When and how to transplant from indoors to outdoors

I'm growing this little guy from a bag seed it's the only one I have. It's called Black out Terpinolene and pretty much is 50/50 thc cbd. Right now it gets 18hours starting at 5 am. I'm wondering if there is any thing to prepare it for outside conditions. I live in northern California. I was thinking around April 20 I would put it out in the sun in the ground.

Well there is one flaw with your plan

Ebgfab said:

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I'm growing this little guy from a bag seed it's the only one I have. It's called Black out Terpinolene and pretty much is 50/50 thc cbd. Right now it gets 18hours starting at 5 am. I'm wondering if there is any thing to prepare it for outside conditions. I live in northern California. I was thinking around April 20 I would put it out in the sun in the ground.

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There is one flaw with that plan. By the time you are wanting to put that plant outdoors, it will be close to sexually mature, and there wont be enough daylight hours in April to be able to keep it in veg.

You dont want to transplant outdoors until the light outdoors is 15.5 hours to be safe. The only way to cheat this system is to add supplemental lighting for a few hours every night to keep it in veg mode.

Good luck.

It may throw itself into flower when you put it outdoors but when the light in a day gets longer it should revert back to vegetative stage and continue growing

What you want to do is begin a hardening off process before you just stick a plant out from indoor to outdoors.

Find what the average last frost date is for your area.

On nice days, two to three weeks before, start taking the plant outside for a couple hours to begin with, paying attention to when the sunlight starts wilting the leaves, then bring it quickly back in to recuperate. This happens fairly quick the first time, because sunlight vs. HID has a pretty different intensity, so pay close attention the first couple times.

After things seem ok for a couple hours, increase that to a few, then half the day, then all day outside when it's nice.

Then whenever the average last frost date has passed for your area, and the plant is comfortable outside all day, go ahead and transplant outdoors, or pot up or whatever your plans are.

Good luck man!

ganga gurl420 said:

Well there is one flaw with your plan

There is one flaw with that plan. By the time you are wanting to put that plant outdoors, it will be close to sexually mature, and there wont be enough daylight hours in April to be able to keep it in veg.

You dont want to transplant outdoors until the light outdoors is 15.5 hours to be safe. The only way to cheat this system is to add supplemental lighting for a few hours every night to keep it in veg mode.

Good luck.

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I tried sticking an old mother out in my garden last spring. It began flowering almost immediately and then revegged. Lesson learned.

GBAUTO said:

I tried sticking an old mother out in my garden last spring. It began flowering almost immediately and then revegged. Lesson learned.

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If you can reveg first indoors until there is normal growth then it can really benefit harvest amounts...
But when it all happens outdoors it can be a mess for sure.

ganga gurl420 said:

Well there is one flaw with your plan

There is one flaw with that plan. By the time you are wanting to put that plant outdoors, it will be close to sexually mature, and there wont be enough daylight hours in April to be able to keep it in veg.

You dont want to transplant outdoors until the light outdoors is 15.5 hours to be safe. The only way to cheat this system is to add supplemental lighting for a few hours every night to keep it in veg mode.

Good luck.

Click to expand...

I'm in Norcal as well.I grew my own for 30+ years, until pot got so cheap and good, I just started buying from friends.

The trick to moving your girls outdoors is to GRADUALLY reduce your daylight cycle to 14 hours so that the girls will find the outdoor cycle to be an increase in day length.

I'm at 38.15 degrees North Latitude. Maximum Sunrise/sunset is 15 hours, 9 hours.If you MUST move the girls into a short day cycle, Put a small light among the girls on a timer and reduce the light bulb's cycle about v20 minutes a day until it matches outdoor daylight. It works.

BTW, I was a regular here for years. Digging through my two thousand posts might be of interest to some.

veggiegardener said:

I'm in Norcal as well.I grew my own for 30+ years, until pot got so cheap and good, I just started buying from friends.

The trick to moving your girls outdoors is to GRADUALLY reduce your daylight cycle to 14 hours so that the girls will find the outdoor cycle to be an increase in day length.

I'm at 38.15 degrees North Latitude. Maximum Sunrise/sunset is 15 hours, 9 hours.If you MUST move the girls into a short day cycle, Put a small light among the girls on a timer and reduce the light bulb's cycle about v20 minutes a day until it matches outdoor daylight. It works.

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I know how to move a plant outside. I'm an outdoor grower.
I also know how to shorten the light cycle to match the outdoor lighting so it doesnt trigger flowering.

However what my point was is that If the outdoor lighting is too short like it is right now...it will trigger flowering no matter what you do.

Guerrillachilla said:

It may throw itself into flower when you put it outdoors but when the light in a day gets longer it should revert back to vegetative stage and continue growing

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That "can" retard growth for a few weeks though...

petert said:

That "can" retard growth for a few weeks though...

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That's very true but depending on where he lives and how long of a season his plant would still be weeks ahead of anyone else's and depending upon his skill I would honestly like so see how large it gets. Idk do you think it would retard its growth long enough to outweigh the benefits?

The old mothers flowered immediately with a decent amount of colas forming and then slowly revegged with the old flowers dying off and new flowers setting after the solstice. Damn hard to watch all of that growth just turn into compost.

Guerrillachilla said:

That's very true but depending on where he lives and how long of a season his plant would still be weeks ahead of anyone else's and depending upon his skill I would honestly like so see how large it gets. Idk do you think it would retard its growth long enough to outweigh the benefits?

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No, not in my experience..but then again I'm sure it varies from plant to plant, strain to strain. Ive been growing fairly decent quantities (30-100 plants) for the past 15 years. I'm north central Oregon and I will generally plant outside after the 10th of May. But a buddy of mine in southern Oregon plants late April- early May. He grows amazing stuff! The only time I've run in to that slight retarded leaf curl and growth is when I went from a 24 hour light cycle and went right outside May 1st when we are at about 15 +/- hours of day light without supplemental light.

Update
I put the plant outside before it reached maturity, hope this keeps it alive; or from preflowering. I believe it worked as it recognized the days were getting longer, still at about 13 hours. Unfortunately we had a storm so I thought I'd baby it and I put it back inside under the fluorescent. After 2 days the leaves started drooping so I immediately put it back out under the stars last night. Came out this morning and it was in full health. My prognosis: you can put an indoor plant outdoors but not Visa-versa.

Anyway I just put it in a 25 gallon pot filled with Roots Organics Green Fields and started supplementing it with FloraMaX and its happy as a hat!

Seems to be growing decent but I have noticed some leaf curl at the tips of the lower leaves. I'm not sure if the soil is too hot, too dry, or if the dose of fertilized water I gave it was too much for an immature plant to handle.

Why all the flower concerns? Bag seed right? Has it shown sex. Im no pro but thinking if it goes to flower it would be a plus to know before wasting time and resources on a male. And as already stated it will revert to veg when days lengthen. Forgive me if im wrong but seems like alot of hoping imo

And also like stated,harding off is important

I've had plants pre flower and when they go back to veg they are never the same. Then they only produce tiny buds. If it's a Male no harm no foul but you are right I am hoping it's a big sticky female.

Good luck man im hoping you do too. Hope i didnt come off negative, just reading thread and all talk about flower just pointing out it may never incase you didnt think of that lol its a very tricky thing for me too either deal with alittle reveg and stall or risk them not finishing

I got a stoner bug eating my plant..