Cannabis Life Cycle & Lighting Solution

Every stage of cannabis plants growing in their life cycle requires different growing environment and lighting quality. Only knowing the features of each stage, can we classified the specific growing stage and optimize growing factors.

For indoor cannabis plants growing, it is significant to supplement lighting and mimic natural lighting cycle from day to night. The light cycle refers to the grow lights being on or off during 24 hours. Long lighting time does not means better cannabis plants quality, darkness is also important for cannabis plants. Lighting schedule should base on the needs of cannabis plants in different stages.

Artificial lights, like LED, are widely used in indoor growing due to their low cost and high efficiency. Some of the LED grow lights are equipped with controller to dim lighting intensity and spectrum. In consequence, LED grow lights consume less energy than conventional grow lights.

Now, we can start the process of growing cannabis plants.

Grow from Seeds

General growth stage of cannabis plants includes germination, seedling, vegetative, flowering and harvest. It takes about 3 to 8 months for cannabis plants growing from seeds to harvest. But the growing period is varied from location, climate, weather and variety. Therefore, all data, such as growing time, lighting time, lighting intensity and so on are for your reference only.

Germination

Germination is the first stage of growing cannabis plants from seeds. It is important to choose qualified seeds before growing. High quality seeds have higher possibility to germinate and grow as healthy cannabis plants. The full matures seeds should be hard and dry with dark-brown color. Keep the seeds in dry and cool container can maintain the viability for longer time. In germination, the roots develop. There are only a pair of small and simple green leaves. It takes about 3 to 10 days for germination. The light cycle is supposed to be 16 hours a day, which means grow lights are on 16 hours and off 8 hours per day.

Seedling

Unlike the small leaves in germination, leaves grow into larger size and develops serrated margins in this period. The taproot digs down deeper and roots grow rapidly. To protect roots from drowning, keep the soil moisture but not over-water and don’t move the seedlings frequently. Be careful that don’t touch the taproot with your finger as it is too small to thrive. The seedling stage lasts about 2 to 4 weeks, some of the plants will last longer up to 6 weeks. The light cycle can be 16 hours a day, which means grow lights are on 16 hours and off 8 hours per day. you can also try a light cycle with 18 hour per day.

Vegetative

Cannabis plants grow in the fasted speed in vegetative stage. Some of them can grow six inches a day with appropriate growing environment. Transplanting the plants to larger pot with adequate soil is propitious to the development of roots and foliage. To adapt the rapid growth of cannabis plants, keep copious but not excessive water as well as adding more but not too much nitrogen. Be mindful to offer water with balanced PH in 5.8 to 6.2. You can cut the top of stem to allow more buds and branches. It takes about 3 to 16 weeks for vegetative. The light cycle is supposed to be 16 hours a day, which means grow lights are on 16 hours and off 8 hours per day.

Flowering

The most important thing in flowering phase is to separate male and female cannabis plants, otherwise, they will not produce dubs but seeds as a result of pollination. Female plants have pistils as the beginning of buds, which are looks like ‘white hair’. Then the buds will fatten up and then develop fully glistening trichomes. There are resin containing cannabinoids in trichomes. Don’t cut the plants in flowering stage, or it will decline the hormones. To support the development of buds, plants should be trellised. It takes about 8 to 11 weeks for flowering. The light cycle is supposed to be 12 hours a day, which means grow lights are on 12 hours and off 12 hours per day.

Harvest

Carefully observe the color of trichomes to decide whether to harvest. When the trichomes turn from transparent to milky white and eventually amber, it is time for harvest. Another way to check whether to harvest is observing the color of pistils. if the pistils begin to curl toward the inside of the buds and become golden brown, the cannabis plants are ready to harvest. The trichomes carry highest levels of THC when 50 to 70 percent of pistils have darkened and most trichomes are milky or cloudy.

Here is a short table of the factors for the whole growing process.

Grow from Cloning

A more easier and faster way for growing cannabis plant is clone. The growing process includes cloning, vegetative, flowering and harvest. We have a post about how to clone cannabis plants. If you are interested, please click here.

Cloning are free of germination and seedling process while vegetative and flowering stage are similar to the growth from seeds. Sufficient but not excessive lighting is critical for promoting rooting in cloning stage. To ensure cloning plants in rooting status, we should guarantee at least 16 hours lighting per day for cloning plants.

Using LED grow lights for cloning can be more effectively. Even better, you can control some of the grow light to include more blue light or red light freely. The brightness of lamps are judged by lumen in common, but it is irrelevant to plants. Only the photons in 400nm to 700nm can be perceived by plants. PPFD are widely used to measure light intensity. PPFD means photosynthetic photon flux density, which measures how much active photons fall on a given surface of the plant and changed with coverage area and height.

The following table shows recommended environmental conditionals for different stage growth.

Atop provides high quality LED lighting solutions for all licensed growers. Here are the recommended LED grow lights for different cannabis plants growing stages. If you have any problem, please click here to contact us.