How To Harvest Marijuana

Finally! The culmination of all your hard work… it’s time to harvest!

As you may know, harvesting weed isn’t the same as harvesting tomatoes.

To get the perfect bud, you need to be very careful with how you handle the harvest of your cannabis plants.

This guide will show you exactly how to harvest weed step by step.

By following these steps, you can ensure that you reap the sticky, smelly, and delicious rewards of high-quality cannabis.

Step 1: When To Harvest Marijuana

The most important factor in harvesting marijuana is actually determining when to harvest your cannabis plants.

When you harvest is vital because the cannabinoids that ultimately create the “high” from cannabis change dramatically depending on when the plant is harvested, so the time to harvest is extremely important.

So how do you know when to harvest?

Method one – Inspect Your Trichomes

The absolute best way to know when your buds are ready is to inspect the trichomes on your buds. These are the little white crystals that cover your buds, which contain the all-important THC.

Trichomes form a few weeks into flowering and begin to grow, multiply, and reach maturity over time.

So how do you know when your trichomes are mature?

You look at their cloudiness and color!

When To Start Checking Your Trichomes

Timing is everything when harvesting, so you need to know when to start looking for maturing trichomes to help figure out the best time to harvest.

Understanding the different rates of maturity for trichomes in India vs. Sativa strains is essential and will help you understand what each will look like as they mature.

Indica strains reach maturity much faster than Sativa strains, the average is 6-8 weeks of flowering until harvest. You should begin examining trichomes around weeks 5-6 to find your perfect harvest window

Sativa strains are known to take upwards of 8-12 weeks or even longer to reach maturity. Begin checking for trichome maturity around week 8 from flower initiation.

How To Check Your Trichomes

We’ve outlined what to look for and what it tells you about your plant’s maturity, but how do you actually do it?

With a microscope or magnifying glass!

No, you don’t need a fancy microscope and a lab setup, but you will need a handheld pocket scope. Check out this guide I wrote about the best magnifying glass to use from trichomes.

A microscope like this will allow you to see the formation and cloudiness of your trichomes up close. Track the appearance of your trichomes until they correspond to the type of high that you want.

Other Indicators of Harvest Window

Trichome maturity is the golden standard for determining when to harvest, but there are a few other signs that can indicate harvest time.

After inspecting your marijuana plants to find out when they are ready to harvest, it’s time to cut them down.

Before you begin, make sure you’re ready to handle your harvest.

Step 2: Preparing To Harvest

Now that you know exactly when you want to harvest, it’s time to get all the right equipment together.

Prepare Your Harvest Area

Set aside a designated room or area for harvesting your plants. This area is intended to reduce the spread of odor and begin facilitating the curing process as soon as plants are cut down

This area should be 70F (21C) or below to prevent cannabis oils from volatilizing, which helps reduce the odor. If possible, seal the room and vent with a carbon filter to reduce the odor entirely.

Use The Right Harvest Tools

Harvesting weed requires a few specialty tools, some are necessary, and some just make things easier. Getting these ready before harvest will save precious time.

Check out our grow room equipment checklist for a full list of useful equipment to use during your grow.

Step 3: Flushing Before Harvest

Once you have determined when you are going to harvest your plants, you need to begin flushing them.

The purpose of flushing is to remove any residual nutrients and/or chemicals that have accumulated in the flowers. Flushing is done by watering plants with only clean water until you harvest.

Why Flush your plants before harvest?

If you don’t flush, you will very likely have residual fertilizers or nutrients affecting the taste of your smoke. This makes smoking these buds harsh and unpleasant. Un-flushed buds may not burn or will crackle and smell like chemicals when they burn.

Flushing is absolutely necessary if using synthetic fertilizers. If growing completely organically you may not need to flush, or not need to flush as early and heavily.

When To Flush Your Plants

I usually start the flushing process as soon as I start to see the trichomes turn from clear to cloudy (7-10 days before you intend to harvest them.)

How To Flush Your Plants

To flush your plants, you simply need to stop adding nutrients and water your plants with clean water only. By clean water, I mean distilled or RO water (Reverse Osmosis)

If you can only access tap water, use a flushing agent with it.

If you’re growing in soil, just water as needed with clean water throughout this time.

If you’re growing with hydroponics, you’ll need to replace your reservoir with clean water and recirculate for 2-3 days. After 2-3 days, refill your reservoir again with clean water.

My top Flushing Tips

• Make sure you have 10-20% runoff when flushing in soil.
• In soil, allow plants to remain dry for 1-2 days before you intend to harvest. This assists with the drying process.
• In hydro, use a PPM or EC meter to monitor the concentration of your reservoir when flushing. If the concentration is similar to what you’ve been feeding with, keep replacing it with clean water until it lowers significantly.

Step 5: Harvesting Your Plants

Now the fun really begins, you can finally start harvesting your beautiful buds.

The most important consideration with this step is to handle your plants and buds properly and in the right environment.

Harvest Environment

In the wrong environment, you can easily damage or degrade the quality of your harvest.

Intense light, temperatures above 80F (27C), friction from handling, damp/humid conditions can all greatly degrade THC.

