As your plants enter the flowering stage, you face a critical decision: How do you maintain the perfect environment so that they grow optimally and give you the maximum amount of yield? Whether you grow flowers, fruits, or other crops, temperature and humidity are among the most critical factors on which the quality of harvest depends. If conditions aren’t just correct, then you may see problems with poor flower development, less potency, or even growing mold.
In this article, we’ll examine the ideal temperature and humidity conditions for the flowering stage and offer tips on maintaining them for the healthiest, most potent buds.
Ideal Daytime and Nighttime Temperature Ranges
The temperature during the flowering stage plays a significant role in determining the success of your crop. Plants are sensitive to fluctuations in temperature, which can affect everything from growth rate to bud quality and overall plant health.
Day Temperature Range: 70-80°F (21°C - 27°C)
- Ideal Range: Most blooming plants thrive at day temperatures between 70 and 80°F (21°C to 27°C), which promotes healthy growth, maximizes energy production, and allows your plants to really open up and photosynthesize.
- At this temperature range, plants can take the nutrients they need efficiently inside, which is necessary to enable bud development and good plant health.
What if the temperature gets too hot?
- Temperatures above 80°F (27°C) can stress your plants, slowing growth and reducing flower production.
- High heat causes the plant to transpire more, leading to dehydration and nutrient imbalances.
Nighttime Temperature Range: 60°F to 70°F (15°C - 21°C)
- Ideal Range: After the sun sets, the temperature needs to drop. 60°F to 70°F (15°C to 21°C) is the sweet spot for nighttime temperatures.
- These cooler temperatures provide an opportunity for your plants to rest and rejuvenate themselves after the day’s photosynthesis activity.
- A slight nighttime dip mimics natural cycles and triggers key flowering processes.
- Since plants cannot photosynthesize as effectively at night, cooler temperatures help retain energy for the next day’s growth and encourage bud development.
Imagine planning your cannabis harvest without much hassle. PlanaCan‘s interactive calendar helps you track the harvest of your cannabis with ease. It centralizes tasks, lets you adjust as needed, and ensures nothing is overlooked.
Temperature Differential: 10°F (6°C)
- Ideal Range: A 10°F (6°C) difference between day and night is ideal for stimulating metabolic processes that promote flowering and resin production.
- Such natural variation helps your plants enter recovery, which is always necessary to create premium buds.
- Such changes in temperatures can also stimulate the production of terpenoids, thereby enhancing the flavor and potency of your flowers.
Consistent temperature fluctuations, in line with natural environmental rhythms, can also enhance terpenoid production, improving the flavor and potency of the flowers.
Risks of High Temperatures Above 80°F
While a bit of heat can encourage photosynthesis and bud production, long periods of temperatures above 80°F (27°C) can create serious problems. High temperatures lead to:
- Reduced potency: Excessive heat can cause the plant to enter stress mode, which diverts energy away from bud production and focuses on survival.
- Poor quality of buds: Heat stress also causes smaller buds with low essential oils and cannabinoids, affecting the quantity and quality in general.
- Dehydration and nutrient imbalance: At high temperatures, plants lose water rapidly through transpiration. This leads to dehydration and may also cause a deficiency in key nutrients needed for flowering.
If your plants are exposed to heat above 80°F for too long, they may not fully recover and may stunt their growth.
Next, let’s discuss how humidity affects the flowering stage.
Humidity During the Flowering Stage
The humidity level is very significant during the flowering stage. Low humidity can cause plants to dry up. Conversely, high humidity can encourage the growth of unhealthy mold or mildew. Let’s analyze ideal humidity levels at the various stages of flowering:
Early Flowering Stage: 40% to 60% Humidity
1. The Ideal Humidity Range during the early flowering stage is 40% to 60%. This helps the plants stay moist and retain energy as they transition from the vegetative phase to full bloom.
2. Benefits of Moderate Humidity
- Prevents the plant from drying out too fast and reduces stress.
- Helps the plant take in more nutrients as it develops flowers.
3. Risks of High Humidity
- Too much moisture can increase the risk of mold and mildew.
- The growth and spoilage of flowers by mold can be avoided by controlling humidity levels.-
Mid-to-Late Flowering Stage: 30% to 50% Humidity
1. The Ideal Range is 50% humidity in the middle and late flowering stages.
- The lower the humidity, the better your flowers will develop. Too much moisture can lead to mold growth.
- This range of humidity encourages resin production, which will increase the flavor and aroma of your buds.
2. Dangers of High Humidity:
- If the humidity stays too high during the late flowering stage, your plants are vulnerable to bud rot.
- Bud rot starts when excess water breaks out the buds, causing harvest spoiling.
