this is my first grow, it was sharksbreath from dna
its in jungle growth soil and i vegged it for 5weeks and were just on week 9 today. The first pic is the bud that I dont think looks as ready as the others do.
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In the days before microscopes, the general clue was when 50% of the hairs turned color. If not all buds fall into this category, you can always harvest in waves.
take a small bud and flash dry it to sample if its what you want. Just remember it will be harsh and the high will be somewhat off due to it being dried quickly and not having a proper cure.
i say too many white hairs present.. and if you cant look at the trichs under a microscope, i say cut a small branch and hang dry for a week, smoke it, and if it's to your liking, then you know your plant is a week later than that.. chop.
I'm partial to using a decent DSLR camera + macro lense to get in close, then magnify it up to 200x digitally to determine where your trichs are at. I typically harvest when it looks like about 20% are amber for most indie cuts...
The cheapest route (unless you already have the above equipment) is to get a decent jeweler's loupe, if you can't find it locally they had can be had for cheap online in dozens of places...
I think you're confused. When I take a macro shot with my DSLR I get a digital image that is over 3x my screen resolution. That means that when it's at "real size" I can only see about a third of the photo it's so big, so even zoomed in just to 100% in Photoshop I can see the color of trichs so long as it's a good shot and not shaky or poorly lighted.