Outdoor grow in Southeast Michigan 2024

[Thatoneguyyouknow_]

I had this happen several years ago with a Chemdog x Brutis OG cross and I've been using this to flower overwinter moms for the past couple years, mostly indicas in San Diego North County 32nd parallel.

Works like a charm. Ya know I haven't tried it with my true sativa hemp plants but seriously 15 hrs to 13 will prompt most plants.

Yea, but they have to be fully mature plants that would likely already be well into flowering in nature by that age, if not long rotted to fuel the next generation. Most cannabis plants grown naturally will be on into flowering by the time the days have hits just under 14 hours.

Its not the hour count that triggers this species to flower, it's the act of the daylight hours diminishing, them not being the same as they were yesterday or the day before. It's kind of hard to explain what i mean by that and how the two things are actually different, so ill give an example.

If you have a nice pure indica and do it right, you can get it to flower at like 16-17 hours of daylight no prob. Start it at 20/4 until you have preflowers, then every few days click one tick on the daylight hours away at the timer, and note when it starts flowering.

Even a land race sativa will flower by 13-14hrs if you do this properly. Its just hugely inconvenient and buds stack indoors better with the abrupt shift. so nobody does that. And if you mess up you can suffer consequences. The actual number of daylight hours are largely irrelevant to anything besides manufacturing enough sugars through photosynthesis to be useful.

I think i explained that right.


Im way off from my initial point now. Which i think was weaning plants from LED to natural sunlight is a must to avoid consequences, and drawing a distinction as to when the hour count transition will actually matter. If you are pre-sexually mature plants it does not lol.

On a side note i have had some interesting things happen when ive put clone mothers out in a greenhouse to flower once its into jan/feb and dylight hours are very rapidly increasing. ive had plants try to reveg on me before daylight hours have even hit 13. Same plants that would be actively flowering long before that hr count grown naturally. Id get harvestable bud. but it can indeed get wonky sometimes. Its not the hour counts that are important, its how transitions are being made. Much like plants under a nice cozy, low output high par LED getting thrown out under a nuclear blast furnace, how your transitions are implemented is they key there.

 

[cpurola]

Yea, but they have to be fully mature plants that would likely already be well into flowering in nature by that age, if not long rotted to fuel the next generation. Most cannabis plants grown naturally will be on into flowering by the time the days have hits just under 14 hours.

Its not the hour count that triggers this species to flower, it's the act of the daylight hours diminishing, them not being the same as they were yesterday or the day before. It's kind of hard to explain what i mean by that and how the two things are actually different, so ill give an example.

Okay, so my plan of gradually aclimating them to outdoor times by reducing the light in the grow room by an hour every 4 days will fail. Plants will assume Fall is coming and start flowering again.
So, what do I do?

 

[Thatoneguyyouknow_]

Okay, so my plan of gradually aclimating them to outdoor times by reducing the light in the grow room by an hour every 4 days will fail. Plants will assume Fall is coming and start flowering again.
So, what do I do?

are they still before preflowers? if so, id just put them outside and deal with a little bit of light/transpiration stress for a short time as they acclimatize. Or jsut throw them straight to whatever the current daylight schedule is where you are now and keep them on it adjusting your timer to more hours as necessary to keep more or less in line with outside.

As long as daylight hours are getting longer, and they havent preflowered yet, they likely wont go into flower until you expect them to. You will see longer fan leaves and more distance between nodes reguardless of they they are trying to flower or not, btw. The foliage does grow differently in natural light then it does under LED

Your in michigan so your daylight hours are getting longer more rapidly then mine are, youre probably fine just putting them outside. Theyll bounce back from the transitional stress pretty quick.

If they have preflowered and gotta go outside no other choice, let em grow a little funny while they figure things out is my opinion. And if theyre mature pure indicas or mature clones or something and just want to flower regardless, harvest a little early weirdo bud is what i would do personally.


