When's the earliest that you can put a plant outside to veg?

RYRIPIT15 said:

Ofcourse if you use atificial light from Jan-April you will have larger ladies to put outside.

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I meant have them outside Jan-April with a floodlight to keep them from flowering.

yea I'm not expecting much yield out of a winter grow, and I'm fine with that. They are just supposed to smell really really good (TGA CheeseQuake) and I'm more excited about the smell than anything else.

But as I noted before, be sure that you are good with the timer, and do some research to compare the actual hours of light that there will be in socal in April when you put them out.

For example, you dont want to use say.. 24/0 JAN-APR because you think this will get them the biggest.... just to put them outside and keep on vegging in APRIL. (I have done just that). What happens is that they are used to 24 hours..and you put them out say APRIL 20th..thinking that the hours of light are only climbing so it will just continue to veg. Cause thats wrong. The plant will see that it just went from 24/0 to roughtly 13/11. This makes the plant think that it is coming up on 12/12 and it is time to flower. It will do this for a couple weeks...looking very weird...and you will have a hell of a time getting it back to veg. By the time it realizes that it is really spring...you will have lost all that EXTRA growth you thought you had.

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If I have them on say 24/0 and put them outside in May they should be fine right?

I think it is only when hours of daylight are less than 14 that they start to flower & can continue flowering with 13-14 hours daylight without revegging
(someone tested this before and found that 14 was the threshold, for the strain that he was working with)

so basically like a scrog without the screen. sounds like a good idea to me, but start early. those things will get BIG by the time the stop stretching. doublejj had had 14 foot plants by the time they got done stretching. also you will probably need more room than 5x5 because there will be LOTS of HUGE branches on those things

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dang you keep giving me good ideas. A screen will probably make LSTing a lot easier. hahaha a 20x20 or bigger outdoor SCROG for four plants. Don't know if this will work when the stems are that huge but on small plants I bend the stem back in a U-shape to limit the horizontal space it takes up and fill up it's (is there an apostraphe for "it's?" I'm trippin) given space more tightly.

well you have to know, scrog is different than LST'ing. you put up a screen, to keep it at a certain height, then most of your bud sites will grow up into the screen and creating a bigger area of cola's. kindof what you were wanting. a carpet of buds. IMO i would just scrog it at 8-10 feet. oh and just incase you didnt know what scrog meant, ScReen Of Green.

In theory it seems like it would work and that the plants would just thrive, but it doesn't work that way. For them to take off and not need a couple weeks of being stunted, you would need to do as WILDSHIT said and use the same hours that you will have once you are no longer adjusting with lights.
And yes the threshold is close to 14 hours.

Keep in mind 14 hours of light outdoors in CA is sometime in May..so be sure and not put them out prior.

The main reason I would advise not doing 24 is the time it takes for them to begin to grow again. I have been the most successfull in using less hours of light inside..as hard as that is to believe. It is something about the plant seing the drastic loss in hours of light from what it had been used to. It is hard to explain simply.

If I hadn't experienced it myself I would think exactly the same as you. (obviously..since I tried the 24/0 idea myself)



I now use approx 14.5 to 15 hours of light under lamp. Wait until the corresponding day in May (roughly 20th) where it is 14.5

Yea i know. Never done it but I was just thinking I would weave the stems through the screen to LST. I'd scrog much lower, at 5 feet or just enough to kneel under for maintenance. And not let it get higher than 2 ft of foliage above the screen in veg, I'll just keep tying the new branches down. It'll be the most dense SCROG you've ever seen!

For some reason I feel like I'm underestimating the size these plants will be by flowering time, lol.


I prefer 18/6 because I believe plants grow the most during the dark period/need rest. Haven't tested the theory though.

I think for the 24/0 light indoor plant... to be able to be placed outdoor... and not be majorly stunted it would have to be late June. Even in June it is still only like 16 hours of light so it may very well still stunt. (haven't tried..getting hosed with the 24/0 in may idea once was enough)

And say it did work...by then you will have lost 1.5 months of being outdoors...and thus your "being ahead"

RYRIPIT, your not trying to give them enough light to grow in the dark. just enough to keep them from flowering. they will still grow during the times there is light out. and ya, they probably wont grow much on top, but the roots, are going to be going crazy, and when there is adequate light i.e, 14-16 hours of light, they will SHOOT the hell up. and be huge.

