There’s no question that the goal of cultivating cannabis is to obtain the biggest yield possible. Whether you’re growing THC-rich buds to procure a stash that will get you stoned for months to come, or plants that produce flowers loaded with CBD to keep yourself grounded and chilled, the end goal is the same. But how does a cultivator go about ensuring a max yield with best led grow light? And furthermore, how much weed is one plant even capable of producing?
HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR CANNABIS YIELD: QUICK TIPS FOR GROWERS
Choose the Right Strain
To lean on our metaphor once more, you’re not going to feed your entire crew with a 10-inch pizza, and you’re not going to get a pound of pot from a plant that’s genetically inferior.
Some cannabis strains are naturally predisposed to produce more flowers than others. Even better, many hybrid strains have been developed to deliver high yields without compromising the quality of the bud.
This is not an exhaustive list, but here are some of the strains you should consider in order to maximize your plants’ yields.
Blue Dream: One of the most popular strains in America, it produces huge yields (but somewhat mild product) when grown outdoors.
Purple Trainwreck: Another strain that does best outdoors but also produces well in a grow room, it flowers quickly and produces large amounts of mellow weed.
Big Bud: This strain does well indoors and outdoors and is known for its enormous plants with (as you’d guess) big buds, and its product is good enough to have won the Cannabis Cup.
Girl Scout Cookies Extreme: Another indoor/outdoor strain that’s easy to grow, favored by growers because of its large flowers and big yields.
Critical Kush: This plant has to be grown indoors because it’s prone to mold, but when tended well it will reward the grower with massive yields.
White Widow: Best known for its strong high, it’s known among cultivators for its heavy production and resilience to mold.
Growing Outdoors
You have limited control over environmental factors when you grow outdoors. Started indoors, transplanted into loose and airy soil in a perfect climate, properly fed, watered, and trained – a prodigious strain could produce well over a pound of dry flower. But that’s a lot of “ifs.”
What’s most important is controlling the factors that you can actually manage.
Don’t time your plant to grow and flower during extreme weather. If you have very hot summers (over 85°) or cold summer nights (lower than 50°), don’t expect a heavy yield.
Time of year matters, too; most strains need at least five hours of direct sunlight and five hours of indirect sun – but too much daylight will prevent them from flowering properly, greatly limiting production. Autoflowering plants are often the best choice for outdoor growing.
Soil (dark, silty loam is best) should be rich in organic matter, organic fertilizer should be added as needed, and watering should be frequent; some huge plants may need as much as 10 gallons per day, so good drainage is crucial.
Tenting or putting up tarps is best for outdoor plants in some climates, as protection against wind, heavy rains, temperature variations, and some pests. Just be aware that the smaller the tent, the smaller the plant and the smaller the yields.
If you’re growing in pots, the size of the plants and the yield will be limited; bigger pots allow bigger plants to grow. Large cannabis plants require a 15-20 gallon pot for good production, and you shouldn’t expect the yield to be as great as if you were growing in ideal soil conditions.
Finally, plants should be frequently inspected for pests (particularly spider mites) and mold. They can turn a small yield into no yield at all.
Generally speaking, you can expect 4-8 ounces in decent outdoor conditions, and as much as a pound from a plant that’s been grown in perfect conditions.
Growing Indoors
Are you growing in soil or in a hydroponic medium? That’s important because proper indoor hydroponic growing can increase yields by as much as 20%. You just need a marijuana grow tent! Of course, if you don’t know what you’re doing, your yield will suffer dramatically.
Assuming you’re growing in soil and that you’re doing everything right as far as food, water, and fertilizer are concerned, and assuming that you’ve chosen a productive strain, lighting is the most important factor in determining the yield of indoor cannabis plants.
The benchmark formula many growers use is that a plant will produce one gram of pot for every watt of light. That would theoretically mean that 250 watts of light would let you harvest a little more than half-pound of weed.
That ignores several factors, though. Indoor grow lights are usually either LEDs, CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps) or time-honored HID (high-intensity discharge) sources, and experienced growers often use several types because each has pros and cons.
