Flowering Stages: A general guide

As a new grower, it is nice to have a guide to follow and monitor the progress of your grow, so here you go.

Obviously these are general guidelines, but with that being said, here they are for a female plant that has just been switched to 12/12 lighting, and has a 9-week flowering cycle:

Week 1 - The plant's chemistry changes and it decides it is time to flower.

Weeks 2-3 - The Stretch - usually, starting at the end of the first week and through the third week the plant really shoots up and "stretches". It can grow several inches a day.

Weeks 4-5 - Pistols & Crystals - Most of the vertical growth has slowed and small white hairs, called pistols, grow in little bunches that will later become the bud. The leaves start to get speckled with crystals, or trichomes.

Weeks 6-7 - Buds form - Those bunches of pistols start to take shape into buds, some ball-like and some long and stretched.

Weeks 8-9 - Buds Swell & Ripen - As the buds go unpollinated they will fatten up and swell with resin. The pistols begin changing from white to reddish brown, or orange. New white pistols will continue to grow and reach out from the bud hoping for pollination. As the majority of the pistols change color you will notice that they retract back into the bud, rather than reaching out. This is a sign of ripeness and it is time to check the trichomes before harvesting, which is covered elsewhere on Rollitup.

The stretch is usually over at 10-14 days into flower for most strains people grow, except sativa doms, and technically begins as soon as you switch to 12/12, not when you see the growth explode. As far as I'm concerned, "the stretch" is a continuation of vegetative growth, not the beginning of flowering. That begins when you see pistil clusters start to form after the stretch, and you begin to feed flowering ferts.

My experience has been that for most of the first week after 12/12, the plant is figuring out what is going on. By the end of the first week, through the second week is most of the stretch, but some keep going through the third. Do you disagree with this? I could clarify that most is happening by the end of two weeks, but I believe what I stated is pretty close. Like I said, this is general.

Also, even though the plant doesn't show sex for the first few weeks of 12/12 usually, the stretch is part of the flowering process in the sense that it happens in a more pronounced way after inducing flowering. The plant may not be "flowering", but the stretch is indeed part of the flowering process as the plant rapidly grows vertically.

I agree with most of the above; a few comments/additions based on my experience:

-Many plants will show gender BEFORE they're actually put into 12-12 by showing "pre-flowers" at the nodes of branch and mainstem. If you see female flowers with white hairs there, you can be sure your plant is female, even without putting it into flower.

-How long a plant takes before it actually starts to grow new flowers depends on two things: Genetics, and the age/maturity of the plant. Some plants won't make flowers until two full weeks (or even a little more) under 12-12. Others will start noticeable flower production within only 4-5 days under 12-12. The same plant might take 2 weeks to make flowers if flowered after 4 weeks of veg time, but only 1 week if flowered from clone.

-Pure sativas or sativa dominant plants are the ones that really stretch after flowering starts. These plants can quickly double in height (in only a few weeks) after going to 12-12. In some cases lower branches will stretch upwards faster than ones closer to the light, forming a sort of canopy. Then, after a few weeks of this, most plants will still keep growing under 12-12, just to a lesser degree.

A good general rule of thumb is that pure indicas will double in height (or maybe a bit less) from the beginning of 12-12 to the end. Sativa dominant hybrids will typically triple in height, and pure landrace sativas can even grow 4-5x in height because of the prolonged flowering times (eg 16 weeks in some cases).

-Some strains will make colas (elongated bud clusters in the shape of a cylinder), some won't. Again, mostly genetics.

-Most potent strains will start to make visible trichromes before week 5. Again, as a general rule, the earlier the trichrome production starts, the more trichrome coverage by the end of flowering.

-Most strains will make distinct buds (ie floral clusters) before week 6-7. In fact, at least a few strains are legitimately done by week 7-8. They may still continue to pack on weight the last two weeks, but if you're growing a true 9 week strain, by the end of week 7 not only should the buds be completely formed already, but you should already be seeing early signs of bud maturity, including white pistils starting to turn brown/orange.

-For a nine-weeker, week 8 is when the individual flower calyxes will swell up as if seeded, and then week 9 is when the trichromes will start to turn amber.

