How To Get Dark Purple Leaves And Buds – Marijuana Growing Tip

Glenn Panik’s Purple-Leaved Plant Technique

[Writer Glenn Panik’s “How To Grow Cannabis At Home: A Guide To Indoor Medical Marijuana Growing”, is available on iTunes here, for the Amazon Kindle and  Smashwords here.  You can also order the ‘stealth title’ of our information-packed ebook for the Kindle here. ]

Ahh… the color of autumn leaves; shades of gold, purple, red, yellows, and orange. These colors are even more beautiful if they appear on your maturing medical marijuana plants! So what is the secret to getting rich, deep greens and shades of purple on your maturing leaves and buds? It is actually not difficult, and doesn’t have to do with special fertilizers or unique strains of cannabis. There are three steps to getting this to happen:

1) Grow your plants in a nutrient-rich soil or substrate. See our post on “The Best Soil For Growing Marijuana” for a perfect soil recipe for your next grow. It is critical that your marijuana plant has all of the necessary macro- and micro-nutrients in order to develop strong leaves with intense colors. Using a rich, well-balanced soil is an excellent choice since the nutrients are made available to the plant in an even fashion, and as the plant requires them – this is much better than giving a heavy infusion of nutrients via fertilizers, which could cause nutrient burn.

2) Use sufficient lighting, and allow your plant ample time to mature. Many seed banks base their flowering times on very high wattage lighting, and your personal, medical marijuana home grow may use less lighting power, and therefore require a longer maturing time for the buds. With our soil recipe suggestion (or even better, our “Dark Chocolate Soil” recipe from our growing-tip-filled Ebook), your cannabis plant’s leaves should develop a deep, dark green color that intensifies as flowering progresses.

3) This part is key to triggering the “fall foliage look” – expose your plant to lower temperatures in the last weeks of flowering. I suggest that you aim for “autumn temperatures” of 55 degrees F or lower (13C and below), but not much below 45F (6 C) or so, which could slow the bud maturation. Under no circumstances should you expose your plants to freezing temperatures! I personally prefer to move plants to a cool location at night and expose them to natural low temperatures. Cooling with air conditioning would cost a lot of additional electricity, although if you live in a very warm climate and were desperate to try this out, you could try using a spare fridge…

If you follow our growing guide (available as an Ebook here), you can look forward to some gorgeous looking plants and deep-hued, impressive buds like these:

The following from an outdoor WSS Skunk grow, harvested late to allow darkening of the buds/leaves:

A closeup of a smaller side bud on the WSS Skunk plant grown outdoors and left until mid-November to show how dark purple colors can develop due to colder temperatures. (Note – these buds are not harvested or trimmed, and therefore appear quite “leafy” in the pictures.)

Some buds from our WSS Skunk outdoor grow, left until temperatures dropped low at night, turning leaves and some buds a deep purple. (Note – these buds are not harvested or trimmed, and therefore appear quite “leafy” in the pictures.)

I hope your autumn has been a fruitful one!

G.P.