Florida Growers Thread

[Aquaman2112]

Damn That Sucks
S.A.G.E. Pure Power Plant are Two Good Ones

which strains would do good, or some pointers about the factors of the area would be highly appreciated.

S.A.G.E. Pure Power Plant are Two Good Ones [
Outdoors dig your soil out and replace with a good Mix atleast 3 feet widw by 3 feet deep per Plant
Be Prepared to carry alot of water.
Most important is Tell NO-ONE about you Growing
I would like to change the Mood heres an UpDate







Aqua~

 

[Tropical]

Hello, Evlme2 and Kingpiff. If you want plants to veg, you should wait until late April, at least 4/20, before you but them outside. Starting plants indoors is a very good idea. It not only bumps up the yield, but it also helps because plants survive better indoors where you can protect them from pests until they get bigger. One lizard can eat an entire little seedling, but not a 12" plant. Also, you can flower plants outside in the fall, winter, and even early spring if they have already vegged to a size that will give you a decent yield.

If you love sativas, you are in luck. Thailand, Jamaica, and Columbia all have climates that are pretty similar to ours. Anything that grows there, should do fine here too. Keep a mom indoors and put out female clones for sin semilla, and your buds will be even better than the bag they came from no matter how fresh it was. My first grow was from bag seed I brought home from a Jamaican vacation. It was great.

Evlme2, if you only want to veg for a few weeks, then you could wait until July to put them out.

Kingpiff, mold isn't a big problem here for sativas, especially late flowering ones with fluffy buds. Our rainy season is in the summer when the days are long enough for the sun to dry out the buds after a storm. It's not like the fall up north where the sky stays grey and damp for weeks at a time.

BTW, hardly any strain will veg in September anywhere. If you find one, let me know. That would finish in our dry season. Many strains, wont veg here at all once they are sexually mature (all the clones are mature once the mom is). I'll repost my photoperiod and Florida growing faq from my thread at OG.

 

[Tropical]

Hey, Aqua, nice plant porn.

When to start MJ Outdoors in Florida

what is the very earliest in the year i can start vegging my plants outside? I know its somethin like late april/early may, but can't i do it any earlier? thanks

I see people keep asking about when to start outdoors in Florida. There are more questions asked on this topic than any other in this thread. I think it's time for us to write a detailed FAQ on it and paste it into one of the first posts in the thread.

I’ll get this started and then you guys can review my draft and make comments to improve it. First, we need to see what’s already in the OG on this. As far as I can tell, the only FAQ related to this topic is one that lists the average first and last frost days for a few selected cities. It shows Tampa usually gets their first and last frost in January, and Miami is frost free. [faq]1445[/faq]

The most important points to keep in mind are:

• Genetics determine how much darkness a plant will need to flower. The number of hours of uninterrupted darkness each night that will induce blooming is called that plant’s “critical night length.” This is usually around ten to eleven hours. So, indoor growers keep the limit the dark period to six hours to keep plants in veg, and switch to twelve hours to induce flowering. That probably covers 99% of the plants.
• The longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere is in late June, and the shortest day is around Christmas.
• The closer you are to the equator the less fluctuation there is in day length. It’s 12/12 every day of the year on the equator.
• Plants wont start to flower until they are sexually mature. This can take a couple months and the exact amount of time is affected by the plant’s genes. Clones will have the maturity of the mother. So, young seedlings will stay in veg even when given long nights, but mature clones will start to flower when they are given long enough nights. I think there’s an FAQ on how to tell when a plant is sexually mature.
• I’ve seen several plants flower right through the longest day of the year (shortest night).
• The shorter veg season we have here is actually an advantage in many ways. The plants stay shorter, so they’re more stealthy. The lower yield can be compensated by planting more plants and having more flowering seasons. The longer you leave your plants outside, the more you expose them to loss due to pests, pestilence, poachers, or police.
• Frost isn't good for Cannabis plants, so, if you live someplace that gets cold in the winter, you should put up some kind of temporary greenhouse on the cold days. I've seen some clear pup tents that are made for this purpose and I posted a link to them in the previous Florida growers thread. Or, you can rig something yourself with a clear plastic tarp, like Visqueen.

I keep moms, clone, and veg indoors and then treat the great outdoors here as a huge flowering room. That way, you keep most of the odor and heat away from your home and you take advantage of the powerful free grow lamp in the sky. Find a couple stoner friends who have sunny backyards and put one small bush or bed of tiny clones out there each month. That will give you and your friends plenty stash to keep everybody happy.

