If you just started growing, you may be wondering if you are “doing it right.” With no prior experiences, you don’t know if you are on track or if things are off. Even if you have a few runs under your belt, you may want to see how plants in other gardens track through the flowering period.
This web log will follow a set of cannabis plants in a commercial facility from Week 1 through Week 8. We have used video and images to document the changes that occur every week.
The purpose of this article is capture and log the changes that occur, so you know what to expect, what to look for, and how to determine if your plants are staying on schedule.
You may have questions, like:
- What week of 12/12 lighting do plants start to flower?
- How much do plants stretch in flower?
- How big are my buds after Week 5?
- How do I know my plants are ready to harvest?
- How much bud does each plant yield?
This series will not only answer those questions, but we will show you, so that you can see a visual representation of what we are talking about. If you just started growing
Review our blog series on Growing Cannabis Indoors
If you are just getting started and would like more reading material, check out our series on Growing Cannabis Indoors, where we cover starting from seeds versus clones, how to top and train during veg, and the basics of flowering period.
However, as a first time grower, it can still be hard to know if you are on track. You may be wondering if your plants are growing fast enough, or how to manage them as they go through the various stages of growth during the 12/12 light cycle.
Tracking the progress of your Cannabis plants, Week by Week, during the flowering period
In this series, we will actually track the progress of these plants every single week of flower. With video documentation, you will see how these plants progress so that you will know what to expect with your own plants.
We have documented with video every week of the flower period for two popular strains. In this article, we chose to focus on two of our favorite strains to grow: Apple Tartz and our Platinum Silk.
We not only document the plants every week of the flowering stage in video form, but we also track temperature, humidity, light density, and you will be able to see how these environmental conditions are controlled, as well as manipulated, over the course of the eight week flower cycle.
Below are links to the videos and photos for each week of the flowering stage.
Flowering Cannabis, Week by Week, with Pictures and Video
For this project, we took our plants out of the veg room and flipped them into the flower room on Wednesday, February 2nd (Day 1). Our first video was recorded on Friday, February 4th, which would have been Day 3 under a 12/12 light cycle.
Our Grow Room Set-up: Lights, Medium, and Nutrients
We shot this series in Room “B” of our facility, which is equipped with Phantom 1,000 watt, double-ended HPS lights.
Our plants are grown in Growers Soil, which is the best coco-coir brand we have ever used. It is a pure coco blend, with only perlite added. It is sustainable and eco friendly, and we love it.
For nutrients, we use Front Row Ag, part A and B.
Without further ado, let’s dive into this series.
These plants are three days into flower. You can see they are still very immature, but you can already see some growth.
You can see the stretch and the growth on the inside. What you will notice is that we have now begun tucking the vine under and through the trellis during this growth spurt after the first week.
We are beginning to see bud sites develop “pre-flowers,” the beginnings of what will become the buds.
This video is the longest, because there is the most to discuss at this stage. This phase is where the plants are finishing their vegetative growth, and the nodes begin further developing into buds. In addition, you can see the white pistols. It is at this stage you will want to get your canopy management under control before it’s too late.
Now we are starting to recognize these as flowering plants. The bud sites are much more developed, big, thick pistols. And the stalks have completely firmed up.
The plants begin to express a touch of color and the colas are gaining real weight. This is where you start to feel like you are deep in flower.
Much more color expression. Now you can see what we’ve been waiting for this whole time. At this point, it is time to start tapering down the temperature and humidity.
Now you get to see maximal color expression of the plants. The plants have also put on even more size to the buds and colas. The end is near.
We have made it to the finish line. The trichome development is peaking and the milky tone is filling in the once transparent trichomes. Time to get ready to harvest!
Harvest Time
In our long-form guide, Harvesting Your Cannabis from Start to Finish, we cover everything you need to know. Learn about the technical aspects of harvesting, from chopping down your plants to how to properly dry, cure, and trim your buds.
Want more information on Indoor Cannabis Cultivation?
Check out our articles from our blog:
- How to keep and maintain a Mother Plant
- Transition your Plant from Veg to Flower
- Pheno hunting, Part 1: Why seeds produce different plants
- Pheno Hunting, Part 2: Phenotyping, Hunting, and Selection
Subscribe to Our Newsletter for more Grow Tips
We hope this article was helpful to you in your cultivation journey. If you’d like to stay up to date with us at Smokey Okies, we highly recommend you sign up for our newsletter, the Smoke Signal. It goes out once a month, and it contains grow tips as well as strain reviews and videos.