One of the ultimate goals that every medicinal plant's grower has in mind is increasing their harvest yield. That being said, several factors can negatively impact your yield. Therefore, you need to be ready and prepared to overcome these problems to protect it. This article will guide you through 5 important tips that explain how to maximize any medicinal plant's yield.
1. Improving Your Grow With Proper Lighting
ECO Farm full spectrum grow light enable you to use a higher concentration of blue and white light during the vegetative stage so plants grow out instead of up, ensuring the best light access for all buds once flowering begins. Then, as you approach the flowering stage, you can crank up the red to increase bud production and ultimately add more UVB in the finishing stage to maximize potency.
Your lighting setup will have a major impact on your final yield. Moreover, depending on the wattage of the lamp, you need to remember to keep your grow light at a safe distance, as placing it too close to your plants could cause burn damage and thus a lower yield.
You also need to consider light distribution. The more equally the light is distributed, the better the bud production will be.
2. Providing The Right Amount Of Nutrients (don’t overdo it!)
The importance of adequate nutrition cannot be stressed enough. However, some growers tend to take this advice a little too seriously and end up overfeeding their plants. Providing too much or too little nutrition is a recipe for disaster. You can immediately figure out whether a plant is under or overfed by noticing things like leaf curling, discoloration or even death, among various other symptoms. This problem is also referred to as nutrient burn. Just like we should avoid filling our plates with hundreds of vitamin pills, we should also avoid giving our plants more nutrients than they can handle.
If most of your plant’s leaves are bright green and look similar, you can breathe easy knowing that your plant does not have any problems. However, you should know beforehand the exact amount of nutrients you should be providing to your plants. Here are a few nutrient-related tips that will help you:
The best method to help you steer clear of nutrient problems is to utilize soil-based mediums for creating compost to form super soil. This is completely organic and provides your plant virtually every nutrient that it requires for its entire lifecycle.
The super soil will also make sure there isn’t any toxicity or deficiency-related issues, allowing you to focus your energy and time elsewhere.
Buying a pre-mixed fertilizer is another option that can help eliminate the nutrient burn problem. Item contain exactly the right combination and quantity of nutrients to ensure your plant thrives, which can significantly improve its yield.
3. Plant Training
Training methods like SCROG, LST etc have proven to be quite effective in increasing yields. An even canopy and equal exposure of buds to light that can be achieved with training ensures an increase in both qualitative and quantitative growth of flowers, hence bigger yields.
Topping
As the name suggests, topping involves cutting off the top part of your plant. Since most plants tend to have a single stem, the idea of topping is to make the plant develop a double main cola in response to the stress. Sure, cutting off a part of plant that’s perfectly healthy may not feel right, but this is a tried and tested method used by a lot of experienced growers. These colas equally convert into buds during the flowering stage. Essentially, topping your plant a few times will result in more buds and a better overall yield. Topping also makes sure that your plant does not grow skinny and tall. Instead, it will make your plant more bushy, directly exposing the major portion of your plant to lights and allowing it to grow stronger.
SCROG
SCROG is often made of chicken wire or netting. The net is fixed at a particular height over the plants – a process that ensures your plant will grow according to your chosen height. As soon as your medicinal plants reaches the screen’s height, its leaves will begin to grow toward the sides, widening the plant. Wider and shorter plants ensure that a larger area of the plant gets direct light exposure. Once the nodes start getting adequate exposure to light, your plant’s yield will improve remarkably.
Pruning
Trimming and pruning is the same thing. This method helps you maximize yield by shifting all of the plant’s energy to the bud production by clipping off the extra foliage. This principle is quite simple, yet very few people actually follow it. However, by cutting the extra leaves, you will expose your plant’s bud sites to more light. Moreover, as the plant doesn’t need to support the growth of that extra foliage, it will grow more buds and a bigger main cola. Once you’re done trimming your plant, your yield and quality will improve tenfold.
Trellising
Sometimes when a plant is struggling to grow, it doesn't even have the strength to support itself. If medicinal plants have a structure bearing their weight, it can help them advance to a more developed stage. A basic technique of gardening is trellising. This is where wooden structures are built to aid and guide the growth of plants. The material can sometimes be wood, but also bamboo or kinds of metal. Any such strong material can be arranged in a mesh or simply as supportive rods. These can keep your plants separated and sturdy whether you're grow setup is horizontal or vertical. A bamboo rod could be enough for your medicinal plants to continue flourishing.
4. Control The Growth Environment
By controlling temperature and humidity, you can actually increase the smell and potency of your buds at harvest.
A big advantage of indoor growing is the ability to control the temperature of your growing environment through a ventilation system. The recommended temperature while receiving light is between 70–85° F, or 21–29° C. The recommended temperature without light is between 58–70° F, or 14–21° C. Humidity is also crucial to monitor, with levels between 50–70% being perfect, depending on the stage of the plant's development.
5. Wait Until The Right Time To Harvest
For most varieties of medicinal plants, there is a 1-2 week harvest after flowering, and harvesting is achieved during the “harvest” period. When the grower harvests before the “harvest”, the harvested yield will decrease. After the harvest period, the quality of Huaye has been greatly reduced
When 70%-80% of the pistils of the plant turn brown, the inflorescences mature and the plants can be harvested.
The final two or three weeks before the harvest can make a world of difference – buds can grow up to 25% more during this time! This is why it’s very important not to harvest earlier than the optimum window.
Conclusion:
For all of those wondering how to get bigger buds and improve their medicinal plants yields, this article will come in more than handy to provide you with the right knowledge and skills. Just remember to take your strain, growing area and some precautionary measures into consideration before you start growing. Once all of these things align with your goal to increase the yield of your medicinal plants, there won’t be anything stopping you from achieving your dream harvest.
If you have more issues with your plants, do not hesitate could contact us freely.
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