Starting indoors for outdoors

[tokinjoe]

I copied my thread from the Outdoor Growers forum to get more responses:

Hey guys, most of you probably know I'm primarily an outdoor grower. In the past I've always started my plants outdoors in a mini-greenhouse, from seed until they reached a height of 12" or so then they come out of the greenhouse and right down to my grow area in the country. My concern is that it will be a RADICAL change going from indoors under lights to outdoors under the sun. My concerns are two-fold: First is shock. I'm not sure if I should veg for 24/0 and put outside or what the light regimen should be. I don't want to produce a bunch of hermies. I've battled the 50% male ratio for years and this year with clones and femmed seed (thanks for the advice Gainster) and I don't want to replace males with the dreaded hermies because I light shocked them.

Second, I don't want to put my plants out and have them start to bud as soon as they go out and produce small plants due to early budding. My goal is to get out around 20 plants or so. My weight goal is 5 lbs or more. I figure with 20 plants I can lose some and still have a chance at hitting my weight goal. With any luck I can exceed it. Previously I was going to put them all out in June, but may stagger them and try putting some out in April, May and June as well.

Any and all advice I can get on this will be sincerely appreciated as I've never started indoors under lights and do not want to have a catastrophic failure do to poor planning. Any time I have a failure, it takes me a year before spring rolls around again. Way too long for me because I failed to plan. Thanks for reading this long post. HELP???

 

[deZerTomB]

I give a bud of mine clones that are rooted for a couple weeks indoors and he puts them in the ground on the day of the Kentucky Derby. No hermies, plenty of growth. Start at about 6 inches & end up at 5 ft. tall. Depending on your weather.

 

[kov]

tokinjoe I've done just that last year. In Europe, latitude 53 deg., in continental climate (long winter, short summer). First mistake I've made is to cramp a lot (20 seedlings) in my small grow box (0,75 m sq).

Planted second week of april, by may 1-st they were stretchy and thin fighting for space. They just have outgrown the space available. So I got gravely impatient and transwered them outdoors on may 3-rd, regardless my knowledge that in my country the mean border of local frost close to the ground is may 15-th.

Last year the spring was early and warm, so like an idiot I thought I can get away with it. Well, I didn't. The very last frost on may 8-th killed them all. I was sooo fed up, as a last resort I planted some remaining beans straight to the ground. The outcome was - just one of my primo beans has made it, all the rest were undeveloped.

So, my advice is. If you want to plant many seeds, plan on large indoor area, bearing in mind that a month of growth indoors will make them quite big. Then don't rush them outdoor at first signs of improving weather, take your time.

Go 18/6 from the beginning indoors, outdoor light duration in june is even longer when you include dusk and down (at least in my climate) so they will keep on vegging, until natural light subsides in autumn.

You may get away with it, if you're patient.

rgds, kov

 

[tokinjoe]

Thanks Kov. I'm definately not impatient. I'm growing mothers for clones, so patience be damned, I HAVE to wait until my clones are big enough to go outside. Our last frosts here will be mid-end of April. The earliest I would put them out anyway would be May, and a big part of them would be the first of June. My main concern is shock and them not flowering as soon as I get them outside. I figure with all of the brilliant minds at work on here, there are plenty that have done it. I just wish they would drop by this thread. Things move kinda slow around here on my threads. I've got time though. Thanks bro. Peace. TJ

 

[Guest]

tokinjoe -


This is how we do it with much success :

1. take your rooted cuts and place them in 1 gallon pots
2. get an Old Farmers Almanac
3. find the average sun cycle for your area in the month you want to put your clones out, where we are its about 14-16 hours of day and 10-8 hous of night...
4. get some 32w 5000k fluros to veg them under, this spectrum is warm and will mimic the outdoor condition
5. as your clones begin to get rootbound, transfer them to a larger pot and keep doing this until they are ready to take outside.


