Flowering Cannabis: Week by Week Guide!
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Treated well, looked after and well fed, cannabis plants will grow vigorously.
In fact, they grow so well that on a week by week basis, you can see clearly visible changes as time passes.
This continues once the plant begins to flower, and we thought it would be a good idea to run through the weekly stages of flowering for you.
Flowering usually begins once your plants begin to enjoy longer periods of uninterrupted darkness.
From here on in, your plants will begin to put all their energy into producing buds rather than growing.
Flowering should begin when you switch your lights to between 10 and 12 hours of darkness.
Obviously with so many different strains of cannabis, there will be some variations in the flowering period, but you can take all this information as a guide.
In general terms, the flowering period will last for between seven and nine weeks.
In weeks one through three of the initial flowering phase, your plant doesn’t stop growing and buds miraculously appear.
Instead, you may well witness your plant undergoing a growth spurt and some varieties will double in height in the three-week period.
Take note that while this is still recognized as the early stage of flowering, your plant or plants will need plenty of nutrients, so now is not the time to be stingy.
Come week two and you may notice the appearance of small white pistils on female plants. These fine white hairs will ultimately turn to buds. In a male plant, these hairs don’t appear, but instead the plant will produce pollen sacs.
By week three the growth spurt will begin to slow down and you may begin to see signs of your first buds. It’s like becoming a parent for the first time if you are a cannabis plant virgin.
Week four and all plant growth will have stopped, and while your buds will develop white hairs, they should become noticeably larger as well.
Week five will see your buds become thicker, while new buds may start growing along the plant’s cola. You should also notice an intense but pleasant odour coming from your plant or plants.
Weeks six through eight will see the build-up to harvesting.
This is a good time to consider ‘flushing’ your plant – eliminating the nutrients and providing only water.
The trichomes on your plant may start turning a milky white, and as your plant nears the perfect harvesting time, the thrichomes will turn an amber colour with an opaque clarity.
Once you r trichomes are the perfect colour, get harvesting, as it is at this particular point the THC levels in your plant will be at their maximum.