So, in my inexperienced opinion, you could probably start outdoors twice a year, April and October.

Yes, April is a good time if you want your seed plants to veg a bit outdoors. Start sexually mature clones a few weeks later. What do you mean about October being a good time to start?

...if you start in oct. outside you end up with a 8inch bud, or a male! great to flower outside but needs the longer daylight to veg in or will go into flower as soon as she is old enough...

That’s right. Just remember that 8 inch buds aren’t bad if you have enough of them.

Can you speak more slowly? I'm not following. What's with the male thing?

Well, he’s just saying that a male wont give you an 8 inch bud, it will just give you a few balls.

What times of year are normal for starting outdoors (and staying outdoors)?

What do you mean by normal?

I also thought starting a bit later might contain the size a bit.....

Bingo!

1st outdoor grow, many years ago, was Jamaican Sativa.

My first outdoor grow was Jamaican sativa too. I put two mature plants out in March and they started to flower right away, producing about six ounces. The second round went out in June and they flowered right through the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. Those plants must have had some indica in their genetics to flower early like that.

well sitivas will stretch and grow bigger outdoors but really I found May to be a good month to start here! some of my aprils flowered out! it will definatly contain the size...

Yes, many strains will flower here no matter when you put them outside.

 

[Guest 18340]

Tropical, right on for that answer bro, and the faq is a great idea!
Aqua, wish my patio had trees like that!!! How do you guys go about protecting the ladies from the summer afternoon downpours? Cover them? Move them indoors? Or leave em to get soaked? Again, im a total noob at outdoor growing. How pathetic is it that growing the natural way is more dificult fo me than growing in an artificial environment.

 

[Guest]

thanks tropical, I was really curious about the mold down here.

 

[Guest]

Tropical, right on for that answer bro, and the faq is a great idea!
Aqua, wish my patio had trees like that!!! How do you guys go about protecting the ladies from the summer afternoon downpours? Cover them? Move them indoors? Or leave em to get soaked? Again, im a total noob at outdoor growing. How pathetic is it that growing the natural way is more dificult fo me than growing in an artificial environment.

I would just leave them out in the rain. The only time ill try covering my plants will be for a tropical storm or hurricane. I hope we don't get too many of those this season.

 

[Tropical]

I have heard of people here in Miami coming home after a storm and seeing the buds on their 8 foot skunks down in the mud. The buds get very heavy when wet and the wind blows them and breaks the branches. Personally, I haven't run into that problem yet, I don't grow much in the summer and, when I do, I put the plants out on the sunny side of a house, under the overhang. I have had a couple pics. I'll try to dig them up.

BTW, I have also heard of people with something like a clear roof that they put up for heavy rains. They have too many plants to just put on the side of a house.

 

[Tropical]

OK, here is an OG Kush in a five gallon container. This was grown in the winter or early spring of 2007.



Here is my LUI from the winter of 2004 at a different location that is no longer available to me.



Here is a bigger Jamaican bagseed from the winter of 2003.. Don't get fooled by all the marketing hype behind all the commercially sold strains. Good bagseed will make great pot if you grow, harvest, and cure it right.



Here is a better pic of that wall.

 

[Aquaman2112]

Those Buds Look Yummmy ...
I forgot about that Faq you put together it still Kicks @$$

Aqua~

Evlme It just doest rain here that much till June and Its the Humidity that really screws with your Buds...........

 

[Tropical]

Those Buds Look Yummmy ...
I forgot about that Faq you put together it still Kicks @$$....

That is a nice compliment, but, since it comes from you, it's enough to make me blush. ;-)

Seriously, though, I wrote it hoping that everybody would contribute to making it even better. So, don't be shy about suggesting improvements, no matter how big or small.

 

[Guest]

anybody know what the choppers look like? you know the ones to avoid and what time of the year are they out most?

 

[Tropical]

anybody know what the choppers look like? you know the ones to avoid and what time of the year are they out most?

From what I've heard directly from a chopper pilot, the governments don't have a budget to allow helicopters to hover over every little bush in the country to determine if it is cannabis. From 50 feet in the air, a mj plant just looks like a green bush. The choppers have to fly pretty fast and can only zoom in on large patches, acres and acres in size, that stand out from the surroundings. The mj plants will look cultivated, healthy, and well fed, yet surrounding plants are just scraggly native scrub.

