How do you like your indoor plants to finish for the best yield & smoking quality?

[VerdantGreen]

How do you like your indoor plants to finish for the best yield & smoking quality?

hi guys and girls, ive started this thread because of an interesting OT discussion sprung up in someone's grow thread.

i was wondering what 'look' you aim for when harvesting your indoor organic buds and how you feel it affects the quality of the smoke...

do you like them to stay green as long as possible and then cure them well... or do you like them to finish 'ugly' having used up much of their chlorophyll - and do you think this sacrifices yield.

here is my take fwiw.
whilst i understand curing will improve smoking pleasure, i like my plants to finish really ugly - with senescence well and truly having set in, and i find that the best way to do this in my setup (using 3-4 gallon pots, fresh soil each run with carefully measured amendments) is to have the plant run short of nutrients in late flower to trigger yellowing. i find a well yellowed plant will smoke better after a week's cure than a green one of the same strain will smoke after a year's cure.

others claim that plants will naturally senesce as they ripen whether or not the nutes run short - and i think this is only partly true and somewhat strain dependent. having run the same cuts many times over with slightly different levels of ferts in the soil, i am confident that soil fertility has a major part to play in the process of getting indoor plants to senesce - especially as many of the natural triggers- cold, day length etc - are not present indoors... and perhaps the most major trigger to senescence, seeds ripening, is also not in play.

another theory - i think triggering the plant to use up the food reserves in it's leaves can actually increase yield, especially as the roots become less efficient as flowering progresses.

i'd be interested in the hearing rest of your practices and opinions....

VG

 

[mad librettist]

i like em ugly too

I think there is an argument to be made for breeding plants that finish well in well fed living soil.

 

[WelderDan]

My only concern is quality. I ain't slinging it, so bag appeal means nothing. But I'm with you on the theory of letting the plant use up it's internal stores of chlorophyll and nitrogen. IMO, a good flush means smoother smoke, better taste and less cure time. Never really concerned myself with yield, so never considered if yields were better or worse. I never really noticed that much new growth in the last week before I started flushing, so to me, yield isn't suffering. Even if it is, I'm not in it for the $$$ so a zip either way is negligent.

So yeah, I like seeing that sucker ugly up and get yellow too.

 

[Maj.Cottonmouth]

This is not my area since I do hydro but I find I have a hard time getting them to yellow at all. I flush for a few days with Clearex and water and then the rest of the two week flush is straight water but I still do not get any yellowing. I am confused about how soil growers get such colors when there must be some nutes left in the soil and in hydro where I know there are no nutes in the solution for two weeks and I get zero yellowing. Sorry this is off topic, ignore it if you want.

 

[lemonskunk420]

I'm with ya on the ugly girls finishing up.Ugly girls seem to try harder ( :

 

[Bullfrog44]

Let me throw an outdoor prospective on things:

I find that if you let your plants finish too "ugly" outdoors it really promotes bud rot. When your sun leaves yellow and die off, a common thing that can happen is at the stem where the leave pulls off there can be an infection point, or a weak spot. With phat nugs on your outdoor ladies the last thing you want is a weak spot for mold to take hold.

I think that giving your plants a last bit of N at around 6-8 weeks of flower will help to prevent this. I would be careful not to use a slow acting organic fert, or any chem ferts, as this would effect your harvest. You want your plant to use up the N by the end of the 6-8 week period. I have found EWC to do a great job as a top dress to accomplish this. EWC don't have a lot of N, but if you are growing your plants right that little N is all they need.

As far as indoors goes, I always seem to finish more Ugly than pretty on most harvests.

 

[OPT]

I like to have then uniformly yellow towards the end of the cycle. Of course this can also lead to purpling and some crazy weird colors, but it all starts off as a gradual yellowing in the plant. I think the best in general is to have the bigger leaves yellow but not the actual litttle ones that protrude from the bud itself, if those start to become yellow, i feel i'm losing out on the yield. The good thing about organics is the plant takes what it wants, i don't have extra nutes in my 2 gallon pots in the end, but they always seem to yellow up uniformly for me when growing a 9 week strain.

OPT

 

[ChickenChaser]

Ugly! I hate to see dark green plants being picked. Some people say why stress them by starving? then others stress them on purpose with cold water/temps.

 

[mad librettist]

Let me throw an outdoor prospective on things:

I find that if you let your plants finish too "ugly" outdoors it really promotes bud rot. When your sun leaves yellow and die off, a common thing that can happen is at the stem where the leave pulls off there can be an infection point, or a weak spot. With phat nugs on your outdoor ladies the last thing you want is a weak spot for mold to take hold.

