Aesliip’s Grow: Flowering Stage

Blue Dream, 11 weeks

After 11 weeks of vegetative growth, the Blue Dream plants looking strong and green, I have changed the light schedule to 12 hours ON and 12 hours OFF. This has signaled to them that it is fall and time to start flowering. Having reached this stage, I am excited and satisfied as now the work will begin to pay off.

When I first changed the light schedule, I let the plants sit in darkness for 36 hours. This is supposed to help the plant transition into flowering quicker, although the effectiveness of this tactic was debated. Since this whole operation is a big experiment, I figured it’d give it a shot. After all, the more mistakes I make, the more I learn.

One of the most important requirements for the flowering stage is that when the lights are off, there should not be any light flooding in. This has been challenging because of the circumstances of my set-up. I have power cords snaking around the doorway, so I cannot completely close the door to my closet. In the meantime, I have hung a blanket over the door so as to fill in the gap, but I need to find a more complete and permanent solution.

I’m still using the same light bulbs as before, but I’m considering adding bulbs that have an abundance of light in the red/yellow spectrum, as this simulates sunlight from fall and winter and is thus better for flowering.

The smell of the plants hasn’t gotten any more potent, which is good. However, if it does get worse I have automatic air fresheners that can shoot a blast of freshener.

One night when I came home I noticed that one of the plants had fallen over and the other was leaning over alot. I’m not entirely sure why this happened, but I think it was the combination of my plants weaker stems, and the fact that it got a little chilly.

To keep them upright, I bent up some coat hangers so that they were straight, and stuck them into the dirt. Then, I used a couple of twisty ties to attach the plant stem to the wire. So far this has worked well, and in the meantime I will look into ways of strengthening the stems. Next up on the agenda is to find out the sex of the plants.

Aesliip’s Grow Series:

1. Germinating and Setting Up
2. Vegetative Stage Weeks 1 and 2
3. Weeks 3 and 4
4. Blue Dream, Weeks 5 and 6
5. Weeks 8 and 9, the Smell!
6. Final Vegetative Weeks
7. Flowering Stage [this post]
8. Sexing the Cannabis Plants
9. Flowering Update
10. Nutrients Disaster!