and watering.
I would be really please to have some replies as well as your opinion or experience about some of the many things i've talked about, let's learn together!
Hope the trip won't be boring!
Let's take the case of a declared "8 weeks flower" strain, starting the water flush around week 5-6 in soil and around one-two week before estimated harvest for hydro/coco (obviously it is all relative to grower's preference, i'm in hydro so i like to start gradually lowering the EC after around week 5-6 which is peak ppms, but it's always all related to how i feel about that specific plant in that specific moment of her life, these are just hypothetic reference values and nobody should ever look at the time passed from the flip to determine how is the flowering going, just look at your babies and at your medium, runoff or solution EC to see what they tell you, depending on the system u are operating).
Overfeeding (i think mostly excess of phosphorus causing NPK unbalance) can make pistils turn orange even from the first weeks of flower so be careful not to do it, as you will end up with small buds that taste like crap in hydro, as well as too much light or heat stress, so growing hydro you can take flower pistils color to figure out in couple days if you are doing something wrong. When it is possible try to keep em white as long as you can, white meaning growth and more final weigh.
So, i've got two ideas to experiment with different plants, the first being less ambitious, and the second idea being risky, but maybe the most worth it!
FIRST
The first harvest being on the less lightened up branches and the lowest point of the plant (most likely they will be in a less advanced state of maturation and offer mostly cloudy trichomes with a 10% of amber, hypothetically around week 9), taking away like 1/4 of the total properly flushed canopy bud.
This would be your "high thc" weed.
This is obviously going to stress the plant but hopefully not to a point that stops the swelling of the bud, and it should give the plant the signal to produce resin to protect herself, resulting most of the times in a massive explosion in resin production that makes your weed a lot more potent. I always do massively stress my plants in their last days and (don't think about flushing, i've done things i am not proud of, like stabbing the main stem in the center and leave the poor plant to die in the dark without water and love, for an additional last week from that designed harvest day when she had about 10% amber... at the end she fought hard and it was literally frozen in 50% amber trichs, slowly starting the drying process by herself) somehow i found out it really works
The second and final harvest being when u feel comfortable that the plant is ready for your ideal level of couch locking effect, meaning around 10%, 20% amber trichomes for a potent but super psychoactive weed, 30% for a more " body stoned" effect and 50 to 60% for a bomb that will make you go to bed in couple hits.
These values are referred to the trichomes inspected on a single bud, and not to all the trichs present in the canopy, as different buds will ALWAYS
show different maturation stages as well as size, depending on the light that specific bud is getting, how well is that specific branch trained, how equal is the environment.
Think about the sub-units that we have in our grow : starting from the environment the canopy is in, the canopy is composed by single plant individuals spaced together in most of the cases (or by just one big plant in mine), then we have the single branches, the single leaves, stems and bud nodes, and all of them respond directly to the environment and the training like single, small autonomous regions.
The "privileged" regions overgrow the others, one leaf that is more exposed to light and has plenty of space, before sending her photosynthetic energy to the plant she thinks about herself and gets bigger and bigger, ending up shading other stuff.
So the buds which are in the best environment with the right amount of light grow bigger (not too much light, 700 PPF can grow bigger buds than 1000 or 1200 PPF in some strains and conditions, past that you're gonna burn them even with co2 at 1500ppm).
Even with training techniques that allow for an equal canopy heigh, branches grow differently: for example, a little side branch that before flip was covered by one large leaf or some other plant mass, can stretch like a motherfucker cause of the lacking of light and become the tallest (and weakest) of the canopy .Thhat's why i would recommend LST, manipulation, even supercropping, during the flower stretch but a little bit more carefully then if you was in veg, this means training a small amount of branches in separate days to get an equal canopy at the end of week 3 or when she stop stretching (i like to give the canopy the shape of the inside of the Colosseum, to maximize light absorbtion, leaving taller branches on the edges), combining with very light defoliation so she doesn't get stressed, plus defoliating when she starts focusing on bud production .After that gets treated like a queen for a couple weeks.
Training also tighten the space between bud sites, definitely increases weight and potency as much as it is applied the right way.
But even a perfectly trained and lollipopped plant with perfect and equal light distribution from the top and the room walls, will show bigger and more mature buds on top, and less on the bottom right? Buds show different stages of maturation on the same plant.
So WHY are we used to harvest the plant with one tragical chop?..
HERE is idea Number 2
This would work a lot better on strong hybrid phenotypes, the most resilient you can grow, top breed genetics only.
Chopping the most mature TOPS on the plant with the highest potency at their THC PEEK, with less possible clear trichomes and mostly cloudy as first parameter, then if you want to be super high and you are lucky, you end up with 5% amber and all milky 20%THC mind blowing shit, if you are not you can always harvest till an ideal 15-30% amber for this example, aiming to obtain the most psychoactive effect as possible or a more balanced high as you let the bud mature.
Half of the properly flushed canopy is gone, now all the low bud sites that were not swelling are the top of the plant. She will go into shock, and will react popping out tons of new trichomes. Are the bud sites still gonna grow in your opinion, presuming they would be still covered in white pistil shoots? here we return to experiments and playing around with how much plant you chop and how much stress to apply,
surely she would continue to mature and desperately try to maximize chances to reproduce.
Maybe if she is a fighter (marijuana really is
) and continue to fatten up and at the end You end up with one harvest of cerebral weed and one of super potent and swollen couch locking bud, and the total weigh is increased.
this idea was theoretical, but i'm going to do it soon.
Back to reality.
Heat or too much light can cause the closest bud sites to the light to show orange pistils even from the first weeks of flower, and usually end up small if condition are not fixed.. I've grown week 10 flowering clones, which in week 12 were still shooting off new white pistils and fattening up, somehow in some conditions i've not completely understood yet you can manage the duration of your flowering cycle, playing with enviroment, food and watering.
I would be really please to have some replies as well as your opinion or experience about some of the many things i've talked about, let's learn together!
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this plant is wonderful )
