The term Perpetual Harvest refers to an indoor gardening technique where multiple (usually two) different growing areas are utilized so there are always plants in both the flowering and vegetative stages. Creating a Perpetual Harvest is popular for growing cannabis indoors because it ensures an ongoing supply of marijuana throughout the year. Think of it as not putting all your eggs in one basket (or harvest)!
A Perpetual Harvest can be as big or small as you want, depending on yield and space. The easy explanation is that a Perpetual Harvest is primarily four phases or stages:
- Seedling or cloning
- Vegetative Cycle
- Flowering Cycle
- Harvesting
Here is a quick summary of how to prepare and setup for each phase of your Perpetual Harvest:
Step One:
Decide which of these indoor growing methods you prefer to use to grow cannabis: Planting new seeds every couple weeks or taking clones from plants before they go into the flowering cycle. Many growing cannabis prefer to use a “mother plant” that is kept in the vegetative state indefinitely to supply clones. Growing with a mother plant allows for a lot of clones going in a variety of different stages.
Step Two:
Set up two different cannabis grow rooms with exactly the same equipment that will operate simultaneously. One growroom is devoted to a vegetative cannabis grow room and the second area is designed to house a flowering cannabis grow room. The vegetative cannabis grow space may be a bit smaller than that of the flowering cannabis area, as plants in vegetation aren’t as large as those plants in flowering stage. These are just a few of the needs to consider for each growroom space:
- Security and safety
- Electricity
- Lighting and water sources
- Fans for heating and cooling
- GrowFloor® vinyl flooring mats / grow room vinyl floor rolls
- GrowWall™ grow room wall coverings / vinyl wall rolls
(GrowFloor and GrowWall create a contained, sterile, lab-like environment for plants in both cycles to flourish)
Step Three:
From seeds, it takes approximately 8 weeks for cannabis plants to reach vegetation, then another 8 weeks before they reach half their desired final height and are ready to move from the cannabis vegetating growroom to the cannabis flowering cycle. Then your indoor cannabis plants will need another 8 weeks in your flowering growroom.
Step Four:
After some practice, you’ll get the timing down. The goal is 8 weeks in veg and 8 weeks in flower, then harvest. After you harvest, you move your next cannabis plants in vegetation to your cannabis flowering grow room, and continue the process without any down time in between.