Late flowering is the final stage of growing weed, and unless you screwed up all the previous steps, you should have perfectly healthy plants in your garden now, ready to be chopped any day!

Basically, this is the last stretch for you. Buds are bulking up, and in a week or two they won't be growing anymore. If your temps are down, plants might start changing colour as well, and often they'll be dropping bottom leaves, that went yellow beforehand.

Timeframe is strictly strain-dependent. With average hybrid late flowering occupies 2 weeks, but with less standard strains it may take a bit more, which is why knowing your strain is so important.

But even a noob can easily estimate how much time his plants have left by watching the trichomes closely with a 60x loupe. As a rule of thumb cannabis should be harvested when all trichomes are cloudy, which marks the peak of THC production. However, this varies wildly according to strain and chemotype.

For example, CBD-rich strains should be harvested earlier to prevent diminishing of this non-psychoactive cannabinoid, which is later replaced by more THC. Also, landraces sativas or NLDs should be harvested as soon as trichomes get mostly cloudy to keep the zippy, happy high.

On the other hand, most of medical growers prefer to harvest their „indicas” when they arrive at 20-30% amber trichomes to get more CBN, a sleep-inducing cannabinoid, that is vauled by current or ex opioid users, and patients with insomnia or PTSD.

In other words, there's no simple harvest time guideline for the growers, who need to consider their own circumstances, necessities, and markets they cultivate for.

Irregardless of when you harvest, you should look after your plants closely in this stage to get pungent, sticky, and clean-tasting buds, that'll satisfy you, and your customers.

In order to stay on the safe side, you should withdraw or cut down on the fertilisers you've been using throughout the cycle. As I've written before, cannabis shouldn't be fertilised excessively in general for the highest quality flowers, and there's not much to do if you've used shitloads of them, but you can at least give your plants a chance to absorb everything you've poured into the soil.

Giving only pure water, referred to by both hydro and soil growers as „flushing”, in the last few weeks, is correct in hydro, but changes very little in soil systems as plants continue to absorb the nutrients nonetheless... but it's definitely better than pushing them to consume more.

As opposed to hydro or soil farms with feeding schedules, organically grown plants regulate nutrient uptake themselves, which is why providing clean water works best here, but using very light fertilisers such as compost teas is possible too.

Late flowering is also the time, when you should absolutely quit spraying insecticides and fungicides, organic or synthetic. Although there's a big chance you'll end up with tainted buds if you've used any systemic ones, organic ones have a very quick breakdown time, which means there shouldn't be any trace of them in the produce.

Stay tuned for the next bit, and support @canna-curate by upvoting and resteeming this post 🌿

Written by: @conradino23
Pictures by: @bluntsmasha

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