PlanaCan‘s interactive calendar provides a clear visual timeline, making task planning and tracking more effortless than ever. The calendar lets you adjust tasks as needed, helping you stay on top of any changes or dynamic needs.
So, what is the role of humidity in keeping your cannabis crop healthy?
Role of Humidity in Mold Prevention and Resin Production
Humidity is a very vital component for the health of your plants, especially when you think about mold and promoting resin production. Mold and mildew love moisture-rich settings and can be quite catastrophic to your yield.
Careful adjustment of the humidity setting from the start of the flowering phase will reduce the onset of mold and encourage resin in buds, which is a desirable attribute of quality buds.
1. Mold and Mildew Prevention:
- Mold and mildew are likely to grow when the surroundings are too wet, especially in the dense canopy of flowering plants. Excess moisture creates a perfect breeding ground for these fungi, which can quickly spread and ruin your buds.
- By lowering the humidity during the flowering stage, especially in the later stages, you reduce the chances of mold taking hold. This will ensure that your flowers remain healthy, mold-free, and ready for harvest.
2. Encouraging Resin Production:
- Resin is essential to the potency, flavour, and aroma of your plants. It contains cannabinoids, such as THC and CBD, and terpenes, which define the effects and profile of your buds.
- Lower humidity in the late stages of flowering triggers plants to increase resin production. This natural defence mechanism works because once the plant gets accustomed to drier air, it starts producing more resin around the flowers to protect them from becoming desiccated and from a more challenging environment.
- This resin production will intensify the potency of your flowers and enhance the richer, more aromatic flavor profile for which a crop is sold. Thus, such production directly impacts the quality and marketability of your crop.
Balancing humidity can protect your plants from mold and stimulate the production of high-quality resin, resulting in a more potent and flavorful harvest.
Now that you know about humidity and its role in the flowering stage, let’s understand how air circulation impacts cannabis growth.
Air Circulation: A Key Element for Healthy Flowering
Good air circulation is one of the most critical factors many growers overlook when growing their plants during the flowering stage. Good airflow maintains optimal levels of humidity and prevents it from becoming stagnant, which then causes mold and mildew to grow.
Why Air Circulation Matters
Air circulation is crucial for:
- Even humidity: Stagnant air creates pockets of excessive humidity that can cause mold, especially for dense buds. Proper airflow ensures moisture is evenly distributed throughout the grow space.
- Preventing mold and mildew: Air circulation helps prevent the growth of mold and mildew by ensuring moisture does not settle on your plants’ leaves and buds.
- Strengthen stems: Plants grow stronger stems, which, if air circulates appropriately, will cause the flowers to hang later when they appear.
Are you tired of guessing how your cultivation decisions affect your harvest? PlanaCan provides detailed reports that track your choices and their impact on yield. Analyze trends, avoid mistakes, and improve your process for higher yields and profitability.
So, what can you do to manage the air circulation in your cannabis plant? Let’s understand.
Tools for Good Air Circulation
Proper air circulation is essential to create a healthy growing environment, especially during the flowering stage. It ensures that your plants get just the right amount of moisture, inhibits the development of mold and mildew, and provides them with adequate oxygen.
To ensure good air circulation, you can use a mix of fans and ventilation systems. Here’s how each tool works and how to use them effectively:
1. Oscillating Fans:
- Purpose: Oscillating fans help distribute steady airflow throughout your grow space, preventing stagnant air pockets from building up and becoming wet and moldy.
- How They Help: Circulating air gently and oscillating fans ensure that every area of the grow room is exposed to fresh, clean air while avoiding hot spots and additional humidity.
- Placement: Mount fans at various angles and heights to ensure that the air is distributed evenly across your plants. Do not place them directly on the plants, as constant direct airflow can cause wind stress or dehydration.
2. Exhaust Fans:
- Purpose: An exhaust fan is meant to pull a moist, warm air mixture out of the grow space and to ventilate fresh, cooler air from outside or from adjacent areas.
- How They Help: Exhaust fans help regulate temperature and humidity, ensuring that air does not become too damp, resulting in mold, mildew, or bud rot.
- Placement: Install exhaust fans at the top of the room as hot air rises. This allows the moist, warm air to be properly expelled from the space.
3. Fans in Combination:
- Balanced Airflow: This is best achieved through a combination of oscillating fans and exhaust fans.
- How They Work Together: The oscillating fans’ internal airflow helps circulate air inside the plants, while the exhaust fans remove stale air and regulate temperature and humidity.
- Avoiding Wind Stress: When installing these systems, take great care not to create wind tunnel effects that stress your plants. You want the air to flow gently for good airflow without stressing your plants too much.