Anomolies, you may have to settle with 6-7 feet. putting them out that early will make these things literally monsters. did you check out the thread i posted on here? those are some HUGE plants, and you will have to do some serious training to keep them 7 feet. IMO i dont think you can with just scrog alone, but i may be wrong. but you will have one MASSIVE carpet of buds

yea I did, I've seen that thread before but could never find the pictures but I just saw them, lol.

no no, I'm not even going to let it grow over 2-3 ft height in veg. I always start LST really early. I top at the 2nd/3rd node, and tie down the branches in a cross, then just keep tying down the new growth.

The monster bitch will probably break the screen after I put it outside is what I'm wondering, lol.
Not to mention they're gonna be in giant coco hempy buckets. holy hell. all of a sudden I can't imagine it anymore.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that I don't agree with what you wrote about the dark period. I am only talking about taking a plant from inside and moving outside..and the effect that has due to chaning the hours of light. 24/0 only being 1 example. As i've said several times, I use 14.5 to 15 hrs light to prepare my plants inside..to move outdoor in may...so ofcourse I use a dark period. But not because I "believe" they grow in the dark..but because the 14.5-15 hrs has proven itself to work best in this scenario.

top about the second node, and then on the 4 main colas you get, top them again for 16 colas. then if you want, top em some more. or you could just FIM them. once they are nice wide bushes, let em grow, then screen em. wait til they are done then reap the massive amounts of Buds

May is so far from now, lol.

No doubt. just think how big they'll be by then..hopefully you have a spot for some monsters.

haha well, that is definitely combining scrog and LST together. this is a good example of a scrog

this is with two plants. imagine it with the trees you will have

anomolies said:

They say spring but why can't you put it outside in Jan/Feb when the daylight hours start increasing again? No frost here...

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Whenever you start getting more than 16hrs/ day of sunlight????????

Start em inside in february on a sunny window sill and put out when you think they can handle it. If reveg is a problem just put a cfl on her for a few hours after the sun goes down. Thats all. Its not rocket science. In calli some parts you can grow all year and have multiple harvests. Just sayin

i live in vegas it's relatively warm here all year around. and i plant in late march early april. and i get monster plants. planting too early can be bad cause of frost or the light cycles. the light cycles isn't bad. it'll just grow a lot more once spring hits. i also don't have my plants inside at all when i grow outside. they need to acclimate to the real life wind and sun and temps from the start or they may die when you put them out. mine died in a few hours my first grow. decided they should have some sun instead of my cfls i had and they fried lol. just keep an eye on them. start them in a pot so you can move them if necessary. good luck man.

go to http://www.gaisma.com/en/ and figure it out yourself.

as long as the frost is gone
just watch the day length in your own area, take darkness as from the start of dusk when the outline of plants are just barely visible

most strains apart from maybe long flowering sativas, will induce flower at 9-10 hours of darkness
15.5+ hours of light will be needed to keep them in veg in any given 24 hour period
you are roughly looking for it to be light by 5am and not dark/dusk until after 9pm
they will easy flower with a 6am to 8pm light period , make sure you have a long enough outdoor photo period before you put them out

peace

pabloesqobar said:

I can't give you a scientific answer, but I'm in SoCal and I planted outdoors around the last week of February (last year). Worked just fine. Seems like you could get away with going earlier than that.

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My beans from last season which was 2-3 months ago popped out of the buds all over my GH floor and in my vegy garden and now I have a plant or 2 that are 5-6 nodes tall. The rest (50 or so ) are little seedlings so we will have to see how big they get. The 2 tallest ones with 5-6 nodes don't have hairs but the one that it 2-3 nodes has hairs protruding from the top of the plant. Might be strain based since I had 8 strains outside. Ill keep all the Cali growers updated as to how big they actually get lol

Question: If I get teens right now and put them in my GreenHouse and they go into flower pretty much immediately, would I expect some what of a good harvest or do you think an Oz would be the most Id see come off one plant this early in the game ?

It's been my experience, that if you don't plant during prime periods (this will vary depending where you are).
Your not going to see your plants full genetic potential one way or the other.

You have to put them in when it's hot, and pull them out when it's still warm. To acheive that.