One grower in Florida grows hundreds of plants at a time in his backyard. His last harvest was 63 pounds! Yet, he has never been spotted by a helicopter.

Just my two cents...

Puff, puff, pass...

 

[Tropical]

By the way, the helicopter question comes up a lot. Maybe we need to put our heads together and come up with a good faq for that too.

Same for the mold question and "what strain should I grow in Florida."

 

[Guest 18340]

I agree with you Tropical, a coupla faq threads specific to Florida/growing in Florida (etc) would be a great idea. Knowledge is power, after all. Unfortunately, i'm a total noob to outdoor growing so i cant really contribute much

 

[Guest]

From what I've heard directly from a chopper pilot, the governments don't have a budget to allow helicopters to hover over every little bush in the country to determine if it is cannabis. From 50 feet in the air, a mj plant just looks like a green bush. The choppers have to fly pretty fast and can only zoom in on large patches, acres and acres in size, that stand out from the surroundings. The mj plants will look cultivated, healthy, and well fed, yet surrounding plants are just scraggly native scrub.

One grower in Florida grows hundreds of plants at a time in his backyard. His last harvest was 63 pounds! Yet, he has never been spotted by a helicopter.

Just my two cents...

Puff, puff, pass...

Don't they use the money they make from the local bust towards the choppers? I guess I should be good as I only want to do a few guerillas. Are you talking about lougrew with the 63lbs? If you are, I never knew he was from our state of Florida thats cool.

By the way, the helicopter question comes up a lot. Maybe we need to put our heads together and come up with a good faq for that too.

Same for the mold question and "what strain should I grow in Florida."

A good faq would be great for the choppers and strains. I never grew outside before so I have nothing to add now but I will be posting my experiences as time goes by.

 

[Tropical]

Yes, I think that drug bust money goes to leo, but that doesn't mean specifically to chopper patrols, AFAIK. That chopper pilot from Tampa who was interviewed on the tv news said that they spend a lot of time in the air, but have to fly fast and high to cover the county. They can't possibly look at every bush. They are going after the big guys who grow thousands of plants. I'm not saying they would ignore a 100 plant patch if they noticed it, just that they don't have the manpower to devote to that.

Yes, I am talking about lougrew.

 

[SlowCalaToker]

Got y'all subscribed now that I've found ya! I'm an indoor guy, working on my first harvest next weekend. I have given more than a little thought to doin a trashcan scrog in the back yard this summer. When would you move a clone outside, and how much should I veg it 24/0 before the move outside date? I'm north of Orlando but south of Jax, away from the coast.

An F.A.Q. to handle stupid questions like mine that have probably already been answered at least twice around here (even though I can't find anything on the search....) would be a FANTASTIC idea!

I'd be willing to do anything I could to help ya out.

 

[Tropical]

Slow, just go back to post 1123. That has the info.

Are you growing a mold resistant sativa? If so put it outside in late April, after you celebrate 4/20. ;-) It might continue to veg or it might flower, depending on the genetics. Haze and Skunk, for example can veg here. Otherwise, it almost certainly wont veg outdoors, it will flower when you put it out, so you need to veg it to full size first. Put it outside at least two months before the start of the rainy season. The rains start around June down here in Miami and taper off in October.

The best way to help out for now is to document your grows with pics for everybody and help answer newbie questions.

Aqua is more experienced than I now in growing outdoors in Florida. By the way, Aqua, have you heard from GodShaveTheQueen in the past few years? Wasn't he the one who took a direct hit from Hurricane Ivan, like a cat 4? Ouch.

 

[mtf-shaman]

wow, that is a name i haven't seen in forever.....GSTQ...........i am working with a new camera but i can't post attachments for some reason....i tried everything i know in another thread, thought y'all camera buffs might have a clue

i still see blue roofs when i visit my dad.....ivan then dennis for florida, katrina and rita for most of the gulf coast....last season was a nice calm change, i wonder what the old farm book projects for this year

 

[Guest]

Heres a Menage el Trois I put outside last week to finish up. Its on day 42. I plan on choppen her down 2-3 weeks unless a problem occurs before that. Also I went to check on her and there was a all black cat just relaxen next to the plant lol I thought it was funny. A cat won't cause any harm to my plant right?