Indoor and outdoor harvesting are basically the same thing except you have to bring your harvest inside if growing outdoors. If the plants are on private land where you can just pull them out of the ground and bring them in your house then you shouldn’t have any trouble.
Guerrilla farmers, however, will probably have to hike in to retrieve their plants and then hike back out unnoticed. Of course, this is generally not that easy to do and may require the help of a friend, depending on the size of the plants and the overall size of the crop.
Security
If at all possible, try doing this during the night or in the early morning to avoid any chance of people seeing you. Even if you conceal the plants in bags, any onlookers will reach some obvious conclusions.
In any event, taking a few leaves and shoots before the actual harvest time is one of the more prudent decisions you can make. This essentially ensures that you’ll at least get something for all your efforts if your plants get stolen or noticed by law enforcement. For indoor growers, it’s always good to sample a little bit of the smoke beforehand. The leaves and shoots during vegetative growth will actually be rather potent and will already provide you with a good smoke
1. Harvest time
The right time to harvest the plants won’t always be apparent. You don’t want to harvest too early, and you certainly don’t want to harvest too late. In either case, the THC and other cannabinoids on the plant won’t be nearly as concentrated as you might like.
Obviously, if you want sinsemilla buds, the male plants must be harvested early so they don’t pollinate the female flowers. If you remove male flowers early, you won’t really be losing that much in terms of potency or yield. For the most part, male plants don’t produce the highest quality smoke anyway. Still,
if you want to avoid pollination, you should get them out as soon as you determine the sex.
2. Pollination
If you do want to pollinate your female seeds, then you should just leave the males in the soil so that they can flower and produce pollen. This will keep you from having to pluck out the males prematurely, and it will also ensure that you will have seeds for next year’s crop. When it comes to pollinated female plants, you won’t want to pull them before the seeds have had enough time to mature.
Many growers start to notice the telltale signs of high THC production and increased flower and bud growth, and they might think it’s a good idea to pull out their female plants.
But, if you pull the plants out too early, the seeds might just be inactive and won’t germinate next season. You can investigate the seeds by opening up their sheaths or bracts and seeing if they have achieved the marbling brown color associated with maturity.
Sinsemilla
Of course, sinsemilla plants don’t have to rely on seed maturation for them to be viable for harvesting. But in general, these plants have a longer flowering period. In fact, they might bloom for 4 to 5 weeks with new growth happening almost instantaneously.
The new growth will be sort of a boon to your overall yield, but you should wait until there is a noticeable decline in flower production. This will generally happen in the fourth or fifth week of blooming. When you notice the decline, don’t start to harvest immediately.
Wait about a week after the decline starts before you start harvesting sinsemilla plants. This is when the THC will be at its highest, and the smoke will be the most potent.
If you allow the plants to grow more after this point, they might slowly get a bit larger and produce a few extra buds, but the THC won’t be as potent because it will have started to degrade.
