HELP! Impact of TX Winter Storm power outage on crop...

[Malkavian420]

Hey all,
so I am in ATX and was impacted by the winter storm that struck here in mid February, and growing using Hydroponics.
At the time, my crop had been two weeks since switching to the bloom phase when we lost power for 5 days. I wasn't too worried cos, well they had started the bloom so I was not worried about the plants accidentally being forced to transition.
During the outage (no power, meant no heat as the HVAC/Furnace had shut down) I managed to keep the grow-room at least above 40F during the period so the plants did not freeze (you can tell where my priorities were during the blackout), but they were in darkness for the whole period so no growth happening. It also meant that the air-pumps keeping the Hydro reservoir oxygenated stopped for the 5 days.
Once power was restored, the plants looked fine, the leaves were drooping, but within 2 days they were back to healthy, so I thought that everything was OK.

I'm now 1 or 2 weeks from the expected harvest - the question is, what impact would those 5 days of outage and cold (but not freezing) temperatures have on when the plants should be harvested?
One of the plants definitely "foxtailed" forming small bud clumps on the elongated stems, while the others have formed normal big coala's, but the trichomes just don't look as mature as I would expect at this stage.

Any advice?
Should I harvest on schedule, or add an extra week or two before harvest? While I can look at the trichomes thru a microscope, I don't want to risk them going over-ripe (I have a variety of Hazes and we want to harvest to get the best "wow - look at the pretty lights" head high we get from the Haze family).
My concern is that if I was on the expected schedule, now will be the time that I would have to flush the reservoir and filled with just water for the final week of ripening, but if they are not ready I would be depriving the plants of nutrients when they are still fattening up and could have a detrimental effect on the crop quality...

Anyone else in a similar situation?

Thanks in advance

 

[TheKieftan]

Honestly darkness for plants is nothing 5 days is lengthy but not detrimental the cold could of definitely messed things up though if I remember hazes are one of those strains that love the heat and that means they hate cold the question is how are the trichs and pistils looking a close up pic of your buds would help everyone answer your question better

ps just re read your post I’m a bit of a scimmer the fact that trichs are what you smoke weed for makes them the highest priority for determining ripeness if they don’t look ripe then you should hold off harvesting

 

[YYCannabis]

Plants have their own schedule. Your arbitrary date of when you were going to harvest, is, well, arbitrary.

You answered your own questions in your post. You have a microscope to look at the trichs...so keep monitoring the trichs until they are at a point you are wanting (milky/amber ratio). They are what’s telling you it’s time to harvest, not the arbitrary schedule you forced upon her.

As for the cold issues...hopefully just a rez change was all that was needed. I don’t know the lineage of those strains, but sounds like they might be from mountain grown land races and tolerated the chilly temps without harm. Since they were in the dark, i would think that the roots were quite dormant after the first 24hrs. The colder res temps and the darkness might have kept the water from getting too low on oxygen since their was not much photosynthesis happening.

Keep us posted on how it progresses 👍 We all love happy endings here on GWE.