If they arent sexually mature, just put them outside, do part shade to begin with if light stress becomes an issue. If they are fully sexually mature plants (clones or mature seed plants) your going to have some mild reveg issues regardless but its still not the end of the world, and not worth mega stressing unless you have huge investments on the line or something. Where you are at, and as rapidly as faylight hours increase up there, you probably wont even see fully stalled growth if they reveg, just funny looking growth and you may even, like i said, have an uglier, but yieldier (for the space it takes up) plant with more tops and bud sites come fall.

i know some growers that partially reveg clones just because of how many growth shoots it gives them afterward and they can increase clone count numbers quicker. ive done that myself several times. Sometimes youll get like a dozen growth shoots from an inch of meristem space and the plant wont ever even slow down. Sometimes it will pull character/expressions out of a genotype you haven't seen before too, and sometimes they'll stick around. sometimes to the benefit, sometimes to the detriment.


I just lined up my babies schedule with outside about a week ago, all at once on a single day. But they're pre-sexually mature, they didnt even notice as far as i can tell. Aside from storms ill prob just leave them out on the back porch now until i put em out in the plot. Still preparing it.


Seed or clone, age of plant if seed, their genetics, and your latitude (how quickly daylight hours are increasing) all affect this decision making process and the end-result of making the decision lol.

 

[cpurola]

are they still before preflowers? if so, id just put them outside and deal with a little bit of light/transpiration stress for a short time as they acclimatize. Or jsut throw them straight to whatever the current daylight schedule is where you are now and keep them on it adjusting your timer to more hours as necessary to keep more or less in line with outside.

As long as daylight hours are getting longer, and they havent preflowered yet, they likely wont go into flower until you expect them to. You will see longer fan leaves and more distance between nodes reguardless of they they are trying to flower or not, btw. The foliage does grow differently in natural light then it does under LED

Your in michigan so your daylight hours are getting longer more rapidly then mine are, youre probably fine just putting them outside. Theyll bounce back from the transitional stress pretty quick.

If they have preflowered and gotta go outside no other choice, let em grow a little funny while they figure things out is my opinion. And if theyre mature pure indicas or mature clones or something and just want to flower regardless, harvest a little early weirdo bud is what i would do personally.

Thanks! Lots to process.

 

[Thatoneguyyouknow_]

Thanks! Lots to process.

yea, lots of variables to consider, and no one set-in-stone answer unfortunately. And as with everything in life, there will be exceptions to every "rule"

 

[cpurola]

Well, I checked the plants again and found another male.... I looked at our 'future forecast' and decided to just put them all outside and let them do whatever they want. The males may pollinate the flowering females and I'll get seeds. (who knows)
Had to support them 'cause they got too dry while I was away for the day. Perked up over night.

Male:

All outside:

"Tree" frog.

 

[Deadstill]

Which is why I started so many, so early. Supposedly at 2 months I can identify the boys/girls. Well, it's been 1 month and I'm getting nervous about leaving them in the 4" pots. I may have to transplant into gallon containers before they show.
Oldchucky is right, gonna get crowded in there.

Moved a tray and a friendly house spider appeared. Not relocating her/him, saw a gnat yesterday.

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Bro idk if anyone else has mentioned it but be careful, I cannot say for sure just from that picture but there's a good chance that is a Brown Recluse Spider..

 

[Oldchucky]

Shouldn’t have any pollinating as long as you keep culling the males as they show up. Looks like you are a little over 14 hours between sun up and sunset! Those are some good looking plants! Well done!

 

[cpurola]

Bro idk if anyone else has mentioned it but be careful, I cannot say for sure just from that picture but there's a good chance that is a Brown Recluse Spider..

I do keep my distance, but I'm pretty sure it's either a wolf or funnel weaver spider. We have lots of the funnel weaver spiders.
Hate to admit, but I like to tease them out of their homes sometimes.

 

[Oldchucky]

When you said it was a house spider, I googled it and found, giant house, spider! But it looks exactly like that one! I guess the spider whisperer knows what she’s talking about!

 

[cpurola]

Shouldn’t have any pollinating as long as you keep culling the males as they show up. Looks like you are a little over 14 hours between sun up and sunset! Those are some good looking plants! Well done!

