Force flowering outdoors

[DJ_highst_]

Id avoid putting things like bags over the plants during the daytime, esp. garbage bags. I wouldnt even want to think about how hot it would get inside a black trashbag sitting in the sun for a few hours during july.

during force flowering, its only covered for the last few hours at the end of the day and it gets taken off right when it gets dark. Its not as bad as covering during the mid day and its only for a few hours.

 

[Relik]

As DJ_highst said, you should have no problem if you just cover the plants in the mid-late afternoon. We just want to shorten daylength, and for that you need to know at what time the sun rises.

This chart was posted some time ago and is pretty useful.
http://pictures.marijuana.com/gallery/data-stuff/b6d767d2f8ed5d21a44b0e5886680cb9/1257_p17846.swf

This one is a bit better IMHO, the only downside is that it's in French. But it's pretty intuitive, you should find your way, if not, PM me lol! You first choose your country, then your state/region, and finally your city. Then it indicates sunrise, sunset, and photoperiod.
http://ptaff.ca/soleil/

Peace

 

[CC Rider]

heres another good site i found for sun rise/set charts, its only for usa and canada though................http://www.almanac.com/rise/

 

[Sad247summer]

www.grobots.com
There are a coupla threads about this they run around 4000$

 

[DJ_highst_]

check this out. similar to the grobots, but dont know the price. there site sucks

http://www.autoflowertent.com/

 

[badmf]

You can build a cover tent with a timer, long cycle batteries and garage door opener and as mentioned flip on at 5pm and uncover at 10pm. Otherwise its a pain to be there daily at the same time unless its your backyard and you are there anyway.

 

[suzycremecheese]

You can build a cover tent with a timer, long cycle batteries and garage door opener and as mentioned flip on at 5pm and uncover at 10pm. Otherwise its a pain to be there daily at the same time unless its your backyard and you are there anyway.

Interesting idea bad mf. You should expand on that in the greenhouse section. Especially if youve done it before. I can see an interesting tutorial evolving from your comments. Especially if you can show how to build it from scrap parts.

 

[Sad247summer]

Yeah bad MF I wanna see plans??

 

[badmf]

OK I hope you can use your imaginations a lil here.
Picture a hoop-house made of PVC.
With a shadecloth cover, that is fitted pretty loose(ease of travel) but light tight when up.
A series of hooks, etc to the edges of the cover/tarp whatever, tied to rope/twine/wire whatever.
Connected to an anchored (use a board staked in to the ground) connected to your timer.
When the timers fires, the garage opener motor cycles to pull the cover over the hoops. Now it's dark inside... spooky , huh? You can wire the garage to reverse and it will "un-cover" after its night outdoorz. Pretend to be Macguyver, and you can come up with some interesting ideas! I would'nt want it to close all the way to allow some venting at the bottom, remember the light only needs to avoid the leaves and budz not the stalk.

 

[DJ_highst_]

OK I hope you can use your imaginations a lil here.
Picture a hoop-house made of PVC.
With a shadecloth cover, that is fitted pretty loose(ease of travel) but light tight when up.
A series of hooks, etc to the edges of the cover/tarp whatever, tied to rope/twine/wire whatever.
Connected to an anchored (use a board staked in to the ground) connected to your timer.
When the timers fires, the garage opener motor cycles to pull the cover over the hoops. Now it's dark inside... spooky , huh? You can wire the garage to reverse and it will "un-cover" after its night outdoorz. Pretend to be Macguyver, and you can come up with some interesting ideas! I would'nt want it to close all the way to allow some venting at the bottom, remember the light only needs to avoid the leaves and budz not the stalk.

thats actually a really good idea. Some of the other force flower freaks around here have kicked around the idea of using a garage door, but I always invisioned the shade cloth connected to the garage door track. I like the idea of have the hoop set-up and garage door being seperate and the garage door acts as the "lead" or guide for the shade cover, but has its own track system.
Home Depot has a nice section for gargae doors, so you can size your door and track to any size application too. You dont even need the actual garage door, just the outside tracks, the center chain rigging set-up with the motor and the arm that the door is usually connected to. Just hook whatever you are going to use to control the tarp to the idler/pitman arm (whatever its called, I am car guy, I use car terms, lol). this cold be feasible.

I think I might search craigslist for a cheap garage door opener to canablize. You renewed my interest in this idea and I really dont want to do it by hand again.

nice post Badmf

 

[Sad247summer]

I dunno.. I tried the garage door route and didnt get anywhere.
With the door opener what do you use as a guide for the cover?
You have actual Pix?
heres mine

 

[badmf]

I had envisioned the motor outside the tent and using a pulley set-up to control the tarp pull. Place it under the outside lip (black pole on ground) and it will pull down use bracing of PVC where necessary.Work out the tent-pull before adding the motor/timer. I also thought the motor could pull multiple tarps down. Your thoughts?

 

[Cannapits]

I'm going to build a PVC frame and use black/white poly......anyone seen these before....seems like a great way to secure the material to the pvc....http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/prodinfo.asp?number=SN-SC

 

[page1]

i did it once but i just took the plants indorr at the same time each night and put them in a cupboard. it worked fine and i got some nice smoke

 

[Sad247summer]

Covering a "Hoop" House like mine by hand would be a peice of Cake I know several pple that do that for outdoor growing up here in AK , but those pple have nothing else to do throuought their day of farming.
For several years they carried the plants indoors to a blacked out room but they like not having to move them better.
I almost have my box working so I hope to have pix or mebe a youtube link of the box in action.

 

[johnny depp]

I just started covering my plants with black garbage bags. I put the bags on at 6pm. The sunrise is around 4:15am in the morning but it's quite bright already at 3am, therefore I keep the plants covered until 4am (I try to give them 10 hours of darkness). When the dark period is a bit longer I'll start removing the bags for better airflow as soon as it gets dark.

If I stop covering them after they start to bud properly will they keep on flowering or will they go back towards veg?

I at around 62N so the daylight is now almost 19 hours.

 

[johnny depp]

Have been covering for a week now, no signs of flowering. I'll put a second layer of bags, maybe the light comes through or there's some leaks. Or perhaps 10 hours of darkness isn't enough (should be 100% indica strain)?