Vegetative Growth
Vegetative Growth
The vegetative growth cycle is where plants focus on developing strong roots and abundant foliage. By managing light, nutrients, and environment, you can extend this stage to maximise plant size and strength before flowering begins. The effort you put in during veg directly impacts your final yields.
Extending the Vegetative Cycle
For most plants, an 18-hour light cycle with 6 hours of darkness is enough to maintain vegetative growth. However, some varieties will automatically flower once they reach maturity, regardless of light. To delay this, growers often pinch out flowering sites. Though it may seem drastic, this redirects the plant’s energy back into leaf and root development, allowing more time before the flowering stage begins.
After pinching or pruning, give plants a recovery boost with a stress-relief tonic such as SuperThrive to help them bounce back quickly.
Key Considerations for Vegetative Growth
Crop Support
As plants produce more foliage, branches can become heavy and awkward to manage. Use support netting, yo-yos, or plant training devices to guide growth and keep the canopy open to light.
Feeds
Depending on your media and nutrient range, you may have a single A&B formula used all the way through the growing cycle or separate 'Grow' and 'Bloom' nutrients.
Medias like coco are inert, they don't hold on to nutrients like soil does. You control the shift from “veg-biased” to “bloom-biased” feeding not by changing bottles, but by adjusting dosage and adding bloom boosters.
Soil mixes however already contain nutrients and buffer them differently at various stages, because of this, the demands in veg (high nitrogen for leaf and stem growth) and flower (higher phosphorus and potassium for bud development) are more distinct, and as such are split into 'Grow' and 'Bloom' specific nutrients.
Stimulants can also be added at this stage to improve canopy size without triggering early flowering.
Environment
Maintain a temperature range of 24–28°C and a relative humidity of 50–80%. Accurate measurement tools like a thermometer, hygrometer, or combined temperature & humidity meter are vital to track and manage conditions consistently.
Lighting
Blue light encourages compact, leafy growth with strong stems. Traditionally many growers use dual-spectrum lamps, or Full spectrum LEDs. Traditionally, growers used to deploy a metal halide bulb during veg. Compact fluorescents (CFLs) are also effective for supplementing smaller setups.
LED grow lights are increasingly the top choice for veg and flower. Full-spectrum LED fixtures provide the ideal balance of blue and white light to drive vigorous vegetative growth, while running cooler and more efficiently than traditional lamps. Quality LEDs deliver high PPFD levels across the canopy, helping plants develop thick stems and dense foliage without the excess heat output of HID lighting.
By optimising these factors, you create the strongest possible foundation before moving your plants into the flowering stage—maximising their potential for size, structure, and eventual yield.
