If you want to crank up your harvest yields and make optimal use of available space and resources, a personal cannabis grow schedule can be very helpful, as you will find out below.
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Your Own Annual Cannabis Grow Schedule
When you start to grow your first marijuana seeds, you usually just go with the flow and hope for the best. One harvest a year seems like a fine prospect at that stage. However, once you gain some experience, you will find that working with an annual cannabis grow schedule can dramatically increase your cost-efficiency and harvest turnover. Planning ahead can make your herb gardening life easier, as this blog explains.
The Importance Of Planning Ahead
Cannabis seeds are natural products, and nature has a pretty accurate sense of timing. That makes sense: after all, seeds need the right conditions to germinate, grow, and flower. Out in the wild, these conditions usually occur only once a year as spring passes into summer and the arrival of autumn signals harvest time.
Admittedly, indoor cannabis growing is not a very natural process. We try to simulate natural conditions in grow rooms or tents, using high-tech equipment, knowledge, and timing to mimic optimal growth conditions. Much depends on the space and equipment you have available. Still, having a cannabis grow schedule ready helps you make the best use of whatever means you have at hand.
All Year Indoor Growing
If you are a dedicated indoor grower, you may want to harvest several times a year, or even every month, to make sure you always have enough freshly cured bud to enjoy. To achieve this, you will need to arrange separate grow spaces for three different stages of the cannabis life cycle: seedling, veg, and flowering.
Before you go ahead, though, ask yourself how much weed you really need to last you all year long. Well-cured flower can last a long time if stored correctly, so growing more than you need will only ruin your cost- and energy-efficient growing objectives.
If you think that multiple harvests would be useful, then by all means proceed.
Perpetual Harvest?
In the perpetual harvest approach, you work in three rooms or grow tents simultaneously. One room is for seedlings; the other two are reserved for the growth and flowering phases, respectively.
Cannabis plants have different needs throughout the stages of their life cycle. That’s where three tents or rooms come in handy: they let you set the right light, temperature, and humidity levels for each stage. In addition, you can adjust the watering regime and the nutrients you feed your plants in accordance with their changing needs as seedlings progress through the growth and flowering stages.
The principle behind perpetual harvest is simple enough. First, you germinate your seeds and set them up in the seedling tent. Once your seedlings have fully entered the vegetative phase, move them to the second tent and clean out the seedling space as you make room for new seeds to sprout. As soon as your vegging plants start to flower, move them on to the flowering room or tent and change your parameters including watering and feed schedule accordingly.
This leaves the veg tent empty, so move in the second batch of seedlings, clean the seedling tent, and let your third batch germinate there. You can now keep moving your batches along your three-stage production line. If you get the timing right and nothing untoward happens to your crops, you are now running a perpetual harvest cannabis grow schedule!
The Drawbacks Of A Perpetual Cannabis Grow Schedule
Timing is everything when implementing a perpetual harvest grow and nutrient schedule. Think carefully about what sort of genetics you intend to grow. Try to avoid growing consecutive batches of very different strains. You want to make sure your crops flower and grow at about the same pace to prevent production line blockages.
The trick is finding your unique personal cannabis match. Once you’ve identified the perfect strain to work with, you can keep your cannabis grow schedule running smoothly all year long with minimal hassle. If you want to try a new strain, we suggest waiting until the seedling and veg spaces are empty before germinating your new seeds.
Planning An Indoor And Outdoor Grow Calendar
Depending on where you live, and on the garden or indoor space you have available, you may want to consider combining indoor and outdoor runs in your cannabis growing schedule. This has the added benefit of potential savings on your electricity bills – sunshine is free after all, which can save you bigtime on light and heat expenses.
You could simply keep running your perpetual harvest indoor schedule while you set up one or two outdoor runs over the spring and summer. That would be a great opportunity to try different genetics in the open air before deciding on a switch indoors.
Another option is to shut down your power-consuming (and therefore costly) in-house operation once the outdoor season starts. If you start up a new batch of seeds in your perpetual harvest setup by the time your backyard crop starts flowering, you can switch back to your indoor cannabis grow schedule when autumn arrives.
The Best Seeds For All Year Growing
Which seeds you choose for your cannabis grow schedule is entirely up to you. You could choose fast-flowering strains to max out on the number of runs you can squeeze into the year. Then again, maybe a slow-growing strain with bigger crop yields will better suit your needs. Don’t forget to consider flavour aspects, resistance to mould, and the type of high or stone associated with your strains.
The best choice is usually a strain that ticks all the boxes you find important. No matter what your taste and individual needs, always order premium quality seeds from a trusted supplier. Working with a year-round cannabis grow schedule is ultimately pointless if you get multiple mouldy harvests, poor germination rates, or a huge stash that just doesn’t give you the full flavour and effects that you seek!
