acclimating indoor plants for outdoors

[black_thumb]

How often should I reduce light hours for plants that have been under 24 hours of light? I was thinking give them 1 hour of darkness in 1 week increments until I get them to 18/6 light/dark.

Plants will be going outdoors mid May @ 31 degrees north.

My concerns are I don't wont them going into per flower as soon as we put them out. Does this plan sound okay?

 

[black_thumb]

I've tried the search but this forum is info poor on it.

 

[black_thumb]

Maybe I should put them out at the first of june because 14 hours of daylight is best I can hope for mid of june.

 

[klint]

Till they will get more than 12 hours of light they will not start to flower. Soo dont worry bro

 

[klint]

If You will put them out in mid may they will get enough light to continiue the veg.

 

[gorilla ganja]

Depends on strain. latitude, ect.
I would put them out beginning of June if your longest day is only 14 hrs of daylight.Unless they are pure sativas.
And maybe start them on 16 hrs inside instead of 24.

Cheers GG

 

[black_thumb]

they are blue dream. so im afraid putting them out in may will be to soon.

 

[gorilla ganja]

what latitude are you at?

 

[black_thumb]

See my first post. I'm at 31 N

 

[gorilla ganja]

oop's missed that.
Well there is only about 1/2 hr difference between may 1 and June 1 as far as daylight at 31.So I don't think it will make to much difference. The shock between your indoor hrs. vs. outdoors may trigger them. I'm not to sure about how much to reduce them, but I would try and get the indoor hrs to about 16 for couple weeks before you put them out.

GG

 

[tech1234]

seed or clone?

clones be very careful, seeds do your best but don't worry so much. seedlings (from seeds) seem to know they are young and wont flower too early as long as it is not a ridiculously short light period. There is some info on the forum about this. Basically I think it comes down to clones are tiny sexually mature plants and seedlings are "new" plants

 

[mofoo]

i would start them at 18/6 light then dim down to 16/8 then to 14/10 before they go outside. if you go from 18/6 straight outside they will flower unless you have the greatest luck ever. Trying to save ya from a huge headache and want ya to have a great year, good luck.

ps

put them outside to harden off with supplemental lighting before you put them in there final homes, that will reduce the stress from triggering em into flower.

 

[ChaosCatalunya]

Till they will get more than 12 hours of light they will not start to flower. Soo dont worry bro

Sorry, but this is totally wrong

Clones that have spent winter indoors on 24h are almost impossible to acclimatise to 13/11 or 14/10, they just flower on you, or fuck themselves up starting, then stopping. Beside them, seed plants thrive happily, if they sense the daylength elongating by just a couple of minutes a day (Spring) then they just veg away happily

After 7 years outdoors, having "fun" with exactly this, I would recommend :

Use your 24h clones for force flower crop

Do another force flower crop

Use seed plants for natural light crop and selections

Use Autos for midsummer crops where you cannot do light dep, the quality of the good ones is far higher than most people grow regs

 

[plantingplants]

Beside them, seed plants thrive happily, if they sense the daylength elongating by just a couple of minutes a day (Spring) then they just veg away happily

ChaosCatalunya, do you find that feminized seed behavior is the same as regular seed?

 

[plantingplants]

Also, what would be your auto strain recommendation?

 

[ChaosCatalunya]

ChaosCatalunya, do you find that feminized seed behavior is the same as regular seed?

Yes, I have grown out enough, there is no difference whatsoever. However.. S1 recreations of elites can give some dweeby phenos, more so than crosses, IMO, unproven opinion

Autos, not really my field, I would avoid all the known shysters, go to the specialists.... I forget the name of the guy who worked all of Serious Seeds stock, but he is great, also LBH and Mephisto get good reviews and I just saw CBG have just released an Auto Destroyer, they are proper people I would trust. Kannabia Maxi Autos are also good

A always, do your research and spread the risk, try lots of different ones,dont trust me or anybody else and put all your eggs in one basket

 

[Roor22]

This is how it's goes, the only way to put indoor outside with out it flowering is to reduce the light cycle to whatever the outside light cycles is in spring where you are if you have 16 hours of light and 8 hrs of dark or less light then you need to turn your indoor lights by incriments to get them on the same sun cycles it's the only way otherwise you flower year round like me, veg 24/7 light put out plants year round and they will flower!

 

[green-genes77]

It's a complicated question but here are my two cents. It looks like, as you point out, you have a maximum of approximately 14 hours sun from about June 8th until slightly after the solstice. Up at 44 degrees I never bother with light cycle acclimation for short day plants like cannabis because we're still hovering around 15 hours up here in early July.

I haven't done Blue Dream outdoors in ages but my observations were that it started flowering outdoors with about 13.5 hours of light (~Mid August at 38 degrees), but that's cutting it pretty close when you want as much veg time as possible. It looks like mid-May offers around 13.6 hours of daylight so you should be okay on that end while the days are getting longer, but keep in mind shaded areas at the beginning or end of the day can effectively add to the dark hours as far as the plants are concerned.

Go 16/8 then outside.

 

[Roor22]

It's a complicated question but here are my two cents. It looks like, as you point out, you have a maximum of approximately 14 hours sun from about June 8th until slightly after the solstice. Up at 44 degrees I never bother with light cycle acclimation for short day plants like cannabis because we're still hovering around 15 hours up here in early July.

I haven't done Blue Dream outdoors in ages but my observations were that it started flowering outdoors with about 13.5 hours of light (~Mid August at 38 degrees), but that's cutting it pretty close when you want as much veg time as possible. It looks like mid-May offers around 13.6 hours of daylight so you should be okay on that end while the days are getting longer, but keep in mind shaded areas at the beginning or end of the day can effectively add to the dark hours as far as the plants are concerned.

Go 16/8 then outside.

Who ever told all you guys to hit 12/12 for flower well that's for indoor only, outside is completely different and if you don't lower the light in incriments your plant will flower at 16/8, 15/9, 14/10, anything from 24/7 light will flower it doesn't need 12/12, don't be a fool just put them outside when their ready to flower

 

[green-genes77]

Who ever told all you guys to hit 12/12 for flower well that's for indoor only, outside is completely different and if you don't lower the light in incriments your plant will flower at 16/8, 15/9, 14/10, anything from 24/7 light will flower it doesn't need 12/12, don't be a fool just put them outside when their ready to flower

First of all, this has nothing to do with 12/12 so I am not sure what you're even referring to.

Second of all it's patently false that any plant will immediately flower if taken from 24/0 to any of the light schedules you list. One exception would be 14/10 but even then there are many strains that would keep chugging along in veg because, being more equatorial, they actually do need something more like 12/12. Most strains will not in the case of 15/9 and 16/8. This is from decades o experience as an outdoor grower. Every strain (every plant, really) has an individual threshold that is primarily congenital. The more photoperiod sensitive cultivars will certainly have this tendency, but I don't grow those and neither is the OP.

At 31 degrees north there is a clear benefit to decreasing the light hours incrementally, because there is a sharper drop-off in light hours and because it brings you that much closer to the threshold. That's why I, like you, recommended that OP go to 16/8 prior to planting out.

At 44 degrees north the days during plant-out time are sufficiently long to keep my plants from flowering because I am still at fifteen hours of daylight, and even straight from 24/0 I have never had a plant try to flower early on me or sit there confused. With the days lengthening before the solstice, anything worth growing at my latitude wants to veg nonstop after Mother's Day.