To illustrate what I wrote in the last post, here are some pictures lifted from my Williams wonder grow report. Its fairly comprehensive, and I think it gives a pretty good idea of what you might expect to see and when with a decent indica strain. Although this particular one is a bit unusual in terms of high yield and resin production, other good indicas shouldn't be far behind:

With this strain, you can see distinct early bud formation here as early as day 13 after going to 12-12:


At day 18 (week 3) there is already early trichrome production. Obviously, this is one of the more resin-heavy strains, but you'll see this with any good kush:


By day 28 (end of week 4) not only do you have strong bud formation with conspicuous resin production, there is even early cola formation:



Et cetera. . .

My plants have been under 12/12 for about a month now and just started to show pistills a few days ago.. Seems kind of slow to me? This is my 2nd grow, 1st indoor grow. Any ideas on why shes taking what seems to be longer then my previous outdoor plant to start flowering?

Not enough light or too low temp are the first things to come to mind.

Double/triple in height? Is there any way to stunt this at the flowering stage? I have a plant about 36" about ready to go into flower, but only have about 48" total height in the room... this concerns me now!! Yikes!!!

Lewbowksi said:

Double/triple in height? Is there any way to stunt this at the flowering stage? I have a plant about 36" about ready to go into flower, but only have about 48" total height in the room... this concerns me now!! Yikes!!!

Click to expand...

You might consider topping it before it goes into flower. It will be less likely to stretch and will buy you more space.

I did a search in "topping" and didn't get much results. Anyone have a link to a good thread discussing how to top a pretty good size (30-36") plant? And/or could I clone the shit out of it?

Alchamy99 said:

My plants have been under 12/12 for about a month now and just started to show pistills a few days ago.. Seems kind of slow to me? This is my 2nd grow, 1st indoor grow. Any ideas on why shes taking what seems to be longer then my previous outdoor plant to start flowering?

Click to expand...

too much n will prolong flower production also.

Lewbowksi said:

Double/triple in height? Is there any way to stunt this at the flowering stage? I have a plant about 36" about ready to go into flower, but only have about 48" total height in the room... this concerns me now!! Yikes!!!

Click to expand...

you could tip the top horizontal and grow like a vine also, found if I top late into veg, it will loose​ some of the yeild

Redeye Bri said:

As a new grower, it is nice to have a guide to follow and monitor the progress of your grow, so here you go.

Obviously these are general guidelines, but with that being said, here they are for a female plant that has just been switched to 12/12 lighting, and has a 9-week flowering cycle:

Week 1 - The plant's chemistry changes and it decides it is time to flower.

Weeks 2-3 - The Stretch - usually, starting at the end of the first week and through the third week the plant really shoots up and "stretches". It can grow several inches a day.

Weeks 4-5 - Pistols & Crystals - Most of the vertical growth has slowed and small white hairs, called pistols, grow in little bunches that will later become the bud. The leaves start to get speckled with crystals, or trichomes.

Weeks 6-7 - Buds form - Those bunches of pistols start to take shape into buds, some ball-like and some long and stretched.

Weeks 8-9 - Buds Swell & Ripen - As the buds go unpollinated they will fatten up and swell with resin. The pistols begin changing from white to reddish brown, or orange. New white pistols will continue to grow and reach out from the bud hoping for pollination. As the majority of the pistols change color you will notice that they retract back into the bud, rather than reaching out. This is a sign of ripeness and it is time to check the trichomes before harvesting, which is covered elsewhere on Rollitup.

Click to expand...

very informational..! i ran into a spell and it slowed down in growth.. im seeing week 4-5 and i need it to stay in 2-3 for another 2-3 weeks lol.

Good explanation, straight forward and informative

Alchamy99 said:

My plants have been under 12/12 for about a month now and just started to show pistills a few days ago.. Seems kind of slow to me? This is my 2nd grow, 1st indoor grow. Any ideas on why shes taking what seems to be longer then my previous outdoor plant to start flowering?

Click to expand...

Hey man, I find that it's different from plant to plant as to when they start flowering. I had a lady under 12/12 for 5 weeks before she started. I figure they'll do it when they're ready. Having said that I also had a lady under 12/12 for 4 days and she showed sex. I only use cfl with LED sup lighting and find it takes a bit longer to show sex and kick off flowering. But you can't beat sunlight. It will always be the best lighting to use for the best result because it's El-natural
Hope that helps.