What makes indoor and outdoor, different...

[HooleyBooley]

Does anyone have a definitive opinion on what makes indoor grows less leafy and more buddy, vs outdoor grows?

Is it:

1) The sun vs HID lights

or

2) Soil (and slow release nutrients) vs Soil-less/tighter nutrient control.


For example, if you grew hydroponically outdoors, would your bud look like indoor? Or if you used soil (real soil, not Sunshine Mix or even FFOF) with slower releasing nutrients (like most people do outdoors), inside under HID's, would it look like outdoors?

My assumption is that the leafy bud result outdoors is from so much residual nitrogen in the soil mixes used outdoors, but if you grew in something like sunshine mix and fed Pure Blend Pro type products, you could get bud quality equal to indoor. What you think?

 

[FirstTracks]

I think (but could be wrong) a lot has to do with the photoperiod.
Generally, indoors, people flower at a straight 12/12 and many go straight there from 18/6 or 24/0.
Outdoors, the transition is less abrupt. Additionally, daylight hours are usually over 12, at least the farther away from the equator you go.
Longer days during flower=leafier buds since plants are mixed between vegging and flowering.

This is strain specific as well.
I've grown some sweettooth that was leafy as anything outdoors.........a few hundred feet away I had bagseed out of some bricked up mids that had huge fans but the colas were essentially leafless spears 1.5ft tall.

Leaf development may also be increased outdoors due to conditions such as great penetrating sunluight coming from multiple directions throughout the day, great airflow, and whatever else.

I feel the photoperiod is the bigger cause though

 

[thcrefugee]

what directly causes leaf and flower growth? light/ light period.

 

[ChaosCatalunya]

Environment is a lot of it, clones put out in different gardens can look slightly different indoors more so as there is way more room for error !

 

[Fingaz2]

I often wonder if weather has something to do with it. I have seen plants looking great up to mid flowerin, white pistils everywhere, then we would get a period of unsettled weather (wind & rain) and the plants end up a lot more leafy. They could do this to protect the buds. What mother wouldn't wrap their babies up. Its called swaddling. Aaaaah!

 

[Robin_of_Loxxy]

night and day

 

[HooleyBooley]

Have any of you tried using the exact same growing medium outdoors as you do indoors, and still ended up with the typical end product differences?

I guess to me the fact that virtually everyone uses different growing mediums outdoors than indoors adds this extra variable, and I wonder if you eliminated it, if you could grow indoor looking herb, outdoors.

 

[Guest]

Howdy HB.

It's my view that leaf to flower ratios are controlled primarily by genetics and heritage. Lighting can only make the buds larger or smaller or denser, but not change their bud structure by increasing or decreasing leafiness.


There are however, major differences in indoor and outdoor strains.

Outdoor strains often need a much longer veg period, ( minimum of 8 weeks), in order to respond naturally which tends to make them impracticle for indoor. If grown indoors, they will stretch to high heaven and have poor, whispy bud development.

Typically, many outdoor strains are labeled as such because proper bud development cant be achieved with weaker indoor lighting. Only the strong outdoor sun will allow for proper bud development, growth and density in these strains. Timebomb from SOL is just such a strain. There are quite a few.

Some outdoor strains are labeled as such due to their poor performance in a container. Nute sensitivity is high in these plants and the cant tolerate even the slightest root restriction.

Some indoor strains are labeled as such because their finish date would disallow their growth anywhere outdoors but in the tropics.

Some strains have been bred and grown indoors to the point they have become acclimated to indoor light cycles and willl only flower at 12/12 cycles. 12/12 lighting has no relevance to the outdoor grower due to the fact that most cannabis strains begin to flower outdoors at around 14+ hrs of light. A plant that wont begin to flower until 12 hrs is reached wont began to flower until late sept, far too late to have a harvest in the N hemisphere.



sb

.

 

[vod]

It's my view that leaf to flower ratios are controlled primarily by genetics and heritage. Lighting can only make the buds larger or smaller or denser, but not change their bud structure by increasing or decreasing leafiness.

as far as my limited experience goes, the outdoor stuff is much leafier than same strain grown in my box. i'm a bit more north than you sb (and in europe) and get little direct sunshine in sept/oct.

 

[ljjr]

similar to what was said earlier by others i always thought the weather and environment made the difference, outside the plants deal with imperfect conditions(cloudy and rainy days etc.) inside we control the weather and temps. jmo

 

[Guest]

Maybe someone can search it out and give the factual, diffinitive answer. Maybe vod is right, perhaps latt may impact.

Its certainly something that Ive never seen in many many indoor and outdoor grows. Not for any strain and really not under any conditions. I thought bud structure , branchiness or the lack of, stem characteristics, coloring and many other aspects were controlled by genes. Other than nutrients , water and sunshine, I wasnt aware that any enviromental factors effect bud development or structure inside or out, with the exception of bud density, which is usually harder outdoors.


