Early Budding

[Watashi420]

I've been growing for years but a new challenge has reared it's head. I got a new piece of property earlier this year it's S/SE facing at 5500' altitude in North County San Diego. I put plants out on May 15th (first break of the 15 hour day) and every 2 weeks since up to July 10th. Now the first 4 @ May 15th started budding immediately (a week, but now I know that date is too early). The other batches vegged fine for the 4-6 weeks they were out and are already budding as of the 10th (even the one put out on the 10th immediately went to flower). Everything stayed really small, seemed to take forever to "get growing", but no health issues at all (maybe a bit of sunburn going from indoor nursury to sunlight). Outdoor at average elevation (1100') budding happened around Aug. 15th.

So my question is, Are the plants budding a month early due to the fact the sun goes behind trees and shades the plants for the last 3-4 hours of the day (due to SE facing, I lose the sunlight over the western ridge) but it's still bright out until sunset at around 8:30pm. This doesn't totally make sense to me because at elevation my Nautical Twilight is even longer than the civil twilight observed by the city(maybe 10 minutes more visible light). Is it the Altitude?

I'm stumped. I now have plants that are only 2 feet tall when last year they were 6 feet tall. Next year my only option is to run a few CFL's over each plant to trick it's summertime light cycle.

 

[Seamaiden]

I'm stumped, too, Watashi. This has been a very odd year with regard to these flowering plants. I'm observing this stuff with my seed starts, couldn't even get my cuts into the ground, though that was truly likely my fault for screwing up a timer. Still though, the flowering onset seems to be whonky for a lot of people, this is the third or fourth thread on the subject, IIRC.

 

[Watashi420]

Thank you for the reply. At least it's not just me. I was going crazy thinking I was in a bad location, but I've heard of people growing on north slopes with hardly any direct sunlight. Looks like artificial light to suppliment is the way to go until earth fixes itself.