Contents
What is the usual growing time for cannabis?
No time to wait? These are the fastest ways to make weed grow faster
Tips for a faster outdoor grow
Growing weed faster is a learnable skill. Whether you’re pressed for time, in a short-summer region, or eager to smoke home-grown marijuana, it pays to have it.
Cannabis has a relatively consistent seed-to-yield period, but its life cycle isn’t set in stone. Your selection of genetics and actions in vegging and flowering can shorten the waiting period and let you get buds faster.
Join us to learn how to make cannabis grow faster. We discuss general, indoor, and outdoor cultivation tips to help you harvest as soon as possible.
What is the usual growing time for cannabis?
How long does it take to grow weed? Most cultivators harvest 3–6 months after germinating their seeds.
The cannabis life cycle differs based on the variant and setup. In general, autoflowers are harvest-ready sooner than photoperiods, and you get buds more quickly indoors than outdoors.
To know how to make marijuana plants grow faster, you should first understand how they usually develop. Here’s a short breakdown of the stages:
- The cannabis germination stage lasts 1–10 days. If you’re using clones, this step isn’t a part of your cultivation journey.
- The cannabis seedling stage lasts 2–3 weeks. Clone growers need approximately 14 days to root their cuttings instead of four weeks for germination and seedling growth.
- The cannabis vegetative stage lasts 3–16 weeks, depending on how large you want your plants. Indoor growers may cut it short, while outdoor cultivators rely on the seasons and usually wait longer. Autoflowering strains bloom automatically after 5–6 weeks of veg.
- The cannabis flowering stage lasts 7–12 weeks, depending on the strain. Indica tends to ripen sooner than sativa.
As you can see, there’s variance based on the strain and how you grow it. Let’s start by reviewing some general tips on faster cultivation.
No time to wait? These are the fastest ways to make weed grow faster
Some strains, variants, and cultivation styles are naturally speedier than others. So, the fastest way to grow cannabis is to make good decisions while buying seeds and planning your garden. You might:
- Consider autoflowering cannabis. Autoflowers are the way to go when your patience is in short supply. They bloom based on age, and you can maintain an 18/6 or 20/4 light cycle for bigger yields.
- Choose the right seed genetics. If you’re not ready for non-photoperiods, fast-version cultivars shave two weeks off the flowering stage. Some unmodified hybrids bloom fast, too, so read up on your strain and make an informed decision.
- Opt for indica-dominant strains. Indica landraces grew in harsh climates with short summers, so they ripen quickly. Sativa takes ten or more weeks to mature, and indica generally becomes harvest-ready in eight.
- Employ a hydroponic setup. Looking at hydro vs. soil growing, the former increases nutrient availability and supercharges development. This setup speeds up vegging, and you can launch flowering sooner.
- Go for clones. Growing from cuttings makes the seed-to-harvest period two weeks shorter. Plus, cloning cannabis lets you preserve and multiply your finest phenotypes. The plants are fussier and lower-yielding than those from seed, though.
You make these decisions before starting your grow and influence its overall duration. Next, let’s explore specific steps to help vegging and flowering plants develop faster indoors and out.
Tips for a faster outdoor grow
Cultivating cannabisoutdoors leaves you at nature’s mercy. How do you grow weed fast if you can’t manipulate the seasons? By altering your plants’ size, shape, and even light exposure.
Trim your plants regularly
Light is vital for learning how to make weed plants grow faster outdoors. Sun-grown phenotypes get bushy, and their fan leaves shade the lower branches. As a result, the base requires extra time to develop.
Regularly remove large fan leaves to direct light where it’s most valuable. Perform detailed pruning twice in vegging and twice in flowering. You can also cut off the unproductive branches at the bottom.
Don’t throw away the results of your final trim, which happens in mid-flowering. There’s much to do with weed trimmings when the plant already produces cannabinoids.
Make sure the nutrients are right
You can’t disregard fertilizer while figuring out how to grow weed fast. Supplying appropriate doses of high-quality nutrients for the growth stage accelerates growth and flower production.
Familiarize yourself with the cannabis feeding chart to maintain the optimal macronutrient ratio for veg and flower. Consider an organic setup to minimize the risk of burns and deficiencies.
Pollen your buds
Pollination is the bane of growers for smoking purposes. It might come as a surprise that pollen helps you grow marijuana fast.
