How long do I let the plants grow for? Can someone help set up a scheduel you use to understand when to switch the light cycles, when to let it stop growing.. All that jazz.. Any help would be greatly appreciated -hubba
Well, it depends on how big you want your plants. If you want monster plants, veg for months, if you want smaller ones, veg for a few weeks. There's a ton of information on this in stickies and through Google. I suggest looking it up!
Aside from plants with a large percentage of Haze genetics, most pot plants will grow to around 3x their starting height during flowering. How tall you should start them at depends on light intensity and available room, in addition to the strain & phenotype.
I'm bored so what the heck... 1) Seed Germination/1st planting - 3 to 5 days Pretty straight forward 2) Vegetative growth w/no nutes - 14 to 21 days. Let the plant go until the very first leaves start to yellow. Then transplant into flowering container and begin nute program. 3) Additional vegetative growth to allow the plant to recover from transplant and mature - 5 to 35 days (total veg time 30 - 60 days). This stage will have a big outcome on the final product. The longer you let the plant veg, the better the yield potential, but the bigger the plant will be. You can use "training" methods to keep the plant short and bushy if you don't have a lot of space. I would recommend a veg period of 30 days for a newbie. 4) Flower period. 55 to 70 days. This is very dependent on strain and can be shorter or longer depending on situation. 5) Harvest and dry - 2 to 3 days Total time from germination to smoke 90 - 120 days. If you use flourescent light you might yield 5 - 30 grams. If you use HID you can yield 1 - 3 ounces.
Great advice, but this last part I must respectfully disagree with. The final production depends on many factors, from strain to soil to nutrients, etc. I grew an auto using 5 CFLs and it produced 2.18Oz dry.