How do I know if my outdoor Cannabis is flowering?
There's really no mistaking a fully flowering weed plant from a vegetating weed plant. Your pretty cannabis girls are beginning to smell. They're getting a lot of sticky resin on the buds growing all along their branches. Plant energy is focused now on bud production instead of leaf and branch expansion. Remember how small your plants were just two months ago? If you have any pictures of them when they were young go back and look at them because the rate that weed grows is really astonishing. You're about halfway to the finish line now, and while the flowering phase of cannabis is more challenging than the vegging phase, it's also more fun because you get to see your marijuana growing on the branch. It's like growing corn that you can smoke!
Ok so my Cannabis is flowering. What should I expect?
Your plant will continue growing buds all along the branch. When these individual buds grow into a large group they're called colas and they will lengthen and thicken, with the biggest colas being located at the ends of each branch. Ultimately, your cannabis will reach a peak ripeness at which point you will harvest your outdoor cannabis.
How do I take good care of my flowering Cannabis plant?
A flowering cannabis plant needs to be treated with more care than a vegging plant. All of your pruning should be done now because cuts to your plant now take on added significance: if your flowering plant thinks it's dying prematurely due to heavy pruning it can potentially become a hermaphrodite and pollinate itself, drastically lowering the potency of your buds. Budworms now become a very real threat and daily inspections plus weekly spraying is required to keep them away. Humid or rainy days can allow bud rot (botrytis) to grow on your buds, and windy days can break the heavy, bud-laden branches off your plant.
Can you make a Cannabis Flowering guide for me to follow?
My job is to get you to the end of your first grow with homegrown outdoor cannabis for smoking, and if it takes another guide to do it then dammit, I'm making you a guide for flowering cannabis!
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How to Care for your Flowering Cannabis
- Stake your plants if you haven't already. Remember that the rounded end of the stake goes in the soil.
- Perform daily inspections for insect eggs and damage. Spray your plants regularly for pests.
- Don't spray anything on your flowers on humid days. Humidity creates an ideal environment for botrytis to grow in flowering cannabis. Adding more water to your leaves and flowers makes it more likely for botrytis to gain a foothold.
- Your large fan leaves will begin to yellow and fall off. This is normal.
- Prevent Bud Rot
- Inspect your Cannabis for signs of Bud Rot (botrytis) weekly
- Be gentle. You don't want any spores to become airborne and infect a different part of your plant.
- Gently cut the affected bud off and remove it from your grow location. Place it in a bag, close the bag and trash it.
- Clean your hands and trimmers with alcohol.
- Reinspect the cut location on the plant to make sure you've removed all the bud rot. Remove anything in that area that looks suspicious...better to be safe than sorry with bud rot.
- Look for signs of Budworm / Caterpillar damage to your Cannabis each day
- Support your branches to prevent breaking off
Ok Ron I have a handle on this and my pot plants are doing great. Please tell me when to harvest my cannabis plants!
Once September comes rolling around you should begin reading my section on when to harvest your outdoor cannabis. You'll still have a couple weeks minimum before your actual harvest occurs, but the actual time you harvest your outdoor cannabis will be based on many different indicators. You'll primarily look at the trichromes under a loupe to determine when to harvest your plants, but you also need to look at the swelling in your buds, the color and behavior of the bud hairs, and the overall plant appearance. If you have the time, grab some tea and head on over to the Harvesting Cannabis page now. See you there mang!