accurately indentifiying a plants flowering age from seed or clone

this may be confusing but can anyone answer this......after switching from veg to 12/12.....how are you able to actually tell what week of flower your plant is truly in if you dont know how long it takes for your girl to go from veg to actual flower??? i mean they say when you switch to 12/12 for a week or two your plant will still be in veg...sooooooo how do you determine the age if you cant just switch to 12/12 and say this is the beginning of week 1 flower???puzzled???

I (and everyone else I know) count the first day of 12/12 as the first day of flowering.

Counting the days from the initial switching of photoperiods is most common and accurate , you ll find often with seedlings that there will be more time to ripening verses clones but none the less mark the day and watch the beauty unfold !

judge by the day you flip to 12/12 then count it as a you would, and harvest when they are ready and next time you know how long it takes from flip to chop for that strain. the only way to fine tune that is with experiance. things i like to do now to be sure my plants are ready to explode into flower the day i flip them is to make sure they have been on a 18/6 light for a while (sometimes i veg 24/0 even tho its not ideal imo) and ive been starting to test this other way of putting them into flower other than just slamming them into 12/12. in nature plants dont have a dramatic shift into flower all the sudden, so the past 2 runs iv eased my plants into flower by going from 18/6 to 17/7, then 16/8 and then 12/12 over the course of a week or so. its pretty easy to mess it up if you have strains in there that want to flower sooner than others. some of mine started wanting to flower at 17/7 but went back to veg after a week. what this does for me other than waste time(caugh) is that it really kicks the plant into gear. i imagine the plants like little kids being held back from the play ground. they see an amazing toy by they are held back and so they become more excited and eager to run for the thing they saw, then when they are made to wait even more while they can still the amazing playset they are finally let go and they burst into play and have so much fun. thats how i imagine they plants are responding to being "teased" with flower.
i do not think that i put my plants into flower early when i do this, because i make sure they are still in veg before i continue. the plant may start to try to flower but if the light is not continusly reduced and its also above 16/8 most plants shouldent flower and will go back into veg. outside plants do a lot more preflowering and all that than indoors where we use a much longer day cycle to make up for less intense light.
my plants are currently thriving and im seeing buds at the end of week one that are about the size i used to see at week 3 so its great results for me, and i no longer have any issues wondering when for sure to start counting those precious flowering days.

ProfessorPotSnob said:

Counting the days from the initial switching of photoperiods is most common and accurate , you ll find often with seedlings that there will be more time to ripening verses clones but none the less mark the day and watch the beauty unfold !

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ok...does harvesting early effect how potent the high will be or only the yield....i mean mine are in week 8 or 9 flower from seed....but they also have lots of seeds so im really ready to chop and get my beautiful purple paralysis clones started...but i still would like an ok high from this seed batch

I start the flowering time when I flip to 12/12. Different strains are going to act differently as the hormones change. Some will stretch faster than others. Some will fill in earlier or later than others and so on so forth. You would have to grow a strain a few times to really know how it acts. DO NOT confuse this time of fast change with the Pre Flower stage. Pre Flower also known as the Sexing stage will happen at around 2 months give or take 2 weeks. This is when your plant is sexually mature and will start to show signs of female flower sites or male pollen sacs. Pre Flowering or Sexing will usually occur during veg time it is a part of the vegetation stage. Keep in mind that clones are as old as their original mother.

I believe harvesting early will change the type of a high you will get. Check out info on trichome development. From what I know the clear to clouded trichomes give more of a Sativa high. When the trichomes turn to a amber color this means they are starting to oxidize and turn to CBN's. This is when the high moves towards the Indica sensations. Do Google it though just to check my info on this one. Some people get mad about the issue. Its quite funny. My girl friend and I are going to let our Indicas go amber and we will pull the Sativas when they are around 40 to 50% cloudy. This should help the Sativas stay in the head and the Indicas keep to the body.

When the plant sets seed it uses its energy to do so and uses less energy to create the THC but you can still persuade the high one way or another. What color are your trichomes? Do you have your clones ready? Congrats on the seed run.