If you’d like to get maximum yields at harvest time, then you need to know how to make buds bigger during flowering.
In part one of this series, we talked about how to maximize your vegetative stage so that you are off to a good start…
In today’s article, we’ll cover:
- The importance of the flowering stage
- The best nutrients for flowering cannabis
- Why playing good “defense” is critical to growing big buds
- The best bloom nutrients for cannabis and how to use them
Plus a whole lot more. So let’s get started…
Why The Flowering Stage Is So Important For Getting Bigger Buds And Maximum Yield
The truth is, you don’t have to tell most growers that the flowering stage is critical when it comes to getting bigger buds.
In fact, we felt it was important to start this series on getting maximum yield with the vegetative stage because we don’t want you to skip ahead! We have to put things in the proper perspective and realize that without a robust, healthy, and strong vegetative stage you’ll never maximize your flowering cannabis.
That said, the flowering stage is when your plants will bloom and put on all the bud size and density that you desire.
That’s why it’s so important to maximize it.
So how can we do this?
First, You Need To Play Good Defense And Keep Your Grow Room Clean…
Many growers get so obsessed with maximizing their flowering phase—or what we call playing “offense”—that they forget about playing “defense” and making sure that they’re not sabotaging all their previous hard work.
In other words, you need to make sure your plants stay happy and healthy before you even think about pushing them to get bigger and maximize their genetic potential.
So keep these tips in mind to keep your cannabis healthy and avoid problems of pests and diseases like bud rot:
- Air Circulation – Your plants need fresh air for maximum health. You want to vent the humid air as much as possible and replace it with fresh air. The important thing is to keep the air moving around your plants as much as possible.
- Proper Temperature – You want to keep temperatures warmer than 68°F (20°C) (to avoid diseases like bud rot) but no higher than 80ºF (26.6ºC). It’s important to maintain ideal temperatures for good flowering.
- Avoid Excess Wetness (Including Humidity) – Diseases (and many pests) thrive in wet environments. Don’t let your buds sit around damp all day. And you don’t want too much humidity during the flowering stage. Keep humidity at 40-50% during the cannabis flowering stage.
- Cut Infected Buds Immediately – If you do run into an issue like bud rot, then carefully cut and remove the infected buds (and any buds very close to them) to make sure the disease doesn’t spread. You would rather lose a few buds than your whole harvest at this point!
Remember, you can’t maximize your flowering stage if your buds are fighting off disease and are unhealthy, so play good defense first!
How To “Train” Your Plants So You Get Bigger, Heavier Buds and Up To 40% More Yields!
A proven way to produce bigger yields is to “train” your cannabis plants so that they grow in a way that is more conducive to producing bigger buds.
In fact, this is one of the most important things you can do for maximizing yields and getting bigger, more abundant buds because it doesn’t require spending any additional money or making any special adjustments in your grow room. So you’ll definitely want to take advantage of this strategy.
And yet, just by manipulating how your plants grow, you can increase your yields by as much as 40% as compared to not training your plants!
For example, in part one of this series, we showed you how to “top” your cannabis so that it would grow flatter and “bushier” instead of straight up (like a Christmas tree) and produce more than one primary cola.
In the same way, you can use other strategies to train your plants—without cutting or removing their parts—with the primary goal of producing several top colas so that more of the plant is exposed to your lighting, which helps you produce more buds.
These are the two most popular strategies for training your cannabis plants to grow wider and bushier instead of straight up…
How To Use Low Stress Training (LST) To Get Bigger Buds…
Low Stress Training (LST) is basically any method of training your plants without cutting them, topping them, or pruning them and causing them additional stress.
LST methods usually involve pulling the plant and bending the stems downward so they grow in a more lateral way, exposing more of its lower branches to light which promotes a more equal distribution of light intensity.
The increase in bud formation on these branches results in a higher yield per plant, and also a higher yield per watt of light.
In short, you get bigger, heavier yields from the exact same grow setup and lights.
There are many ways to use LST to increase your yields, however the easiest way to get started (especially if it’s your first grow) is by simply bending the main stem of your plant as it starts to grow.
Bending the main stem is the easiest way of Low Stress Training your plants.
In fact, the best time to start LST with your cannabis is during the vegetative stage, because the younger the stems the easier they are to bend. That said, you can continue with LST into the first few weeks of flowering before your plants direct all their energy from plant structure to bud production.
How To Use The Screen of Green (SCROG) Method To Maximize Yields
This is a method of indoor crop cultivation that trains plants using a “mesh” or “screen” to direct growth.
