Marijuana, as many other plants, reacts to a photo period of light (amount of light hours each day). Outdoors, where days are longer during july, we can proceed to advance the harvest (suposed to be at end of September - middle October), reducing the numer of hours exposed to light. If we do our job day by day we can finish our crops much earlier than usual. And maybe we have a chance to grow 2 times in a season so we get 2 crops in 6 months.
What does it mean photo-period and how affects marijuana?
Photo-period of light is the amount of hours that condition plant's cycle phases. Plants need darkness to sleep, but the number of hours they are sleeping determines if they are in vegetation phase or flowering phase.
Indoors, plants are under periods of 18 hours of light and 6 of darkness to keep them growing endless (like motherplants do). To induce plants to flowering, growers increase darkness hours (12 light and 12 dark).
Outdoors parameters like light are not under grower's control, but if the grower is clever he can act to get what he wants: 2 crops in 1 summer.
How to get two marijuana crops Outdoor
To get two crops in a season is so important to seed the first ones at the beginning of May. We will do it this way to get 2 crops in 6 months (12-13 weeks per crop). First ones should end at July ending / early August, and second ones by the end of October.
Marijuana plants need to be adult to start flowering. A cannabis plant (usually) takes 4 to 5 weeks to become adult. Now it's time to check what plants will end its flowering before (faster flowering). Plants with faster flowering will turn to flower earlier than sativa plants once we reduce the light hours)
Our intention is, once the plants have been growing for 4 weeks (all May), induce them to flower to darkness for more hours than it would recieve on tis normal way. For that we can proceed in two ways:
Covering plants with something that keeps out the light
Moving the plants every day in and out of a dark room (we specially recommend this method for being less problematic and easier).
Seed in May and harvest in July
We suggest to proceed this way: Once the plant has recieved 12 hours of light (from early morning), induce them to total darkness until the night arrives outdoors (moment where we can replace them outside again). Plants will start to flower 10-15 days after reducing their day-light. We should repete this every day until end of flowering (8-9 weeks after starting to flower). If we are constant proceeding to move them everyday at the same hour, we will harvest by the end of July.
Second harvest: Seed in August and harvest end October
Arrived to first August week, light hours outdoors are less than they were in June or July (decrease that will turn them to flower naturally). In our first crop of the season we had to move the plants daily. In this second chapter of summer we won't need to move them. Plants will grow for 4 weeks (all august) and then will turn to flower. Once the white pistils appear, probably it will take 7 to 9 weeks to end flowering.
This informations methods are helpfull to:
- Growers that don't like huge plants nor multiplying number of plants on its backyard, balcony or terrace, but need quanity enough for the year next.
- Growers who want to taste different strains in one outdoor season.
- Growers that need to move by the end of July.
- Growers that have non autoflowering seeds.
- Growers that need to harvest earlier outdoors.