CFL bulbs are great for small spaces and work well with seedlings, but aren’t ideal for the plant’s flowering stage and will limit yield significantly if they’re the only light source.
LEDs need to be kept a good distance from plants, and yields are smaller (on average) than with HIDs. By the way a full spectrum LED grow light can help your cannabis grow better.
HIDs are the most efficient light source and produce the highest yields, but they’re much more complicated and run extremely hot, requiring extra fans or ventilation.
As it turns out, the one gram per watt formula only holds true with HID lighting, and that’s under perfect conditions. Also, remember that light can be “absorbed” by a large grow room, so just because you have 500 watts of light in the room, that doesn’t mean 500 watts are hitting the plant. What's more, quantum board led grow light also is with a high watts.
If you really want to give your indoor plant exactly the right amount of light to maximize yield, you need to use the type of formulas that commercial growers do. Here’s one of them:
room length x room width x desired PPFD level (measured in µmol/m²/s)
That should be more than enough information to let you take a step back, and use a more common-sense formula. Here’s the one we prefer:
productive strain + proper care = between 4 ounces and one pound per plant
That’s probably not the definitive answer you were looking for – but it’s the right one.
HOW TO ESTIMATE YIELD
While yields vary a lot, there are some ways you can get at least a rough estimate of how much weed you’ll produce.
ESTIMATING YIELD BASED ON POT SIZE
Remember that cannabis plants will only grow as large as their pots allow them to. And while size is, as we saw earlier, far from the perfect indicator of how much you’ll harvest, it can help you get a ballpark estimate of what your harvests will look like.
Ideally, you’ll want to grow in at least 18-litre pots. With this amount of soil, some decent nutrients, and some light pruning/training, you should be able to grow large, healthy plants that reach at least 90cm in height. Given they get a full 4–5 weeks of vegetative growth and solid lighting that penetrates right through to the lowest bud sites, plants of this size should be able to produce at least 100g of dry bud per plant.
ESTIMATING YIELD BASED ON LIGHTING
Some growers choose to estimate their yield based on the strength of their lamps. And while this is far from an exact science, it can be a bit more accurate than calculating your yield per plant, especially if you choose to grow multiple smaller plants, rather than just a few larger ones.
If you're growing indoors and have at least a few harvests under your belt, you can expect to harvest roughly one gram for every watt of light. If you’re a newbie grower with little-to-no experience, expect yields of around 0.5g per watt.
GO HYDRO FOR BIGGER YIELDS
Growing hydroponically gives you a lot more control over how your plants feed. With the right equipment and experience, this can greatly improve the size and quality of your yield. Experienced hydro growers, for example, can encourage yields of up to 1.2g per watt of lighting. By this logic—and using a 600W lamp—a good hydro grower can harvest over 700 grams of bud (genetics depending)!
A NOTE ON DRY VS WET YIELD
Remember, the weight of your buds will drop dramatically after drying and curing. So don’t get too excited when you weigh your buds right after trimming. Instead, multiply your wet yield by 0.25 to get a rough estimate of how much dry bud you’ll end up with.
Final thoughts
We all want to get the biggest yield out of our marijuana crop especially since growing it requires hard work. But more importantly, we want to be able to enjoy its benefits as much as we can. To help us achieve this goal, we need to have a baseline on how much weed to expect come harvest time. Ultimately, this information will help guide our work to get the most out of the crop.
So, exactly how much weed can one marijuana plant make? Interestingly, there are many answers to this question. But the biggest determinant is the light that nourishes the cannabis plants. Typically, a brighter light will encourage the plant to produce bigger and denser buds. Similarly, a spacious grow area will help the roots grow longer which results to a more productive crop.
Not surprisingly, using high-quality soil and fertilizer will also lead to bigger yields. As we can see, many variables can affect both the quantity and quality of the weed we can harvest. Therefore, we will focus on them to get the nearest estimate of the yield.