4. Other Air Circulation Equipment:
- Intake Fans: If you’re growing in a closed environment, an intake fan can bring fresh air from outside or another room into your space. This balances the exhaust fan so that there is always a continuous flow of fresh air into the space.
- Air Filters: If air quality is a concern in your location, using filters on your exhaust and intake systems can help prevent contaminants or pests from entering your grow space.
Now that you know the tools, let us learn how to monitor and adjust the temperature and humidity of your cannabis plant.
Need help determining how your cultivation choices affect your harvest? PlanaCan provides detailed reports on your decisions and their impact on yield, helping you improve your methods for better results, higher yields, and profitability.
Monitoring and Adjusting Temperature and Humidity
It is crucial to maintain a suitable temperature and humidity level for plants to grow well. A minor change in a single aspect can significantly impact a plant’s progress, so it is vital to monitor and adjust growing conditions carefully. Here’s the trick to monitoring and adjusting your growing conditions perfectly.
1. Use Hygrometers and Thermometers
Why It’s Important:
To ensure that your plants grow in the right conditions, you must constantly monitor the temperature and humidity. Otherwise, you may create an environment that is too hot, too cold, too dry, or too humid.
2. Good Quality Devices:
- Hygrometers measure humidity, and thermometers track temperature. A good digital model provides easy-to-read data directly from the source.
- Many of the new hygrometers and thermometers are precision instruments that can be calibrated for even more precise readings.
- You can also use smart devices that connect to your smartphone to monitor the conditions from afar, making it easier to adjust when necessary.
3. Placement Matters:
Place your hygrometer and thermometer at various places within your growing space to really feel the overall environment (such as near plants or air vents).
4. Temperature and Humidity Adjustment
You can use several instruments to make adjustments if it’s too hot or cold.
- Space heaters: if it’s too cold, the heater helps increase the temperature.
- Air Conditioning: If it gets too hot, AC units will cool the air and keep it at the right temperature.
- Use Both: If the temperature in your grow room fluctuates greatly, you may need to use both a heater and an air conditioning unit to maintain it.
5. Adjustments for Humidity
The humidity also needs to be kept in the right amount. Excessive humidity leads to mold and mildew, and insufficient moisture will stunt your plant’s growth and even harm bud development.
- Dehumidifiers: These are very effective at removing excess moisture, especially in humid climates or when you want to keep the humidity on the lower end in the late flowering stages.
- Humidifiers: On the other hand, if the air is too dry (often during colder months), a humidifier can add moisture back to the air, helping your plants thrive.
Air Circulation: Proper air circulation via fans can also help regulate temperature and humidity by preventing hot spots and moisture buildup.
6. Acclimating to Environmental Conditions
- Strain-Specific Requirements: Different strains of plants often prefer different environmental conditions. Some may grow well at slightly cooler temperatures, but others may require warmer temperatures to reach their maximum flowering potential.
- Research Is the Key: Researching the strain you are growing will help you make the proper adjustments. Knowing the ideal temperature and humidity for your strain can help you fine-tune your environment for the best possible outcome.
Are you tired of managing every detail? With PlanaCan, workflow is made easy with the use of customizable templates for planting, feeding, and harvesting. You can plan everything easily, stay efficient, and focus on growing.
Consider factors like whether the strain is sativa-dominant (which tends to prefer warmer temperatures) or Indica-dominant (which may perform better in slightly cooler conditions).
Strain-Specific Environmental Controls
Not all plants are created equal, and most definitely not all have the same temperature and humidity needs, especially different strains. All strains have their own environmental preferences based on genetic background, breeding practices, and place of origin.
For example, some strains do exceptionally well in warmer temperatures, while others prefer cooler climates. Again, some strains need moist air to thrive and grow well, while others prefer dryer conditions.
Knowing these exact needs is crucial to setting up the appropriate environment for each strain and ensuring its optimal performance during the flowering stage.
This knowledge is vital for maximizing growing conditions and ensuring that every strain flourishes throughout the flowering cycle.
Genetic Differences in Environmental Needs:
Plants have evolved according to the prevailing climatic conditions in their locations. In tropical climates, sativa strains generally grow better at higher temperatures and humidity.
On the other hand, indica varieties, which originate from colder places like the Himalayas, prefer cooler and drier environments. Such strains may not thrive well under high humidity or too much heat; therefore, they need a more controlled setting to avoid mold and other complications.
Why Knowing the Strain Preference is Important
- By adjusting your environment to suit your strain’s preferences, you can help it grow and develop healthily, resulting in better, healthier plants and better-quality buds.
- Understanding these preferences can also help you avoid common pitfalls, such as mold growth or poor flower production, which can happen if environmental conditions are different from the strain’s natural habitat.
