Fading Your Cannabis Plants – Good Tips for New Growers

fading marijuana plants

Mother Nature has been beyond kind to the cannabis industry, and when it comes to fading, no one does it better than her. Fading your cannabis is an artistic process, especially if the crops are bottle-fed hence the reason why all growers must know how to get it right.

In addition to the help you receive from Mother Nature, this article will also share the most effective and practical tips for fading your cannabis this grow season.

Don’t panic over the process.

When growers panic over the growing process, it leads to mistakes and errors in the process that causes damage to the plants. Sometimes panic starts when you become afraid that your plants will fade too early, and your fears are valid, but panic is not a good reaction to such worries.

The tendency at which plants will fade is relative to specific genetic abilities, which it is efficient at or not. The amount of food the plant gets from the soil or surrounding water will be a deciding factor. The environment also plays a crucial role as hotter places make the plant grow with a higher metabolism, which means more water and nutrient consumption.

If you are an expert grower with years of experience, you will agree that panic is not helpful at the earliest fading stage. If you use living soil without bottled organic nutrients and don’t change the water or planting environment, your plants will decide on their own needs.

When it’s time to fade, you will observe that the plant fades away slowly, and that is a good sign: so don’t panic!

Use PPM

This is an important tip as you can initiate the fading process and control its speed with the PPM levels in your marijuana’s water. Fading your marijuana is not easier than this, especially if everything is stable, from nutrients to water.

You will have more impressive results if you don’t overly goose your crops with liquid nutrients, you can do this sparingly, and fading will still happen.

Another super tip regarding PPM is to run your crops on the water while it is at 64 PPM: do this within two or three weeks before harvesting the crops. Ensure that you lower the water’s PPM to around 50 PPM as harvest draws closer.

This move shifts the plants into a “New mode” where they use stored nutrients to compensate for all the lost nutrients (which is in PPM value). So just cut your regular water with distilled water or another low PPM water source to achieve the desired PPM level for the last two weeks of harvest. If you want, you can also reduce your customized water.

Consider the temperatures, Humidity and Light Distance.

All three things mentioned are essential for fading your plant: they are all crucial individually and used in combination. If you have compelling lighting, you might want to become intentional with controlling the plant environment that is exposed to light.

You can also slow the fading process down by ensuring the humidity runs above 40% when lights are on with temperatures at 3 or 4 degrees lower than what is obtainable daily. Remember to increase light distance by 6 inches, as these are efforts that can help slow down the fading process.

It is okay if the plant fades and cannibalizes itself when flowering begins. Watch the plants closely to observe their fading speed and progression. You will know fading is starting to happen successfully when it first hits the leaves, then to the center and lower segments of the plant.

Allowing your plants to cannabilize early enough creates a pathway for additional lights that penetrate deep into the canopy, making for even better secondary growth yields. You will have more impressive products per plant using this method, and you can expect this to start about four weeks before harvest.

Watering

Every grower’s watering habit can either make or mar the fading process. If your plants experience drought-related stress, they may appear limp because of lack of watering, which shouldn’t be a “Serious” problem. But if the plants show such a lifeless appearance and they still don’t get water on time, it could become a problem.

You should pay even closer attention during the second part of the flowering stage. As if you have plants facing drought stress within ten days, they can enter “Burst mode.”

In that mode, the plants quickly consume their stored nutrients, and this can cause them to become hermaphrodites. So what’s the solution? Maintain a consistent watering routine, especially in the last flowering stages if you grow in containers.

You want to ensure your water rightly: not too much and not too little. Overwatering your marijuana plants can lead to additional issues, but if you have well-designed containers where you grow your plants, issues from watering will be minimal.

Yes, your marijuana plants need water for fading to happen, but no, they don’t need to be soaked in water. Interestingly, getting it right with the watering phase at the flowering level can position your cannabis plant well enough for Mother Nature to handle the process.

Bottom Line

When growing cannabis, having green marijuana plants at harvest time doesn’t mean you have a “Good” yield. The fading process entails reducing the plant’s nutrients during oil production. With fading, you don’t have to starve the plant of nutrients; you only reduce it to the barest levels before harvest time.

This is done because the quality of the derived product after fading is enormous. If your plant nutrient balance is off or overfed, you wouldn’t see much difference as it works best with healthy plants.

But excellent fading requires paying attention to specific details, and this article has shown you some of the most effective ways to perfect your fading process.

Every cannabis grower wants healthy yields and desires a profitable planting experience. Use these tips to get it right with fading your cannabis, and your desires for profitability will come to fruition.