Growing your own weed is Hard (with a capital H). The good news? We’re here to help. We’ve written this guide to help you identify how your plants are growing through each of the main weed plant stages.
Weed plants go through six different growing stages. These include: germination, seedling, vegetative, pre-flowering, flowering, and harvesting. For a plant to thrive, knowing these stages is imperative.
Here’s our breakdown of each plant growth stages to help you achieve higher yields.
What Are The 6 Stages Of A Cannabis Plant?
Taking care of your baby plants to adulthood takes constant attention and an understanding of each of the different plant stages.
- Germination Stage: These are your babies. At this point, they need a little coaxing to get them to grow. The seeds are ready when they are light or dark brown and hard to the touch. Place them in a wet paper towel and store in a dark place to begin the germination process. Lastly, choose quality marijuana seeds to grow the healthiest plants possible.
- Seedling Stage: This is the stage your seeds will go from baby to toddler. It’s a surefire sign when they sprout into cannabis leaves and have 3 to 7 blades per leaf, we are now officially in the seedling stage. When the plant accomplishes this process, the plant is no longer a baby seedling and are now a toddler.
- Vegetative Stage: If you made it this far, then your babies are halfway across the finish line! The vegetative stage is when the plant grows large enough past the seedling stage that it needs a ratio of light and dark. It needs about 18 hours of full light and 6 hours in darkness. To identify when you’re fully in the vegetation stage is about when your first few leaves are fully developed and actually starts to look like your typical attractive marijuana plant. In this stage, your plant will only grow stems and leaves while growing taller. The longer you leave your plant in the vegetative stage, the higher of a yield you can eventually harvest.
- Pre-Flowering: Now, this is where the real fun comes in! This stage lasts for roughly 7 to 14 days. At this point, you can clearly identify the sex of the flower by looking at the nodes. Desirable female plants will have pairs of white hairs popping out of a cup-shaped pistil. While the undesirable males will have little balls that look like a bundle of small grapes. At this point, you can either extend the vegetative stage a wee bit or you can change the light cycle to 12 hours of light and 12 of darkness schedule (12/12). This 12/12 light cycle will signal your plant that it’s time to start producing our desirable swollen crystalline buds.
- Flowering Stage: The flowering stage is the most exciting part of the game! This stage occurs when the plant receives less than 12 hours of light per day. After you’ve identified your female plants and removed your male plants, you can make the final adjustment to your lighting to a 12/12 light cycle. This lighting will begin to signal to your plants that it’s time to start making marijuana.
- Harvesting stage: To determine if your plants are ready to harvest, you’ll need to look at the pistils and trichomes. If most of the pistils are curled with orange and brown coloring, then it’s a good indicator they are ready for harvest. The trichomes must also be ripened and change slightly in color. Early in the flowering stage, you’ll notice the plant’s trichomes are more of a crystal clear see through white color. The “harvest now” signal you need to look for boils down to the trichomes transforming color from its translucent white into a milky reddish amber color. Individual preference will help you determine when to harvest. Harvesting while the trichomes are still white offers a more head stimulating high, while the more milky amber-colored trichomes will offer more couch locking sedative effects.
If you’d rather talk to a professional about growing through these stages, reach out here for a consultation.
When Is The Right Time To Grow Weed Plants?
For growing outdoors, the best time to start planting is between February and March (location-dependent).
However, you can grow successfully year-round indoors!
How Long Does It Take To Grow Weed Plants?
It takes about 4 to 8 months to grow weed plants depending on your approach.
During these months, it’s best to keep one eye on those baby weed plants, 24/7!
Ok… So that might be a bit of an overstatement… But they will grow best if you pay attention to the growth stages and give your plants what they need at the right times.
Whether you’re growing indoors or outdoors will also factor into the plant growth times.
You can successfully grow plants in any environment as long as you continue to feed them water, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.
How Long Can A Weed Plant Survive?
Outdoors, plants can survive for one season and eventually die off. Wild plants that are growing and ripe for one season will eventually drop seeds signaling their death.
Each seed that falls will bring about new plants the following season.
How To Get Started?
Whether you want to dabble in growing for the first time, or are looking to become more experienced, you can start growing indoors at any time.
If you’re looking to grow outdoors, then you may need to wait until the right time of year to get started.
Whatever you choose, start optimizing your weed yields with us today to make sure you have successful growth cycles!