What to do if you forgot when your plant went into flowering, and how to prevent it. We asked our expert growers.
Hi guys and ladies of CannaConnection,
I have a little problem. I have a plant of which I forgot when I have put it to flowering exactly, as I have put it into a tent that already had other plants there.
Normally I harvest it around 8-9 weeks. How do I know when I should cut it if I don't know from when to start counting?
Hoping you can help me somehow.
Thanks,
Mandy
Hi Mandy,
By looking at your picture we can hopefully guess the right stage in which the plant is currently at. Considering the fact that the flowers are already starting to build up mass and fill out, as well as the fact the resin is clearly visible around the top cola, it seems that your plant is at least 4 weeks into flowering.
Usually around that time you will see shift in the flowering, while pistils are still vigorous and new sets are released, older calyxes are starting to swell and fill out.
Normally we start counting the flowering time from the moment when first pistils are released, which takes places around 3-10 days after the switch to the 12/12 photoperiod.
Around 3-4 weeks before the harvest you will start noticing the pistils (white hairs) slowly dying out and changing from white/yellow to orange/red/brown. This means that the plant is getting into the maturation phase and only then you can start thinking about when to harvest the crop.
We recommend using a handheld microscope or a macro lens to be able to follow the resin development around that time. This is a method used by growers to determine the maturity of the flowers when the harvest time comes.
You will start seeing the trichomes degrade and turn from initial transparent to opaque/milky, later reaching amber and orange tones as it goes further into maturity period.
As for the nutrient status of your plant, you can see that the color of the plant is light green. Light green color usually indicates that it could still use a bit more Nitrogen, but at the same time if you want to harvest early, we would not increase the nutrients concentration.
Your plant seems to look happy in general. We would probably recommend to give it at least another 3 weeks and plan the harvest accordingly from there, but it is hard to predict things, especially as we don't know the exact conditions and setup of your grow room.
For the future, you could consider keeping a diary/notebook for your grow operation and of course label your plants. This way you can keep better track of the process and can’t get confused.
We hope this helps! And let us know how she turns out.
Team CannaConnection