Thanks for that. No matter what I do to these plants they keep bouncing back.
I'll keep culling the males. And stop stressing about it all.
I still have a boat load of Afghan hash in the basement. LOL

 

[Oldchucky]

I like going out at night with a headlamp and looking around on the ground and in the weeds! Dozens of little green jewels shining back at you. Little spider eyes!

 

[PlumberSoCal2]

I like going out at night with a headlamp and looking around on the ground and in the weeds! Dozens of little green jewels shining back at you. Little spider eyes!

I do it looking for slugs and snails to kill I've run into a few spiders, wolf and trapdoor mainly and a few Tarantulas.

 

[Oldchucky]

Yeah, you really don’t notice it during the day, but if you go out at night and see all those jewels, you realize just how many of them there are in every square foot of area! Just lurking! Waiting to pounce! On the unsuspecting, slug, hunter! Mostly harmless Wolfies around here! The widders keep to themselves!

 

[cpurola]

A day in the sun has changed my plants a little.
The top leaves are curling. And I think they may have some sunburn.
But I'm staying calm and just letting them get used to being outside.

 

[cpurola]

4 gallons water plus 1 teaspoon each: Megacrop, Sea-K, Recharge.
Divided among 58 plants

 

[Oldchucky]

Make sure you pick up every pot to see if it’s light enough!!!!

 

[Thatoneguyyouknow_]

those white spots almost look like aphid scabs, prob not but may wanna check some undersides of leaves. Could be from the transition stress though. Stuff a lot like that is what i meant by scaly leaves but many plants do the "scaley sunburn" thing differently from one another.

This is how i usually transition them

When im getting plants ready for outdoors, i tend to drop my panels to about 6 inches off the plants *at most* over the course of a couple days, honestly its been more like 3-4" recently for me. then ill give em a couple hours full sun each day or so for a few days. by the time you get one fully developed set of true leaves that have been seeing real sunlight frequently, i leave them outside, and i rarely if ever see any sunburn or excessive transpiration. You could put the average full spectrum led panel 1-2" of the tops though, and it's still barely as intense as the sun at mid day with low humidity. par is irrelevant for transitioning plants to the sun, lumens are what's important there.


You can successfully transition very young plants to full sun doing it that way.

If they get more then 4hrs direct sun a day, once you get on into the hotter part of the summer i recommend painting black pots white with some cheap latex paint if you're still using black ones. You will be watering less, and you're plants will have longer periods of condition every day they can actively grow and youll be increasing the amount of refracted light in the . Once a cannabis plants foliage hits 86F they stop growing and only transpire, they aren't even photosynthesizing above that temperature, they cant. (they can keep their foliage this cool up to about 94f if humidity is low, but not when high) This wont be a big deal up in michigan i dont imagine, but a cooler root zone hugely aids a plants ability to regulate its temperature when its hot and transpire efficiently.

A plant also will not actively grow if it's root zone exceeds about 80f or so. And this applies to most plants, even many cacti and succulents. Paint a big black pot white, and the center of the pot will basically never go above 75f even if its 100f in the sun if not insulated from the ground. Plants will grow faster in a white pot vs black, pretty much across the board. They are just harder to keep looking nice, which is what most plant growers are most concerned with where their pots are concerned, and nurseries use cheap black pots just because thats what's cheapest, not because they are ideal.


Sorry, i guess im the information overload guy. I continue to blame sativas.

P.S. Cannabis, absolutely, 100% without a doubt transitions to the sun better from t5 or Ceramic metal halide then any other forms of grow lighting for future grow season reference. If you start plants 10" or so off a CMH 315 from seed, you can transition to sun without weaning them into it. Same with 6500k t5 kept about 4" off the plants.

 

[cpurola]

Lots of good info.
I should have weaned them from the LEDs to the sun, but I decided not to this time. (my inner child said" I don't wanna")

And the pots, I used black ones the first year, but they got hot and I figured not good, so have used white and or tan ever since.

Added Wollastonite, Bone Meal and Worm Castings. Mixed as thoroughly as I could.

 

[cpurola]

The kids are adjusting.