The flowering stage is the third and final phase of a cannabis plant’s lifecycle. The Most Potent Outdoor Strains READ NOW Light Schedule For Photoperiods In The Flowering Stage Ideally, plants should be placed in the ground as soon as the nightly frost ends, allowing your plant a few months of vegetative growth before it flowers. Planning your outdoor grow ahead of time is a must to ensure a successful result and maximize your yields.

Growing outdoors means being at the mercy of mother nature and waiting for dark days in the late summer or early fall to trigger the flip into flower. Outdoors, growers don’t have the ability to end the vegetative stage by switching the cannabis’ light schedule. That being said, a pattern of 18/6 (18 hours of light followed by 6 hours of darkness) is the standard marijuana light cycle for indoor vegetative growth.

Finding the right amount of light for the genetics of your plant can take some tweaking. There are growers who opt to go even further and provide a period of 20 hours of light. This means you should have your cannabis plants under consistent light for a minimum of 16 hours a day. How Well Do You Know Strains? TAKE QUIZ Marijuana Light Schedule Options For The Vegetative Stageĭuring the vegetative stage, you don’t want to let your plants go into flower. With an LED, for example, you’ll want to keep your light between 60-76cm (24-30 inches) away from your seedlings. If the light is too far away from your plant, it will stretch, and if the light is too close, it may burn (especially if it’s an HID).

However, if you dim your lights or use a weaker bulb, make sure to check the distance between the bulb and your plant. Contrary to what many may think, light that’s overpowering can sometimes harm seedlings. Seedlings do not require bright light to grow well. It’s okay to experiment and find out what cannabis seedling light schedule works best for you. Opting for a 20/4 schedule gives your plants a small dark period to respire while still maximizing the amount of light your plants get, and also giving your equipment a short breather. Running lights on all day with a 24/0 light schedule will max out the limit of your equipment, especially fans, and will run up a high electricity bill. However, some growers experiment with cannabis light schedules of 20/4 and even 24/0. The optimal marijuana light schedule for seedlings is 18/6, meaning lights are on 18 hours per day and off (giving the plant darkness) for 6. Light Schedule Options For The Seedling Stage As a seedling, your plant will transition from growing single blade leaves to growing leaves with multiple blades (also known as “fingers”) - this is an indication that the seedling stage is over. During this stage, your cannabis plant will be exerting a lot of its energy to develop its root system. This will last for only 2-3 weeks indoors but up to 6 weeks outside. Once your seed has germinated (or your clones rooted), your plant is at the seedling stage. Photoperiod: Definition, Grow Info And More READ NOW Light Schedule For Photoperiod Cannabis Seedlings Each stage of a cannabis plant’s lifecycle has its own unique lighting requirements.Īutoflowering Vs. Give cannabis 12 hours of uninterrupted darkness a day consistently and it will go into flower (thinking that it’s fall when the nights grow longer). Because of this heritage, photoperiod cannabis will “flower” when exposed to the right darkness conditions. The natural growth cycle for cannabis is to begin life in spring as a seedling, then to “veg” all spring and most of the summer, after which it “flowers” and grows buds in order to propagate the next generation. Let’s check them out! Photoperiod Strains And Their Light NeedsĬannabis is an “annual” plant, meaning it lives for just a single growing season. Every grower does things in their own way, and we have tried to capture a wide range of successful strategies for implementing marijuana light schedules. The seedling, vegetative and flowering stages each require unique lighting conditions. Actually, the size and the quality of your harvest depends largely on the amount of light your cannabis plants receive and its timing. Getting your light schedule right is an important part of growing cannabis.

Light schedule for germinating seeds