By Jay Marsh
Now that our little plants are getting nice and full, it is time to switch from the vegetative cycle to the flower cycle. This means a few things:
- Change light cycle to 12 hours of light and 12 hours of total darkness
- Change my LED lights to Bloom Cycle
- Change fertilizer to Bloom nutrients
If you are using a tent and a timer, please change your timer to 12 hours on and 12 hours off. I stick with the daylight hours in case some light peaks in it will not harm my plants slumber, plus that means less nosiness from neighbors or friends who see any stray Purple LED lights. Please make sure to close your tent at night.
*TIP* if you have a fully enclosed tent you will need to purchase a few items that I did not: and exhaust or extraction fan with charcoal filter, and CO2 additive. I am able to open my tent and my shed to allow full exchange of air, I additionally place a box fan to draw in more outside air which is full of CO2 here in Southern California.
My LED lights have 2 options for lighting a VEG and BLOOM option. This allows 2 different spectrums of light to come from one light source. For the vegetative cycle the light gives us of 60% RED and 40% BLUE to increase plant size, where the bloom cycle gives us 70% RED and 30% BLUE to increase resin yield. The light also has a UVB supplementation during bloom to increase THC levels.
Now that we are in the flowering mode our fertilizer will need to change from a nitrogen rich “get big/full” fertilizer to a bloom nutrient. Bloom nutrients tend to be lower in nitrogen and higher in potassium and phosphorus. I have chosen to make a fertilizer tea.
Bloom Fertilizer Tea: N-P-K = 4-10-8
1 Gallon of fresh pH neutral water
1 TBS Dr. Earth’s Organic Tomato Fertilizer
2 tsp Phosphorus
2 tsp Potassium
2 tsp Kelp Me Kelp You
Mix together and let sit overnight. Stir before watering plants.
So, I do all of this on a Sunday and I then go out of town on business for 3 days. I come back to find 2 male plants!! Oh no!! I had to carefully cut them out of the scrog net as to not make a mess. This does give my other plants a little more room to spread out though. Males must be removed immediately from my grow because I do not want them to pollinate the female plants, that would mean no sticky good medicine for me in the future. The 2 male plants were Terp Smoothie.
This brings me to the very important, SEXING of the plants! How to tell a male plant from a female plant is very easy! Males have balls. Females have hairs.
Don’t forget to talk to your girls, keep an eye on the watering, and have fun!