Note: as you veg indoors, this is the time to train your plants to be in whatever style you want them to be, weather you plan to LST, scrog outdoors, top a few times and let it bush, supercrop, whatever combination...DO IT INDOORS!! once you take your plants outside they are going to go apeshit on you and it will be tough to train them so you might as well do it while you have control over them no?

Also note: vegging 4-5 weeks indoors and letting your plants get rootbound in say a 5 gallon bucket...i mean REALLY rootbound then giving them a good 60% cutting back, just prune the hell out of them (rootball is now larger than the plant it is supporting) and take her outside you'll find that she'll bush out vigorously and flower, if you start with about a 3.5ft plant before you cut back, the plant will grow to about 4ft and give you a great yeild, 1oz + per foot!!

 

[tokinjoe]

Thanks for the help Danimal. How bout if I want to grow say, at least 1/2 lb per plant. What would I do different? I'm getting 1/4 lb out of the strain I've been growing. I'm wanting to increase this with a strain that will do it. I want some biguns and have the perfect place to get this out of my plants.

BTW

I'm vegging under a 400MH now. I want them to still veg outdoors as well, just as if I started them outdoors to begin with. I'm at 38 degrees lat. if that helps.

 

[Guest]

NO problem at all man

If you want more yield you need to go with more plant, and therefore are going to need more roots, so once the plant is good and rootbound in the pot and you're going to take it outside, place them in 1.5ft wide x 2.5ft deep holes full up with your soil mix whatever it is.. this will give the roots some more room to grow and they'll still flower with the light change/being rootbound...


i forgot to mention if you want to do the force flowering outdoors you need to veg those 4-6 weeks at 24/0 photoperiod.

 

[tokinjoe]

Nah, don't want to force flower, just want em to start as they always do, in August. BTW I usually dig my holes around 2 1/2 feet wide, 2 ft deep. Lots of work, that's why I'm trying to go with clones, to get rid of the males and to be sure all my work is at least going into producing females.

 

[kov]

Very useful things you say there, the danimal. Why didn't this force flower idea come to my mind before? Very interesting, thanks!

edit: flowering in August is no good for me, I usually must pull out the plants by end of September, most of the good seedbank will not finish by then.

 

[humanbean420]

a trick to find out early if you have a female or male is to put a paper bag over one branch on the plant for half of your sun time every day. it will start to shoot hairs or balls much faster and only on that branch. good trick before you put in the dirt.and i say you sould go with pots if how tall your plant getts is no problem. you can controll all your nutes and you get more air to the roots plus the sun warms the pots they like that. also you sould put 1" wide tube in each pot to flow more air. and use rainbow mix if you can find it. i get it in santa crus its a full mix of bone mill blood meal bat shit feather meal micros and some other good stuff. and dont forget the better you mix the dirt the better and more herbs youll get. stay heady man if you have any ? ask me i love to give all the info i can. hope it helps later guys.

 

[Hooked-On-Grown]

danimal summed it up pretty good there Joe. Not much to add. The farmers Almanac or at least knowing your light and dark times helps a bunch.
I will not plant again outdoors till mid April.

kov....... check out this link HERE ....its by wolfshadow and he goes into depth on vegging inside 24/7 and force flowering outdoors to get like 6 harvest a year!!

 

[kov]

hmmm Hooked, I'm checking the thread now. Might become a cure for my short summer. Danks.

 

[Guest]

I just moved 3 lil soon to be girlies outside yesterday. It was kinda overcast not a lot of sun out. So it was kinda just right for them to get aclimated to outdoors.. peace

sack :friends:

 

[tokinjoe]

Sackoweed, It will be a while before I can get my plants outside. We are still do a frost or three at this point. I've got three that I'm going to have to cut back to keep them from getting too big to transport. Wolfshadow is THE MAN when it comes to reading the almanac and getting 6 harvests per year. My goal, as I stated above is different. I just want em to flower as normal, starting in July as they usually do. Big plants, big stinky sticky buds. Can I have an Amen?