It’s every single cannabis growers dream to grow cannabis buds so big they need a chainsaw to harvest them. This is for good reason, growing massive cannabis buds means you get to have more dried cannabis flowers with less time and energy costs going into your grow.
Many growers make mistakes when they start growing cannabis that lead to small buds and little harvests. The great thing about this is that it doesn’t have to be the case at all. With some simple tricks and growing techniques, growers can not only increase their yield, they can even double it by growing the most massive cannabis buds ever.
How Cannabis Genetics Play a Big Part in Bud Size?
In many articles we speak time and time again about how important plant genetics are in just about everything to do with your plants. They control everything in its growth, plant growth, lighting needs, plant size, leaf size, bud size, flowering time, pest resistance and countless other traits to do with the plant.
If you start from cannabis seeds with poor genetics, no matter how hard you work, or how much you do to make the buds bigger, you can only do so much and they still may be small.
Are Bigger Buds More Potent?
Bigger buds are not more potent than any other size of cannabis buds. Also dense cannabis buds are not more potent then less dense cannabis buds. A grower could grow the largest hemp bud on the plant and it still would not be more potent than a small indica cannabis flower.
The size of cannabis buds have nothing directly to do with cannabis potency. Cannabis potency comes from the genetics of the plant, and to a much lesser extent, how the plant is cultivated.
That being said, the more massive cannabis buds you grow the more you will have to smoke even if it is a weaker strain of cannabis, or a CBD marijuana strain.
Creating the Best Growing Environment
Step one to growing massive cannabis buds is keeping your growing environment as optimal as possible. Any type of growing condition that will have a negative effect on the growing plant will affect how large the cannabis buds will grow on the plant. Most hybrid cannabis strains today have an eight week window to flower.
When there is an interruption in darkness, environment or growing conditions, this will slow the plants growth down impacting how large the plant can grow flowers in the window. When the plant slows down so doesn’t the growth of the female plants buds.
Anything that affects the plant’s growth negatively will help the plant to create smaller less dense cannabis buds.
When do your Cannabis Buds Grow the Most
Cannabis flowers tend to grow the most about one week after lights have been turned to 12 hours of darkness. With most strains the buds will grow the most from week 2 to week 5. This is the time that the buds will grow the most flowers. However the buds actually bulk up in the last couple of weeks of flowering. The flowers start to swell up and become larger. Some growers mistake this for the plant growing the most during this time.
Proven Ways to Grow Larger Buds
Other than growing great seeds genetics these ways can really help you to grow massive cannabis buds. A few different things can help your buds grow more flowers in the first few weeks, and gain more weight later in the flowering cycle.
Successful planning can go a long way in growing massive cannabis buds.
Growing With Adequate Lighting and Spectrum
One of the main keys to growing the biggest cannabis buds possible is to have good lighting that has the proper spectrum for your cannabis plant. Cannabis is a light loving plant and this is especially true for flowering cannabis plants.
No matter how good your genetics are, how perfect everything in this article is, without a good strong bright light you will never be able to grow massive cannabis buds. You will never be able to grow massive buds under a 15 watt fluorescent light.
This is why having a good light with the proper spectrum is very important in your growing space. We have a great article here about picking the right grow lighting.
Making Sure the Plant Has Enough of the Right Nutrients
No Cannabis plant can grow well without the right nutrients, and will struggle to grow vegetatively, let alone grow massive cannabis buds.
Cannabis will need the right types of nutrients in flowers to grow large buds. These include the right amount of phosphorus, and potassium. Both of these nutrients in flowers help to create more flowering sites on the cannabis buds. The more flowering sites you can promote on the plant in the first few weeks of flower the larger and more dense the end cannabis buds will be.
Not having these two important nutrients in the flowering cycle will hurt the overall bud growth of your plants.
Another important nutrient that is often overlooked when growing massive cannabis buds is calcium. Calcium is the building blocks of your cannabis buds. It helps to form the plant’s cells and keep the plant growing healthy flowers.
How can I provide these Nutrients?
If you are using liquid nutrients there are many “bloom boosters” that you can purchase that contain these elements. Growers can use the recommendations provided by the manufacturer to provide these flowering enhancers to their plants. These bottle nutrients are made to make sure your plants have what they will require in flowers to grow the best and largest buds possible.
If you are growing organically then you can provide these flowering nutrients using organic methods like top dressing for cannabis plants. We have a great article here all about the best organic nutrients to flower cannabis.
Recommendations for Larger Buds With Organic Amendments
There are a few different amendments we recommend that organic growers use for top dressing for massive cannabis buds. The ones that we recommend the most are Rock Phosphate and high phosphorus Bat Guano. These are awesome organic amendments to grow cannabis with and use as a top dress to grow huge cannabis buds. Growers can start using both of these about 2 weeks before you start flowering.
Sprinkle a good amount around the stems of the plant (about one handful per plant container) about every two weeks, until two weeks before harvest. These amendments break down slowly over time and will feed your plant well for flowering.
Plant Training to make sure all your Plants have Access to Adequate lighting
As we mentioned above, having enough lighting is key to massive cannabis bud growth. Using training methods in order to make sure that none of your cannabis growing tips are shaded from the light is another way to grow larger buds.
Many growers will trim their plants to grow 3 or 4 main larger cannabis colas (one large dense flowering top for cannabis plants). They do this instead of growing 25 smaller cannabis colas that will yield smaller buds. The more growing tips the cannabis plants have the smaller the buds on each growing tip will be. The plant has to divide more resources into more tops instead of a few larger ones. This is a proven way to grow larger cannabis buds.
There are also other ways to make sure your top buds are getting the most amount of light possible. We have a great article here on using Low Stress Training techniques to get your buds excellent lighting by training your cannabis plants.
Using these ways of training your plants will help to grow massive cannabis buds.
We should Also Mention Super Cropping Here
Super Cropping cannabis means to bend, twist and squeeze your plant branches to make them thicker and more sturdy. When you do these things to the plant it will regrow the stems tissues back even stronger than before. You can pinch the plant’s stems with your fingers, being careful not to break the branch just, gently crush the stems tissues. The plant will regrow the point at which you crushed it back even stronger than before.
Growers can do this, all the way up the main plant stems to allow them to also take up more water and nutrients from the growing buds. This is a great way to create stronger plants, and grow very large buds that will be far less likely to topple over when they get large in the final few weeks of flowering.
Adding CO2 into Your Growing Space
Another way that you can increase the size and weight of your cannabis buds is by supplementing CO2 into your growing space. Adding CO2 is a lot like adding a supercharger to a car, it will give that extra overdrive to the plants to grow extra large flowers. Cannabis is always limited by its weakest link, whether that be, nutrients, lighting, container size or CO2 PPMS in the grow room. As a grower you can think of extra CO2 in the growing space as rocket fuel to grow massive cannabis buds!
Normally in a growing space the CO2 will be around 300 to 400 PPMS. By supplementing CO2 you can bring that level up to 1500 PPMS in the growing space.
Waiting for your Cannabis Buds to Finish
As we mentioned above, cannabis bulks up the last couple of weeks of flowering. We see time and time again growers posting their buds online asking if they are finished yet. However their buds are still not bulking up yet. We know you are excited to harvest your crop. It’s completely reasonable. But be patient and give the plant the time they need to finish up, you could end up with smaller buds then you could have by harvesting too early. Let the plants get massive cannabis buds.
Your buds will be much bigger if you just give them the time that is needed to get big.
Conclusion
While genetics will play the biggest part in growing massive cannabis buds, these tips can help to improve the size of your buds even more. They call the cannabis strain “Big Bud” for a reason! Happy Growing!
