7munkee said:

I am growing 3 Gorilla Glue autoflowers and they just started shooting off pistols. The weather will be nice (70's) the next several days and I was thinking of setting my plants outside for 4 or 5 hours per day to help save on energy.

They have spent 40 days inside under LED's and have been receiving approximinitly 450 par. They will be going back inside every night at about 5-6 PM

Is this a bad practice?

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I did that for about 1 month before i ended up with spider mites that I brought into my grow and it ended up I had to kill everything and start over after that grow was finished to kill all the little bastards, their eggs, children & grandparents. I had to bring them in to flower so that's when I got the infection inside.....I had them in a old lawn trailer I'd wheel inside my garage at night ( too cold) I thought keeping them off the ground would keep them clean but nope those little fkers fly I guess....

During my first year of growing I put some indoor vegged plants (using CFL) behind the house, outdoors, in a valley. It was summer but they did only get 6-7h direct sunlight.
A day or 2 later when I checked on them virtually all leaves were fried/bleached white from the outside of the leaf tip/margin and subsequently wilted totally and fell off.
They (~10 plants some a meter tall) grew new leaves which could withstand the sun's UVA & harsh ppfd.

Half a decade later I put similar plants on the balcony - these were grown under a high-K 600w Metal Halide bulb - this time they kept all their leaves.

So I think it's your risk. In doubt you can try to acclimate them by putting them under a tree for half a week. They will react to the new stray light by building up screening pigments which will help them dealing with the direct sunlight.

I had a case of Fungus gnats over the winter. They came in a bag of FoxFarm Ocean Forest. It took me months to get rid of them. I tried the dry out method and sticky traps and that helped very little. I finally ended up ordering a few billion nematodes and that did the trick after like a week.

I DO NOT want another infection from anything.

As far as the sunlight being too strong for them, THAT was my biggest fear. Thank you for the responses. From what you two have said I don't think the few days of energy saving is worth losing 3 plants over. I am down to 4 ounces of cured flower and NEED this harvest.

Again, thanks for the responses.

When I first started growing and my new lights hadn't arrived yet, I decided to put the plants outside during the day. It only took a few days and I ended up introducing pests into my tent. Going forward, what's outside stays outside.

paulsreef said:

When I first started growing and my new lights hadn't arrived yet, I decided to put the plants outside during the day. It only took a few days and I ended up introducing pests into my tent. Going forward, what's outside stays outside.

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Definitely agree, the only thing coming back Inside is me. And that's straight to the shower and some fresh clothes before I even think about my indoor grow