What are photoperiod seeds?
Photoperiod seeds give cannabis plants that start flowering when they get fewer hours of light a day, in other words, when the nights get longer. This is the natural way most strains flower.
"Photoperiod" means the number of hours of light a plant gets each day. Photoperiod plants use it like a calendar: while the days are long, they grow. When they sense the nights getting longer, they understand that the end of the season is approaching and start forming buds.
Autoflowers, on the other hand, ignore that calendar: they flower on their own based on age.
How they flower indoors and outdoors
- Outdoors: they grow in spring and summer and flower when the days start getting shorter, at the end of summer. The usual time to harvest is autumn.
- Indoors: you decide when they flower. During the growth stage they usually get about 18 hours of light a day and, to make them flower, you switch to 12 hours of light and 12 of darkness.
Advantages
- Size control: indoors, the longer you let them grow before switching to flowering, the bigger they get.
- Higher yield per plant: with time and space, a photoperiod plant can yield a lot more than an autoflower.
- Room to fix mistakes: if something goes wrong in the growth stage, the plant has time to recover.
- Cuttings: you can keep a mother plant in the growth stage and take copies from it.
Disadvantages
- Longer cycle: they take longer from seed to harvest than an autoflower.
- Be careful with darkness: indoors, the night hours must be completely dark. Light leaks can disrupt flowering.
Are photoperiod seeds feminized or regular?
They can be either. "Photoperiod" refers to how the plant flowers; "feminized" or "regular", to its sex. We state both on each product page.
Related terms
- What are autoflowering seeds?
- What is flowering?
- What is a Fast Version strain?
- What is the difference between indoor and outdoor growing?
Before you grow, check the laws in your country: growing cannabis is not allowed everywhere.
