I am on my 6th grow right now and trying to get a better understanding of what one would call early flower, mid flower, and late flower.
When should I adjust the nutrients and light mode from veg to flower?
When to start backing off the light in late flower?
What would anyone say are cues or signs mid flower starts or late flower starts.
During this round, I am running photo period plants, Super Lemon Haze(ILGM) 11 weeks flower time, Lambs Bread (Cannucks seeds) 8-10 weeks, Widows Breath(Graysin) 10 to 12 weeks, Black Amesia(Graysin) 8.5 to 12 weeks, also using autopot system with reservoir and coco coir/perlite as the medium.
I am thinking early flower ends and mid flower begins when the stretch stops and the first signs of trichomes start appearing. These 2 things seemed to be aligned for all 4 of the plants this grow. The trichomes first showed up Day 26 since flipping to 12/12 light cycle, Day 19 of flower. The plant I was measuring was Super Lemon Haze and it grew about another inch over the next 2 or 3 days after the trichomes showed up. Widows breath seemed to stretch another week or so longer than the rest, I didnt take any data on this. The stretch went from 1.5" to 1.0" of height per day to 0.5" per day after the trichomes had first appeared. Day 26 of flower, I flipped to flower nutrients and bloom flower mode/red leaning on the light. I wanted to use the blue light all through stretch to keep them as short as possible so they dont grow into the lights. I did end up getting a little claw/ tips of fan leaves drooping on a lot of the fan leaves on all of the plants, not sure if this is from consistent watering from the autopot or slight nitrogen toxicity, they didnt get waxy or dark green like I have seen on my earlier grows where I didnt adjust jacks nutrients at all and fed the same ratio the entire grow. So I am wondering if I should have switched to flower nutrients maybe a week or 2 earlier? Any opinions on that?
When would you consider mid flower starts?
When would you adjust your light from more blue to more red?
When would you adjust nutrients from veg to flower?
I am on day 56 of flower now. Wondering when I should start backing the light off a little bit, I tend to torch the plants with the light and am trying to fix that. About the only thing I can think of as a gauge for late flower starting is how often I need to refill the reservoir. During peak stretch, I was refilling the reservoir every 3.5 to 4 days. Last couple of fills have been about every 6 days.
When would you consider late flower starts?
How do you gauge that?
Are there any signs you notice in how the plants look?
Or any signs with how they are feeding/drinking?
Adjust to more red is transition or wk1 flowering and follows the natural light during flowering.
Adjusting nutes, you wann keep up the N till wk4 so it’s a mix of veg/flowering before going just flowering.
Start backing down lights wk6
Late flower is wk7-finish
You gauge this by the number of weeks flowering estimated
You’ll notice the plants getting fatter with waves of white pistils as they bulk up, and they’re drinking less. They usually begin to drink less and less around wk6.
Transition takes 2+ weeks. So day 19 of flowering isn’t correct. You only accounted for 7 days, so day 5-12 actually. More accurately, I count transition as 3 wks
As you go through your grows it’s more important that you’re doing the right things at the right times than anything else. When you chane your lights to flowering schedule (12/12) you can tune your light spectrum as well if applicable, and your fertilizer schedule should have an adjustment for this same time frame. From this perspective you’re on flowering schedule. But most of us wouldn’t say our plants are flowering until flower sites are present. The time between these two is “transitioning”.
If you’re looking for help or wanting post updates to a standard that everyone can relate to without explanation then simply posting days of 12/12 is pretty easy.
So are you saying early flower starts for photo period when lights are switched to 12/12 at that time change to flower nutrient ratio and switch to flower lighting?
What signs do you look for or when do you gauge mid flower is starting?
What signs do you look for or when do you gauge late flower is starting?
Early flower is when you start to see an actual flower…that part should be pretty obvious.
As far mid to late i dont get caught up in placing a title on it…if i had to i would say early flower is when the buds are growing/extending vertically. Mid flower is when they are doing most of the bulking, and late flower is when trichomes are ripening.
Sometimes you can overthink things and it will stress you out for no reason.
Every plant is different and is on its own time frame. Some take 2-3 weeks of transition. This one here is only 13 days into 12/12 but i started counting flower days a few days ago because there are very obvious flowers.
I’m more or less saying that I don’t typically use early, mid, or late as terms to describe where plants are. I would say week 1, week 2, week 3 and so on. Or just something like day 27 of 12/12. It’s not as subjective using either method.
Most of the available fertilizer schedules also support a week by week plan.
