Details? What exactly are you checking with feel? Newer grower so always looking to learn. thx
Some part of me wonders if this might help explain the āhigh THC!ā cannabis available on the legal marketā¦ smells nice, tastes pretty good, almost zero high.
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Itās learned. They look right. They smell different. They start to fall over. You get a feel for it.
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Iām with beak on this one.
So resin heads swells and ruptures as it turns amber.
Resin might lose some potency since it is now exposed to more air but itās not going to be a total loss.
Also if the head is swelling that suggests the head is getting filled. More is better right?
My thought is harvest time is going to very based on plant and person. Resin heads and contents of heads change with age. Depending on what kind of buzz ones looking for.
The heads themselves are going to be on completely different development times depending one strain.
The final part is weight. Many ladies put significant weight on during theses final weeks. Weight-buzz-terp flavors it all seem very fluid during those final few weeks changing from person and there goals.
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I imagine the research was intended to inform commercial growersā¦ who are generally trying to produce high THC flower. They donāt usually do scientific studies to benefit the homegrower.
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Towards the end of flower, is the gland filling up and bursting, or is the glands outer membrane shrinking and tearing? Amber trichs always look slightly smaller to me. 
Second question: or is the ambering a result of oxidation of the bursting? What I mean is, does the ambering occur in a sealed trichome head, or only when thereās a breach, hence the oxidation/degradation?
I feel like Iāve seen some Mechoulam paper about this.
My mind is not a steel trap lol
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The study I linked does discuss this in the discussion section, Iāll summarize later itās really interesting.
IIRC The heads (glands) burst when the cuticle no longer has cellular integrity due to maturity, and this occurs not because of, but around the same time that they turn amber.
I do wonder if this is why or part of the reason that many growers and nutrient companies are pushing high calcium in late flower / āflushā ā¦ Greengene turned me onto this idea a few months back and I ignored it until now.
I owe you his a higher effort response tonight!!
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I wonder if a time lapse microscope video could capture the ālife cycleā of a patch of trichs? I donāt know but man I bet it would be great to watch.
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Iāll pull mine early sometime. For several reasons sometimes. Waiting is worth it. Like everyone says itās what you want.
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Yeah, itās evaporating. Think about leaving weed out of the jar, how after a minute it doesnāt smell or taste as good as weed thatās still in the jar. No, the resin didnāt blow away in the wind, but the volatile chemicals responsible for aroma and entourage effect inside that resin (e.x. terpenes) sure did.
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It makes sense (OP content)
I prefer over ripe to an 8 week harvest but am in a high RH environment(new to me) and bud density is the trade off for longer blooming times.
So for now itās basically 8+ weeks, whatever the plant can bear.
The CBD & CBN are essential for the relief I need, based on experience. Which seems to conflict with bud typically grown in the tropics. 
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This 
@breadwinner see (b) below
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(a) Fully developed head with intact cuticle. No secretion of resin or shrinkage of the cuticle has occurred. Arrow points to the ring of secretory disc cells.
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(b) Shrinking of the cuticle and shriveling of the head has occurred, likely due to resin secretion.
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(c-d) Rupture of the cuticle (arrow) shows the dense granular appearance that is the resinous material underneath.
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(e-f) Shrinkage and collapse of the cuticle on mature glandular heads. The secretion of resin causes an aggregation of underlying resinous material and the surface of the head appears convoluted and wrinkled (arrows).
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(g) Close-up of dried resinous material.
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(h-i) Dried convoluted appearance of glandular heads that are completely senescent
Per items (g, h) the resin dries. And so we can assume the terps have left the building for resin which has leaked/exuded from the heads and dried. I suspect this is why a dry plants in later flower put out a lot of odor; trichomes are busting and resin is drying.
Is this bad? Well I donāt know! So I ask who here harvests early to compare some notes! The study doesnāt make our preferences irrelevant.
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Great discussion @LD50!
The photos from the study above are compelling, but has anyone actually seen trichome heads that look like those pictures?
Most of us use a loupe or microphotography to inspect trichomes as they mature and the resolution is good enough to detect damage like that shown in the study so I think it would be noticed if this effect were common.
I have intentionally run late harvest plants into senescence as an experiment and according to this study I should have noticed lots of amber trich damaged in this way but I donāt recall ever seeing any.
The trichome damage Iāve noticed was heads knocked completely off their stalk from mechanical abrasion, touching or brushing against something. That didnāt seem to be related to maturity or disproportionate to amber coloration.
Rather than āWho Harvests Early,ā perhaps it should be āWho Harvests (really) Late?ā Does anyone have any personal pics of amber trichomes shriveled and burst?
Respectfully,
-Grouchy
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A bit different, from most.
I will yank out a plant from flower, that is simply sitting in the light, after all her buds are packed on and she is just waiting for me to see a few ambers in the eye loupe.
There is a 10 day to 2 + week window I can see now, when I pull her from the light, set her pot in another area, and let her dark finish. At this point, (IMHO) ripeness will happen, with or without light.
This allows me to bring more younger plants into the light, and not spend another 10 day to 2 weeks sucking up expensive light, it does not really need, as ripening will take place.
Just my way!!
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BANG ON!! What a great way to look at it!
I will soon, I harvested half of the Barneyās Farm LSD w/ clear trichs, and the rest will be taken with mostly amber. Iām also buying this microscope for the effort:
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@JoeCrowe may, dunno?
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I donāt care much about studies, since this is growing not math, we cannot expect the same results with different variables.
I have been a early harvester until last run, because I read that kind of info and I was hurrying to chop, and last run I did things well and it is another high, I prefer some 30pct ambar trics to harvest, you will get more out of each nug as compared if you harvest early.
This is it for me, you may like it different but while trics are changing from milky to ambar, the buds increase size too, not much but something is better than nothing.
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You better inform Utah State University to suspend their decadeās long research programsā¦ theyāve been under the assumption that the natural world is underpinned by mathematics.
Yield dilution!
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