Finishing times, Photoperiod, Latitude, and how it all works!!

[tamio]

OK.... I Know I'm a bit slow... I do admit it pretty easily! BUT If my girls started flowering about two weeks ago, I'm at about Latitude: 38:43:23 N thereabouts... so when should my possible harvest time be???
I tried to figured it out using the almanac but didn't seem to know what I was doing...lol HELP!

 

[DonBong]

Great thread!!


Here is my thyphoon plants outdoor 19.08.2009 in southern Finland Latitude: 60

I had them growing first indoors about 1 month with 20/4 light and 03.06.2009 beginning of June I planted them outdoors.. I belive my harvesting date will be in the beginning of september first or second week....or maybe later...


Peace

 

[norcalsmoker]

great thread. Tons of good info TY

 

[anonymousgrower]

deleted

 

[gardenlover]

Backcountry: I read the post on page 7 of yours saying that if you veg indoors on 24 hours as apose to 16 hours, then plant outside when its closer to 15 hours light out, it may induce early flowering and it may revert back to veg there by causing longer finish time. Can you explain this more to me? I am trying to understand how the plant works better.

 

[BACKCOUNTRY]

I think this is the post gardenlover?

They need to be under a 18/6 cycle at the longest, a 16/8 cycle would be ideal. 24/0 will encourage them to bloom if placed directly outdoors.
What light cycle were the moms under? 24/0 ??

This post was in response to a grower who was going to use clones for a regular season crop(plant in spring-harvest in fall), the problem is that clones(and sometimes seedgrown) vegged under 24/0 have never seen the night, when they get placed outside in spring they will often overreact to nightfall and start blooming. The premature bloom can in some cases lead to a slowdown or stunting of the plant while it tries to figure out the light-cycle. Usually the plants adjust on their own OK, but they may waste alot of time doing it and end up smaller plants.
A better method is to use a 16/8 cycle, which is long enough to keep most strains from blooming, but close enough to the natural outdoor light-cycle to keep them from setting into major premature bloom.

 

[gardenlover]

So this is kinda what I was hoping you would say. It makes to me because i have read how giving the plant 24 hours of darkness before harvest will fatten them up a bit. My next question (if anyone has documented) would you see an overall larger yield if you run progressively shorter light times as oposed to running 12/ 12 the whole way thru? would the plant always be fattening up because it indicated to the plant that the end in near? Sorry if this is a bit off topic but I would figure people who grow outdoors would have a better idea about this.

 

[BACKCOUNTRY]

I'm sure this topic has been discussed many a time among experimenting indoor growers, but I can't say exactly where, maybe after I finish this post I'll go do some digging around.

It does(in my personal opinion) take longer to finish given strain outdoors than it does indoors, some very respectable folks disagree with me. I first took interest in this subject because I saw lots of people trying to predict harvest dates for strains(planted outdoors) based on their indoor finish times on 12/12.

Prior to registering as BACKCOUNTRY on OG, I had grew a mystery strain collected from a bag of good bud. I kept good track of when the first hairs started showing, and when the trichs finally indicated finish. Then I grew the same strain indoors a couple years later(12/12), I found that the finish time indoors was 2-3 weeks shorter than the natural outdoor. I have since seen the same thing play out with other strains, bear in mind all these plants grew from seed, and all plants were at least 2 months old when blooming initiated.

Most strains commonly grown at temperate latitudes start blooming well before 12/12 starts at the Autumn equinox in late Sept. I start seeing first signs of blooming when the light cycle is still 15/9, my strains are all usually done by Oct 10-20, at the time of harvest the plants have only seen 12/12 or shorter day length for 2-3 weeks.

As the daylight gets shorter and shorter, the plants seem to pack weight on faster and faster, leading me to believe that part of the reason 12/12 was established as the indoor norm is due to the "fact" that plants bloom and finish faster the shorter the daylight, 12/12 is the happy medium between a faster harvest, and heavy buds.

In turn, I do not think it is a good idea to predict outdoor finish times based on the indoor finish time.

 

[BevoLabs]

What a GREAT thread! Been looking for something like this! Thank you advanced search!

After looking over the information on the first page, is Texas @ Latitude ~29-30, a good place for a year round greenhouse?

 

[BACKCOUNTRY]

Possibly.....does it freeze where you live?

 

[BevoLabs]

Possibly.....does it freeze where you live?

We usually get 1-3 freezes a year. I would obviously just use a heater for controlling the greenhouse though.

Just from looking on the front page, the day length looks great, all year, except for 3 months or so in the summer when we have 13-14 hour days.

I am sure these are coming off as repetitive questions, and I apologize. Just trying to wrap my head around the intricacies of greenhouses, flowering, etc. I am just scratching the surface, and before I dig too deep, I would like to know if my location is actually good for a greenhouse.

I appreciate it!

 

[dirrtyd]

Just wanted to say great thread. Didn't know it at the time but I went threw alot of this last season. Now I will monitor it this year for sure. I also have a few seeds to pop in March to see what the difference is from the clones. I'm at 37 north.

 

[brah]

great read

 

[Johnny Bud]

Hey guys, i have a question for you, i live in england, and i am planning to do an outdoor grow, but given the climate n weather the only way i can pull this of is to induce flowering, during the peak of summer by going to the site every day and night to create the correct lights out time, i.e 12/12(shorter days), yes this is going to be a pain in the arse, so is thier a point where i can stopp doing this and hope that the plant is deep into flowering an i can get away with not having to go and controll the lights out. my theory is that after say 4 weeks of flowering the plant is well into its flower period and the natural daylight will be short enough to keep the plant in flower.
cheers

 

[pearlemae]

Great thread, picked up a lot of good info.Kudos Backcountry.

 

[longy]

veg em indoors on 18/6 light cycle so the flower straight away

 

[Johnny Bud]

veg em indoors on 18/6 light cycle so the flower straight away

Hi Is this an answer to my question if so, i will be vegging on 18/6 indoors, so are you saying that once i take them outdoors, they will realise the days are shorter and start flowering.

 

[TLoft13]

Anybody has an idea how wavelength of the light and light intensity tie into this problem?
I got 100% preflowers in '09, 0% this year. Both the same planting date and lighting period.
Light intensity was roughly 3-4 times higher THIS year, but of another spectrum. So this anecdote seems to indicate that wavelength is more important than intensity.

 

[longy]

yep

 

[skankwhisperer]

This is really helpfull!