looking good here mate, and considering you're not even using a high powered light, they look bloody fantastic.. nice n frosty... no need to be cutting any leaves off mate, unless they're more than 70% damaged.
I'd say it's "probably" too late to take clones, you "could" but they'll take an age to go back to "veg" mode and end up all stunted (at least thats what happens to mine when I try n take em too late... I'll put up with it, if I realllly wanted to save the plant) The other thing you can do is leave about 20% on the plant when you harvest it and put it back to veg... again I personally dont do this as its a right pain in the backside and the plants take an age to "right" themselves.. lots of ppl do re veg though.. its a tried n tested method of saving genetics... although like I say, starting a new pack of seeds would probably be quicker (in my very limted experiance)
) then you should get pretty close to "perfect" (which of course is subjective anyways, some people like the high from herb taken early, while others prefer the stone from a flower taken later).
before people had the benefit of cheap high power scopes, the old rule of thumb was to aim for around 60% orange hairs
pick a wee bit of popcorn off and smoke the bugger, thats the true test
Flowering
What we talking about when referring to bud are unfertilized female flowers, or sensimillia. As long as the female plant remains unfertilized, she will continue to flower and thereby also produce Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, the main psychoactive substance found in the Cannabis plant. THC is an oily, resinous substance that is formed inside fine outgrowths or appendages called trichomes. Trichomes are most abundant on the floral clusters of the female plant, but can also be found on other parts. There are also other substances that fall under the category of cannabinoids, which are by definition compounds that are structurally related to THC.
Once the plant enters the flowering stage, it will produce this substance in abundance. The quality and quantity of the finished product varies according to strain and growing conditions.
The most important thing to remember during this stage is that absolutely no light may reach the plants during the dark hours as this will interfere with flowering and might even stress the plant into sex reversal. You need complete darkness in the grow room. I am talking pitch black here.
The flowering time stated for a certain strain by the seed provider is a general guideline and will seldom correlate with the exact flowering time in your own garden. Usually these flowering times reflect the time it takes for plants to mature under optimal conditions like in large greenhouses where the environment is precisely controlled. Trust your feelings, harvest the plant when it looks ready and forget about counting weeks. Most plants will take a few weeks longer than stated to mature properly in my experience. The flowering time can also vary depending on the phenotype of that particular strain. Genotype is the genetic makeup of an individual and phenotype is the physical expression of those genes. There might for example be a range of phenotypes that can be found among the seeds of an indica/sativa hybrid. All the different phenotypes might also have different flowering times.
The flowering time can range anywhere from 6 weeks for fast indicas to 20+ weeks for pure sativas.
Once the plants have started flowering, you should also stop the foliar feeding. Never spray the flowers with water and always try to keep the relative humidity in the grow room as low as possible during flowering to minimize the chance of mold. Mold can take hold quite easily on the buds and once that happens, it might be difficult to get rid of without removing entire buds or even branches.
Patience always pays off in the end. The decision to harvest too early will always result in a smaller harvest and immature buds. Cannabis plants usually go through two to several bloom explosions during flowering, when the bud mass essentially doubles each time. The first bloom explosion can be expected after about 4 weeks of flowering, the second at 8 weeks and so on depending on the strain and the individual plant. Trust your feelings. Harvest the plant when it is ready.
Sometimes you have to wait a long time. Patience is a virtue when it comes to growing weed. For a speedy harvest, I recommend that you grow mostly indica plants.
There are three types of trichomes that can be found on cannabis plants but the one that we want in abundance is the capitate-stalked glandular trichome that looks like a mushroom because it also contains the highest levels of THC. The peak of THC production is when most of the oil inside the trichomes has turned from clear to cloudy, with a few amber ones here and there. Clear trichomes contain mostly immature THC but cloudy ones are at their peak. Amber ones have already passed the peak of production and contain lesser and nonpsychoactive cannabinoids. The whole process of THC synthesis is naturally heavily dependent on the sum of all the factors, but providing optimal soil with an assortment of nutrients goes a long way, so I think it's always wise to give the plant a good start.
Read more about trichomes here and more in-depth here
The synthetization of Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol inside the trichome goes as following:
Cannabinoid production starts with formation of CBG (cannabigerol). From here it is independently processed into either:
1. CBC (cannabichromene), nonpsychoactive "energy-storage" compound which is readily converted back to CBG if needed.
2. CBD (cannabidiol), the body stone effect, which is the precursor of THC. It also affects how the THC hits us, effectively improving on the high. (So high THC low CBD isn't necessarily a good thing). CBD also have some medicinal properties, making a high CDB value good for medicinal strains. CBD is then enzymatically cyclized to THC.
3. CBD --> THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol), the cerebral high that sometimes border on the psychedelic. A very high THC content can also increase your pulse and cause paranoia.
4. THC --> CBN, in late flowering and with trichome age, THC starts degrading into CBN (cannabinol). This also means that the THC on buds sitting in a jar will eventually degrade into CBN and other lesser cannabinoids. It might taste great and be smooth smoke but probably less potent than when it was harvested. This is why we store the buds in air-tight jars and in darkness because we hope to reduce the rate of THC degradation. Unlike THC, CBN is nonpsychoactive and mainly causes disorientation and "fuzzy head", both of which can be quite unpleasant in nature.
