When should i/is this uncommon?

This is my first grow and so far ive been rather successful. About 10-14 days ago i had noticed that i was getting the clusters of female pre-flowers on 3 of my largest plants, which are about 3 months old. The pistils id say are about a week or so old but i had not yet exposed them to a 12-12 photoperiod. Is it a common occurence for pistils to form under a normal 14-10 photoperiod? If this is a common occurence when should i begin the 12-12 photoperiod? I had read that if left for to long the potential for healthier buds decreases as the pistils get older.

Few older images

ok... where to begin...the pistils you see are prefloweres, which is completely normal to see... that just means they have reached maturity and are ready to flower.. so you can put them under 12/12 anytime if you want to flower... now for what really concerns me... if those plants are 4 months old they are really small... and they look really light starved... at 4 months of vegging you should have, well, damn near an xmas tree with the right lights... so it appears you need to invest in more lights... what sorta lighting are you using?? if you have the right light they should be bigger, unless you have run a 14/10 light cycle the entire growth time... then your problem is your plants confused wether to veg or flower... sorta stuck in limbo.. it wont grow but it wont flower... the critcial photoperiod for plants is somewhere in the 12/12-14/10 hour range, with some varities who flower at 16/8... 12/12 is just agreed upon that all strains as the universal phtoperiod because all strains will flower under this light schedule for sure... your strain is obviously a strain the needs more dark than 10 hours to flower, which is why it hasnt fully started to flower.. but 14/10 is close enough to confuse it and thats why your plants are so small... you should go ahead and flower these... you probably dont want to waste much more time.. but next time leave them under an 18/6 - 24/0 light schedule when you are vegging your plants.... youll achieve in one month what has taken you 4 months under 14/10

I edited my post soon realizing i had put 4 months they are rather 3 months. For the first month i had them on a 24-0 photoperiod. i had planned on waiting another month and a half after i put each plant into a 3 gallon before i was to begin a 12-12 photoperiod. By that time they would be 4-5 months into maturity and would be prime time to start this phase. Really allow the clusters to really thicken up. If you see on the 2nd post a few better pics of what im dealing with at the moment. After i began flowering i had planned to then drop them back to a 10-14 photoperiod after 2 weeks or so. Am i waiting to long? The pistils are about an inch in length on the healthiest female. would another month damage the pistils? I do plan on getting a better fixture for the flowering phase but as far as my seedlings and the lower growth goes id say just a brighter lamp, im running 2 75w fluroescent sunsystem grow lamps and a regular 500w e39-mogul base bulb for the tops. After another solid month of growth and a repot they should thicken up quite a bit. For the 2nd month of growth i had been told that a 24-0 light regiment isnt really a proper way to allow your plant to grow because in nature a plant grows at night so i began a 16-8 regiment and soon thereafter began the 14-10 regiment.

your making your life really really complicated... dont worry about what happens in nature... if you are controlling the lights you are controlling the plant... the idea that the plants need "rest" because in nature they always get some rest due to night is not a valid arguement to make... the "rest" does nothing for the plant... the growing they do at night is more stretching than growth.. sure there is some normal growth.. but since light is needed for photosynthesis, and at night there is not light, it stands to reason there is no photosynthesis.. so there isnt any reason to try to mimic the outdoors with crazy light cycles.. it just ends up confusin the plant and stressing it out and which can lead to males/hermies/problems... so as far as vegging stick with the same light cycle the entire vegging process... if you start with 24/0 and end up needing them to slow down growth switch to 18/6... this will slow growth down a little.. but as i said keep your light cycle throughout veg the same... i personally use 24/0 and swear by it... the plants just grow the entire time... basically there is no REAL reason to have any dark period during veggin except to save money on electricity... secondly i cant stress enough how important light is.. you need more light for sure... but your aware of that so ill move to the last thing... different strains of marijuana have different critical photo periods as i said... the only way you can know for sure what the CPP of your strain is, is by years of growing the same strain... it takes a long time to learn all the little ins and outs of individual strains... so i cant say anything about your 10/14 light schedule after 2 weeks of flowering... what i can say is this.. your plants are mature enough to flower.. they are genetically structured to only be so potent... you can grow 2 clones, one to 4 ft tall and 10 ft tall, and they will both be just as potent... unless you have enough light you wont get a big yield anyways... so dont take hieght into account.. either way your plants have reached max maturity... i would take clones now if you are going to.. or switch to flowering... same thing with flowering.. stick with 12/12... ive been growing my strain for a year or so now and am just startin to think about different pruning techniques and flowering light cycles... but until you have experimented, and to make sure you get the most out of your plants right now, leave it on 12/12 the entire flowering cycle..

so

1) dont mess with light cycles... keep vegging at 18/6 - 24/0... flowering at 12/12 until you get used to the strain... dont worry at all about natures light cycles.. they dont affect your indoor plants.. to those plants.. you are god.. you make the sun rise and set as you please... just make it consitantly rise and set at the same times so your girls dont/cant get confused...
2) when you repot try to only do it once... go from starter cube/cup to final pot... your girls will flourish better.. and since transplant shock can stunt growth up to a week, they will end up growing faster since you dont have to wait a week everytime you transplant..
3) the only, i repeat, THE ONLY time i fuck with light cycles, besides going from 24/0 to 12/12 is this.. when i decide to flower i give my girls between 24-36 hours of straight dark... this helps the onset of flowering by telling your plant without a doubt its time to start flowering... it can speed it up by a week.. which also helps with sexing... i usually know the sex of all my plants within a week doing this... other than that they are under either 24/0 or 12/12...

hope i answered what you wanted... anything else??

Ill wait a little while longer so i can buy a flowering bulb and ballast and also a small 1 year carbon filter so i don't funk up the place to bad. I plan on taking several cuttings from these females so i can be sure i know they are females. Where exactly should i cut the clones from? all the new growth is taking in light for the buds so i dont see that as a major option and im not exactly sure i wanna prune any leaves, all but the first set toward the bottom are dead because of poor light but other then that the plants are quite healthy. Only 5 % of the tops have turned purple so its showing signs of flowering. i think ill wait about a week longer to let more growth develop around the stems. let me know about the cuttings that would help alot. When you talk about a 24-0 photoperiod your already sure you had females this was my first time growing so i added in all the factors i could come up with including time periods eg. 16-8 14-10 that would influence females and out of 4 major plants i came up with 3. Not being a jerk just saying this was the reason why. I may at some point decide to try and get some good seed strains and or cuttings but for now im not sure of the strain i am working with. Just trial and error at this point