How to tell when flowering has begun outside? Signs of flowering?

Hello,

please don't pop in here saying that plants start to flower as days get shorter I know this. I heard that some begin to flower when they get only about 14 hours of light or less outside, otherwise it's the 12/12 thing for others. My question is, how can I tell when my plant has entered flowering? I have one Ortega indica clone which is about 4-5 inches tall and there are pre-flowers on some, but not all of the nodes. The plant is still semi-compact and hasn't streched a lot and the tops aren't really yellowing yet. I'm starting to see larger pistils on the pre-flowers, but how can I really tell that my plant has entered flowering and start counting down the days? The stems are also fairly straight and don't appear to be going zig zag yet.. I know from experience that last year I had a super skunk male, whose top started to go zig zag, at exactly this time, and little pods started popping up. I had also had a super silver haze female whose top started going zig zag too. The reason I'm asking, is so that I can roughly predict my harvest time. Thank you for you're time..

Look for pistols forming at the base of branches

So far I only have pre-flowers, and they're not everywhere. The pre-flowers aren't even near the top of the plant yet. But, I'm looking for other ways to tell, during the earliest flowering stages, besides floral cluster formation. I mean, it would be pretty obvious that I'm in the flowering stage if I see clusters of calyxes everywhere

There is no differance when growing out doors and growing in just thing's are done at a far more rapid rate inddors because of the light intenceity.Look for small white hair's also where the node's come from the stem you can sometime's get a couple of hairs shooting from this other than that just look up on you tube or if you have done a indoor grow then the same rules apply outdoors.If the plants are getting the ammount of light that you are saying they should start showing soon so make sure that you keep a close eye on them so any snidey males can be pulled unless there females and you know this for sure.I am waiting on a fewof my girls to come good there still got a few month of vegging yet but won't be long before the super skunk and a seed that i did my self a.m.s/lemon skunk will be comeing good about 6 ft now monsters ................tyke.....