Stages In The Life Cycle Of The Marijuana Plant

Growing weed successfully requires you to learn about the various stages of its lifecycle along with the requirements of the plant in each phase.

Marijuana plants have different growth stages. If you are thinking of growing a cannabis plant, it is crucial that you are aware of these stages. You need to learn more about the life cycle of the plant. This is vital since the requirements of the plant vary with each stage of the life cycle. How much light, nutrients, and water the plant needs depends on the stage of growth that it is in.

Stage 1 – Germination

This is where it all begins – where your tiny seed will swell and burst in the presence of warmth and water, until its hard, tough casing finally cracks.

During this step to growing cannabis, your seedlings need only water and warmth to grow.

They don’t even need light, and may actually suffer stress if exposed to too much light.

So it’s perfectly fine to keep them in a dark cupboard or similar for the first couple of days – just make sure that they are kept warm and sufficiently moist!

Stage 2 – Seedling

Small cuttings are taken from the mother plants and planted into a moist starter cube in a low light and high humidity environment.

After two weeks, the roots start to sprout through the starter cube and the seedling is transplanted to a larger cube. After an additional two weeks of growth, the young cannabis plant is moved to a slightly larger base.

Stage 3 – Vegetation

A cannabis plant will start to grow outdoors in early spring, anything from mid March to late may, depending on local environmental conditions. During the spring time and early summer, the plant will grow leaves, stems and branches. It will also spend a lot of energy building a good root base. This is known as vegetation.

If you’re growing indoors bt using marijuana grow tent and cannabis grow light, it won’t be long before you will need to transplant into a bigger grow pot, and begin some training, and topping.

Early veg will only last a couple of weeks, as soon as a good root structure is formed, the plant is stable and very resilient. The growth rate will increase and with in four to five weeks after germination, your will be into late veg.

Stage 4 –  Flowering Phase

Within its second to the third month of life, the cannabis plant will reach pre-flowering and flowering periods. 

The pre-flowering period is important as it will show you early on if your plants turned out male or female. Male plants will have sack-like structures where the leaves and main stem is connected.  You will need to weed these out as you see them as the pollen that is released when they mature and burst will decrease the potency of cannabinoids in the female plants. The distinct “hairs” that are generally associated with strong weed are a result of female plants that have escaped pollination (which is where the term sinsemilla comes from).

Stage 5 –  Harvest

The flowering stage has a different duration for each strain and seed, meaning the best time to harvest is going to be different. Typically, 7-8 weeks is enough for flowering. If you harvest too late, you risk losing potency. The same can be said of harvesting too early. For this reason, you must pay close attention towards the end of the flowering stage to know the perfect time to harvest those buds.

The little hairs on the buds will start to change colour when it’s time to harvest. Where they would have been white and milky throughout the flowering stage, they will change to an orange or amber colour.

Even the trichome heads change colour when it’s ready for harvest, meaning they will be opaque rather than clear. In the extremely late stages of flowering, these trichomes will also turn amber. However, to see these you probably need to use a magnifying glass.

Indoor Cycle

We get a short life cycle when we grow indoors which usually takes around 3 months. For clones, it’s even shorter at 2 to 2.5 months. However, some strains take up to 7 to 15 weeks to flower.

One big advantage in indoor gardening is that we can control most of the stages. For example, we can hasten the vegetation phase by planting more plants per square foot. Also, we can choose the time to trigger the flowering stage once the plants reach our desired size.

When it’s time for the cannabis to flower, we can put them in the 12- hour light cycle. Sometimes, other factors in the cannabis grow tent will trigger the flowering but not by more than 5 days.