Moving outside after an extended indoor veg time:

Hey all, fairly straight forward question, where I live the days aren't going to be longer than 12 hours until march 19nd (at which point it's 12:02 from sunrise to sunset). If the weather blokes are to be believed I could in theory move my girls outside on the 15th (11hr 50 min days). However since I've had them indoors vegging for quite some time (and I've only got one outdoor harvest under my belt which commenced MUCH later), I'm concerned this will flip them directly into flower instead of allowing them another ~5 (+) months to veg.... They will be planted into the ground after getting them acclimated to sunlight in their existing pots.

Should I focus on waiting until the days are at least 13 hrs (april 7th)? Later? Or not worry about it as outdoors is different than indoors? As the veg room is a 4x4 tent with a 440w florescent veg lamp I'd really rather not leave them in it longer than absolutely necessary due to light penetration concerns.

(if it matters, the length of daylight won't drop back below 12hrs until late september here)

Thanks!

Mid may or early june depending on strain, location, and how easily they transitioned on the light cycle. Early flowering will indeed cut your veg time and you'll lose a lot. Mine are going out in beginning of may with a T5 in a hoophouse until first week of june.

Ugh, that's a lot more indoor time than I hoped but I suppose now I know for next time to start the selection process 2 months later next year.... In the meantime I'm going to need larger pots for indoors...

Hmmm, the idea of the t5 in the hoop house until june could be a winner for my situation though as the area the girls will grow in is in essence a hoop house and the indoor veg room won't be used any once things move outside. In fact, I'm somewhat kicking myself that I didn't think of that as it solves the penetration problem and concerns about early flowering nicely if I just run the light from 5pm- ~11pm once frost is no longer an issue through the end of may ( Note to self: make sure the light isn't pointing directly into the neighbor's windows but still protected....) Yeah.... that could work...

Thanks Calico!

calicocalyx said:

Mid may or early june depending on strain, location, and how easily they transitioned on the light cycle. Early flowering will indeed cut your veg time and you'll lose a lot. Mine are going out in beginning of may with a T5 in a hoophouse until first week of june.

Click to expand...

I forgot to ask, is there a reason you wait until may when you're using the T5 to fool them into longer days? Just a location preference due to temps, they're not ready, or is there an obvious reason why I wouldn't want to move them outside as soon as frost allows (with my current veg light hanging next to them elongating the day) rather than upping the pots and leaving them in the tent until may/june?

Thanks again!

I only wait because I don't get a lot of sunny days until then. It's just more light under the 1000 watt. But this winter has been so sunny and my plants were started too early as well so I'll probably be transplanting out of 20 gallons when the time comes, just a little awkward. I've mentioned this in other posts, you can pre cut those big pots vertically and wire them together, then open them up at transplant, it's a little easier than turning them up side down.

I'm waiting to see if my clones took, then I'll flower the moms and have an idea of which seed plants to run. It is my opinion that a rootbound plant will be counter productive so that is my only concern if I go with bigger plants at transplant. The sooner they are in the final home, the sooner they will take off and fill those pots.

awesome thanks! I'll do the veg light in the garden option in a few weeks when frost isn't an issue I think then. I've already run a flower test on these genetics (the majority of my theater room's winter heat was the air cooled 1kw HPS ) so I'm sure which I will be growing Well, I tested most of them anyways since the sugar cookie genetics I was hoping to populate half my garden ended up tossing pollen (they're pretty hermies, but no hermies allowed) I went with backup femmed seeds for the three holes.... blah says I. But hey, at least I get to try cotton candy (mmmm, power plant!) and sugar punch (drool!) a year before I expected to. This year's garden will be:

1 Sannies Jack Herer (last year finished in the second week of nov)

1 Blue City Dog of my creation [(NYCD x True Blueberry) x (Chemdog x True Blueberry)] (the test harvest bred true, it was blue sweet and strong, should be the first to finish in early/mid sept ) Need to figure out WTF to call it.... Maybe Blue Jay....