Proper handling and preparation of your harvest area can eliminate all of these potential problems.

How Should You Cut?

There are two ways to begin harvesting your plants. You can either harvest the whole plant by cutting the main stem or harvest only the most mature buds.

Method 1: Cutting The Main Stem

This method of harvest is quicker, easier, and requires less monitoring of individual bud maturity. You simply need to cut the main stem, then hang or further divide up the plant.

Method 2: Harvesting mature buds first

This harvest method can potentially increase your overall yield and quality.

You first remove the ripest buds (as determined through the previous steps).

Next, you wait 5-10 days for the remaining buds to reach perfect ripeness, then harvest them as well.

The outer buds, which receive more direct light, will always mature first.

Buds not receiving direct light will always take longer to reach maturity until exposed to direct light.

Cutting the main stalk

With either method, you will want something besides trimming scissors to cut through the main stalk. Fiskars All Steel Bypass Pruning Shears are great for just that.

Chopping Time

So you have decided when and how you will harvest your plants, now the next few steps are more about your preference than necessity.

The large trichome-less leaves can be removed, or left attached to the plant. Removing fan leaves will speed up the drying process while keeping them on will allow buds to dry more slowly.

If in a high-humidity environment, removal may help prevent mold.

If in a low-humidity environment, keeping leaves on may help keep the buds from drying too quickly.  We have a guide (here) where we go more in-depth on if you actually need a drying room and the benefits of having a drying room.

From now until your cannabis is cured, any and all handling of plants and buds must be done while wearing gloves. THC will stick to everything it touches, and anything loose on you will stick to your buds, keep it clean!

After you cut down your plants, you will want to hang them. Do this along a wire, and space plants evenly so they will dry evenly.

Ensure there is adequate ventilation so that humidity isn’t too high, this can slow drying and cause mold issues. Use a fan to facilitate air exchange for the harvest area if you don’t have a proper drying room.

Step 5: Manicuring the Buds

Once your harvest is complete, there are two different ways to approach the manicuring stage.

You may either immediately trim your leafy buds down to frosty nuggets, or dry them on the line first.

Immediate Trimming

This gives the advantage of easier trimming and faster drying time.

Just after harvest, the leaves that need to be trimmed are still full of water (turgid). Turgid leaves are firm leaves, which make for easy cutting.

Trichomes are more malleable at this point, so they are less likely to be knocked off during handling.

With fewer outer leaves covering the buds, they will dry much more quickly. This can be good if you need to dry quickly or have high humidity.

It can be a problem if you have low humidity as quick-dried buds can be harsh and unpleasant.

Drying on the line

By allowing the buds to slowly dry with most excess plant material still covering the buds, the curing process begins.

Let plants hang on the line until stems bend and begin to break slightly (not snap). This indicates that buds are drying and are ready to be trimmed.

This usually takes 3-10 days depending on your environment, bud size, and amount of material already removed.

Leaves and branches can be trimmed more easily because everything easily snaps off. This can also be an issue because the trichomes will be much more likely to flake off if brushed or mishandled.

Time to Trim

Whether you immediately trim or wait, the process of trimming your buds into their final form is the same.

You want to remove all excess material from around your buds.

How close you trim is mainly preference, although if selling your cannabis, most customers prefer very tightly trimmed buds.

What to remove

Your eyes will be your main reference for this. Remove any large leaves protruding from the buds.

Remove any brown or yellow-tinged leaves from your buds, these will impact the taste and aesthetics of your buds.

If in doubt, remove any leaves that don’t appear to have any trichomes on them. No crystals = no THC = no fun.

Making Trimming Easier

Manicuring buds is laborious and time-consuming, so you might want to utilize some methods and tools to make it easier.

Curved Trimmers – These are trimming scissors with a curved blade. This is ideal for trimming around a relatively oddly shaped object such as a bud. The curve reduces the need to tediously angle your scissors around a bud to get the perfect cut, saving energy and time.

Bowl Trimmers – These are enclosed bowls lined with steel blades and sweeps with a crank attached to move the buds around. Insert some buds and begin turning the crank, this can drastically reduce the time required to trim your harvest. Most have built-in kief catchers as well.

Trim Trays – Trim trays offer greater comfort while trimming, and also collect excess material as you trim. These trays are ergonomically designed for comfort and come with a 150-micron steel screen to catch kief and sugar leaves.

Trim Strategically  – Don’t just start hacking all your buds off, try to leave a few inches of stem to hold on to while you trim. Use razors to frequently clean your scissors while trimming. Scissors will quickly become clogged with resin, so free them up to trim more easily.

Final Thoughts – How To Harvest Marijuana

I hope you’ve enjoyed this guide on how to harvest weed step by step.

You should now have successfully harvested your cannabis, but it isn’t time to enjoy the fruits of your labor just yet.

After plants are harvested and buds trimmed, another most important process begins…

In our next article on how to harvest, we will guide you through the stages of the drying and curing process. This process is what will ultimately determine the flavor, smell, and smoothness of your smoke.

Originally posted 2018-10-21 13:40:20.