How to Grow Bigger Buds Outdoors

How to Grow Bigger Buds Outdoors

Every grower dreams of harvesting the dankest yield. Growing cannabis is a labor of love, and after the hassles of everyday cannabis growing chores, you should get the love right back— huge buds that reward your commitment and patience. Read on to find out how you can get the best out of your outdoor grow.

 

Generally, cannabis plants do well outdoors, and the buds tend to grow bigger. Natural light and the breeze outside provide favorable conditions for your plants to grow into healthy, sizeable buds.

Cannabis Plants Enjoy an Unlimited Supply of CO2 Outdoors

Unlike indoors where airflow is limited within the grow tents, there is also sufficient airflow outdoors— more than you can get indoors, even with the best ventilation system.

 

The fresh air supply enriches your plants with enough CO2 which is essential in making the sugars that your plants need for growth.

How to Grow Bigger Buds Outdoors
Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

With access to 400 ppm of carbon dioxide, the plants can use this to make enough sugars for the plant’s growth and bud development.

 

Plus, no tent limits the heights the plants can grow and the bigger they spread around— hence more bud sites.

 

Unlike indoors where you have to work with strict environmental controls, outdoors, nature does it for you. The Christmas tree shape of the cannabis plant gives it adequate exposure to the sun’s light at any time of the day—enabling the buds to grow bigger and denser. That’s why outdoor growers get more yield per plant than indoor growers. Still, there are a few things you can do to grow bigger buds outdoors.

Prepare the Soil

First, prepare the area by enriching the soil with compost or slow-releasing fertilizer. Soil that’s rich in vitamins, minerals, and good bacteria offer your plants enough nutrients to thrive through vegetation to harvest.

 

You can add a layer of worm castings or bat guano to boost pH levels and further enrich the soils with phosphorous, nitrogen, and potassium— the key ingredients!

 

Also, adding compost tea moisture to the soil increases mycelium in the soil, ensuring the plant absorbs a higher percentage of the nutrients.

 

When you prepare the soil well, your plants will benefit immensely. Improved soil aeration, increased root growth, and the balance of water to air ratio in the soil are just a few benefits that spur healthy growth. Growbarato delves deeply into the subject of soil preparation.

 

Good soil genetics is vital as it ensures the buds are well suited to your environment.

 

Pre-compost soil is good as it does not require you to add commercial fertilizers, but if you want bigger outdoor buds, you need to add nitrogen-rich nutrients to complement their feeding.

Watch the Humidity

Avoid excessive moisture as buds are susceptible to mold infestation and bugs. Mold infested weed is good for nobody.

 

Besides, you don’t want your plants to channel their energy to healing after humidity-related infestations. That energy should be directed to bud growth and development. The buds home the THC, remember? You must take care of the plant and protect them to avoid bud rot.

Give the Right Nutrients at Every Stage

It’s essential to provide the plants with the right nutrients at every stage to have bigger buds. Mostly, you’ll need Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium. This explains why cannabis fertilizers have an NPK ratio.

 

During vegging, the plant needs more nitrogen than the rest. Nitrogen spurs the growth and development in your plants as it enables efficient photosynthetic processes. Nitrogen gives the plant the strength it needs to shoulder the big buds later. Give your plants a good start by using nitrogen-rich supplements.

 

At the flowering stage, you should add more phosphorous and reduce the nitrogen. Phosphorous helps in the development of buds— enabling them to grow to their full sizes. Go for a 10:30:10 NPK ratio during the first weeks of flowering.

 

Potassium is also an essential nutrient that helps improve your plant’s resistance to diseases and other environmental factors like drought. It helps in photosynthesis, hence a growth factor in your plants.

 

Lastly, potassium, in collaboration with phosphorous, fattens your buds, making them weighty and potent. Give more potassium during the last weeks of flowering to fatten the buds and potentiate the flavor.

Train Your Plants

When you have enriched your plants with nutrients, you expect them to grow— and they will grow dense and thick. Depending on the strain, your plant may grow so thick that light won’t penetrate through. Therefore, you need to prune it, then delve deeper into training techniques to enhance light exposure and airflow.

 

Pruning allows you to open up the plant leading to better airflow, discouraging mold and pest infestations.

 

However, you shouldn’t stop at pruning. Various training techniques like topping, fimming, and low-stress training remove unnecessary bud sites and allows the plant to focus its strength in producing the best buds.

Look at it this way, without training, you get many small buds, some not even worth keeping in the long run. But with training, you remove the popcorn buds and focus on developing the bigger buds!

 

Contrary to what most people think, training doesn’t waste the potential of your plants. Instead, it removes bud sites that are far from the canopy— the ones that never get adequate light to amount to anything!

 

A section of this in-depth guide to cannabis growing delves deeply into the essential tips for training cannabis for a bigger harvest.

Time Your Harvest

How to Grow Bigger Buds Outdoors
Photo by Terre di Cannabis on Unsplash

Timely harvest is a crucial factor in getting the best yield. Some strains grow hurriedly towards the finishing line— growing up to 25% of their size in the last two weeks to harvest. When you get excited and harvest earlier, you will miss on the extra goodness.

 

Also, timely harvesting helps you to achieve the right taste and aroma of the stash. Too late, and you lose on the flavor and THC concentration.

 

In summary, growing cannabis outdoors isn’t as easy as most people think. If you don’t want the quality of wild weed, you must tend to the plant well. Ensure they get the right nutrients at every stage, keep diseases and pests at bay by watching humidity and temperatures, and harvest at the right time. The buds will amaze you.