The Final Stages Of the Flowering Stage for Cannabis Plants
As a cannabis plant develops, it will pass through several stages on its way to full maturity. Beginning as a seed, it will grow into a seedling after establishing roots and its first leaves. Then, it will begin growing foliage as it becomes more capable of absorbing nutrients and minerals directly through its roots. As it begins to reach its full size is where the plant will decide that it soon needs to reproduce. This is done by growing buds, which are the exact things that humans have learned to harvest from these plants, creating our weed. The flowering stage is where the plant uses all of the bud locations it’s grown during the foliage growth phase to start creating flowers. As a natural result of biochemical functions, the cannabis plant produces a chemical called tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, in the buds. However, this process only really happens in female plants. Male plants do have trace amounts of THC, but only enough that you would have to extract an entire plant to get an oil of any potency. In place of buds, males produce pollen sacs, which contain nearly no THC and only exist to pollinate female plants. Though when a female plant becomes pollinated, it will no longer grow its buds any larger as they’ve already contacted pollen, and it will instead begin growing only seeds inside its smaller buds. Thus, when female plants are beginning to fully mature and grow their large buds in an unpollinated state, humans can harvest them for natural psychoactive consumables.
How to Tell Your Plants Are In The Flowering Stage
As your plants begin to mature, even in the foliage growth stage, they’ll start growing areas for their buds to sprout once they begin the flowering phase. This happens on both males and females, so if you have males around, you’ll have to get especially familiar with what this looks like in order to prevent any accidental pollination from occurring. Luckily, there’s a specific spot that both males and females grow their reproductive parts in, called the bract. This is where the flower stems from in most plants, and they’re found in the same place on both females and males. In females, these will sprout buds, and in males, pollen sacs. You’ll be able to tell that your plants have entered the flowering stage when they slow their accelerated foliar growth and begin growing larger bracts. When the buds sprout and grow to their full size, you’ll be able to harvest them for the intended effects. If you’re growing photoperiod seeds, you will likely already be able to tell that they have begun flowering, because this type of variety requires you to dim their lighting to begin the flower stage. You can do this really any time you see fit, though there are certainly limits to this freedom. Start the flowering stage too early, and your yields will likely be reduced, as there’s less space for buds to form. Begin the budding stage too late, and you may experience reduced potency or put your outdoor plants in danger as the season begins to change before they can be harvested.
The Final Weeks and How To Help Your Plants Grow
Depending on what strain you purchase, your flowering period will likely be anywhere from about seven to twelve weeks. During this time, your plants will begin the flowering period, and at the end is where they will be ready for harvest. As you come up on the end of your flowering period, within about four weeks, you can start preparing to make your harvest. There’s some preparation work that can be done both on your part and the plant’s part to get larger yields and also make your harvesting much easier to carry out. In terms of your growing area, you will want to prepare a room to dry your cannabis in. Luckily the first part of harvesting is pretty easy, as all you’ll really have to do is chop your plants off their stalks and hang them upside down. You should choose a room that will stay dark and at about room temperature. Some light airflow can help, but too much airflow will dry out your buds. Often growers will hang their plants in dark red light, as this has been said to help develop the THC further for stronger potency. In terms of your plants, you should be making sure that they simply get as much light as possible. You should use a growing technique, like those such as the Sea of Green or Screen of Green methods, to train your plants and optimize their growing space for a larger yield.
Bloom Boosters
As a natural part of growing any plant, there are some additives that you can use to help them grow larger, faster and more potent. These range from things that you can spray on your plants regularly to soil amendments that will change the composition of your soil. Starting from the ground, one of the best ways to increase your yields and flower size is to provide your cannabis plants with good soil right from the beginning. You should choose an organic, high-quality soil, and preferably one that is meant specifically for growing marijuana. Should you only have the choice of potting mix, this will also do, though you should get some extra micronutrients for your plants. Check the NPK composition of your soil to understand how much of each extra nutrient you might need. When your plants are growing, there are several different ways you can nourish them for better and stronger buds. One of these is by fertilizing them using several different methods. You may use additives such as kelp meal, bone meal or guano. These are all natural and highly nutritious ingredients to help your plants get what they need. You can also nourish your plants by using a foliar spray, which does essentially the same thing but through delivering nutrients directly to leaves. This can certainly help foliage growth, though its efficiency has been disputed, as the roots are typically better at absorbing nutrients. This can particularly benefit larger plants which will take longer to move nutrients from the roots to the foliage.
