What so many people seem to not understand is there is not a singular point in time in the maturing of pot plants that is the perfect time for everyone to harvest. Over the nearly four decades I have grown pot I have countless times been asked or read on sites like this people asking when is the best time to harvest.
While there is a window of opportunity in which the overall best results can be achieved there is still variance within that window of opportunity and depending on each individuals tastes/likes/wishes what it the very best time for Joe to harvest is never going to be the very best time for Frank or Jane to harvest.
Something else that so many seem to not know or not understand, or possibly just fail to mention, is that plants need not be harvested at one time. Individual plants can be taken when they are at a point were they will be the very best according to the growers likes and wishes and the same can be said about portions of individual plants.
Anyone who has grown for long and learned anything has discovered that plants will not reach the exact same level or degree of maturing at the same time and for that fact neither will all the buds on each individual plant so it is very difficult to have one single time where an entire harvest will give someone precisely what they want.
Many people are just not that picky, especially commercial growers, but some growers want their entire harvest, or at least as much of it as is possible, to be what they want it to be and to do that can require harvesting over a somewhat short period of time, taking individual plants and even portions of individual plants at different times.
If someone likes more of a head high and will harvest when their trichomes are milky white to avoid any amber trichomes will they harvest when some trichomes are milky white and some are clear, which means the THC level is not as high as it can get and the additional growth that would occur while that portion of the plant fully matures is lost thus slightly reducing ones yield? If they do they will not only not get what they want the most they will slightly lose. If someone wants more of a couch-lock stone and will harvest when their plant’s trichomes are amber will they wait for the last trichomes to turn amber and end up with part of their trichomes brown and end up with an inferior product just to assure that the last of their trichomes had turned amber? I tend to doubt it.
I have had plants where some trichomes were beginning to turn amber while others were still clear. In cases like that when is the precisely best time to harvest so someone ends up with what they want the most? The answer is to harvest different plants and different portions of each plant at different times. That of course means there is no single precise perfect time to harvest even when it comes to an individual and even less of a single precise perfect time for everyone to harvest.
Over the decades so very many people have asked when should I harvest? Well anyone that gives them a single time to harvest an entire crop no matter what their information is based on will steer someone in at least a somewhat wrong direction. It can be because their personal preferences and tastes and likes are not the same as the person they are advising and it can also be because the plants the person they are advising is growing are maturing at different times and different rates meaning there is no single precise perfect time to harvest them all or even to harvest entire plants at one time.
Again though many people are simply not that picky, plus their natural impatience factors in, so they tend to take them all at the same time regardless of what error they may be making by doing so.
I myself find that to be an odd phenomenon. A person waits for so very long to harvest and has hopes of achieving optimal results and then at the end they do something that assures they will not achieve optimal results.
If someone just put in the time and effort to attempt to achieve optimal results then why would they not harvest over some period of time that would then give them optimal results? Having waited so long should it really be all that difficult to spread out a harvest over roughly several days if the results is a crop that gives them what they most want? The difference in time in relation to what they have already put into their crop is absolutely minimal so why should such a small amount of time be enough for someone to accept something less than they could otherwise achieve?
It makes no sense to me whatsoever to harvest all at one time if someone is growing for their own personal consumption. If they are commercial growers I can understand it because people who buy just want to get high or stoned and they take whatever they can get and as long as it gets them off at least to a certain degree they are happy. But if someone is growing for themselves why would they not want to end up with their entire crop, or at least as much as it as is humanly possible, to be the very best that it can possibly be?
Maybe the very best advice that I can give to anyone new or fairly new to growing, and harvesting, would be to say have patience grasshopper, Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was Syracuse.