Question to you and your followers Sue. I was curious about the do's and don'ts of transitioning an indoor plant outdoors? It will be on a 18/6 schedule up until I move it outdoors. Is there a minimum on the amount of daylight hours my area should have before moving them? By this time next month well be at 14 1/2 hrs daylight, maybe an hr more if you count the 30 min light before and after sun rises/sets. Thanks
Are you worried about the possibility of your plants transitioning to flowering way too early? Knock a half-hour off your lights-on time, wait a little while and do it again. You'll be at seven hours of darkness per 24. You should be able to repeat this twice more to end up with eight hours of darkness per. You'll be moving the plants into a grow environment that has ten hours of darkness - but maybe, as you mentioned, only nine. And during the two to four weeks of indoor transition, of course, the "days will be getting longer" outdoors (placed phrase within quotes because
one day is still (roughly) 24 hours on Terra). So the various time periods will be much closer each other.
You might - either in addition to the above or instead of it - hit the plants with a bit of light during their outdoor dark period in other to prohibit the production of... I cannot remember offhand, but by interrupting the process, you'll tend to inhibit flowering. This may not be an option, depending on circumstances.
Or you could stick them out but pull them back in for a bit each day when the sun is going down, to artificially limit the number of uninterrupted hours of darkness each night.
Finally, you could just stick them out there, lol. You
might see an issue. I hate to say, "Flip a coin," but some strains require lengthier dark periods for flowering to begin.
The more abrupt change (from
short drak-period lengths to relatively long ones) would make this more likely, but it is still not guaranteed. We used to adjust the indoor schedule from 18/6 to 20/4 or even less dark hours for a couple weeks prior to placing plants outside in the Spring in order to cause it. Sometimes it worked, sometimes they just kept on trucking in vegetative growth mode. Of the ones that did start to flower, some continued to as the night periods grew shorter - but some did not. But I think it was '89, '90, somewhere around then when I/we last did it. So I'm operating more off of "hunch" than memory here,
but: I'm wanting to say that the more sativa types were easier to "shock" into beginning the flowering phase with an abrupt switch from only four (or less) hours of darkness to the much higher amount of it outdoors... but that it was the more indica ones that easily continued to flower
once it began.
Again, that is not memory speaking
.Treat it as an opinion/guess only.
You might find something by browsing in the
Outdoor Growing section. Or even, perhaps, the
How to Grow Marijuana or
Frequently Asked Questions one.
to my joyful little garden journal. Are you referring to you or me? Lol! Not many could juggle the classes I run through my garden and still be sane on the other end. Most give it up after a couple cycles. I seem to feed on it.
I managed to have a good selection of chemovars for her to explore beyond the comfort of her Candy Cane favorite. Now it's time to grow some African sativas to meet my cobbing needs. Lol!