5 Tips for the growth of your cannabis plant

What can you do during your weed plant's growth to increase the average yield per weed plant? Grab these quick tips to make growing weed at home more fun! For indoor and outdoor growing.

Don't put your weed plants on the windowsill, use the right grow lamp.

Weed growing tips for the growth phase

1: Give weed plants enough light and choose the right power for the grow light. 600 Watts per square meter is the rule of thumb.

2: Hang the grow light at the right height to prevent weed plants from stretching or burning.

3: Experiment with different light schedules for faster growth.

4: Growing techniques such as LST, ScrOG and topping can prepare your plant for a monster harvest.

5: The last and most important tip: give your weed plant not only enough nutrition, but also the right one - specifically for weed plants.

These are our top tips for growing weed plants. Now we'll tell you why these tips contribute during the growth period.

Growth period weed

The growth period, vegetative phase or growth phase of weed plants is the period of time the ladies spend growing big and strong. Normally, weed plants do not flower during the growth phase. There are exceptions, however. Auto flower weed plants can get symptoms of flowering earlier, but you don't have to worry about that. After all, the fact that autoflower weed will start flowering by itself is what it's meant to do.

However, photo period weed plants are not supposed to flower during the growing period. If they do, your plant is not getting enough light each day. This can have several causes. Even seedlings can start to flower if they are placed in front of a window with very little daylight available to them. That thick thermopane in combination with a few cloudy days and a windowsill facing north is a bad combination for your weed plant. In fact we would advise you not to let your seedlings depend on daylight on the windowsill at all.

Broad leaved indica.

Actually, growing weed without lights is not a good idea at all. Sativas in particular, which originally come from the tropics, have the greatest difficulty surviving on little light because of their thin leaves.

Weed plants grow slowly

Oh dear, bonsai weed! If your weed plants are growing slowly, but otherwise look healthy, nine times out of ten the cause is: not enough light.

For outside growing

Most likely your plant is in shade or semi-shade. Weed plants like full summer sun. Especially sativas. Does your weed plant have broad leaves that it inherited from indica genetics? If so, she can also get by with a few hours of half-shadow during the day. 

For inside growing

It should be obvious by now that a weed plant needs a lot of light. If the power or light output of the lamps is too low, your weed plant will grow with difficulty. Moreover, the leaves can then become dry and brown from the heat. For powerful gas discharge lamps such as metal halide (MH) and high pressure sodium (HPS) grow lights, an output of 600W per square meter is advisable. Also, the lamp may be placed too low on the plants. The ideal height of such a lamp can be calculated by dividing the power by 10 in centimeters. So a 600 watt lamp is hung 60 cm above your plants. Are you growing with LED lighting? This is a complex story because there are several factors that determine the ideal height. Ask the seller or manufacturer what is best for that particular LED lamp.

However, are you hanging the lamp too high? Then weed plants will start to stretch towards the light source. You often see this happen on a windowsill. The result is skinny, thin and flabby plants with little yield. So you see that "growing fast" does not always lead to better results.

Other causes of slow growth may include:

  • The pot is too small. Use a pot that will hold at least 12 gallons of soil - preferably larger.
  • The soil is too compact. As a result, the roots have trouble growing freely, and this is reflected above ground as a small plant.
  • Overall poor care. If your weed plants are only watered when the leaves start to droop, you are not taking the best care of your plants.

Also, your expectations may be higher than the weed plant can deliver. Some weed plants just don't get that big. Lastly, just a little patience can help - sativa-dominant weed plants can grow up to twice as large at the beginning of the flowering phase! This is because they then go through a growth spurt while they are already flowering. Indicas and hybrids will also continue to grow during flowering, but not to the extent that "purebred" sativas do.

Play with the light schedule

Weed, has a day and night rhythm, just like we do. At night, or when the lights are off, the stretched fibers in the stem and branches of weed plants get a chance to recover after a day of intensive growth. When you grow weed indoors, you have to deal with what is called a growing or lighting schedule. This is nothing more than a sort of daily calendar on which you determine when your lamp is on or off.

Weed plants love a huge amount of light.

Despite the fact that there are success stories going around the internet of 24 hours of light a day, top growers still believe that 18 hours of light is sufficient. An 18/6 schedule is therefore preferred, as it simulates a sunlit summer perfectly.

But there is a reason why some choose more extreme light schedules. In the so-called Sea of Green (SoG) growing technique many plants are preferably placed close together and exposed to maximum amounts of light. That way they grow fast and can be harvested quickly, is the idea. In any case, know that photoperiod weed plants go into bloom when it's dark for more than 10 hours. So in the growing period of your weed plant, you are well advised to provide more light than this lower limit.

Topping, Phimming, Scrogging and LST

Then we arrive at the (advanced) growing techniques that you can apply during the growth phase. We have already discussed them all in an extensive article on growing techniques, so here is a short summary:

Topping - You carefully cut or trim away the new sprout on top of the plant, causing the stem to split into two stems.

Phimming - You cut or trim a little less carefully. If you cut that sprout a little shorter, three or even four new stems will form from one. But those are thinner stems.

Scrogging - With a net or trellis you force new sprouts to grow horizontally, increasing the surface area. This creates a Screen of Green, from which ScrOG gets its name.

LST - With soft binding wire you guide the flexible young branches in a direction where there is room for light - away from the shadow that other branches cast on the plant.

Neatly phimmed weed plant.

All of these techniques aim to increase the plant's foliage, allowing the plant to absorb more energy from light. Importantly, they also create more growth points for buds to grow from in the flowering phase. This combo is the way to increase your yield with little effort.

Weed plants under a scrog net.

Weed plant nutrition for Titans

The best thing you can do during the growing period of weed plants, we save for last: nutrition. It is true that garden soil contains enough nutrition for the first period of growth. But weed plants are hungry creatures. Within a few weeks they will eat their way through the nutrition in the soil like it's nothing. This is why it is not only good for weed plants to be given nutrition: the right nutrition is necessary.

This is what it’s all about!

If you give generic nutrition from the garden center, at least pay attention to the correct NPK ratio. Sodium, phosphorus and potassium, what those letters stand for (the P for the Latin phosphorus), are in fact the three essential building blocks for any plant. In addition, they need dozens of other substances that they are a little less likely to go through. That's why buying special weed nutrition is so worth it. This plant nutrition has been specially developed with weed in mind. So whether you choose Plagron, Royal Queen Seeds, BAC or Advanced Nutrients; special weed nutrition from these sorts of brands is the best nutrition you can get for weed plants.

Problems during the growing phase of your weed plant?

During the growth phase, problems can also arise. If this is the case, use the helpful articles below for a diagnosis and solution!