Massachusetts Outdoor Grow- First Timer, Lots of Questions

Hello there! This is my first thread, just trying to get some info on what to expect from my grow. I'm growing 3 Bag seeds that my friend gave me from some weed he has (which is total crap, I mean really really awful weed, I won't smoke the stuff). I'm doing it as an experiment of sorts: I've always wondered how the growing cycles, etc. work, and since the seeds were free and the sunlight is free I see no reason not to try and get my hands dirty in an attempt to see how this all works!

Again, I'm really just doing this for fun, not expecting to get anything frosty or even smokeable out of it, but if I do I'll be pleasantly surprised.

I've got a lot of questions and hopefully there are some out there who can shed light on them!

Here are the seedlings, 4 days after Planting:

And here they are again today, 7 days after planting
Not growing quite as fast as I had expected, but they also weren't in direct sunlight for the whole day where they had been sitting, I moved them today and they'll be getting a full 8-10 hours of direct sunlight every day now!


I know that the pot is pretty small, but obviously i'm not looking for a huge grow here since i'm starting so late in the season, and anyways I need to keep the plants relatively small for stealth reasons.


So, Here are my questions, hope they're not wicked stupid things to be asking!

1- How much does the quality of the bud that the seed came out of determine the quality of the bud the seed will grow? (In other words, this came out of a bag of stuff that I would be ashamed to put in my bong, we only have it around for edibles and concentrates... if by some miracle one of the seedlings is a female/ does make it to harvest, will it give me some schwag stuff i can only use for oil/ edibles as well?) I know that I'm not going to be getting something crazy frosty from the seeds my friend got out of his mids, i'm just wondering how much genetics accounts for quality, as opposed to growing conditions, etc.

2- I put the plants in the ground around august 20... that gives them maybe 10 weeks outdoors before it's just too cold, period. Am I totally kidding myself thinking they'll even make it to the flowering period in this much time? I assumed that they would just be much smaller and produce less bud in the end, but perhaps this isn't how it works?

3- I started 3 seedlings in one 3gal pot, obviously 2 need to be moved to another spot, but when is the best time to move them?

I'll say it one more time before this gets started: THIS IS INTENDED AS A LEARNING EXPERIENCE! I'm not expecting anything great, and I don't plan on putting much work into this, I'm just conducting a bit of an experiment here, and hopefully I'll learn from other member of the forum as they grow!

im not 100% positive but dude its really late to start an outdoor grow that far up north. i use to live there and its almost september first the plant needs many more hours a day to grow in the begining. move it indoors if you want it to work.

yeah i know it's late in the season but we've had a very hot summer and it's been a long one too. It's 70F out right now just after midnight and usually around 80-85 in the sunlight during the day. I realize september the days start to get pretty short during those last few weeks, but i figure it's a week old now, 4 more weeks of veg, and then maybe 2 to 3 weeks to flower, and that would take me into mid october with like 60F days by the end of it. I've read a few journals that say the cold speeds up the plant and makes it try to finish faster in an effort to produce a seed for the end of the season. Just some thoughts though. Also read that the cold can cause the buds to look more purple? Don't know if there's any truth to that. Seems like I don't have very good chances here, but i'm still gonna try to make it happen. I'm in a good spot geographically... You got anything worth checking out yourself?

So I have been thinking on it and I actually have another thought. If I get male/s, maybe I should let them fert the female/s, and that way I'll have seeds for next season?

Of course this brings up the question, will that completely ruin my buds as far as smoking goes, no matter what?

Like pwwn said, the outdoor season's coming to close now. You'd be MUCH better off starting a grow indoors at this time. Also, since you're just starting out, and will be investing a few months into this process (at least), I'd recommend you get a couple of feminized seeds of a quality strain. They're not that pricey and you'll be much happier with the process and final product. Either way, good luck!

So It's been a while but the ladies are still growing strong! Well... not quite ;P When I went to transplant 2 of my 3 ladies one was killed and the other shocked pretty bad... not sure it's going to recover but I left it out to grow just in case. Anyways, The one who wasn't touched is still growing pretty strong, despite something munching on half of it's leaves (any suggestions around this would be greatly appreciated). She seems pretty happy and the relatively cool weather (down to ~60F every night now) hasn't upset her, she's still growing strong. I'm thinking that pretty soon I'm gonna have to move her indoors but I'm still holding out that I may get lucky.


