Autumn is coming!

The flowering period

Flowering is already on its way, by the time you'll be reading this article you should be at about the third to the fifth week of flowering, depending on your location and the choice of strain. The buds are well structured and you can smell them all over as you approach close to the plants.

Depending on the strain(s) that you grow, you should expect to cut from mid-September, to as late as mid-November. I hope you have taken that into consideration when you selected your strains, and that your climate is suitable to accommodate a long flowering period if that's what you picked. If the local climate is cold and accidentally you have selected a long-flowering strain you have to start making plans to avoid low-temperature problems that will come from October onwards. One solution, if you grow outdoors in pots, is to get them indoors or in a greenhouse. If that is not possible, get a lot of greenhouse nylon and make sure you cover the plant(s) every evening as the night time temperatures are the ones that go low enough to cause damage.

But the cold weather is not the only thing to look out for. Come September you might see lots of caterpillars, and most of them want a taste of your plant. Keep a close eye for them, they can totally destroy it and despite them being big enough to spot, their colouring is such that you need to actively look for them. In case you get stormed by them, my best advice is to use Biothur, a product whose base is Bacillus Thuringensis and it's your best defence against them and totally organic. It smells horrible but the smell doesn't stay on the bud so use it without worries.

Mould can also be a problem if you're living in a wet environment and you got those nice thick, dense buds. If your strain is not mould resistant, make sure you check them regularly for mould traces (do so even if it is resistant, you never know). If you see something, cut it immediately as it will damage the rest of the bud as well. If you feel like you'll be having lots of problems, it might be a good idea to lighten up your buds just a tiny bit to allow for better air circulation; you might lose a bit of your product but you'll save the rest.

Harvest

Finally your plant is ready to harvest. How will you know? The calyxes will swell quite a lot and the hairs will retract. A lot of people advise looking through a microscope at the pistils and checking their colours. If you go down this road, the period to harvest is when you have 75% amber and 25% white pistils. However I advise you to closely look at the plant and it will show you when it is ready. You will see that it has matured, specially if you've been paying attention on how it flowered.

Depending where you're growing, you have several options on harvest day. If you're growing guerilla, cutting down the whole plant at once is a one-way street since you'll need to transport it for trimming and drying. If on the other hand you're growing in your garden, things are more relaxed. You could cut down the whole tree, but you can also cut it branch-by-branch, thus making it easier to handle.

Trimming

I would advice towards trimming the plant before putting it up for drying. It is way easier to trim fresh leaves than it is to trim dry ones. Try to get a comfortable scissor as it takes quite some time; my personal best is at around 40-50 grams per hour, so you realise that it's a time-consuming process hence make it as comfortable as possible.

Once you're done trimming, don't get in a hurry to clean your hands and scissors. If you do you will miss the joy of hand/scissor-hash. Rub your hands together and all the resin that was on them will unfold and you'll end up with a charas-like ball. Likewise scrape the resin that was on the scissors by using a sharp razor, you will not regret it.

Drying & Curing

Most beginners think that once you're done with the plant your grow is completely finished and there's nothing more to do. Major error! Drying and curing are important processes that can make or break your final product.

When it comes to drying, optimally you will have a drying room where temperature, humidity and air-flow will be regulated. Your temperature has to be at around 20-25, humidity at 55-60% and the air-flow has to be slow and constant.

If you can't have a dedicated space for drying, then use your grow tent, it will do the job if of course you got no more living plants in there. At worse you can use a cardboard box, lined up with wire to serve as a place to hang the branches from. In extreme dry weather if you don't have a regulated space keep a constant eye as it might dry very fast and ruin your product. If that is the case, you have to find a way to increase humidity somehow.

Your bud will be dried after a period of five to ten days depending on your environmental conditions. You will notice that the stems will bend but will not totally break. The bud will be dry but still have the juices that you need. Once you reach that point, it's time for the curing process which is nothing more than putting the buds into vases where you keep them for a minimum of 10 days. During those days, make sure you open up the vases at least once a day so as to let the bud breathe and to let the extra humidity escape.

And finally you get to the point where you enjoy your product. As you lay back and take a toke, you form a smile which you completely deserve.