Harvest question

is harvest always determined on the red hair ratio...i was told when your hairs are like 80 percent but the buds dont look ready yet like need to be more formed and some are more formed than others...all in the same system...the hairs are about on 80 percent....does this always determine that its time to harvest...its a sative strain...check out the pic on my journal at the bottom of this post theres new pics on the last page.....or should i be monitering the thc to see when they have turned amber to harvest...please help me lol

hey dude, NICE grow btw.. those sativa buds look really sweet! Ide say that those buds are ready to harvest..
the other way to tell that the bud is ready to harvest is by the opacity of the trichomes.. get a 30X magnifying glass and look
at the crystals.. if about half of them are cloudy (looks like whitish milky substance inside the caps) then its ready to harvest. HOWEVER,
I personally like a more heady high for my crazy mind to think crazy thoughts and so I have harvested sativas before with only like 1 out of every 10
trichomes with the milky white residue and it is an insane high.. some people like a more relaxing body high though and so they wait and harvest later when most of the hairs are orange and the trichomes are no longer clear.. its a personal preference (the pyscho active chemicals will be slightly different)..
dont forget you can always just snip off some bud, dry/sweat it for a day and throw it in the microwave for 15 sec intervals until it is dry and smoke it to test the high out.. you can harvest one branch at a time and let the premature buds keep on growing.. good luck!

please dont call them crystals.

trichromes

also you should check the growfaq for basic questions like this. it goes much more in depth than most people's responses will be. most of the time it has pictures

heres a link to the when to harvest page

link