1 c99 x lemon thai (test is almost over, if this plant fails to impress I'll swap it for another of the next two, finish should be middle of the pack)

1 Cotton Candy (power plant x landrace lavender) (PP was my first smoke in the dam and taught me the value of fanta this should finish in late sept/early oct

2 Sugar Punch (SSH x The One) (After hearing rave reviews on this one for several years I broke down and bought some, just in time for her to no longer be offered, I suspect she'll be ready by the end of oct)

Fun times ahead, my next step is to figure out what sort of trellising nylon/plastic stuff to install to support branches.... don't suppose anyone (cali or anyone else with experience) has any recommendations that can be picked up at amazon.com or a garden center? Ideally I don't want to use 20 guage copper and make my own as.... well, I don't want to make my own

A good grow store will have plastic trellis and sell it by the foot, go for the harder plastic versus the soft fabric ones. Many big growers will put weld wire cages (home depot) around the plant and when it grows through wrap with the trellis, or another way is to pound 4 t posts in a square around the plant and run that trellis horizontally, usually one layer early on and one after the stretch in flower like a double layer scrog. The down side to the second method is it's hard to get to the inside to thin out the plant. Most of mine are usually 8 ft by 8ft to give you an idea, I'm in 300 gallon smart pots.

If no more frost
Can put them out now and they will flower
Be cuttin bud first second week of may if an 8 week strain
Then leave all lower stuff to reveg
but that will lower your october crop also

I just put a few out
Myselve
did em last year like this

But mines not in back yard
So i cant do no suplamental lights


It happens something like that anyhow

My experience
around 32 degrees

Last year first time i done that
seems like they started reveging before
Bud was actualy ready to get
but was done enough

I have some similar issues, as I'm growing in tropical conditions where the longest day of the year is 12:30h+ and the shortest 11:20h or so. I start my plants inside, but would much prefer to go 100% outside, as the sun is great and strong and the weather hot (probably too hot, with dry season seeing up to 115ºF and very rarely dropping below 85ºF).
Furthermore the lack of stable electricity means I wouldn't be having as many issues with power cuts and the like.

I could read above that one can use a T5 to prevent the outside plants from flowering, but wouldn't it have to be really, really close then?
I've tried with 20w, 30w and 50w LED flood lights, 6500k full spectrum lamps, using them to add 5-6 hours of extra light to the plants, HOWEVER, they still seem to be flowering !!!
I've seen another guy do well with these LED's, so I'm a bit surprised they look like they're going to flower!
I want to grow giant trees, but it looks like it won't be happening.
I could grow vegetatively inside until they reach around 1m in height (I got a few Cidly Apollo lamps), but then they start flowering within a few weeks when I put them outside, even with the LED on them.
ANY advice with regards to outdoor lamps for preventing flowering, would be MUCH appreciated. Should be mentioned though, I'm growing in South East Asia in a 3rd world country, so it's not exactly easy to get stuff! I'm thinking of ordering a 400w or 600w metal halide or HPS and put it outside, but as that will be insanely bright at night time, I'm afraid of unwanted attention from neighbors. Around here (countryside) it's blackout dark after 9pm and all shops are closed, with almost empty streets. No-one wastes electricity at night, so I would have a rather strong beacon going on there...

AlcoholicO said:

I have some similar issues, as I'm growing in tropical conditions where the longest day of the year is 12:30h+ and the shortest 11:20h or so. I start my plants inside, but would much prefer to go 100% outside, as the sun is great and strong and the weather hot (probably too hot, with dry season seeing up to 115ºF and very rarely dropping below 85ºF).
Furthermore the lack of stable electricity means I wouldn't be having as many issues with power cuts and the like.

