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If you haven’t been growing and consuming cannabis for years, it can be hard to know whether you have a healthy crop. Fortunately, there are some well-known methods for making sure your grow is up to standard, using your four senses. Whether you’re growing a home garden, or for consumer use, these five methods will help you determine if your weed is up to par.

Whether you’re growing a home garden, or for consumer use, these five methods will help you determine if your weed is up to par.

Look: Make sure your flower is hairy and full of crystals.
Start by checking your flowers. These trichomes are hairlike structures that grow off the surface of cannabis flowers. A majority of the cannabinoids are found in these structures, making them an essential part of the plant. Most importantly, trichomes contain most of the THC found in the marijuana plant, a key source for determining potency.

You want your flowers to have a plethora of white crystals and hair. Just be sure that you don’t confuse the crystals with mold spores.

You can use a hand loop with 30x magnification, or a more intense digital viewer. Whichever method you decide to use, it’s important to start checking the trichome production around week 6 bloom. This is when the flower is beginning its peak production. Come week 8/9 depending upon the strain you will notice a shift with three stages, from immature clear trichomes to cloudy balls of THC filled greatness, to amber resin sacs with maxed out potency. The key is to harvest when close to ¼ of trichomes are amber, with ¼ clear leaving the majority of crystals perfectly ripe.

Look for Colors: Is it vibrant and green, or dull and brown?
Cannabis can be a lot like money. When considering the color of your weed, you’ll note that good weed is a nice, rich green color or purple, as some genetic variety put off beautiful fall like colors. Can’t deny that desire!

What you don’t want is brown bud that’s dried out. Key indicators include the pistils or stigma hairs.

Just like trichomes above they follow a similar lifespan from white to brown, too brown and you’re too late, too white and you’re too early. If you’re purchasing or packaging be suspicious of un-uniform white spore clusters that could signal a mold infestation. Trichomes appear resinous and water like where powdery mildew gets its name from just that, its powdery appearance and web-like structure when looking at magnified.

Why is this important? The mold spores can travel easily through the air and contaminate other plants. In the right conditions, the fungus will quickly grow. This will put your entire grow room in danger.

Thus, check regularly for signs of mold and mildew, and remember PathogenZERO works great as both a growth enhancer and plant protector. If you spot a problem, be sure to use our product to address the issue before sacrificing your plants, or your entire garden.

Smell: Is it strong?
Use your sense of smell to detect how good your weed is because when it comes to this plant, the stronger the better. Scents you should recognize include a sweet, musty (but not damp), and slightly herby smell.

Some strains also carry a more citrus-like scent, to sweet berries or a pungent earthy note. If you’re growing different strains, notice the distinct smells. The different scent profiles are really good indicators of quality growing procedures.

Also, you want to let your plants grow and harvest well enough so that its characteristics and terpenes become prominent.

Worried about a crop problem? Think of it like food, if the scent is dull or bland, it’s likely no good.

Touch: Is it slightly sticky or dry?
Your grow should be slightly sticky with resin, the organic trichome containing substance found on marijuana. If it’s purely dry, consider it useless as THC degraded quite rapidly with the lack of a base moisture level.

Also, some strains of marijuana do grow more resinous than others and appear to have a white coating but be wary if it’s gray, brown, black fuzz, or spider-like (another indicator of mold).

Taste: Is it fresh?
Finally, there’s taste. For some, this is their favorite part. You’re looking for a sweet and flowery taste and not spicy (unless it’s a special, spicy strain). It should never taste harsh.

Another key indicator of quality grown medicine is the ash test, your smoke should burn with a white ash, if your pipe, blunt or joint ash is a very dark gray and almost black….. It contains nutrients.

Taste can also be strain-specific. For example, if you have a blueberry strain, it should have a blueberry taste, a Lemon Kush would taste of lemons, and grape ape, well you get the picture.

Always remember, a clean grow room is a dream grow room. Use these four senses regularly to test the quality of your crops. This will help you maintain a grow room that’s free from harmful pesticides and pathogens.