Evenin' peeps,

I'm very excited as i'm soon to be harvesting my first ever grow, FD's skunk #1. They're coming up to 9 weeks and are looking almost ready, lots of brown hairs, now I'm just waiting for more amber trichomes.

What I want to know is if there's a best time to chop in respect of watering, light cycle, time etc etc. For example is it better to chop when a watering is due, or chop just as lights come on?

Cheers for any help, DB.

Get yourself a jewelers loupe or pocket microscope mate and look at the trichomes.. Chop when there 50/50 clear and milky as a rule of thumb, you can experiment with differing trichome maturity with time... there does come a point when a plant starts degrading THC faster than it is converting it. So your ideal window of opportunity can be as little as a week or as much as 3 weeks depending on strain and very often enviroment..

, did you read his question


plenty of debate on that one, chop before lights on, lights out, leave in dark for 6 hours, lights on for 6 hours, blah blah
i just chop when i want to, when i think they're ready, when i got the time.

Me too, i can't see it making any difference in terms of lights on or lights off. I do like to crop a plant when it is in need of watering though as i think the bud dries a bit quicker, not always needed but sometimes when you've run out even a couple of days quicker really helps.

my book say at the end of the night when resin production is at its peak.

I crop mine when they nearly need a feed because its easier to get rid of the compost when its not saturated, in terms of the light cycle etc i'll eat my shorts if it matters, resin production if you have amber trichs its going to be a nice smoke i cant see how its going to get that much better in a few hours.

i got myself a 100x pen type microscope from maplins for 6 quid , i did at about 50/50 and the weeds lovley.

I'm with grandad on this one - read it in (probably the same) book years ago. If I recall correctly, resin/thc is produced during lights out, but THC degrades during lights on.

Having said that, I have never done a side by side comparison, but my guess would be that any difference in the final smoke would be undetectable in terms of depth or style of stone.

If you have amber trichs..........prepare for couch lock!