Flowering Stage

The flowering stage is the one that all cultivators have been waiting for. It is when your cannabis plants put all of their effort into growing large, lush resin covered buds.

In nature/the outdoors, this is triggered towards the end of Summer/early Autumn (with the exception of the autoflowering ruderalis). The decreasing amount of light each day signals to the cannabis plants that their lives are coming to an end; in response they trigger their reproduction cycles in order to ensure their species preservation.

During the flowering period of your cannabis plants' lives the females will start creating buds, in hopes that they will receive pollen to create seeds. This pollen is produced by male cannabis plants during the flowering stage. You will want to make sure you prevent this from happening, (unless you want seeds over marijuana), by moving the males to another room/area. This will cause the females to grow even larger buds as they strive to attract pollen.

You will also notice that whist in this stage your plants will exhibit a lot of branch and leaf growth, causing your cannabis to become more Christmas tree shaped. This is for two reasons, firstly to support more potential flowers and secondly to increase leaf surface area, so that the plants can obtain as much light as possible – gaining as much energy as possible to focus into the buds.

Growing indoors gives you a lot of control over this stage as it is a completely artificial setting. When you are ready for you marijuana to enter the flowering stage you can change your photoperiod to simulate the change of seasons. For example, lets say you are running your grow room on an 18/6 photoperiod; by changing to 12/12 you are effectively telling your plant that it is time to start thinking about reproduction.

Light during flowering

As mentioned, during the flowering stage of your cannabis plants' life cycle you should be exposing them to 12 hours of light followed by 12 hours of darkness. This is the required light cycle to induce and maintain flowering.

Ideally you want to be using a HID light with a bulb that falls into the orange/red color band. This is the color band that can help promote healthy flowering, (see our article on color bands for more info). Using a HID light will ensure that the cannabis is getting the right quality and amount of light it needs.

Nutrients during the flowering phase

During the flowering stage the requirements of your cannabis will shift from a nitrogen emphasis to potassium and phosphorus. Much like the other stages, your cannabis still requires all three, but the production of buds requires the plant to use more potassium and phosphorous then nitrogen.