Now that you've had a read through Part 2 of our How to Grow Guide, we can move onto understanding The Cannabis Life Cycle.
As mentioned previously Cannabis plants are either male (Produce pollen) or Female (Produce Flowers/Buds). This relationships allows the pollen to pollinate the flowers, and create more seeds, therefore extending the plant's genetic journey of reproduction in the universe. You can also get genetic hermaphroditic cannabis plants, which include both male and female anatomy, which would produce both pollen and flowers simultaneously.
However, because seeds are undesirable (Unless we are breeding), we like to avoid having males or 'hermies' present in or around our grow space.
So when purchasing seeds or clones, be sure to select feminised seeds/clones, to ensure you get female plant for your grow room.
Cannabis is an annual plant, which means it dies after its flowering cycle, and does not fruit again, which means once harvested, it must be thrown away.
Cannabis, much like many fruiting plants, has 2 stages of growth:
- The Vegetative Stage (Does not grow fruits/flowers/pollen)
- The Flowering Stage (Grows fruits/flowers/pollen)
These stages can be broken down into more specific stages, which we will touch on further down toward the end.
Once germinated, the plant starts to grow in the vegetative state, building roots, stems and leaves as a good foundation before moving onto the flowering stage. This plant will continue to grow until the nights get longer in late Summer, which tell the plant that it's time to start flowering, so that it can bear fruit/pollinate and die before the Winter months roll by. The plant will flower for a fixed amount of time (5-14 weeks strain depending), whereas the plant will remain in the vegetative state for as long as the daylight hours remain long.
Farmers figured out, that you can manipulate the light hours and 'trick' the plant into thinking it is in a different season, allowing us either to extend the vegetative state as long as we want, or to force the plant into flowering at the right time to suits our growing needs. This has allowed indoor growers to be able to grow cannabis multiple times a year, instead of just once every autumn.
We will touch base on lighting schedules in our next part of our serious.
AUTOFLOWERING CANNABIS:
All the previous information of daylight hours and seasonal growing has referred to Photoperiod cannabis, meaning it is influenced by light hours to change grow stage.
Autoflowering Cannabis has been bred to Flower automatically after a certain amount of time after germination. This means that even if you keep the light schedule long, to keep the plant in veg, it will trigger into flower no matter what. The different strains has different veg and flowering time, but generally they will start to flower 30 days after germination, and be ready for harvest after a further 8-10 weeks of flower.
BREAKING DOWN THE LIFE CYCLE:
We can further breakdown the life cycle to better understand our grow more effectively, into the following stages:
- Germination/Seedling/Propagation
- Early Vegetative
- Mid Vegetative
- Late Vegetative/Pre-Flower
- Early Flower
- Mid Flower
- Late Flower
- Finishing/Ripening
- Harvest
These separate stages allow us to work with our plants based on it's different needs at different times in it's cycle. Whether it is environmental management, pest control, training/pruning, nutrient recipe adjustments.
Let's move on to Part 4: Training and Plant Manipulation
