Harvest in Sections?

[gman420]

Working on my first grow and nearing harvest but I have a few questions. I have an auto Amnesia that has some nice buds on it that are filling out at the top but there are also more buds at the bottom that are not so big and still have quite a few white pistols and look like they could use more time. So if I begin to harvest in sections and allow the bottom buds to get more light what happens if I run out of time? I live in the Northeast US and the temps are getting cooler at night. I am not set up for an indoor grow at this point (have everything but the lights really). If I run out of time can I use them buds for something else such as butter or make into gummies or something?

[ChadWestport]

Sure, why not? As long as they don't get mold, even if they don't fully develop you can always do something fun with them.

If your plants are in pots, you can wrap the pots with material that helps hold in heat, this will please the roots. There are also other methods / products for helping plants get through cold snaps. Just look to the horticulture industry, they do it every year and created some pretty cool solutions.

[BR2K]

Take this with a grain of salt, I've only done one auto grow. My preception is that autos don't have a lot of time on this Erth. I kins of doubt the "Larf" buds will ripen appreciably, even if you give them more light.

[ChadWestport]

Plants will keep growing as long as the have the proper light, nutrition and space for their roots. You do however only ever get one onset of flowering, so it is limited in that aspect. But once those buds are growing, you can grow them well past maturity. This is an assumption of an auto flower based on my experience with photoperiods. I had some get pollinated in week 4 when it is a 7-8 week strain. The seeds take 6-8 weeks to mature, so I let those plants go another 8 weeks, 33% longer than it's intended harvest date and they were fine. They weren't putting on new bud mass but the energy there was focused on seed production. I've also seen it in other cases.

[dphipps1020]

You definitely can do a partial harvest on a single plant to let the rest mature and fatten more. From what I've seen, a lot of people do that. I've done it quite a bit myself. If you're in the harvest window with the top half and don't want to wait, I say go for it! Or, another suggestion that hasn't been said yet, but I know someone is thinking... Cut off a branch at a time, separating them by a day or 2 each time so you can judge the high for yourself and see how far along you prefer them to be. Remember though, you're not really looking at pistils for maturity, you're going to be looking at the trichomes. The pistils just kind of give you a visual of when to really start paying attention to them, IMO. If the lower and middle trichomes are milky, I usually just chop it all right then regardless. Whatever is really small usually goes in my trim container for edibles or BHO mostly.

[gman420]

Thanks everybody for your input, very helpful and a relief knowing that if I run out of time I can still use the lower portion for something and it won't be lost. Thanks again.

[Rwise]

Heres 2 plants I just done, and another in the third pic, look to the left of the big girl, she is growing out nicely, these are photos.