I have three mendo breath growing and through their life cycle i had a few issues,mainly with controlling the temp. Its been a pretty up and down winter,cold most days but temps would hit 80s outside. These girls are about in week 9 of flower...id usually chop by now but I've noticed alot more white hairs popping up. How much longer you guys think they should run? Thanks in advance
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Hey honeycomb here’s what’s up. Your plants look nice. You have 3ish weeks left. You always want to look at all the signs the plants give you, and never harvest based on one metric of maturity.
Your plants are still mostly covered in white stigma which means they are still growing fresh buds trying to reproduce. The first sign a plant is starting to mature is that it stops trying to reproduce, so 90% of those stigma(hairs) will turn reddish and shrink towards the buds.
The next step in maturation is the swelling process which takes another 1-3 weeks AFTER the stigma turn and shrink. During the swell plants can easily increase by 20% in yield during the swell. The plants won’t look like they are growing much on the outside but they are getting heavier and denser on the inside.
Finally near the enemy of the swell you can check the trichomes. You need to check them on the buds not the leaves. You should also check them at various spots on the plant and not just the top of the main cola. This will give you a good look at average ripeness of the plant.
Don’t be afraid you will ruin or degrade your plant. It takes weeks for plant to ripen properly and waaaay longer for them to get degraded.
In 15 years of growing I’ve NEVER seen someone over ripen a plant. In fact everyone that listens to me and actually lets their plants ripen properly comes back to thank me because their weed has never been better. Most people harvest waaay too early because it’s easy and they just don’t know any better. Letting your plants fully ripen requires patients.