[bootyboo]

Gday...I was wondering if its too early atm to plant outdoors?? Theres 12hrs 45mins sunlight atm so would this cause them to flower?? and when would be the best time to go outdoors?? any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Cheers

[Terroir]

Mate it really depends on your genetics. Most strains should be fine o plant unless you have a very light sensitive afghani or kush strain you should be good to go.

If you are in a frost free zone i say get em in the ground. Just saying that as potential for severe frosts is still quite present due to (weakening) el nino.

[High Country]

If your in southern states I wouldn't do it yet...they'll flower on you. Keep em under lights if you can.

Patience...mid November.

[dasher65]

Speaking from an Adelaide point of view now is the time to do it.

Each day is getting longer so there is no worries about early flowering. Frosts have passed, soil is warming up. Only drama is bloody snails.

My suggestion is start them off in decent sized pots placed in the spot where you're going to grow them. Make sure the soil has loads of organic material & you'll be right.

yes sativa could be in already.

dunno about indica altho I 've germinated mine and they seem to be doing fine. like Terroir said above, this may be strain dependent.

never had frost upset seedlings.

I live north of Bbne but south of Rocky.

cheers!

Out here in California many of us growers use an interrupted photoperiod that's matched to the daylight hours for the day you plan on putting out.

Holy Lord God, I hope that sentence made sense!

Let me try to explain. Basically the concept is based on what causes cannabis to flower, which is the dark portion of the photoperiod. If you interrupt that dark period, then you can either force a plant back into vegetative mode, or keep it in vegetative phase growth instead of regenerative (flowering). I like the cheap timers that allow me to set on/off in 15minute increments.

So let's say you want to put your girls out Oct 30. First you need to know what the daylight hours for your latitude. I use this handy-dandy little tool: https://astro.unl.edu/classaction/ani...sexplorer.html
Now, get your latitude, enter it into the tool, then slide it to the day you want to put them out. The tool shows you the total daylight hours for your location and plots it on a tiny map.

So for -38* (I'm at 38*N) on October 30 there will be 13.5hrs of daylight.

Set your timer to that as the main portion of the photoperiod. Then, divide up the DARK portion of the photoperiod such that the plants will begin their dark period with about 2hrs of dark, then that begins being interrupted periodically for 1-3 hours. I like to use two interruptions but I'm also still experimenting with the technique.

If you're starting with seed starts, all of this is moot and doesn't matter since it doesn't know if it's a boy or a girl.

Frost and cold hasn't killed mine, and I've tried. But it does slow down growth to a crawl, if not entirely during that time.

[ScrubNinja]

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?

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.

[Terroir]

Originally Posted by dasher65

Speaking from an Adelaide point of view now is the time to do it.

Frosts have passed.

.

How about the bloody snow eh. My old farm was covered.

[Penguin59]

Hey bootyboo! Welcome to the club friend

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

Originally Posted by ScrubNinja

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?

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.

Originally Posted by ScrubNinja

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.

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.