This is a photo of the one that seems to have been root shocked, as you can see it lost all but its most recent set of leaves... not sure it will be able to recover at this point... Anyways here it is at 20 days

And here it is again today (25 days)


And here's the real pretty lady (The one I didn't have to transplant) at 20 days

And again today at 25 days. Seems like she's making great progress to me My only worry is that something has been eating some of her leaves, and I"m not sure what I can use to stop this safely (I don't want to end up smoking and insecticide) so any advice here would be extremely helpful


After some serious thought I'm gong to build a little greenhouse for these two. Because of the smell I just can't bring them indoors, I'm living with my parents right now since my college is right down the road, and they're fine with me growing/smoking/etc. on the condition that they don't smell it in the house. Hopefully the greenhouse will extend the growing period by long enough to bring these ladies to bud! I've also got soil warmers and lots of other helpful accessories, so I think I can make this work, even if it is close.

Okay so I've realized fully that the plant I have left is much taller with less new lower branch development than my one other grow experience, which I suspect is due to the weaker sunlight this time of year. Anyways, I'm going to let her continue to grow and see where she ends up, I realize that with the temp dropping down to 40f at night here already she's fighting a losing battle against time and temp, but hopefully the daylight hours will force her to start flowering right away and the cold frame I've built around her will be enough to keep her warm through harvest... It's not much but i slapped together a little 2'x3'x2' cold frame with some leftover insulated plastic for the roof... the walls are just white drywall, hopefully in there she will get enough light reflecting off the drywall and coming through since i'm fairly sure it will only be getting about 6 hours of direct sunlight a day now. I may add a soil warmer at the end of the week if it seems like there's any point in trying to keep this little experiment going... so far she's healthy but as I said I'm starting to feel skeptical based on her slow growth. I've included a couple (blurry) photos...

It's been another 10 days, and all I can say is WOW! I didn't think I would be getting nearly this involved trying to keep this girl safe, but I'm sure as hell glad that I did!
When I posted last it had been just under a month and she was looking pretty good, but I was getting very nervous when we had a cold spell and the temps were down in the 40's... But, just when it seemed like I should throw in the towel, it warmed up, and I therefore decided to turn my cold frame into a greenhouse of sorts. The result:



Not the best but It's certainly doing it's job, i can tell by the condensation on the plastic roof every morning! Anyways, i've left her alone for the most part since planting her (other than moving her around) and haven't even done so much as water her. This was designed to be as little effort as possible because of it's likely chance of failure, and given that the temperature could still end up screwing me, the only thing I'm interested in doing to help her is maybe give her some nutes for flowering. If anyone could give me some advice on what to use, I'd appreciate it. I don't have access to a whole lot of stuff but I can go to the garden store if necessary.


And now for the best news of all... IT'S FEMALE!!! Snapped this photo today with my macro lens, hope i'm not bonkers, but I believe those two white hairs are indication that this is indeed a beautiful lady!



----EDIT: You might notice from that picture, I fimmed her, let me know what you think. Also, plant guts look gory close-up, huh!?

I'll remain hopeful, expect many more photos to come. Thanks for anyone who stops to chat, I'm always open to suggestions. Also, does anyone know, is it normal for a plant to begin to flower 1 month from seed? I looked around and found very few who even thought it was possible, but this seems to indicate She's doing just that... :O

Good luck growers!

So it's been a few days, I've let the lady relax and enjoy the sun, and, for the last couple days, a nice warm rain. It's been humid and hot the last couple days and still hasn't dropped below 40F yet this october in my area. So all in all things are looking great for her, and she seems very happy!


I can see plenty of people have stopped to look at this and for some reason nobody seems to want to chat! :/ Oh well.

Hopefully someone else from my area will be looking to do a grow and stumble upon this. I may have gotten a late start but she's beautiful now and I'm certain I'll get at least one nice little nug off her. I never expected much, it's crazy late in the season and I've had to do a fair amount of work to keep her safe from cold, plus she was ravaged by spidermites before the cold finally killed the buggers... but it's been fun and in another few weeks i should have some pot, no matter how shitty!

Here's some more pics of my little lady, she's doing great, growing slowly but surely and perect warm and comfortable every night. Greenhouse is working perfectly and keeping it around 50 in there every single night.

She is now 58 days old and I have to say this was perfectly executed in my opinion as she is now flowering and seems like she will yield maybe a quarter, which is small but still alright by me considering i got her to bud in the time of an auto flowering plant.