by Jorge Cervantes
When to Induce Flowering
After four to five weeks of vegetative growth, plants grow early male or female pre-flowers. Once these pre-flowers appear, plants are ready to enter the flowering growth stage.
Indoors you can control the life cycle of cannabis with light and dark. This light and dark cycle is called the photoperiod. Cannabis stays in the vegetative growth stage as long as it receives 18-24 hours of light. Fowering is induced with 12 hours of light per day. The 12/12 day/night photoperiod triggers most strains f cannabis flower.
The vegetative growth stage is only two to four weeks long in most strains when grown indoors. Plants should be from 12-18 inches at the end of vegetative growth. If they are taller, artificial light will not be able to penetrate the foliage to the bottom.
Plants will need to be flushed at the end of the vegetative growth stage and possibly once in between after three weeks. I like to flush plants with three times the amount of weak fertilizer solution as the amount of soil or soilless mix in the container. This will flush or leach out all the extra built up toxic fertilizer salts in the growing medium.
Mother plants enjoy a longer life from six months and occasionally as long a several years. Once a plant’s sex is determined at pre-flowering, it can become a mother, clone, or breeding male.