I think that giving your plants a last bit of N at around 6-8 weeks of flower will help to prevent this. I would be careful not to use a slow acting organic fert, or any chem ferts, as this would effect your harvest. You want your plant to use up the N by the end of the 6-8 week period. I have found EWC to do a great job as a top dress to accomplish this. EWC don't have a lot of N, but if you are growing your plants right that little N is all they need.

As far as indoors goes, I always seem to finish more Ugly than pretty on most harvests.

I think the botrytis is causing the yellowing, not the other way around. to pick out early signs of budrot, look for leaves yellowing in the wrong order. Nitrogen def should show up on the bottom and work up with no exceptions.

 

[pinecone]

I think I like them yellowing and ugly, but I haven't grown the same plants with different harvest looks and identical growing, drying, and curing conditions so I can't say for sure. I also don't know if I lose any yield by letting them get ugly, but I suspect that I might be.

I'm getting ready to harvest my second run of two SSH plants. This cycle the plants are a lot uglier than the were last time. As I still have plenty of smoke from my last harvest I ought to be able to compare the quality of the smoke from identical plants grown differently. Unfortunately the prior crop was a summer harvest so drying conditions were warmer with lots of humidity. This crop will dry in a much cooler and dryer climate. I really wasn't happy with the way the last crop smoked until it cured a month or so. I'm curious to see if this crop smokes better quicker.

Pine

 

[Pinball Wizard]

This one was so ugly ...she hung herself.....during the flush.

 

[Scrappy4]

I'll jump on the ugly bandwagon, but lately it's been tough to run out of nutrients in 7 gallon pots. And since I grow scrog style I pull a lot of fan leaves anyway, so that might make em look greener at the end.

I've also noticed green finishes can mean late finishes too. I've seen up to two weeks difference on the same strains. Too much N?

Along these lines last harvest, I had some buds dried with sugar leaves intact and some close trimmed before drying and all from the same plant. It was surprising how much better the buds with leaves tasted, smoother and sweeter and easy to tell, nothing subtle at all......Scrappy

 

[VerdantGreen]

interesting stuff, thanks. i'll need to read it again when i'm not baked

my plants tend to start yellowing a little at around week 5-6, then i feed them a bit for a couple of weeks and topdress with a handful of EWC, the yellowing slows right down for a few weeks. after a week 8 just water. my best yielding plant ever yellowed after 4-5 weeks.

VG

 

[VerdantGreen]

hey scrappy, i think there is a tipping point, MM says somewhere around 5 gallons, above which a regular sized plant is likely to have all it needs from a decent living soil - and then i guess senescence is more down to the genetics.

VG

 

[Hydro-Soil]

This is not my area since I do hydro but I find I have a hard time getting them to yellow at all. I flush for a few days with Clearex and water and then the rest of the two week flush is straight water but I still do not get any yellowing. I am confused about how soil growers get such colors when there must be some nutes left in the soil and in hydro where I know there are no nutes in the solution for two weeks and I get zero yellowing. Sorry this is off topic, ignore it if you want.

It really isn't off topic... What you're experiencing is the cannabis plants ability to store excess nutes when over fed. You would probably start seeing yellowing near the end of week 3 of plain water... possibly the end of week 4, depending on how overfed and for how long.

You can save yourself some money by feeding them less and cutting out the nitrogen at least a month before chop. Dark green is not a sign of good health in the cannabis plant. If your nute mix is low in nitrogen you'll overfeed on other elements before you get the warning dark green. This is another reason I prefer mixing nutes in the lucas ratio.... overfed is overfed on all elements since the nutes are balanced.

Stay Safe!

 

[sunnydog]

Ugly.

 

[187020]

Like this

Like this

 

[ThcInfused]

i like my girls fat and ugly

 

[Duplicate]

Like this

Butter Leaves

 

[guest2012y]

I lean towards ugly for personal smoke and pretty for the bags...just depends on type and where it's going.
Running up to 30 types in flower really gives you a good lesson in senescence....you eventually learn what each type should be doing/looking like at finish.
I have a Durban Poison x BMR in a 4 gallon pot rootbound and therefore prematurely yellowed out rather extensively...yet there's probably over a half pound hanging off her for sure,and those flowers look pretty tasty...I'll pop a pic up when I pull her out for harvest.