When weed gets fertilized, it moves its focus from flower formation to seed production. The development rate escalates, and the bud sites house fully-developed pods after several weeks. You can use this natural process to your advantage.
Remove your male plant from the ranks as soon as it shows signs of sex. Collect its pollen, fertilize your females by hand, and harvest after a week. The seeds are still unnoticeable, and the buds get ripe and potent.
Cover outdoor plants to force flowering
Marijuana needs 12 hours of uninterrupted darkness to start and maintain flowering. Covering them in mid-summer is among the fastest ways to grow weed outdoors. As a bonus, your buds are bigger, denser, and more resinous thanks to the intensity of summertime sunlight.
Cover the outdoor plants with a light-proof cover in the early evening and remove it after 12 hours. Black buckets are perfect for this purpose. The plants get an extended darkness period, believe the fall is approaching, and bloom in response.
This approach is straightforward but requires consistency. If light leaks through, the plants might revert to vegging or turn hermaphrodite.
When should you force flowering? When your plants are about ¾ of the desired final size. Most cultivators do this in July to remove 3–4 weeks from the seed-to-harvest period.
Progressive harvest
How to make my weed plant grow faster in flowering? Ensure it has enough light. Marijuana has an apical structure; its top cola matures 1–2 weeks earlier than the side bud sites. This shape makes it suitable for progressive harvesting.
A progressive harvest means collecting mature flowers and leaving the rest to finish ripening.
Most growers collect the buds from the top half, trim the plant, and harvest again two weeks later. The lower buds become the canopy and get extra light in the final stages, getting bigger and sticker.
Tips for a faster indoor grow
Indoor setups offer the fastest way to grow marijuana. You control the conditions and move the plant through its life stages at will. Speeding up plant development mainly relies on manipulating the lights.
Leave the lights on 24/7 during veg
Learning how to make weed grow faster revolves around lamp usage. Plants remain in veg as long as they receive 16 hours of light daily. If they get more, they have extra time and energy to develop.
Cultivators use an 18/6 light schedule because this nighttime recovery period makes marijuana more resilient. If you keep your grow lamps running 24/7, the growth rate increases. You can flip to flowering earlier and harvest sooner.
Employ the best grow lights for weed and establish the optimal climate to prolong the daytime without sacrificing plant health.
Reduce the light cycle to less than 12 hours per day during bloom
Indoor cultivation is the fastest way to grow pot because you can flip to flowering after several weeks of vegging. Many don’t know they can also manipulate the lights to shorten this stage.
Marijuana needs a minimum of 12 hours of uninterrupted darkness to flower, but it can make do with less. The main reason growers use a 12/12 schedule is because more light means bigger buds.
To speed up the bud production stage, use a 10/14 or 11/13 light cycle throughout flowering. The plant believes that winter is rapidly approaching and ripens faster. This trick reduces the number and size of your buds, but they reach peak maturity in less time.
Perpetual harvest
If you have multiple grow spaces, you can set up a perpetual harvest schedule for a regular bud supply. This approach is even more efficient when paired with our other tips on growing marijuana fast.
Perpetual cultivation means maintaining separate spaces for vegging and flowering plants. You move the pots once they bloom and immediately germinate another seed batch. New vegging plants are ready to flower when you harvest the previous garden.
The more spaces you have, the more regularly you can achieve a harvest. What if you’re using autoflowers? Can you get perpetual harvests in a single room? Not quite.
Autoflowers don’t depend on the light schedule, but their needs change with the stage. Knowing how to get dense buds revolves around temperature, humidity, and spectrums. Blooming plants get moldy when kept in high humidity, and vegging ones overstretch under red lamps.
Early harvests made easy
Don’t forget your priorities while learning how to grow weed faster. It’s better to give your plants time to produce epic quantities of top-tier buds. Weather issues, shortages, and eagerness are understandable, though. Our tips are here to help you speed things along.
Use a hydro setup if you’re short on time from day one. Treat your garden well to keep it healthy and high-yielding, and adjust the lights to facilitate flower production. Since genes matter, pick strains bred for speed for the best results.
We stock hundreds of such cultivars here at SeedSupreme. Visit our store to buy seeds, apply our tips on how to make weed grow fast, and harvest sooner than ever.
