I'm having a successful indoor LED grow and am about to build a SCROG and flip to flower. A few weeks ago, I planted a seed to get started indoors for an outdoor grow season. That plant is a few inches tall now and has a few sets of leaves. I now realize that my timing is a little off with the flip to flower and the weather outside. Around here we typically say there is still a frost danger until Mother's Day and I have no good place to put the plant (no second light setup) other than outside or temporarily in a window. The variety is feminized Lemon Kush (indica dom). I understand indicas are typically more tolerant of low temps. My current plan is to give it a window seat at night and put outside during the day to transition (harden) over the next week. Then purchase a temporary greenhouse/cover to place over it at night once I plant it outside and probably put some mulch around it as well. The extended forcast has lows of 32, averge lows of around 40, record lows in the low 20's. Any other suggestions or ideas for this transition? I'd rather not spend the $60 on the second light setup. I'm in eastern Oregon for the curious.
It's not just the cold that will slow it to a near stop.. It's going to flower if you put it out at this time of year and it won't have time to finish.. So half way into flower around the end of May it'll re-veg and you'll wind up with a very messy multi headed plant.. You'll have to extend it's light to 16 hours minimum.. I've used a high power solar light.. A CFL on a stick will do it.. You'll need to add lighting till the end of May or early June
That makes all sorts of sense, and an early flower hadn't even occured to me, but I just checked the daylight hours for my location and the most daylight it ever gets throughout a year is 15 hrs 42 min. People grow outdoors plenty north of me so there's got to be something else involved. So you're suggesting basically any kind of light out there next to the plant to trigger a "lights on" response. Any by solar light you're talking about those pathway lights with the little solar panel (but highest power I can find)?
The whole daylight hours doesn't count the twilight hours and the minimum lumen point the plants trigger at.. Just figure if your someplace in the northern hemisphere set out day is roughly June 1st for clones but they'll need to be time matched to around 16-8 when set out to avoid flowering from light shock caused by mismatched light hours.. Seeds can be started about a month sooner as the immature cannabis plant needs a month of so to reach sexual maturity and become sensitive to short days which are getting longer and disappear in early June.. http://www.homedepot.com/p/Hampton-Bay-Outdoor-Solar-Black-LED-70-Lumen-Spotlight-SS23C-M8-BKT-CPK1/204471418?keyword=solar+landscape+lighting+70+lumen I've got a couple of this type.. Set on the lower power 35 lumen but longer run time 10 hours vs 6.. Edit: Just a point of information the trigger point of most strains is 14.5 hours.. At 15 they veg.. At 14 they flower.. Inside under timed lights with no ramp up or down times like you get outside so working out exact times outside is more of a crap shoot and what you work out for your own microclimate..
Good info. The kush genetics are from Afganastan, which I thought was similar latitude as my home. I just looked and it's closer to SoCal. The seedling is about 3 weeks old (from first sprout). I like your idea of the solar light, I'm going to pick something cheaper up though. At that price, I'd be close to just buying a proper cfl grow light/hood and keeping it indoors till mid summer. My wife is up to here with money spent on growing so I need to stay lean. This outdoor plant was just for fun anyway. My girls indoor are where the real effort goes. Thanks for your input. I'll send you a pic of her later this summer.
I've been growing a sativa dominate bag seed since about November - I think - and through the winter overnight temps would dip into the low 30's, and frosty mornings. It was in a 3 gallon container and I planted it in the ground just about 3 weeks ago. I used these lights to keep her vegging. CFL 150w(42w) 65k cost about $12 each at the local hardware store. The light fixture w.6' cord and timer were another $13ish. I already had the power strip and extension cord. I set the timer to turn on at 1am and off at 2am (1 hour). The cold made for really slow growing, but the light worked like a charm. Just sharing. That's what I did and I hope this will spark some ideas in your world.
Just breaking up the dark cycle like that works fine too.. Several ways to get it done.. Anyplace that doesn't freeze can do out of season grows.. Just stay within the general rules.. Additional light on veg until June 1st.. Additional dark on flowering plants after June 1st.. Or you can ignore all the rules and set out 24-0 plants any time of year and they'll flower.. You can apply all the tricks tomato growers use in cooler temps to grow as well.. I see people using pipe heater strips either wrapping above ground pots or burying it with in ground plants to keep root temps more reasonable.. The usual stuff like covering on expected frosty nights will help..
I'm still new and fumbling around with this stuff. Don't really know what I'm doing. Mostly I just wanted to see if I could do this in the winter time. I still consider myself in the "just keep it alive" stage. Hopefully, I can keep up with the budworms this year. I have little to no operating capital so I have to make shift and experiment as I go.
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=bt-k+pesticide BT-k is what I've used for several years now to control the caterpillars.. Weekly spraying is needed to maintain coverage as the stuff has no real persistence being destroyed by sunlight.. It's about the lowest grade toxin you can find being a bacterium only effective in the gut of a caterpillar and I've found it to be an acceptable risk if I want clean buds.. Safer brand at home depot.. Bonide Thuricide from Armstrong's garden center.. The other big threat is Powdery Mildew.. I fight that with Green Cure from the hydro store but if your on a shoestring budget you can substitute household baking soda and a drop of dawn dishwashing liquid at a rate of 1 table spoon per gallon of water.. Again once a week will get the job done and keep you PW free..
In the end, I'm just going to let it do its thing. I'm buffering it from the cold mornings whenever it gets around 35 or less but otherwise, I'm just going to let it flower then reveg and flower again, or whatever it'll do. It's not a big deal to me if it produces much, if anything, but I don't want to draw attention to it in the garden (with lights) with kids around and whatnot.
I learned about BT last fall, but I think I was too little too late. Lost about a third of my crop and harvested the rest a bit early because it was going away. Is there a certain time to start using this, or should I be applying it throughout the entire grow?
I picked several full sized caterpillars off my vegging plants yesterday after finding damage so I hit them with BT along with all the spring flowering plants.. Weekly in So Cal is my usual routine but I've been skipping the veg plants as I didn't think they needed it yet..
i live at the opposite end of the country from you - 29 s. latitude. Our general rule of thumb is to plant on Good Friday. That being said, I planted in january and just took some pvc pipe anchored at each end with rebar in the ground. Sort of a semi circle. Ddid 3 rows about 6 feet apart. I can cover it up with visqueen if we are going to have a cold night and even add a heater or heat lamps. This temporary greenhouse works well for me. My Jack Herer is almost ready to harvest. Trichomes still need a few more to turn amber and I added UVb bulbs last week. You can plant outdoors almost anytime (no frozen ground please) so long as you can protect your babies from the cold. It goes without saying that smaller plants are easier to protect than a 12 footer. I had to cover some as tall as my rooftop back in Dec and harvested right at Xmas. those were next to a building so all I had to construct was a visqueen lean-to against the wall and add some heat lights.
Looks like you've got a good handle on growing outside in your zone.. I ghosted the Nor Cal thread picking up ideas before figuring out So Cal I could use outside like a giant flower room all year round.. http://forum.grasscity.com/outdoor-medical-marijuana-growing/1265327-so-cal-growers-unite.html/page-370 Drop by the So Cal thread as we have several people running outside full time and you might pick up some useful information..