Note the trichomes in this picture. They look like crystal mushrooms but are actually spherical containers for the THC oil. Keep in mind that every time you touch a bud you are breaking these fragile structures and THC evaporates into the air, which is why I try not to touch the buds unnecessarily during flowering. On the other hand, there is enough to go around so don't worry about it too much. In order to know for certain at what stage of development the oil inside the trichomes is, you will have to buy some kind of magnification glass or loupe that enables you look at closely at these appendages.
Besides looking at the trichomes through magnification there is another way to tell if the harvest is ready.
When 50% of the visible hairs on the bud have turned brown, it is generally considered ready although this is a very rough indicator.
Here are some pictures describing the various stages of floral development that might help you decide when to harvest.
Observe how the calyx starts swelling up as the bud matures. This is the real indicator of mature bud.
You can clearly see this happen in late flowering, it looks almost as if the calyx was bearing seed because it increases dramatically in size.
The timing of the harvest can greatly affect the quality of the finished product. Although it is not this simple, it can be said that if you harvest too early the high will be disappointing, incomplete and mostly in the body while harvesting at the right time will give you a well rounded, potent and profound experience. You have to give the plant some time to develop fully realized THC. The best time for the harvest varies from strain to strain and from individual to individual. You will have to keep a close eye on the plant during flowering. It is not as difficult as it sounds, when you see thick and heavy buds packed with trichomes, you know that it is close to harvest time.
You will always have bud that is in different stages of maturity as the plant keeps flowering and forms new buds all the time. New flowers actually grow on top of old ones, so you get a layer of bud. This also means that you have trichomes all over the plant that are in different stages of development. Just make sure that the bulk of the crop is ready before harvesting. Or just harvest the top half of the plant and leave the bottom half flowering for another month or so. Those popcorn buds will eventually pack on weight, but personally I do not think that it's worth the wait.
Cannabis sativa strains usually have a higher THC content than their indica counterparts. Pure sativas can carry a stratospheric and sometimes creative, cerebral high, so strong that you'll be blown into next dimension. Indicas on the other hand can pack a strong narcotic stone so numbing that you lose the ability to speak, let alone think. That's why they are good pain killers. Indicas also contain higher values of the therapeutic cannabinoid CBD, especially landrace indicas. Cannabis Ruderalis contains almost no THC and has mainly been used to make hemp and auto-flowering hybrids like the Lowryder.
There is also another psychoactive compound called THCV (Tetrahydrocannabivarin) that is mostly found in certain strains from Africa, India, Nepal and South-East Asia. This cannabinoid is an analogue of THC which enhances the effect of it by removing the "ceiling" from the high, giving the smoker the impression that there is no end to how high he will get. The elevator just keeps going up until the effect wears off. This is why cannabis strains like Haze are so popular, because they contain genes related to these strain and therefore pack a very strong high.
THC is quite a complex compound that binds to several cannabinoid receptors in the brain in various ways depending on the presence of other cannabinoids. The rate and quality of the synthesized THC is also dependent on the availability of nutrients, environmental factors like humidity etc.. I like to keep a very dry environment during flowering because I believe that promotes THC synthesis.
THC has many uses for the plant, including fighting off pests, prevention of desiccation by the means of binding solar energy so that it will not harm or cause mutations in the plant, and to some degree keep the buds dry due to the fact that THC oils are hydrophobic and reject water. Cannabis plants can actually kill insects because they get stuck in the sticky resin. Once stuck they die and start to slowly dissolve. Death by THC..
Now, the reason why many scientist have proclaimed that UV-B radiation is important for THC synthesis is because it fully activates the CBG --> THC metabolic pathway. Not only that, but it can also activate a secondary metabolic pathway, which means that the road to THC synthesis becomes a "dual-lane" one. I'm guessing that the CBC pathway skips the CBD step and the compound is converted directly into THC. Twice the production that is. No matter how you twist it, I bet that cannabis grown on the top of the Himalayas is always more potent than indoor bud.
I'm sure that many will agree that bud grown under the sun will most of the time blow indoor bud out of the water in terms of potency. The incredible power of the sun cannot be matched by man-made instruments. Sticky and Heavy. Taste and smell however can be more refined in indoor bud as we can control what we feed them. Outdoor bud usually has a feral taste to it. Not that it's unpleasant, not at all, the wind and the rain all leave their mark on the buds and you can really taste the difference.
Like I mentioned before, the buds might get so heavy that you will have to provide addition support for them, especially if you do not use fans to strengthen the stem. This can be done by either using string or a Scrog net. By Scrogging (Screen of Green) I am referring to the style of growing where you have your plants growing through a net that is suspended above the canopy. The goal is to fill the entire surface area of the net with budding flowers in order to maximize the crop. If you would like to know more, have a look at the guide on topping, training and pruning.
One thing that is of major concern when it comes to the flowering stage is the stretch that plants go through when the light regime is changed to 12/12. If the difference between the vegetative and flowering light regime is great, the plants will also stretch more. It is more natural for the plant to be gradually introduced to the flowering light regime by shorting the day length in the manner explained above.
Another thing that reduces the stretch is keeping the blue light present during the first week of 12/12. Personally I leave the metal halide bulb in for this period of time before switching to the high pressure sodium bulb. The same applies to compact fluoros of corresponding spectrum.
It can be debated whether or not plants increase resin production under stress. Personally I try not to stress them too much as there is a difference between stress and torture. I have found that keeping a dry environment with high light intensity seems to promote resin production.
I believe that providing the optimal environment for the plants will ensure that they express their true potential without the need to stress the plant beyond a certain point. Healthy plants will have greater potential than plants that are in a state of deficit.
Treat them well and they will reward you.
regards
