Growing in the winter outdoors in central Florida

[Irotas]

Hi, I was planning on starting a grow outdoors starting december. I was wondering if its possible the plants will still veg for awhile before going into flower considering they are sativa dominant. Or will the plants flower to soon and be too small? Im ok with small plants I just dont want them to be too small. As soon as they are sexually mature they will flower but how long will it take to reach this sexual maturity and how long will they stay in flower? When will they start to reveg?

I got Malawi, Honduras breeze, Honduras Zamadelidica, and Thai chi

 

[Cool Moe]

Hi Irotas, your length of day (e.g. Orlando) is only 10 hrs 40 mins and will continue to shorten until Dec 21. On 12/21 your days will begin to get longer and by 3/21 will reach 12 hrs, then on June 21 your longest day of the year is about 14 hrs. So your only real option is to veg indoor and flower outdoor this time of year, otherwise they'll stay too small and go straight to flower.

 

[dubi]

Hi Irotas,

Thanks for supporting our work. Being sativas and sativa dom hybrids they take longer to reach sexual maturity (5-7 weeks) from seed and to be able to start the flowering.

If temps are ok during winter at your latitude then you can give it a try, although it's always more recommendable to grow the sativas during spring-early summer with stronger sun and warmer temps, and also so they can flower during late summer-early fall with decreasing photoperiod. Photoperiod strains produce more leafy, less dense, less resinous (overall less quality) buds when flowered with an increasing photoperiod, very tropical pure sativas are very sensible with this.

 

[P-NUT]

I'm from the same area and been doing winter outdoors for a while. If possible veg them in the container you plan to flower in then put them outside. If not the will flower early and you won't yield much. Don't plant after Feb or they will start to reveg in may. Winter crops don't get big and are somewhat airy even with thick budded hybrids but the clear days with lots of uv and cool temps makes them produce lots of terps. My favorite smokes are harvested in dec Jan Feb. If you have a greenhouse you could run a light for an hour or two in the middle of the night to prevent flowering and get them bigger. Just remember cold spells will also slow growth so some supplemental heat on really cold nights will help.