What’s a Vegetative Growth Phase and Why Does It Matter? – Harvest Hero (2024)

Congratulations, you’re nearly ready to begin your first cannabis crop! You’ve spent a considerable amount of time and money preparing for a successful first grow including your selection of premium soil or soilless medium, cannabis seeds and species to grow, your grow room or outdoor space, and all the ancillary items to ensure a successful grow. Now you’re looking for the ideal cannabis growing timeline, a step-by-step or week-by-week guide to help guide you to success and a heroic harvest.

You could spend hours, even days, following Reddit threads which isn’t a terrible idea, but it’s time-consuming. Sure, you’ll learn a thing or two, but the feedback you receive is guaranteed to be inconsistent as home growers generally have their own “secret sauce” to growing and will defend it at all costs. There’s one, and only one, constant, critical component to growing cannabis: there’s no one right way to grow cannabis or any crop for that matter. There are dozens of factors that will impact the success of your next crop. From growing phases to light duration to pH. While we recognize and value every successful grower’s recommendations, it’s our turn to provide the growing community with our own cannabis growing timeline and the products that will work in harmony with Harvest Hero Enhanced Perlite Mix to ensure robust, vigorous growth.

Why Follow Harvest Hero’s Harvest Hero Cannabis Production Timeline?

Harvest Hero’s cannabis growing timeline was developed by our own, in-house, Washington-state I-502 certified Agronomist who has four patents to his name and has studied plant physiology (unlike many growers). In 2019, he managed 3,500 acres of cannabis. He’s a firm believer in silica sources and has used many forms of silica throughout the growing phases for a number of purposes. So it’s fair to say we feel confident that our cannabis growing timeline will go toe-to-toe with anyone!

Harvest Hero’s cannabis growing timeline is set up by weeks and segmented by cannabis growth stages. The growth stages of cannabis can be broken down into four primary stages from seed to harvest:

1. Germination (3-10 days)
2. Seedling (2-3 weeks)
3. Vegetative (3-16 weeks)
4. Flowering (8-11 weeks)

Read more about the four primary stages of growing cannabis.

Let’s dive into the vegetative growth stage, one of the four critical growth stages we find growers asking about most. The vegetative phase coincides with the available photoperiod. If your plants are under a light regime of 18 or more hours per day, the plants will stay in a vegetative state. This means they will continue to grow and get bigger. Growers can leave plants in a vegetative state indefinitely.

Once plants are exposed to a photoperiod of 12-14 hours per day, they will begin to start the flowering response. Most outdoor growers have no control over the photoperiod. However, indoor growers can manipulate the lighting and can keep plants in a vegetative state until they run out of room or if they want to take cuttings during an extended period (they want lots of cuttings). Most growers will run plants in a vegetative state anywhere from 3-8 weeks. The longer growers run vegetative cycles, the bigger your plants become. Sometimes growers are limited with regard to their grow setting, for example, if you are using a grow tent or in a basem*nt that’s only 6 feet tall (after you take into account the lights dangling down from the ceiling).

In summary, the size of your growing environment, or the desire to harvest quickly, all determine how long you run a vegetative cycle. Longer vegetative cycles are not detrimental to your plants or yields, so most growers will keep them in a vegetative state for as long as the grow room allows. Attenuating factors are proximity to light fixtures, airflow in the room, and competition from surrounding plants.

Download Harvest Hero’s Cannabis Growing Timeline and be on your way to #heroichorticulture.