Increasing the amount of CO₂ in your grow room can help you grow bigger, denser buds. By doing so, you'll help plants photosynthesise faster and encourage them to take up more nutrients and water.
Make sure to use a high-quality nutrient solution and follow the recommended feeding schedule for your plants. Also, maintaining the right temperature, humidity, and light levels in your grow space can significantly improve the size of your buds!
Molasses adds sugars to the plant and will help it to bud. Like us, plants need salts, nutrients, and sugars daily. Feeding your plants molasses, what could be considered the equivalent to our eating junk food sugars, will pack on the weight to your marijuana buds.
Flowering – 5-20-5 or 5-25-10 – During flowering, you want to prioritize phosphorous to promote bud growth and make sure to limit nitrogen so your plant doesn't get too tall or “leggy.” You want it to concentrate on developing huge buds, not lots of stems or leaves, and phosphorus will make your buds grow.
To some degree, more light translates to fatter buds and higher yields (you'll need to pay attention to the distance between your grow light and plants or your plant may suffer from light burn). Increasing light intensity is the most effective way to fatten up buds.
General Hydroponic KoolBloom
Available as Liquid KoolBloom or Dry KoolBloom, this additive is widely regarded as the best bud hardener out there.
Lack of light is perhaps the most common reason that cannabis produces fluffy, light buds. You may have noticed the lower, puny 'popcorn' bud sites that form below the main canopy. Often these buds are discarded by growers allowing the plant to focus biochemical energy on the main blooms.
In order to get more potency in the flowering stage, you want to inspire your plant to produce more resin-producing trichomes. You do this by cranking up blue, white, and UVB lights to 100% and backing red down to around 50%.
Weeks 4-6: Buds Fatten Up
At this stage of cannabis flowering, your buds are getting bigger. They'll still have all the white pistils sticking out, but you'll be able to see the buds getting bigger every day.
Light – The most common reason buds aren't dense is the plant didn't get enough light in the flowering stage. Light is like food for the plant. Although cannabis plants can survive in relatively low light levels, they won't produce much bud. Up to a point, more light in the flowering stage = bigger buds.
Molasses contains a huge array of crucial minerals needed for weed plants to survive and thrive. Alongside this massive benefit, it helps to bring the soil to life by feeding beneficial bacteria and fungi. This then enables plants to tap into even more nutrients already present in the soil.
As previously stated, moderate levels of nitrogen and phosphorus work best to sustain trichome growth to the maximum level. Dumping nutrients on your plant during the second half of the flowering cycle can result in reduced cannabinoid and terpene content, thereby lowering your bud quality in both flavor and potency.
While molasses can contribute to better soil quality and overall plant health, it is not a direct factor in increasing bud size or trichome production.
Cannabis plants need water and nutrients to grow and develop big, healthy flowers. Drought, overwatering, and over/underfeeding can all affect your plant's ability to develop big, dense, and heavy flowers.
You can remove fan leaves during flowering in much the same way you do during veg. Prune away large leaves that are overshadowing bud sites, as well as dead or dying fan leaves. One thing to keep in mind is that you should prune in intervals, giving at least a couple weeks between each session.
Weak Light Source: On a similar note to distant lights, a weak light source can cause unnecessary stretching and growth in your plants. A light bulb that does not emit the necessary watts and lumens for your specific growth stage can force plants to grow tall and skinny in order to absorb the weak light.
Are Small Buds more Potent? Small buds are generally the same potency as large nugs of the same strain. Small nugs come from the same plants as large nugs, they're simply pieces of flower that tended to get less light and thus didn't grow as large.
In weeks 6-8, the buds of your plants will begin to harden; the delicate trichome heads of your flowers will cloud and turn amber, and the once milky pistils of your buds will shrink, turn brown and become fragile. Also, as your plants continue to ripen, new aromas, flavors, and pigmentation will develop.
After a sugar application, the resulting sugar-like crystals are the flower's trichomes, which are believed to double in production after the plant is treated with sugar.
Plants need plenty of air and movement around them. This allows the lower buds and branches to get the same light and temperature as the top branches and grow well. If many plants are crowded into the same grow space, or there is no movement of the air, it could result in airy buds.
Fluffy buds don't only look less appetising, but you'll need to use more of your harvest every time you roll a blunt or hit a bowl. Dense buds will offer some resistance and spring back to their original shape. Airy buds will almost collapse in on themselves, and feel much more feeble to the touch.
Most of the time, the bigger the buds, the better the quality, but each strain produces a different size and shape. Indicas tend to be more dense and smaller, while sativas are much less dense, fluffier, and generally regarded as less aesthetically pleasing. ...
When applying to individual plants, mix two tablespoons of molasses per gallon of water. Apply every two weeks. More frequent application is unnecessary and can potentially throw off the pH balance of the soil.
Many sugar or carbohydrate-based supplements claim to improve the smell/taste/sweetness of buds. A cheap alternative to expensive sugar-based bloom boosting supplements is blackstrap molasses. Giving this to your plants for the last few weeks before harvest can help them get bigger and smell/taste better.
Mishandling live cannabis plants will damage trichomes and result in lower-quality products. Careful trimming, drying, and curing keep trichomes intact and play a critical role in quality assurance in the cannabis industry.