Understanding Pot Size
Giving your plants pots of the right size will be one of the critical parts of your grow operation. There’s no need to worry though, as you can always repot your plants if you’ve decided your pots are too large or too small. You should aim for a pot that’s about two to five gallons, and you’ll want to try and balance the size of your growing area against how large of pots you can accommodate. Generally speaking, if your pots are at least three gallons large, this will be big enough for nearly any strain of cannabis plant. If you’re shooting for a huge grow, you’ll want to get pots at five gallons or larger. Unfortunately, cannabis plants all grow to a maximum size, so infinitely larger sizes will not give you infinitely more weed. If you get an absolutely massive pot, not only will your plants still only grow to a certain size, but it will likely be too heavy to move, so modesty is key. Should your pots be too small, there’s still time to correct your situation. Try to move them into larger pots as soon as possible, which can be done simply by taking out the whole root ball and planting it into the dirt in a larger pot. Try to do this as soon as possible though, as plants that grow too much in a small pot may become rootbound, which will likely cause their roots to break if you try to repot them.
Controlling Climate For Your Marijuana Plants
Your growing conditions will be the key thing to manage when your plants are in the middle of development. From the beginning, you’ll want to keep growing conditions at good levels to encourage strong growth right from the start. For seedlings, less light is more, as they won’t be able to absorb high levels of light with such small leaves. Additionally, high levels of light or heat may burn seedlings until they grow large enough to defend themselves from strong light or heat. Try to keep the room humid and warm, which will be good enough until the foliage growth phase. Here, you’ll want to crank the lighting up, but be sure to pay attention to when your plants are getting too much. Giving marijuana plants as much light as possible is a good thing, but when they begin to wilt or burn, reduce lighting as soon as you can. High humidity will be good for most strains, though many strains that are genetically predisposed to growing large buds may grow mold if the area is too humid. If this is the case, try to reduce humidity and provide some moderate airflow. For plants with smaller and thinner buds, humidity levels in excess of eighty percent will be great for their development. Cyclical airflow is always good for marijuana plants, and you should try to make sure it's coming from the outdoors. Not only will this provide plants with oxygen, which they certainly need, but it will also stop dust and strong odors from building up in the room.
Ventilation For Your Flowering Weed Plants
It may be easy to assume that since plants consume carbon dioxide and create oxygen, that they don’t need any oxygen. This isn’t entirely true, and plants that grow in an environment void of oxygen will actually begin to die. This is because oxygen cleanses parts of the plants called the stomata, which is where they intake carbon dioxide, water and nutrients. When the stomata get severely clogged, it can slow down development and even cause malnourishment to the plant. On top of this, plants don’t create oxygen all the time. When there’s no light available, the chemical process to turn carbon dioxide into sugar is replaced by a process where sugars are broken down into glucose for the plant’s growth. This is done by oxidizing the sugars, which requires the plant to consume oxygen through the stomata on its leaves. With this being said, plants actually do most of their growing during the nighttime than the daytime. This is why if you’re growing cannabis plants, especially indoors, ventilation will be an absolutely necessary condition for your growing environment. You should try to have cyclical airflow that comes from the outdoors. At least one path should be pumping in air, while the other ventilates the room, and they should preferably be some distance from each other. Fortunately, you don’t absolutely need to do this with ventilation systems. Simply having a window or two open inside your grow room or growing structure will be more than enough to keep the room properly ventilated.
The Final Two Weeks Of Flowering
The final two weeks of flowering before you’re ready to harvest will be the most important part. The good thing is that most of this is in the form of preparation, so as long as you’ve properly readied yourself for the harvest, it should be a smooth experience. You should make sure your growing room is ready to dry your plants. This is done by hanging them upside down in a room that’s preferably dark, temperate, somewhat humid and with a bit of airflow. Some expert growers swear by giving their plants a long night cycle before harvesting, which has been loosely shown to potentially improve potency and flavors. This can be done by simply switching your plants’ lights off for the last forty-eight hours before your harvesting day. When you’ve decided on a harvesting day, you’ll begin your harvest by chopping your plants whole, right from the bottom of the stalk. You can cut at about two inches above the soil, or just below the first stem, whichever comes first. Do this for every one of your plants, and if you’d like to take an additional step to simplify the situation, you can trim them. Some growers choose to hang plants whole, while others choose to cut them into smaller pieces to make better use of hanging space. Trimming the sugar leaves and the fan leaves off your plants will make them much easier to manage when the time comes to cut them up and cure them, which will be your final step in making fantastic weed.
