Day 48 – Trichomes all over the place!

Our Critical + 2.0 has been growing more and more Thricomes on her buds, they’re all white and powdery, i’m loving this! here’s a couple pictures (which we had a microscope to show you what they looked like up close)

As always click on the picture to see the full screen version

Can you see all those little white specs? Those are the trichomes 🙂
You may be wondering what the fuss is all about, we’ll do a full article very soon on this but basically here’s the deal.

Tricomes are what contain, at a specific moment in the plants development, a molecule called TetraHydroCannabinol, aka THC. Tricomes contain many other molecules such as CBD, produced by the Tricomes once they deteriorate (become gold like color)

At this time under the eye glass we can see that they’re totally clear which means that they’re not quite ready, we want them to be a nice milky color in our situation.

Trichomes are important to track since they’re the best way to know when to cut, so if you don’t have one yet buy a magnifying glass!

Day 49 – Fattening buds, Browning pistils and Nitrogen Deficiency

The flowers have been growing more and more with almost daily evolution, it’s really a pleasure to watch these plants grow, although we’ve been fighting these thrips (we’ll cover that in the next section).

As you can see the 2 plants on the far left are showing mid to late stage Nitrogen deficiencies with all leaves impacted. They seem to be further along the flowering stage than their 2 fruit strain counter-parts. I think this is due to the fact that their soil in much less compact, thus their root systems aren’t as solid.
On top of that we kept side branches to make an A/B test between this style and One Bud technique (What are the Different types of cultures? Here’s a guide).

Browning Pistils – Round 1

In the middle picture you can see that the pistils have started browning, and as you may have read this can mean that the plant is ready, keyword being can.
Marijuana flower pistils will turn brown 2 or 3 times during the flowering stage so do not harvest here, you’ll be cutting yourself short of up to 50% of your harvest!

Those different rounds of browning pistils followed by the flower opening back up (white pistils) is her way to grown and increase the size of the flowers, you’ll notice those buds getting bigger and bigger as it goes on, but don’t wait too long! 😉

(If you’re wondering, the best way to identify when to harvest is by observing the trichomes.)

Day 51 – Confirming the presence of Thrips

As you may be aware, we’ve noticed signs of a Thrips or Spider mite invasion, we were leaning for Thrips since the white marks were spread out all over the place but we we’re positive.

In order to be sure we decided, for an hour or so, to drop the humidity levels, take the fans off the plants and raise the heat making the perfect environment for Thrips, hoping they would show their faces.
And sure enough, after leaving it for a little while we could see a couple of those suckers, both on the larva and post-larva stage (no adults though, suspect I killed it couple days ago).
If you want to know more about Thrips and Spider Mites we’ve liked to our articles below.

Here are a couple pics of these suckers, in total we had to have killed about 10 of them across all our plants.

As you may know, Thrips are between 0.5mm and 1.5mm long, so they can be pretty hard to spot but it’s defenitly . In comparison to my index finger nail its super tiny!

If you’re wondering if you spotted one or not, move the leaf around you’ll be able to see if it moves or not. If it does than that sucker is a pest, kill it! (I used my fingers when I spotted some).

As we’ve said in our previous report, since we’re so far along within the flowering stage we can’t use any treatment by fear of leaving a taste in our buds, so we’ve been hunting them by hand and keeping conditions as unfavorable as possible for them.

Thankfully the infestation isn’t that bad and our plants are surviving it fine, showing healthy signs, smelling beautifully so we’re not too worried.

Day 51 – Cutting Side Branches

As we said further up, we tested different styles and one of are buds is really small, so we decided to cut the side branches in order for her to focus on the Apex for the end of her life.

It’s really late in the game to hope for a real impact of this, but we still decided to cut the for satellite branches, hopefully the main bug will get somewhat bigger.

Cutting the side buds

Here’s a couple pictures of how we cut the branches. It’s pretty straight forward, you place you scissors at the intersection of the branch and the main stem and make a clean cut.

Curing Marijuana Buds

As you can see on the pictures below, these buds are real small, but they still look and smell beautiful, can’t wait to taste this Fruit strain :p

Curing the buds are one of the most important steps, the aim is to cut off all the main leaves and as many of the small leaves as possible.
Since this is personal consumption, and the small leaves near the buds have so many trichomes, we decided to just trim them; but if you’re intending on selling your harvest it’s more aesthetic to just keep the flowers.

Side note, keep your leaves and stems! we’ll do a full post on what can be done with them, from tea to hash you can do a whole lot with everything so don’t toss it out.

Day 53 – Fattening Buds and first signs of readiness

Although our plants are objectively small, which we were prepared for, some of these buds are getting nice and fat 🙂 The beautiful smell is all over the room and their shining with trichomes. It’s going to be a small but tasty harvest!

Curing Marijuana Buds

Alright guys that’s all for this one!
Until next time, be safe and grow easy 😉

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