Is there a way to estimate and affect cannabis yields?

The short answer to the question of whether or not it is possible to estimate cannabis yields is yes, it is.

This is extremely useful to know if you have an idea of how much cannabis you are going to need.
After all, the last thing you want is to end up with too many plants or, worse still, too few.

To begin with, certain strains produce higher yields.

For example, Green Gelato, Amnesia Haze, Shogun and Skunk XL all produce between 600g and 750g per plant, grown under optimum conditions.

Now, about these optimum conditions.

Balancing nutrition is important as too little and plants will not grow fully, while too much nutrition can cause ‘blockout’ where the roots stop absorbing any nutrition in the soil.

Pot size will also help dictate the size of your cannabis plant, within reason. You can begin with a half-litre pot for seedlings, yet end up with your mature plant in a 114-litre pot.

Then comes the light factor.

Too little light and again the plants won’t grow, too much light and you can damage the plant, especially by burning the leaves. In general terms, the bigger the light source, the bigger the buds!

Temperature and levels of humidity are also critical to help maximise yields. Plants benefit both from warmth and relatively high levels of humidity, but too much humidity can cause problems with fungi and diseases.

Next comes vegetating.

The longer a plant spends vegetating, the larger it will grow and the greater the yield it will produce. Remember, once a plant starts flowering, all its energy will subsequently be spent on producing buds, not growing.

For this reason, you may want to avoid autoflowering strains, though it will, of course, mean you have to take greater control of the growing process.

Then comes training, and by this we don’t mean teaching your plants how to fetch a stick or bring you your slippers!

Training can greatly increase yields though, once again, this requires more effort.
Indoors, SOG, ScrOG, topping, defoliation, and high-stress training are all viable options.

However, most growers avoid topping their autoflowering plants as they will not have sufficient time to recover before entering the flowering phase.

Finally, don’t get overexcited when you weigh your freshly picked buds as, by the time you have dried them the weight will have reduced by approximately 75%!