Stretch, flowering time, potency, bud density, nutrient uptake and to a great extent, hermaprhoditism and a number of other charachteristics are, or at least can be very different between OD/ID, but I'll be shocked if someone can come up with some info that says flower to leaf ratio is affected by anything other than genetics.

Although, i have developed a refined talent for being wrong at times. This could be one more..

 

[Late_Night_Toke]

The plant is nothing but a heap of DNA everything is based on the code, everything from size shape color potency rate of growth and The very way the plant reacts to the environment. The sad fact is nothing does as well in captivity as it does in the wild, or close.
Who knows what artificial lighting aswell as current breeding techniques are really telling the plants to do. The main problem seems to be that in the instance of identicle twins with freckles, both had the freckle gene but the size shape and position were not facts controled by the freckle gene itself, meaning that heredity its not always Just So, but close.
If that kind of thing is possible it seems to indicate that there is more going on, like co-dominance, maybe more than a few things have to be right for something good to happen
The most famous stud horse in the world was not a champion himself in anyway but his offspring were all the aesthetic Lookers one would assume would pass on the same traits.
but because of the way things work out, it seems that our idea of beauty in breeding is only skin deep. Facts are the plants are adapted to the outdoors, and equatorial sativas fair no better in kansas on the short term than any plant fairs indoors. Even if everything seems the same smokes the same grows as well, it doesnt change what the plant is adapted to Now which is outside. And if your breeding indoors... shame. Not only does the plant respond to things that are present, the plant responds to things that are not present. What does it say to the plant to be flowering at exactly 12/12 all of its life on the long term? What if the missing outdoor fluctuation of light that happens in nature causes the plant to miss out on its true potential. Most of what im saying is beyond cold hard fact, but god knows its not beyond common sense.

 

[Fingaz2]

Sorry Silver, got to disagree. Its so simple, Flowering & Blooming can be sustained to the optimum inside. You cannot get plants to bloom like this outdoors at our lat. Unless we are very lucky with the weather. Leaves will continue to grow because they can, flowers will not. Roses, Hyacynths, Primroses any flower you like will not flower to the max if the weather doesnt suit. Plants will not bloom to fullness if the weather isnt on your side. Genetics have little to do with it. Flowers like sunshine.

 

[barletta]

A plant wants so much more than a stationary parking lot light on a timer. Sure it can do ok growing that way if you put some fake wind in there. But give it the sun's changing intensity/angle/light spectrum/day length/etc..., and the plant thrives. I understand that at northern latitudes, the sun is not really intense enough past mid Sept to produce the quantity of flowers as it is here (41 deg). But I still have to believe that the resin and trimmed plant material is a better/richer/more satisfying smoke. IME, every plant that I could finish outside properly was better in just about every way (short of visible resin coverage in SOME cases). I can't wait to get some OD back in my life

 

[Fingaz2]

ABSOLUTELY!!!!!
Barletta, nicely put, smoking a landscape has got to be better for you than smoking a bucket of nutes.

 

[greennuggets7]

outdoor yields a lot more

 

[L-Thirt33n]

The largest most profound difference is the sunlight. You could never produce the same results indoors under HID as you could outdoors under the sun.

All aspects of the growth characteristics are controlled by genetics. Shape, phylotaxy maturity, leaf and flower development is all genetically predetermined. The environment can only limit the genetics by not meeting that particular plants genetic "food" requirements...

Because of genetic alterations there are now many many different kinds of strains. Each bred with different characteristics in mind. Certain phenotypes will be more prominant and as Silverback was explaining you end up with plants like the autoflowering strains and other different characteristics along those lines...Strains such as those make it logically unnecessary to grow outdoors and more feasable to grow indoors.

The one thing that remains constant though is that the sunlight will ALWAYS produce a better metobolic rate.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

Indoor dark periods are just that, dark. Outdoors you've got the moon, stars and a host of artificial light sources to contend with.

 

[HooleyBooley]

Interesting feedback, gracias. Just to throw a few things out there, I'd say that here, around latitude 42, a lot of people grow the same varieties inside and out, with excellent results in both situations; but clones from the same generation from the same mother, grown outside, are considerably leafier. I think some of the theories of why, y'all have expressed, are feasible and believable, but I think I'm just going to have to try growing a few outside this summer using an indoor medium like Sunshine Mix, and PBP nutes, and see what happens.

I just thought since people here seem to have tried just about everything, someone would pipe up with their direct experience of trying that out already!

I've been lurking here for a while, and there is a lot of kickass information on these boards.

 

[barletta]

More leaf means that the plants can process more light/co2. The buds may have more calyx to leaf (@ 42, I'm @ 41), BUT each OD cola will tripple up an indoor cola in final weight. 3x's the bud, 3x's the leaf.

That Mango Widow was SOOOO tasty. Leafy, but tasty...