ever consider that you didnt intend or want huge plants, but it is already too late.
Do your veg plants get to a degree that by sept/october your pots will not be able to support what happens?
Holy shit!!!! CC you must be a much younger dude I would have to use TNT to get through that shit. All my holes would be 2 inches deep hehehe. Hardwork always pays off I feel a good harvest coming your way.
Yup, you gots a shit-ton o' rock there, CDC!
I don't think you mentioned that as a reason for not digging 6-footers, but it seems like a good one to me!
The third "shit!"? Oh yea, just a small issue. I suspected it several weeks ago and have now confirmed: More than half of the girls...wait for it...are flowering! Is that f'n hysterical or what?? I have to go throw up now but I will continue the "Sleepy Hollow Triumph or Tradgedy in a bit...Stay tuned...I think I'm gonna have to pocket my grower pride and ask for advice...CC
Shoot man! Sorry to hear about early flowering... what hours were you runnin that supp light?
I took my clones in April, by the first week of this month (may) I was in 3's and ready to move outside under supp lights. My F'up, I believe, was going straight from 24/0 inside to 20/0 outside, with drastic temp changes. One of my BlueSat's looks like she's "in the mode" or at least beginning to trigger, while the rest of my varieties are fine. I think my little supplemental CFL's fail to light up the plants enough in really thick cloudy whether... next year I will definitely be using some sort of reflectors LOL.
Got any pics of your flowering girls by chance?
Hey Slang...yea, it's a drag (maybe) or just time to "cowboy up"...lol Like you, I have suspicions as to my predicament. I went from 18/6 indoor to a 19/6 outdoors and leave the lights on during cloudy days so I dont believe insufficient supp lighting is the culprit although I cant rule it out completely.
To err on the side of caution, I set my flouros to the following schedule: I began by using daylite from 7.00 am to 5:00 pm(10hrs). My lights (3-4ft 2-bulb flouros) come on at 5pm a couple hours before dark but I wait till almost dark to cover(blackbox) which is 2 xtra hours of daylite= 12 hours of daylite). The lites go off at 1:00am, come back on at 7:00 am. I leave em on until the sun hits the plants (an additional 1-2 hrs) So the lites are actually on from 6pm til 1am, off the same 6 hours as were inside and then back on for 2 hrs in the AM. I figured between the standard 6 hour sleep period plus the 12 hours of daylite and the 7+ hours of supp lighting, 19/6 -20/6 should keep me out of trouble. And as I said, on cloudy days I left the lights on all day just to insure no pre-flower. I havent started squeezing the supp lighting down yet either. Hey, you asked! LOL Now, if all that makes sense, you would make a good rocket scientist! LOL
The plants showin pre-flower sign are all Sativas. Specifically the Blue Dreams. The purples (GDP) and the Kushes are fine, so far - If I had to guess, I would say my lighting is sufficient, but the sativas are trigger happy? It did get quite cold a while back (47-49 degrees) and perhaps the sativas are susceptable to cold? That would be my second guess.
Anyway, all is not lost and no need for grower despair. It may be this cowboy's first outdoor rodeo along these lines, but I'm far from bein whupped! CC
Will get a pic up soon but yea, they be pregnant...lol
More of a question than suggestion... what if you top some of the ones that have started flowering? would cutting the tops induce the plant to think more about going back into veg stage along with maybe an hour or two increase in the supplemental lighting?
I've had my plants out during the day and in at ngt with supplemental lighting on about a 15/9 schedule for the last couple months but I finally put them out at their location in the ground yesterday and I'm hoping I didn't do it a bit too early.
Maybe rootbound in the pots have also made them think more about flowering? I'm in 530 too and right now with twilight included we're sitting at about 15.5 hrs light and 8.5 dark I believe. Maybe you just put them out right now and let'em go?
Can't remember where right now, but I do remember reading (I think, Tom Hill) talking about early finishing sativas being trigger happy.
My GDP is fine and vegging right along as well, she didn't trigger on me last year either while the Green Crack went all sexy on me this time of year...
Best thing I can thing of is to feed heavy amounts of N, try to bring em back out...
my question now is... without trying to sound like a dead horse beater...
will those holes support the end result of the plants as they exist (huge already)?
By the way. I have never seen such resolve as you with your rock hounding!
I thought i had it bad pick axing in hard pan. I had to dig 3-5 inches, fill with water and come back to that hole tomorrow for 10 days.
But I had no rocks.
Did you find any cool ones?
CC- yeah, preflowering sucks. truth is, if your worried about plants getting too big, ime preflowering will help very much in preventing rapid vegetative growth and slow those sativas down while hormones revert to veg.
i've had experience with pre flowering. but in my case, trying to get the largest plants possible, preflowering = culling and starting with fresh vegetative stock. i had a few GCs that preflowered that i reverted back to veg(which was a slow process), and some GC that never preflowered. the preflowered GC were 1/2 to 2/3 the size of the non preflowered plants.
preflowering will slow your plants down for a couple months at most while they revert back to veg.
heavy nitrogen will encourage them to flip back to veg. i would also extend those hours of light.
this could be a blessing in disguise! if your worried about overall size that is.
Hey BC...Good, this is the input I'm looking for. I agree, pre-flowereds shouldnt grow as large due to the plant having its normal growth cycle interrupted by having to re-veg. Unfortunately, that means the yield would also be reduced? So, ya end up with a smaller plant which may better fit the hole size but the yield drops. This sounds like one of those: "Six of one, half a dozen of the other..." lol
"culling and starting with fresh vegetative stock" I have the back up clones ready for just such a move, but it would mean blackboxing the bigger plants. As I said in my earlier post, yea, it would take away the pre-flowered/re-veg/low yield possibility, but it would also mean I now have a "black box" to deaL with for 3 to 4 months. I have a couple weeks to sort it out...I know one thing, I dont like the pre-flower back to veg scenario. It is sooo anti-productive all the way around...lol
Yea, Ive increased the lighting period but I think the damage is done. it's either deal with it's effects or call up the new clones...Thanks for your time bro! CC
in my grow last year, I put clone sized plants out near end of may. Some did the single leaf reveg dance and some didnt.
from clone sized plants in may... indicas ended smallest. I did have some of the clones that revegged go to just about 3lbs...
I had clone sized plants that did not reveg grow out to almost 5 lbs
I would SERIOUSLY consider using the backups in the holes. They will still be large. and since you "didnt want to go too big" you will be very happy with the results.
My clone size when going out plants last year were 4-7 ft globes of fat colas.
Last year I saw a clone day out in 200g holes make almost 5 lbs...
this year i have 4 ft bushes to put out in 3-400 gallon holes... Id like a 5lb average.
True words.CanniDo Cowboy said:In the end, ya just gotta go out and do it and not get all caught up worrying about the 'ifs".
True words.
Specially outdoors you just gotta do it...and learn. I´m still learning from Mother Nature
P