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Marijuana Flowering Stage

What happens during the flowering stage of marijuana

This is the stage where the flowers (buds) begin to grow, you can activate this stage by reducing the amount of light the plans get each day.

Lets explain further.

After the vegetative stage, cannabis will enter the flowering phase. This is the end result of growing weed plants, what most growers aim for. When your marijuana plants enter this stage, your marijuana plant will begin developing flowers that can be harvested to create smokeable buds or other uses.

If you grow weed, you’ll know that you need to give your plant sufficient amounts of lighting for it to grow well. Usually, 18 hours of pure lighting is sufficient but some go all out and give their plants 24 hours of lighting indoors. This isn’t a bad thing, but to us, its a bit of a waste.

We believe 18 hours of lighting is more than enough, more will just be too much. We don’t know the science to it, but from reading about what other growers have to say, its not something that is efficient. So keep your lighting adequate for your grow. Don’t go too much and don’t go too little.

To make your plant bud, reduce the lighting to 12 hours on, and 12 hours off. This will induce flowers to begin forming.

Outdoors, you don’t need to worry too much about how to induce cannabis to start flowering. After the plant notices the day and night cycle starting to change, it will too. So essentially, the days will be shorter and the darkness will onset sooner. When the days shorten, the buds will start forming. Shorter daylight hours signal to the plant that its time to produce flowers or buds.

If your growing inside or indoors, you can activate the flowering process by simply changing the light output of your setup. Switch your lights to 12 hours light to 12 hours darkness. If you can make sure the lighting switches to this, it will trigger budding in your plants.

Most plants will flower or bud for 8 – 12 weeks, in this time, make sure to provide enough lighting and nutrients to support the budding phase of your cannabis plant.

You must be careful when your plants are budding. They require different nutrients, different lighting and generally more care. You don’t want to go too overboard with your feeding or watering.

Autoflower cannabis strains don’t need you to change the amount of light you need to give. Autoflowers will produce flowers in 3 months nonetheless of anyones input.

At the flowering stage, one month in, your marijuana plants will begin to bud. In this period, don’t be surprised to see your plant grow dramatically fast. At this period, your plants may get too overwhelmed with overexposure to high output lighting. Keep a watch on your plants to make sure things are in order.

Flowering Stages

Week 1 – Stretching phase.

Within the first week of the flowering stage, the plant will be rapidly growing upwards as well as more leaves and stems to hold the buds when they grow in.

Week 2 – white pistils.

Throughout the second week of the flowering stage, you will notice little white hairs growing from the centre of the plant, these grow into the buds. During this time your plant will need extra nutrients to fuel this extra growth, slowly increase the levels of Potassium and phosphorus and ease off the Nitrogen but be sure not to adjust levels too quickly as this will stress the plant and could kill it.

Week 3 – Budding stage

During the third week of the flowering process, you will start to see buds forming in place of those fine white hairs. This is a good time to keep an eye on the colour of the leaves, they are a good indicator of the plants health, discolouration of the leaves at the very bottom of the plant is normal, this comes from receiving less light, if you have discolouration on the leaves on the rest of the plant then you will need to check your nutrient levels and adjust accordingly, this is known as nutrient burn and is caused by overfeeding

Week 4 – Budding more.

By this time your plant will have stopped growing upwards and will now grow outwards as the buds continue to grow larger, this is when your plant will begin to get its odor. Keep the plant well-watered and stress-free as possible during this time.

Week 5 – Budding continues.

Your plant should be looking nice and thick by this time with the buds getting bigger and bigger by the day, you will also smell the difference with the smell getting a lot more pungent by this time.

Week 6-8 – Penultimate Stage.

Also known as the late flowering stage, this is where your buds begin to ripen (some strains may already be ripe). During this stage is when you will begin flushing out the plant, you do this by stopping or reducing the nutrients you give the plant. Flushing is done by watering the plant with pH balanced water and will get rid of and chemical flavour.

Week 8+ – Grand finale

This is when the plant is ready to harvest, if you are unsure if your plant is ready to harvest, take a look at the fine hairs on the buds, if they have begun to turn a brown or ginger colour then it’s time for harvesting.