This form of growing increases the yields of small grows by maximizing canopy space, which takes full advantage of your lights.
SCROG works very well in small growing spaces. This method produces several bud sites and gives each flower plenty of opportunity to develop.
Implementing SCROG is relatively straightforward. As your plants grow through the screen, you simply pull them back down and tie the branches to the screen – working laterally. This creates more budding sites and allows you to maximize your harvests later.
You can easily tie your plants with plastic ties as you guide the branches to the empty sections of your screen. As the plants grow, they will branch out, and develop more fully. In the picture below, you can see how you take each branch that grows through the screen and pull them down and tie to the net:
Once again, you should start these plant training methods as early as possible (during the vegetative stage) and then continue them into the early weeks of flowering for best results.
How To Make Your Buds Bigger During Flowering With These Simple Tips…
- Use the best strains – The simple fact is, some cannabis strains naturally grow bigger and heavier than others. You need to use top-shelf genetics if you want massive buds. You can grow various strains from either clones or seeds.
- Use bloom boosters – When you give your plant a proven, cannabis-specific bloom booster, you’re giving it the extra elements that help it grow bigger, denser, heavier and more potent buds. The less the plant has to make these elements itself, the more energy it can direct towards flowering. These will be discussed more in the next section.
- Get enough light – High-intensity lighting is one of the primary reasons that hydroponics growers can produce such big yields compared to traditional gardening. Because light is just as important as food to your plants, you want to make sure you’re using the strongest, brightest lights possible.
- Maintain The Proper pH – The fact is that you can feed your cannabis all the best nutrients in the world, plus bloom boosters galore, and your plants will still be unable to absorb them if they are not at the proper pH. For cannabis, the sweet spot is pH 5.5–6.3.
The Best Cannabis Fertilizer For Big Buds That Maximize Your Flowering Stage…
It’s critical to use the proper fertilizers—also known as base nutrients—with your plants to ensure that they grow vigorously and produce the biggest yields possible.
The fact of the matter is the nutrients from Advanced Nutrients are the best cannabis fertilizers for bigger buds.
How can we make such a bold statement?
Quite simply, it’s because all of Advanced Nutrients’ products are specifically designed for cannabis growing. And they are the only nutrients to utilize scientific breakthroughs like pH Perfect® Technology.
pH Perfect® Technology automatically balances your pH for you—putting it in the “sweet spot” and holding it there for weeks. As we’ve already discussed—maintaining proper pH allows your plants to optimally absorb the nutrients, light and water you’re providing them.. You can see more about pH Perfect Technology when you click here, but the point is that if you want to grow the biggest buds possible, you should use nutrients specifically designed for that task.
And it’s a fact that the base nutrients from Advanced Nutrients were designed to grow bigger buds. Period.
In the below video, you can see exactly how Hydroboys Grow put Advanced Nutrients to work for them in their cultivation facility to not only grow bigger buds packed with more value, but also to maximize their profit margins.
The Best Cannabis Fertilizer For Bigger Buds…
When used as a standalone additive, any one of the bud boosters produced by Advanced Nutrients will pack size on your buds and help you achieve the yields you’ve always imagined…
However when used together they work synergistically—greatly enhancing each other’s effectiveness and amplifying your results more than if used separately…
This is because each bloom booster was designed to optimize one of the three crucial development phases that flowering cannabis go through:
* Flower Initiation Phase
It’s a scientific fact that the earlier your buds initiate blooming—the bigger they’ll get—because they have more time to grow. Bud Ignitor® optimizes this phase by initiating budding 50% faster than before (within 5 days instead of 10 or more after changing your lighting schedule)
* Mid-Flowering Phase
During this vital phase you not only need the correct extra amounts of P and K but your buds will also start putting on more size, mass and potency if you feed them the correct amino acids of the type and quality found in Big Bud®. Specifically, scientific testing shows L-tryptophan and L-cysteine signal the production of more buds and larger flowers while encouraging other blooming cofactors to develop.
* Final Ripening Phase
The last three weeks is when your buds can actually gain the most weight – that is if you feed them Overdrive®. That’s because this unique cannabis bloom booster supplies critical nutrients in the proper ratios during the ripening phase that translate into amplified growth and heavier buds with enhanced essential oils, flavors, and color.
To develop a personalized cannabis-specific feeding program for the bloom phase, customized to your particular grow, you’ll want to use the BudLabs app.
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