The Amazing Early Stuff at 43° North

I have two strains which have been flowering for about 7 to 10 days now. Let's call them A, and B with an A father. Neither are particularly early, usually 1-15 October finish. They seem flowering early this year, I do not know why. I visited a friend who has many strains, none are nearly as developed [in flower] as mine, I think mine are something like 2 weeks ahead of his, and I did not plant early, late if anything. I don't get it. We'll see how the year progresses and turns out, but if I am doing something brilliant then I'm buggered, because I don't know what it is. I suppose I may have got lucky with 2 freakishly-early seeds, but that seems unlikely.

Maybe there's something different about the spots you're growing in... do yours get leaf-filtered light in the afternoon?

Maybe bees are biting the leaves?



I know, that sounds like a joke, but check this out:


https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...lants-flower-early-cutting-holes-their-leaves

We just had this discussion in another thread, a guy's mother plants were already flowering. Are the plants clones or seedlings? Clones are older plants and more sensitive to daylight change. If you put them out late sometimes they'll start flowering right away.

If they're seedlings there's a few other factors but I don't think any of them are strong enough to cause them to flower two weeks early. Most of the little stuff that's stress related, shadows or low N might force them a few days early but nothing like two weeks.

I grew a Sinai plant that started flowering in late July, I was excited because I thought it would finish early. Nope, it took 12 weeks to flower and finished in early October with everything else. Let's hope you got lucky and you've got early finishers. Be sure to hit them with good pollen, good early genetics are hard to come by.

If A & B both had the same daddy then whatever other seeds you made with that A male probably just became a lot more attractive for next summer. I've had plants starting as early as late July at my location near 45.5ºN, July 20ish natural start to flowering at 43ºN isn't unreasonable.

""[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Maybe there's something different about the spots you're growing in... do yours get leaf-filtered light in the afternoon?""
They get some in the morning and some in the afternoon.

The bee story is very interesting: ""[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]After all, some plants speed up their flowering when they are stressed by disease or drought because these threats provide an incentive to reproduce sooner."" Well, they ARE getting chewed badly by bugs, which is probably my fault for being near a willow tree.

They are from seeds.

Thanks for all the interesting replies. I was hoping that I had stumbled on an early gene, but from what I read in the replies and link, I would have to bet on stress, likely bugs and perhaps filtered light. It is the first time I have used a very buggy spot. Dang!

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If they flower at the usual rate, but started early, will one have to adjust the date of pollinating?

I an certain that the stress was caused by insect predation. I have plants 1/2 mile away - same drought - which have little insect predation and are flowering at the point one would expect. It is a lesson about insects for me.
I was thinking that there is no advantage in earliness if for such a negative reason, but one should count what blessings one can: if the stuff is early, it can be taken off early.