When you’ve truly become a grower and you’ve got everything set up to start growing, you’ll want to speed up your plants’ growth, whether it’s for a change of address or a desire to make more money. So how to speed up veg stage?
There’s no way around it: growing is time-consuming and each stage of growth requires a fair investment of your time regardless of your skill level. As you get more experienced, you’ll start to understand ways to encourage your plants to grow faster and healthier.
That said, you can’t avoid just waiting—the time-consuming of the seedling stage is usually difficult to alter, but we can speed up the vegetation or flowering stage, although this may result in a loss of yield and harm the quality of your buds. In order to speed up your grow, you’ll need to strike a careful balance between health and speed.
Before we talk about how to speed up the plant’s growth, the first thing we need to cover is that growing plants indoors is faster than outdoors, mainly because grow lights can help us control the lighting, especially when we are growing in contained environments like grow tents.
There are some great farmers out there who can make outdoor growing extremely successful and of course outdoor farming has a lot more space, but for most of us we don’t have that kind of access, so a grow tent is an excellent alternative.
In this article, I want to specifically go over how to speed up veg stage of growth in your grow tent. Let’s get to it.
Try Grow Autoflowering Cannabis
Autoflowering cannabis matures faster than photoperiod strains because of their genetic makeup. After the seeds germinate, autoflowering cannabis typically blooms in about two weeks and then takes about seven to ten weeks to harvest. Traditional photoperiodic strains take much longer, usually around 2-3 months to bloom (here, we’re thinking of strains like Northern Lights and Sour Diesel).
The main drawback of autoflowers has been their gene splicing with the ruderalis cousins that flower in low light due to maturity rather than light levels. However, breeders have been working on improving autoflower strains so they can have higher yields with better aromas and THC quality. However, it’s an ongoing process—autoflowers are smaller, they have smaller yields, but for a lot of (new) growers, autoflowers are great choices.
As breeders reduce the influence of ruderalis in autoflower strains without losing the autoflowering trait, the grow time may be extended so it is something to pay attention to. Additionally, a quick note: autoflower light cycles can be anything—24/0 or 16/8 or 18/6, whichever works for you.
Growing From Clones-how to speed up veg stage?
Clones are clippings of a living plant made with a hand pruner. These cuttings will produce their own root systems. This is an effective way to speed up plant growth and can quickly replace the seedling that takes a bit longer to grow. Be sure to clone before flowering, otherwise it will damage the mother plant and make the clone hermaphroditic.
If you have already started growing and the plants are doing well, you can keep cloning from it but clones might degrade over multiple cuttings. Additionally, autoflowers cannot clone (yet)—the quality just is too poor. If you don’t know how to clone, be sure to ask a friend or a grower for advice.
Provide Proper Lighting-how to speed up veg stage?
As we mentioned earlier, to speed up your plant’s growth you can change the time it takes for the vegetative and flowering stages to mature. This is mainly achieved by controlling the lighting.
Veg with an 18/6 light cycle or 24/0hour a day
There has always been a debate about the duration of light for autoflowering cannabis. Some people think that because autoflowering is different from normal plants, it doesn’t need to be in the dark every day to stay healthy. So, the veg stage can be kept illuminated 24 hours a day to make it grow at the fastest speed.
On the other hand, other people believe that providing a 18/6 light period provides enough light and enough rest; further still, others believe that 6 hours of rest is still not enough. There is currently no consensus on which method is better, and growers have achieved good results using both methods. You can try them both and find what works best for you.
Reduce the lighting during bloom-how to speed up veg stage?
Think about the normal growing environment of cannabis: they grow in summer and then start to flower in autumn based upon the available light. In its natural environment, the plant flowers once it begins to receive less light per day (around 12 hours a day), at this point its growth will stop and it will enter the flowering stage.
If you want to force flowering, try placing the plant in complete darkness for 48 hours, then use an 11/13 light cycle during the whole flowering period. Less light can make your plants think winter is coming and naturally bloom faster.
Nutrition-how to speed up veg stage?
Cannabis requires more nutrients than regular crops—Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium are the most important elements. Plants in the veg stage need more Nitrogen but need more Phosphorus and Potassium during the flowering stage.
You’d be better off using the hemp-specific nutrients and following the directions for the right timing and portion size.
Wrap-up how to speed up veg stage?
Becoming a grower requires a lot of learning—even an old dog can learn new tricks. Growing is a wonderful hobby and it teaches us a lot about life, so we’re happy to have you on this journey!
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