What is the Secret to Big, Thick buds????

One of the biggest secrets is don't cut the buds after 46 days of flowering, give them time to mature. Other factors include strain/genetics, grow temps, ferts, supplements, light intensity, light frequency, etc.

 

Nope, they can thicken up mightily at the finish.

That still may not explain all of your problem, but at least that's part of it.

 

The key to REALLY excellent and dense buddage is definitely more light and more time, but you can skew these factors by using a hormone nutrient like CannaBoost, Emerald Triangles Gravity Flower Hardener, and AN's Overdrive. Sea Kelp based supplements can also help.

Essentially the plant is ending it's "growing" phase about 3 weeks before harvest. If you can time it right, when you add these kinds of nutrients they will cause the plant to continue to grow. I've had buds go from 80% orange hairs to 80% white hairs, from almost done to way more.

There are side effects to these products though, generally some form of burning, so be careful when mixing them with your normal regiment.

 

How's it going man, I'm a fairly new grower, but it's been my experience thus far that my buds do most of their filling out inside the last week to 2 weeks of flowering...I use FF Nutes too, and sometimes I even stop nutes a week early, flush, and then just use nothing but filtered, PH-balanced water with a little blackstrap molasses (1 tsp per gallon) for the last week. I've been doing this for about 3 months now and had pretty good success with the size of my buds, although as growers, we always want them to be bigger= ) Best of luck man, Peace

 

I used BUSHMASTER on my last grow and I got an almost 30% better yield and some pretty dense buds.

The BUSHMASTER stunted the grow height enough so that the plants were more uniform and shorter allowing more light to be evenly spread amongst them.

The densest buds I have grown have almost always been nearest to the light.

 

Follow the trichs...

 

I concur with what the other growers have mentioned about lighting, while there are various factors that affect bud density, time , nutes, and most importantly lighting are a factor, that is why I switch to a HPS from CFL's when i Veg, the CFL's just cant crank out the amount of light that plants desire for those really thick nuggy buds.

You just either need the help of the sun (outdoors) or you really need to get some form of HID lighting to flower your plants next time.

 

while it can be done, the usual results from cfls are *relatively* not as good as any HID lighting, but if you cannot afford a HID light, or just like CFL's for some reason, then yes, you can* flower with cfls, but i would only do so with my own plants if i had to and it would require multiple 300watt cfls, at which point it would be a better investment in my opinion to get an HID light as it will only cost you about 20-50$ more.

 

didn't know that, very cool. thank you! I do have a question on the 70 days. Is that 70 days and then start that flushing, or is that 70 days including flushing with the ph balanced water.

I'm using all cfl's right now, so that would explain the slower growth, compared to what I've read here. I' ve got a possible trade for a 400w mh light so that may help a bit.....

 

cool.....I'll have to hold on the hps for now. My oldest is still 3 weeks from flowering, so I have some time. I'd like to start with a 1000w hps and then add accordingly.

The harvest process is still relatively unknown to me, so this really helps out alot.

 

i'm about to give my plants some black strap with the last nutrient feed then start ripening with canna bio boost and liquid karma. they really fattened up last time when i gave the boost so i figure i'd try molasses in one feed and see how it goes.

but last harvest i started doing this at around 5 weeks to help fatten my buds: lowered my hps to the lowest possible level, lowered my humidity to as low as i could get it which was around 40%, lowered my day temps to around 73-75 which lowered my night temp to around 68, started juicing the shit out of them with bio boost and liquid karma. worked pretty well. i harvested around 5oz from a from that grow under a 400w hps w/ six plants in 3 gallon pots with most of the buds honestly being rock hard. i had about an oz of shit that was fluffy but they were mostly little unsmokable hash buds i should have cut off early in flower. that was my second indoor grow so 5 oz was pretty choice.

liquid karma will really help to fatten buds and its great for seedlings also. i'm about to go from 2 tsp to 2 tbsp per gal for the last feed and ripening. its some good shit and you can't really give too much though i'd say 2 tbsp is about my limit.

 

I would say the factors that contribute most to yield are Light, oxygen getting to the roots, and how big the root system is itself. thats assuming that other factors like temp, humidity etc are within spec.