At which point does each stage of the plants life cycle begin?
Like does the plants life start when the seed is soaked, planted or when it breaks soil? When does it change over from a seedling to the veg stage? Does flowering start the day I switch to 12/12 or not until buds start forming?
Seeds are alive veg starts with first set of leaves and flowering starts at the start of 12\12.
I don’t say my plants are in flowering until the colas start to form. Once you make the flip to flowering it will take the plant(s) a few days up to two weeks before they are actually in flowering mode. That is a common mistake new growers make is they will go and grow a strain say with a 8-9 week flowering time and start the clock as soon as they make the flip and 8-9 weeks later they are wondering why its not ready or trying to figure out why there bud is not that potent.
It depends who you ask.
I consider it day one of flower the day I flip the lights.
I am now trying growing 12/12 from seed so what would be considered “first day of flowering stage”? 
Wouldnt that 12/12 from seed be self explanatory?
I count from flip also, but i dont go by breeder estimates as fact… more of a guidance. The plant tells me when it’s done…
Cue huge argument here. 
I count from flip because everyone’s idea of “when buds start forming” looks a little bit different, imo. I think it’s sloppy to use a system of measurement based entirely on personal observations. I know for a fact there are people who would argue this to the death and tell me that I’m an idiot and must always be harvesting my buds early because everyone who’s anyone knows to use the “buds forming” standard even if it’s highly subjective. I also pay very little attention to what breeders say about their plants vs what the plants say about themselves, though. If it’s not ready yet based on scoping the trichomes, I don’t harvest it.
Funny I didnt see this thread earlier and I asked a similar question elsewhere…
I allow a ~10 day transition from veg to flower on plants that are not showing sex. On mature plants/clones showing preflowers I will count from the flip. Always going by trichome development but allowing the transition period usually falls close to breeders estimated timing more so than counting day 1 at the flip.
I think, based on my limited experience so far, that this is the way. There’s so many variables in flowering time and the transition period, but I see a lot of folks forcing flower before sexual maturity and sexing during stretch. I always sex from preflowers at about two months from seed and count flower from the day of flip to 12/12. That’s gotten me a consistent 63-70 days on most strains, in line with the breeder description.
Agreed, I haven’t been comfortable with using that metric of my own judgement, it seems it would work if I was growing the same strains repeatedly or even from the same genetic family, but most of my poly-strain grows flower at different rates.
@Heather420 if you take a look at my grow log thread, I’ve been doing daily photos of my plants this season, one set documented from seed to their current age of a few weeks, and one set of plants in flower from pre-flip to their current mid-late stretch. Maybe it will be useful to see the time lapse to understand the growth phases?
I’m doing it for myself to be able to look back at and study/think about, but I hope other people can also take something from it.
The current grow starts with the regular photo logging about here:
Week 1-2 stretch
Week 3-4 start flowering
Week4 trichs forming
Week 5-6 colas forming
Week 7-8 calyx start swelling smell increases dramatically as buds ripening ( think of flowers opening )
Week 9 hairs browning drinking less
Week 10 trichs ambering
Chop
On an 8 weeker. ( 2 weeks of stretch doesn’t count as flowering )
This is kinda what I’m looking for in general kind off , but every strain pheno different : )
Adjust feeding for each stage : )
That is the truth I have seen here. 
So it seems like the majority say once the time is changed it’s day one. I went by that my first grow but wasn’t really sure. Counting from veg to presex to flower threw me off a little
This is my second time growing regs an wanted to make sure I timed it correctly.
Thank you everyone for chiming in 
Early veg, 0 - 14 days after pop,
late veg 14 day to 2 months,
transition first day of flower to the 3rd - 4th week flower, (usually show herms in this area)
late flower 4th week to your desired ripeness scoping trichomes.
Just my way.
EDIT: this for regs or fem’s, I think auto’s are a different animal…well the one I got tangled up with around 06 or so.
Human babies take 40 weeks to develop, give or take. 9 months is a guesstimate kinda thing. Drs. are guessing when giving you a birth date. Seeds are similar in that there’s no hard and fast rule about time. Plants, like babies, know when its time. Unfortunately plants don’t communicate their readiness the way babies do, so we watch.
.02
The calendar is only important to the grower— the plant doesn’t give a 
what day it is 
The trichomes are your guide - wait to harvest until they’re fully formed & ripe. Unless bugs/etc “real life” make you have to harvest, generally the longer you wait the better, up to a point at which 
hmm not many of us have left a plant to decay in situ 
There’s a huge range of flowering times in cannabis— some of the landrace stuff is like a 12 month flower
vegation stages starts when your seedling has 3 stes of “true” leaves - then there is pre-fower stage
Auto plant growth stages __
weeks 1-3 —vegations stage
weeks 4-12 --Foer sage
Reg /fems growht stages____
germination stage 3-7 days (3/21 cycle)
seedling stage – 1-2 weeks (18/6 cycle)
vegation stage – 4-6 weeks (norm)
Preflower stage – 1-2 weeks (this is when you start 12/12 cycle)
Flower stage — 1-4 months (depends on strain) (12/12 cycle or 11/13 for sativa’s)
