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A cannabis plant’s frosty-looking trichomes show that the plant is ripening at Herbology columnist Nick Clifton’s home on Tuesday.
Cannabis harvesting tools: a jeweler’s loop, curved-tipped scissors, 62% Boveda packs, digital hydrometers and a Mason jar.
Herbology columnist Nick Clifton shows a cannabis plant whose leaves are beginning to fade.
Cannabis buds of different colors and shapes that Clifton has grown.
Hello fellow growers. I hope your cannabis plants are large and healthy.
By now, you should probably have stopped fertilizing your plants. Soon they will begin senescence, and the leaves will start yellowing and dropping off. This is what you want as harvest nears.
I hope the pests have taken it easy on you, and you are about to be rewarded with a nice harvest of top-shelf buds. In the beginning of flowering, buds don’t really look like the buds you have seen in the bottom of your dime-bag. But as they mature and ripen, you start to think, “I know what those are. I can’t believe how easy it is to grow weed!” You may also be thinking to yourself, “how the heck do I know when to harvest these?” Let’s get some higher education!
To briefly recap from last month, female cannabis plants make flowers to try to catch male pollen from the air, which will fertilize an ovary and make a seed. If pollen is present in the air because you, or a neighbor down the street (pollen travels easily) did not remove a male plant in time, there will likely be seeds in your buds.
Don’t despair. Back in the day I never had weed without seeds … but it still worked when I consumed it. That said, the goal for the most potent cannabis is to grow seedless buds. Upon examination, the buds will look like a mashup of tiny leaves, called bracts, and hair-like structures of various colors, lengths and textures. Usually buds are mostly green, with some orange and brown hairs, or stigmas, all over. This is not universally true: I have seen purple buds and pink or red stigmas.
But all of the buds, regardless of shape and color, are covered in trichomes, and trichomes are the reason we grow cannabis.
Whether or not you successfully grew sinsemilla (buds without seeds), there will still be trichomes present. The trichomes are rich in cannabinoids, and cannabinoids are responsible for all of the psychoactive and medicinal effects that we associate with cannabis. THC is the most well-known cannabinoid. CBD is probably the next most known, as you now see it in every grocery or drug store in some cosmetic or “health” product. I personally believe there is a lot of value in CBD products, yet I also admit that some people have thrown CBD in products just to make a buck off of uninformed customers. But I digress.
There are more than one hundred other known cannabinoids, and many yet to be discovered. To me this is the most fascinating part of this plant. Humans have likely consumed weed for as long as we have roamed the Earth. We have selected seeds based on what we perceived as “best” qualities, namely higher THC content. And in the course of just a few decades, we have increased average THC potency from around 2-5% to 20-25%. Only recently have many consumers started to question whether or not this is a good thing.
As THC levels increase, other cannabinoids have decreased in content. This is just a side effect of selective breeding. As federal legalization is upon us — soon I hope — maybe we will finally be able to conduct quality research, which will help us discover the specific effects and potential uses of all of the other cannabinoids.
Now that you know trichomes contain cannabinoids, and cannabinoids give us all of the wonderful effects of cannabis, you can see trichomes are of utmost importance. Unsurprisingly, trichomes are how we judge when it is time to harvest cannabis plants. Trichomes form on the surface of your buds, and they are very small. Individually, they aren’t really visible to the naked eye. When viewed from a distance, they give your buds a sort of “frosty” look. But, if you were to use a microscope or a high-powered magnification device, you can see individual trichomes all over your buds.
Each trichome resembles a mushroom shape, a narrow neck leading up to a bulbous head. As the plant matures, the trichomes ripen. At first, they appear clear, but as harvest nears, they begin to take on a cloudy appearance. Eventually, then they begin to turn milky, then amber and, finally, brown. There is a lot of discussion amongst the “experts” as to when you should harvest, but most agree that the cannabis is most potent when the trichomes have all turned milky white, with about 15-20% of the milky trichomes beginning to turn amber. If they are turning brown, you are probably waiting too long.
“I don’t have a microscope; I didn’t know growing weed was so scientific!” Fear not, if you have an iPhone or Pixel or whatever the fancy new cellular device is, you likely have an amazing magnifier built right in to your phone. Hold steady, zoom in, take a picture and you should be able to see them. If you are like me and don’t keep up with technology, go online and order a jeweler’s loop. Jewelers use them to examine gems, but in reality most people who buy them are probably checking on trichomes, not diamonds.
While shopping for your jeweler’s loop, go ahead and grab a pair of curved tip scissors, a pack of cheap digital hygrometers, some 62% Boveda packs and some Mason jars for storing your herb (I like the 64-ounce ones). The local grow shops likely have all these supplies, or Mr. Bezos can have them all shipped to your door, as well. I will detail what the Boveda packs and hygrometers do in next month’s column.
Most strains finish flowering somewhere about eight weeks. Depending on when your plant began flowering, this will likely be early- to mid-October. Keep notes on when your plant flowered and how long it took to finish. If it was particularly slow, maybe skip growing that variety again next season. If it finished quickly and you liked the plant, maybe try to grow it again. Every strain and every plant behaves differently and offers a different combination of cannabinoids. To find your ideal strain, you have to try different varieties. Breeders around the world have been at it for years, bringing us great specimens of this wonderful plant.
Here’s hoping you got some value from this information. I should mention that the trichomes offer an objective way to judge your plant’s ripeness. For experienced growers, it is more subjective. Some just look at the plant and say “she’s ready, I can feel it.” The best grower I know does not bother with a loop — they just know. If you don’t want to fret with any equipment, you can still grow great pot. Our ancestors did not have loops, cell phones, grow tents, fertilizers or any fancy stuff … of course their weed wasn’t as good, either!
Next month we will discuss the drying and curing process. Keep those plants happy just a little longer, and keep your eye on the trichomes.
Nick Clifton is an amateur grower who lives in Roanoke
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Tad Dickens is the features editor for The Roanoke Times.
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A cannabis plant’s frosty-looking trichomes show that the plant is ripening at Herbology columnist Nick Clifton’s home on Tuesday.
Cannabis harvesting tools: a jeweler’s loop, curved-tipped scissors, 62% Boveda packs, digital hydrometers and a Mason jar.
Herbology columnist Nick Clifton shows a cannabis plant whose leaves are beginning to fade.
Cannabis buds of different colors and shapes that Clifton has grown.
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