To help plants get into the flowering stage, the amount of light hours must be reduced to less than 12. In these light hours the plant creates sugars through photosynthesis. During the dark hours, these sugars are used to create buds. The appearance of buds is one of the clearest signs of flowering.
The flowering stage occurs naturally when plants receive less than 12 hours of light a day. For cannabis to completely enter the flowering stage it requires periods of 10 to 12 hours of complete darkness.
The female pre-flower will look like a fuzzy female flower, but with only two white or pink fuzzy pistils growing from the node of the plant. It is best to wait to induce flowering to your plants before the pre-flowers appear and this will help eliminate the male plants from your crop before flowering.
At first, you'll see white fuzzy pistils/hairs at the joints where fan leaves meet the stem. These can appear in the vegetative stage for older plants or soon after 12/12. These are known as “pre-flowers” and are a hint of what's to come.
Week 7: The calyxes in the seven-week varieties swell to near bursting as THC is produced in the glands. At the end of the week they will be ready. The trichomes stand more erect and the caps swell with newly produced resin. At the end of the week the flowers reach the peak zone.
In week 5 of flowering, you can observe the buds all over your plant becoming thicker. You may also spot new buds growing in new places such as along the main cola. With buds abounding, your cannabis plants will get fatter every day. This is a surefire sign you are in full flowering mode.
Late flowering / Ripening stage – week 6 to harvest
They are sticky to the touch and can be very smelly. You are very close to reaching your goal = harvesting! Most importantly, buds are now covered in trichomes, which are rich glandules for secreting THC and other cannabinoids.
During week 2, the first white pistils will grow on the female cannabis plants. These fine, wispy white hairs develop at the locations where the big fan leaves meet the main stem. These white hairs are what later become the buds of the plant, called colas.
Clear trichomes indicate that the buds are not yet ripe, while milky or amber trichomes indicate that they are. An overabundance of amber trichomes can indicate that the buds are overripe.
The flowering stage is when your plants will produce buds and what we commonly refer to as “weed”. During the flowering stage, your plants should be ready to harvest after 8-12 weeks, depending on the strain.
Week One. Week one is the transition stage between pre-flowering and full flowering when your plant switches from growing tall to producing buds. During this transition, some strains will double in height from what they were a week earlier. Because of this rapid growth, week one is commonly known as “the stretch”.
The stages that plants go through are from seed to sprout, then through vegetative, budding, flowering, and ripening stages. Similarly, the nutritional needs of people and plants change as they grow.
Yes! During the night, late night to early morning you see new buds proliferating, at dawn or soon after they start to unfold. Daytime is the time for (most) plants to produce food by photosynthesis as that is when they get sunlight and the food/energy generated during the day is utilised at night in performing growth.
The answer is simple and lies in the biological makeup of the cannabis plant. Cannabis plants will flower when they receive more than 12 hours of continuous darkness.
Plants need at least 13 hours of light each day to stay in veg – a few 'long' nights may be enough to trigger budding. Plants begin budding when they get at least 12 hours of 'uninterrupted' darkness each night (12/12). This must continue until harvest.
Female preflowers look like a pair of white hairs (stigma) coming out from a green, round calyx. This structure is also known as “pistils”. Many of these small preflowers growing together will become the “buds” we all know, which contain the largest cannabinoids' concentration.
Bud structure
High quality, developed flower from a healthy plant has a sturdy, fully three-dimensional structure. The buds should be solid, with no gaps that you can look through. It's properly cured: not too soft, but not so dry that it grinds down to dust. Flower with poor structure will appear flimsy and flat.
At the absolute minimum, you should wait until 50% of the trichomes are cloudy and 50% of the hairs have changed color. Again — do not harvest if fewer than 50% of the trichomes have turned milky. And do not harvest if fewer than 50% of the pistils have turned brown/orange.
Never harvest your buds when most of the pistils are still white. This indicates your plants should be left to mature for a little longer. To ensure optimal THC levels, you should wait until at least 60-70 percent of your pistils have turned an amber color before you begin harvesting.
The last three weeks is when your buds can actually gain the most weight – that is if you feed them Overdrive®. After your peak bloom phase, your plants enter their late bloom phase (the precise timing and length of which depends on the strain of cannabis you're growing).
Week 3 – Buds begin to develop
Plants are still stretching at this point and are still quite flexible, so if you haven't done much sculpting yet, this is still a good opportunity to work on that flat canopy, which can increase your yields by as much as 40%.
Cannabis plants need water and nutrients to grow and develop big, healthy flowers. Drought, overwatering, and over/underfeeding can all affect your plant's ability to develop big, dense, and heavy flowers.
Usually, growers trim the fan leaves weeks before harvest, which is a period that leads to senescence, a phase in the plant cycle when the larger leaves start fading away. It is safe to start removing these dying leaves and continue until harvest.
There's a simple test to know if your buds are dry: Simply take a small branch and try to bend it. If it snaps, your buds are dry and you're ready to move on to the curing process. If they bend, your buds need a little longer to dry.
If you grow strains with an average flowering time, the majority of bud development will occur by the 6th week of bloom. In the last two weeks, the buds will mostly be ripening and not really growing much more in size. At this point, the previously white pistils on the buds will now slowly turn amber-brown.