Amsterdam Seeds

5: Payoff!

The flowering stage is by far the most exciting of all stages of growth. You will finally start to notice marijuana buds forming. The sweet smell of fresh marijuana will begin penetrating the air, and you will have some seriously nice looking plants. All your hard work is about to pay off, but don’t get too excited. Let your plants keep growing until their peak. Harvesting too soon can seriously reduce your potential yield. Be patient, and you can expect a great harvest.

 

As soon as you notice the plants showing sign of their sex, you will want to remove the males. If both sexes are allowed to grow to maturity, the males will pollenate the females and your weed will not be sinsemilla. To learn about determining the sex of your plants, see sexing plants.

The biggest change from the vegetative stage is the lighting. We want to increase the amount of red-spectrum lighting and we want more light in general. Attempt to maintain 3,000 lumens per square foot of growing space. If you were growing with fluorescents, you can keep any tubes out there. A lot of people like to use fluorescent tubes to provide side lighting for your tall plants. This is a good idea. You will want to replace most of your 6,500K CFL’s with 2,700K CFL’s. The 2,700K spectrum is usually called soft white.

 

You might also want to think about High Pressure Sodium bulbs. They sell standard socket HPS bulbs at hardware stores for about $20. It’s more expensive than other lighting, but you can produce a much greater light output. They also produce more heat, so keep them farther away from your plants, a foot or so should suffice. Direct contact is perfect fine with fluorescents, but proximity to HPS lighting will burn your plants.

 

The lights need to also be on for less time. The perfect flowering light cycle is 12 hours on, 12 hours off. Keep the same dawn time you used for the vegetative stage to reduce stress on the plants. This lighting cycle will let the plants know Fall has come, and for the Cannabis plant, Fall is the season of love.

Keep your watering the same. If you were using nutrients for vegetation (nitrogen-rich), stop them as the plants will need more phosphorous than nitrogen at this stage. Grow supply stores sell great nutrients for flowering. Almost anything with the word bloom in the name will work, but ask the sales staff for advice if you’re uncertain. Nutrients will usually be mixed in with the water at watering. Just like before, only water the plants when the top of the dirt has become dry and crusty. The plants are still very suceptible to over-watering.

 

Remember only to do any gardening while the lights are on. Lights on in the middle of their night-time periods is not good for the plants. The care you have to provide here is much the same as with the vegetative stage. Control any insects and keep your plants happy. Pay attention to their needs. You might want to trim some of the larger leaves to allow light to penetrate to the lower levels, but this is not absolutely necessary.

 

When you start to notice a snowy haze forming on your buds, it’s time to consider harvesting your marijuana. Below are several pics of healthy marijuana plants during the flowering stage.

  
  

 

4: Sexing your marijuana plants

If you bought feminized seeds, you don’t need to do this!

Your plants will usually begin to show signs of their sex before flowering, but the signs are quite subtle. You will most likely have the best luck and make the least mistakes by waiting until the plants have been flowering for a little bit. If you don’t see signs of sex yet, you can start the flowering stage.

This page includes both botanical drawings and photographs of males and females so that you can differentiate between males and females as easily as possible. The differences can most easily be examined by using a magnifying glass. You want to look at the nodes, where the branches meet the main stem.

The preflowers of the male and female are quite distinctive. The male preflower consists of short rounded structures, whereas the female preflower consists of long hairs. Look for these features. The images on this page should help you identify the sex of your plants.

The pictures below are botanical drawling of the differentiation process (left), a male plant (middle), and a female plant (right).

  The pictures below are photographs of a male plant (left) and a female plant (right) with the points of interest highlighted.

 

Once you’ve determined the sex of your plants, you should remove your males to allow the females to grow sensimilla. This will certainly be a sad time for you as the boys you raised so caringly now must go off to their deaths, but this is the price of good marijuana. Give them an honorable funeral and if you haven’t already, it might be time to start the flowering stage.

3: Vegetative phase

Your plants are now ready to grow!

Now that your plants have sprouted, it’s time to watch them grow. You want your plants to grow up big and strong before you transition them to the flowering stage where they will actually be producing the buds. This stage which will last 4-6 weeks and in general, the longer you wait, the bigger the plant, and the higher the yield. Please note that there is a point of diminishing returns at which waiting any longer will actually reduce yield, but 4-6 weeks is perfect.

As your plants get bigger and bigger, they will begin branching off into several leaf branches. You may begin to notice rudimentary sex organs showing up at the nodes, but in general you will not be able to sex your plants until you move to the next stage.

Once your plants start hanging over the edges of the cups significantly, it might be time to move them to larger pots. I would recommend using 5 gallon pots as these will be able to support the plants throughout their entire lives. To transplant them, simply fill one of your new pots with soil and dig a small hole to fit the plant. Take a utility knife and cut 4 large slits all the way up the sides of your solo cups. The soil should come out together very nicely. Then, simply place the plant into its final home and fill in the empty spaces with loose soil. Be careful when transplanting as this can be a fairly stressful time for the plants.

Throughout this stage, you should be using mostly lights in the blue spectrum range. Look for daylight bulbs and if the package displays color temperature, you want 6,500K. The lights should be on for 18 hours and off for 6. Pick a sun-up for when the lights should turn on and keep this the same throughout the entire plant’s life. We will only ever be adjusting the sun-down time. Try to keep the plants in complete darkness when the lights are off as light leaks can increase the propencity of hermaphrodism (having both male and female parts).

If you are using CFLs or fluorescent tubes, you should place the lights within a couple inches of the tops of the plants. They can even be touching the plants as these lights do not produce much heat, but 2-3 inches away is ideal. If your lights are too far away, it might cause your plants to stretch. Since you are growing indoors, you want to control height as best as possible and for the best yield you want bulky strong plants, not tall lanky ones.

Keep a thermometer in the room and monitor the temperature. While the lights are on, the temperature should be between 70-85 degrees Farenheit. During lights-off, the temperature can drop a little. A humidity detctor can be useful as well. Try to keep the humidity between 40-60%, though this is harder to control. Both of these devices can be purchased at grow supply stores, hardware stores and even Walmart.

If you used potting soil with nutrients already included, you will not need to use any nutrients at this stage. A lot of newbies overfertilize and can end up damaging the plant. Be careful if you are using nutrients and follow the directions that come with the product.

Your primary responsibility to your plants at this stage of life is to water them and provide them with light. Do not overwater your plants! Only water plants when the top of the soil is dry and crusty. Plants can handle periods of drought much better than torrential floods. Waterings will end up taking place once or at most twice a week. Look for drooping leaves as this can be a sign of overwatering.

Your plants will tell you how they feel by the way their leaves look. In general, any deviations from strong green leaves is a sign that something might be wrong. There are many things that can cause these deviations. This guide summarizes many of the issues plants can face and what causes them.

You will also need to protect your plants from any invading critters that want to snag a bite of your plants. In general, you’ll want to remove any bugs you see the moment you see them. The only exception is carnivorous bugs which will actually help control the population of other bugs in the garden. Good bugs are spiders and lady bugs. If you find you have an infestation of small plant-eating bugs adding some lady bugs is a nice organic alternative to insecticides, though if it comes down to it, insecticide is sold at your local grow supply store.

Once your plant is about half as tall as you would like it to be, at least around 18″ and has 4-6 main leaf branches, you can begin the flowering stage. At this point in time, plants may begin showing signs of their sex. To learn how to determine sex, visit he sexing plants page. Below are several pictures of healthy plants during the vegetative stage.