Speaking from an Adelaide point of view now is the time to do it.
Frosts have passed.
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Yes, that's it. That's how one gets a good head start on clone or seed starts, get them 2'-4' tall on the adjusted photoperiod. Or another method, but this isn't exactly 'stealthy' is to put a couple of CFLs or something like that on them while they're outside, on timers, so that you can extend the daylight hours. Some folks will have the timers set to come on an hour or three before dawn and after dusk.I think I understand what you mean, Maiden. You mean veg them indoors, but choose your lighting hours so they are pre-attuned to the natural day lengths when they do eventually go out. So you can put big vegged plants outside, and they will continue vegging before eventually flowering?
Right, that's why I took a look at the latitudes and used that daylight explorer to figure out what kind of changes they're looking at. The other variable is weather, and if it's too cold then in my experience the plants, while not killed, just don't grow. They need some warmth to grow so if you put them out when it's too cold you're going to end up losing some of that time. If the goal is to get them nicely hardened off, it works great. I've kept new seedlings with just cotelydons in the snow, for example. But they didn't grow.I wouldn't have a clue but I think they do that in the southern oz states? The northern states are pretty close to the equator though, so there's virtually no difference in day lengths in the far north.
How about the bloody snow eh. My old farm was covered.
Hey bootyboo
I'm in one of the southern states, and, down here the 27th of October is the first day that you can plant outside for your plants to remain in a vegetative state. This is the first day that we get daylight for 13.5 hours and the day length will only increase from that point on.
I mention 13.5 hours because any day length that is shorter than 13.5 will cause 90% of strains to go into flowering. We use a 12/12 photoperiod with indoor growing as a way to cover all bases.
Conversely, the 14th of February 2013 will be the first day that the daylight dips below 13.5 hours and will cause most strains to go into flowering. As said above, you probably don't want to be planting immediately on the 27th of October unless you want your plants to be vegging for 4 months and to turn into monsters! I'd probably wait until Xmas to put anything outside.
Penguin