Can you tell how good the weed is just by looking at it?

Do things on bud give clues on how good the bud is gonna be? As in the amount of tricomes, smell, etc etc etc.

OR better yet can you tell if its mids, good stuff, high grade by just looking at it. Can like a strain that looks like its good, be a better smoke than a strain that looks high grade?

To some extent you can tell, but it’s not an absolute. I’ve smoked not so great looking weed and had it be very good, and I’ve had great looking weeds that tasted fantastic, but barely got you stoned. Lots of sparkly trichs usually mean good weed, but again, sometimes it’s all terpenes and little THC.

I'd say no, I can't tell anything useful towards smoking from a picture?

Some look great but just aren't others look so so and can be bomb.

Meast21 said:

Do things on bud give clues on how good the bud is gonna be? As in the amount of tricomes, smell, etc etc etc.

OR better yet can you tell if its mids, good stuff, high grade by just looking at it. Can like a strain that looks like its good, be a better smoke than a strain that looks high grade?

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Nah some stuff can look like crap and be great when you smoke it then again some stuff looks great and like it's gonna rip your head off and just isn't I've also seen CBD Dom stuff that looked great but little to no effects when you smoke it a tip is to look at stuff under the scope it can also look very resinous but when you scope it you find very little heads and alot of stalks that give the false appearance of potency trust me it's the heads that matter stalks don't do nothing for us

You can look at a plant and say: “that was well grown, and grown to its fullest genetic potential”, but you don’t know until you actually test/smoke it. There are a lot of potential chemicals in those trichome heads, not all will get you rocked.

When a dealer brings a bag...
I have to inspect it
Some bags are A-1
others are near misses...
Some are straight boof packs

I have looked at a ton of bud
So I can spot indoor, outdoor, light dep, PGR

I can't really tell spray terps yet...because I haven't run into much of that. Same with THCA...

It may look great, it may in fact be great but what no one is saying is that the harvest/drying/curing process must be done correctly and is just as important as the quality of the bud. You can have the greatest smoke around but dry it wrong and it can taste like grass or hay, cure it wrong and it can get moldy.

Ive seen Hemp, that looks like it would kill you, but had no buzz. So, IMO, NO, one cant tell by looks.

I've sourced dirt weed back in the day that was some of the best weed I've ever smoked. An identical looking bag was regular shitty dirt weed. The proof is in the toking.

frost is great for bag appeal, but tells you nothing about how it smokes. I've grown frosty rock candy terp nugs that were 100% boof when smoked (I'm looking at you purple punch...)

MtRainDog said:

frost is great for bag appeal, but tells you nothing about how it smokes. I've grown frosty rock candy terp nugs that were 100% boof when smoked (I'm looking at you purple punch...)

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Totally agree! Sometimes the buds look incredible, but the smoke just doesn’t deliver. It’s always a letdown when you expect greatness and end up with "boof." Looks definitely aren't everything when it comes to quality!

I bought some DJ Short's Blueberry when I was in Denver a few years ago. Looked great....smelled like blueberries....smoke tasted like pure sulfur/gunpowder. Maybe it was something they added to the soil....? I don't know.

But I will just leave this here.....

tstick said:

I bought some DJ Short's Blueberry when I was in Denver a few years ago. Looked great....smelled like blueberries....smoke tasted like pure sulfur/gunpowder. Maybe it was something they added to the soil....? I don't know.

But I will just leave this here.....

View attachment 5435605

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The grower had powdery mildew…

Just got some home grown Apple rock candy that looks awesome, but very mellow high. Like, you know you have a buzz but you aren’t high. Most stuff I grow you can instantly feel.

It only works one way, a good looking bud can be bad or good, but a bad looking bud can't be good.
I don't recall in all my years of smoking having a bud that almost didn't have frost, was lacking in glue and just overall looked like those plants no one wants and it was killer... No.
That brick weed and hash back in the day was just the strongest you could acquire so it was the best, but AMS / CAN genetics shortly followed and the bar got higher like never before, after that Cali began bombing the world with elite genetics and we were set for life, just pick your taste

A better question I thought about lately that relates to your question is
If the mother has a defined structure to it, do phenos with that structure have better chances of being mother like in other traits ?
This could save us some time hunting phenos that have no visible relation to the actual plant were trying to reach

I never saw a single trichome on any of the old school buds like the ones pictured above. No one ever mentioned "trichomes"....ever. The weed look "bad" by today's standards for showy-looking, well-trimmed bud, but I guarantee you that those old, craggy, leafy, dried-out buds would put you into your seat! Another thing you never see anymore, that used to be common, are buds full of seeds. "Sinsemilla" was a really new thing at that time.

Grew a butt ugly not frosty kosher kush pheno once but it smelled like summer sausage and kicked your ass. I go by smell before looks and need to try it to tell

Some seeded Oaxacan, in 1972, was the only stuff I ever got auditory hallucinations from.
It looked like the Oxacan Sinse, in the above photo, only with seeds. WShit would flat blast your ass, for hours, and would have ones eyes, blood red. If you got pulled over, you were busted.
Stuff had a heavy duty physical, and mental high, with a heavy, drunk comedown, and munchie raids, to the fridge. Lungbuster. $40 1/4lb. $140lb.
And every seed, was mature. Probably 95% germination rate. Think what they would be worth!!! 1000s-10,000 in a 1/4lb.

Sounds like a seriously powerful effect! Those seeds must have been worth their weight in gold with such a high germination rate. It’s amazing how different that ’70s classic is from modern strains. Have you ever tried growing anything similar, or do you think it’s possible to find seeds like that today?

jimihendrix1 said:

Some seeded Oaxacan, in 1972, was the only stuff I ever got auditory hallucinations from.
It looked like the Oxacan Sinse, in the above photo, only with seeds. WShit would flat blast your ass, for hours, and would have ones eyes, blood red. If you got pulled over, you were busted.
Stuff had a heavy duty physical, and mental high, with a heavy, drunk comedown, and munchie raids, to the fridge. Lungbuster. $40 1/4lb. $140lb.
And every seed, was mature. Probably 95% germination rate. Think what they would be worth!!! 1000s-10,000 in a 1/4lb.

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Generally no. You see it mostly in the structure and underdeveloped flowers.

I can see if a plant is properly grown or not but can't say much about the genetic potential, that's like looking through a crystal ball.