In our last article, we explained that it’s going to take you a minimum of four months to go from seed to harvest. That’s how long it’s going to take you to grow some weed indoors.
Is that not quick enough for you? If you try to grow outdoors, you first have to wait until late spring to even plant your seeds. So when you factor in that you have a very limited window you have, growing indoors offers the adventure of multiple harvest cycles per year.
Why does it take so long to grow weed indoors?
It doesn’t really take that long once you understand the big picture. And once you understand how to have multiple grow rooms (or tents) going on at the same time, you will realize you can literally be harvesting every week if you wanted.
But let’s break it down, exactly why it takes as long as it does to grow a cannabis plant indoors.
How long does it take to grow a cannabis plant?
Growing indoors involves manipulating the light cycles – as well as the temperature and humidity – to mimic out door seasons.
Cannabis has different stages of growth, and you must get through each stage indoors by switching light cycles.
The stages are:
- Seedling/Clone
- Vegetative
- Flowering
Each of these stages requires a minimum amount of time to for the plant to flourish and develop.
How long is each stage of cannabis growth?
There is the Seedling stage, (about 2 weeks), and this is where the seed sprouts a tail, it continues to grow up above the soil. Growing seeds are great for introducing new strains, but most indoor growers start from clone.
It will take a clone at least a week to grow roots and become firmly rooted. We like to give one about 2 weeks. So we consider two weeks to be the amount of time for the seedling or clone stage.
Regarding the Vegetative Stage (4 to 8 weeks), we wrote an entire article explaining you will need a minimum of four weeks allotted.
There are also reasons for why you may want an 8-week or longer veg cycle. This amount of time allows you to top, train, and prune the plant prior to flipping. It gives sufficient time to not only accomplish these tasks but also to allow your plant to recover in between them.
The Flowering Stage (8 to 10 weeks) requires 12/12 lighting and typically around 60 days to reach peak maturity, although this will depend on the strain.
But don’t forget you still have to dry your weed. The Drying Phase (1-2 weeks) is absolutely critical to getting top shelf herb to smoke.