Adjusting Conditions to Your Strain
To get the best results from your plants, research the specific needs of the strain you’re growing. Each variety may have slightly different optimal temperature and humidity ranges, so taking the time to learn these details will pay off in the long run.
How to Tailor Your Environment:
- Temperature: Adjust the temperature to your liking. For example, the Sativa strains can tolerate daytime temperatures up to 85°F or 29°C, while the indicia ones prefer cooler conditions, closer to 70°F to 75°F or 21°C to 24°C.
- Humidity: Sativa strains might prefer higher humidity levels, between 50% and 60%, but indica strains prefer a slightly lower humidity level, between 40% and 50%, to prevent mold and mildew from forming.
- Light: Some strains thrive only under more intense lighting to flower well, while others do much better with less direct exposure to sunlight. Adjust your cycles to accommodate this.
Strain-Specific Research Is Key
- Consultation Resources: Look up breeder recommendations, grower forums, and cultivation guides to get the best advice for your specific strain.
- Adjusting Your Setup: Based on your research, adjust factors like ventilation, airflow, and light intensity to meet the plant’s needs. Minor adjustments can greatly improve overall yield and quality.
- Try/Explore and Observe: Anyone will have experience with a particular strain. Feel free to experiment with slight changes in temperature, humidity, and light to determine what truly suits your plants.
Want better cannabis yields? PlanaCan helps you track every cultivation decision and its impact on your harvest. With detailed reports, you can refine your techniques, avoid mistakes, and boost yields for greater profitability.
Now you know all about environmental strains that impact the growth of your cannabis plant, let us discuss how VPD impacts temperature and humidity.
The Impact of VPD (Vapour Pressure Deficit) on Temperature and Humidity
If you are tuning the conditions in which your plants will grow, you need to know about Vapour Pressure Deficit, or VPD for short. While it’s an advanced concept, VPD is a highly effective tool in optimization, especially when working with temperature and humidity balance.
What Is VPD?
Vapour Pressure Deficit computes the difference between what the air can hold at a given temperature and what it contains. In other words, it measures how much moisture the air can still absorb or “hold onto” versus the amount that is actually present.
Why VPD Matters:
VPD is also directly involved in plant health through how well water is absorbed. When the VPD is too high, the plant’s water uptake might be impeded because the air is nearly at its maximum water-holding capacity. Low VPD is a breeding ground for molds and mildew, and it has too much moisture, so plants cannot undergo transpiration.
The Ideal VPD Rangefor Healthy Plant Growth:
Optimal VPD To maintain optimal plant health during the flowering stage, aim for a VPD between 0.8 to 0.95 kPa. This range strikes a balance between humidity and temperature, encouraging healthy transpiration and nutrient uptake.
What Happens Within This Range:
- When the VPD is within this range, the water can be pulled through the roots of your plants, taken up in the stems, and exhaled out through the leaves without losing its power. This method is important for nutrient transport and overall growth.
- A balanced VPD supports strong flower development and resin production, which are critical for yield and quality. It also helps the plant maintain a healthy cell structure and prevents stress, which can stunt growth or affect the potency of buds.
VPD and Flowering Quality:
You will enhance not only growth but also the quality of your flowers. You will also ensure that your plants are neither stressed by too little moisture nor flooded with excess humidity, which can reduce bud density, potency, and flavor.
Why Proper VPD is Important at Flowering
- Water Conservation: With the right VPD, plants will uptake water most efficiently, so they should not exhaust energy, compensating for suboptimal conditions.
- Prevention of Diseases: Healthy VPD conditions reduce the likelihood of mold and mildew associated with highly humid conditions.
- Balanced Environment: A proper VPD can create a very balanced growing environment where temperature and humidity complement each other, giving the plants the best conditions for optimum health and bud development.
Conclusion
Optimizing temperature, humidity, and VPD is crucial to creating the perfect environment for your plants during the flowering stage. By carefully managing these factors, you can enhance both the growth and quality of your flowers, resulting in a higher yield and more potent, flavorful buds. Understanding the delicate balance of these environmental conditions can be challenging, but the rewards are well worth the effort.
PlanaCan makes it easy for you by supervising your cultivation practices and their improvement. Generate detailed reports on each harvest, including all cultivation decisions and their influence on your final yield. All this information is collected in one place and becomes straightforward to analyze and look for trends over time. By reviewing your reports, you can see what’s working well, avoid repeating mistakes, and continue to refine your process to boost your yields and profitability.
Ready to Take Your Growing Operation to the Next Level? Schedule a free call today to Learn How PlanaCan Can Help You Achieve Optimal Results.
