I wanted to start a discussion I thought could be useful for some that will be planning their first grow or planning their next. The purpose for this thread is to share personal experience with increasing vegging time. While there can be many discussions on the benefits and downsides from a research perspective and don’t want to discredit their value here, this should steer more towards the experience and what to watch for with longer veg times. Such as training techniques to use, how to manage nutrients with longer veg, risks to plants, benefits seen between harvests, etc. The hope would be the community evolves this topic with amazing questions.
To start things off maybe some experts and pros can give some insight to some questions.
What was the longest time you vegged a plant by choice or need?
Do you have a preference for training methods if vegging for a longer period?
Do you amend your nutrient line or continue as normal?
Lessons learned positive or negative from longer veg time?
Have you found a sweet spot that works well for you?
I run perpetual so I have plants in the veg room and flower room at all times. So my veg time is dictated by how long the flowering plants take. Think my longest veg was 12 weeks. The biggest con for a long veg is the size the plants can get if you don’t have the space for them.
I was reading an article the other day about increasing potency. It was posited that older plants are more potent. My personal experience leads me to believe this may be true. My reveg are plants that were started between Oct '20 and Feb this year. All have been harvested at least once. On the ones that were harvested twice, it seems they are more potent. One of those is being revegged again. Her mother was a Super skunk planted last Oct. I harvested her in May. Revegged her and put her outside in early July. I’ll let y’all know how it works out…
This is why I created this topic. I hadn’t even thought of that concept.
Now I don’t plan to re-veg a harvested plant yet, want to get my cloning down to a science first. But I have been keeping this in my mind. I will have to pick your brain sometime on your process for the re-veg of a harvested plant.
I actually did two clones this year with the intent on revegging them. I let them veg the first time for about a month, harvested about an ounce from each and then revegged them.
I have a half dozen that the plan is to harvest them next month, reveg them over Winter, put the outside next year, harvest in May and do it all over again.
But it took too much time to fill up the tent to get that pound.
I could fill a tent with 9-16 clones and grow SOG style with a minimal veg time (2 weeks) and get a pound and save 10 weeks of veg time. Or with seed grows, fill up the tent with 4 plants with only 6 weeks veg and get that pound and still save over 6 weeks of veg time.
I don’t really keep track of veg time, my veg time is dictated by my flowering time. This can get complex when adding clones, with seeds. I usually have enough room to throw a plant in the flowering tent when they get too big. Sometimes it’s just full.
I do like a certain size plant, there are advantages to longer veg times based on yields. There are also advantages to switching to flower sooner with shorter veg times, at the offset of yield. This varies even for strains, as some just don’t yield a lot. When taking clones I take a mental note of yield numbers, this will be the deciding factor if I take 2 clones or 10. High yielding strains I need fewer of, to get the same result as a low yielding strain.
All in all, there are lots of variables to veg times.
Hard topic because what may be advantage to one could be a disadvantage to another. There is nothing im aware of proven and repeatable that will help or harm your plants as veg time increases. Your yields will mainly be decided by the size and shape of your canopy. As such, one plant that takes up a 3x3 will yeild about the same as 4 plants or 9 plants in 3x3 provided everything else about the grow is the same.
So, I would say the benefit to extending veg time is to increase harvest potential with lower plant count. And the downside of longer veg time is that you are increasing operational costs and length of time to harvest.
So I know with some older plants they can become more susceptible to root issues, is this something for Cannabis roots with a long veg? I run fabric containers so curious about if there are concerns. Haven’t used fabric before.
You mean something like being root bound? Fabric pots are less susceptible to this because roots can grow through them, and will air prune themselves. It’s still possible though, but also a number of ways to deal with this. I personally don’t use fabric pots until I’m ready to move something into flower. It’s easier to transplant out of plastic pot.
See this is why I thought it might be useful, I read plenty on the subject but nothing really was written in a personal experience.
@dbrn32 - I agree this is subjective, I wouldn’t even want to know the talk that would occur with the monsters I have going through veg, as honestly I am just going with the flow for them. Zero consistency between all of them. Well they are all plants and of the cannabis strain. lol
I think a scog would be ideal for a long veg time.
However if I had a choice I would soc method like @Hellraiser mentioned and @MattyBear does.
My current veg is my longest I have ever had something like 9 weeks but light timer so turned into 11 weeks.
I trimmed them back so much trying to control them that they ended up with very thin stems… I sorta tried to plan it out but not a thing I’m used to doing so I needed up with these trees that have way to many branches that seem to be producing smaller buds… Not what I wanted thought I could sort of scog it but without constant attention I sorta messed it up.
My photo experince is fairly minimal though only a handful of photos ever done.
I just got through with a 14 week mutiple topped veg and 10 week flower I have basically the same yield as last time with a 8 week veg.
I won’t do it again as the longer veg time led to some issues with deficiencys and roots in the 10 gallon fabric bags. You really need bigger pots which offsets space and brought me back to 5 gallon 8 week veg. I’m also ditching the bags and going back to pots. Doesn’t matter how I seem to grow them inside! I always get a little more than a gram a watt no more no less, go figure✌️