I could read above that one can use a T5 to prevent the outside plants from flowering, but wouldn't it have to be really, really close then?
I've tried with 20w, 30w and 50w LED flood lights, 6500k full spectrum lamps, using them to add 5-6 hours of extra light to the plants, HOWEVER, they still seem to be flowering !!!
I've seen another guy do well with these LED's, so I'm a bit surprised they look like they're going to flower!
I want to grow giant trees, but it looks like it won't be happening.
I could grow vegetatively inside until they reach around 1m in height (I got a few Cidly Apollo lamps), but then they start flowering within a few weeks when I put them outside, even with the LED on them.
ANY advice with regards to outdoor lamps for preventing flowering, would be MUCH appreciated. Should be mentioned though, I'm growing in South East Asia in a 3rd world country, so it's not exactly easy to get stuff! I'm thinking of ordering a 400w or 600w metal halide or HPS and put it outside, but as that will be insanely bright at night time, I'm afraid of unwanted attention from neighbors. Around here (countryside) it's blackout dark after 9pm and all shops are closed, with almost empty streets. No-one wastes electricity at night, so I would have a rather strong beacon going on there...

Click to expand...

honestly if i had those day lengths would just veg indoors under 24hr light then when they're big enough throw them outdoors to flower and repeat year round one plant a month.

Alco raises a good question, how many watts of T5 need to be used to offset early flowering? (It occurs to me it's significantly cheaper to use my 125W clone/seedling light instead of the 440W veg, and well, if something happens and it gets wet it's also much cheaper to replace )

Also I agree with reza, veg indoors then flower outside much better than drawing attention to yourself IMHO... The only reason I grow outside is it's legal where I reside, else I would (and maybe did) do is a continuous harvest with a 250W HPS and 125W CFL veg in a small ikea closet that's stealthy as heck. I am a former micro grower perhaps Heck, my first outdoor experiment was only 20G pots, I am in awe by cali's numbers Mind you there's no dispensaries around here, so if I get more than 24O from my girls, I have to convert the excess to hash. Oh poor pitiful me.

Alco: since no one else chimed in, I can happily report that 4 54w florescents do keep plants from budding outside (which is good as I was fearing I'd need to turn all 8 on ) I suspect you can get by with considerably less (as my "greenhouse" looks like a friggin UFO at night) I did the girls to 15 hrs inside so am now I'm at the point where I only have to supplement 1.5hrs (I do however start the lights about 40 minutes before sundown since I have a western fence in my "greenhouse".

Behold a happy, not remotely budding plant. This is my Blue Jay, indoors she is a really fast budder and (thankfully!) finisher so she's the canary in the coal mine. Upside, she really really loves it outside as she's already nearly 4 feet tall and more than 2 feet wide. Downside, she's already nearly 4 feet tall!!!! Hopefully she will behave as she does inside and won't stretch in budding much at all, else I'm going to have to raise the 9' ceiling (which means either swapping the 10' pvc pipes that I'm bending wagon style for a 20' one, or adding connectors and forgoing the wagon style.)

Yup, first world problems....

I have used old shop lights and they weren't enough for some strains, replaced those with T5's and that did the trick. Strain dependent on what's acceptable, but better safe than sorry and light that greenhouse up. I'm building my hoophouse right now, and I have to say it may be messy but I have found using gorilla tape to secure pvc pipes to each other might be stronger than those connectors and a little quicker to put together of course it's more garbage and mess but pvc in general doesn't last that long and is destined for the landfill. I also don't like messing with the glues and spreading that stuff around.

I currently cheated for my hoophouse, attached a pair of 2x4s in an L to both the house and the side fence about 5' up, then just drilled holes for the 10' pvc pipes, bent them down and forced them through the holes, no solvents, and easy (relatively) to remove if one doesn't count the 2x4s attached to the house/fence I don't think I'll need to replace the pipes for at least a decade. The greenhouse film is also doing surprisingly well, but don't think it'll work for more than 3 or 4 sessions (I leave the house up all year, aside from collecting a bit of snow, it's holding up excellently)

Here's a pic of the greenhouse at night from late march.... subtle right?

OK, so looks like mine were actually flowering due to a power cut that confused them and showing pre flowers since they're fairly old plants. I let one flower and re-vegged two and am successfully using a 20watt Flood LED from keeping them from flowering, without problems now.