outdoor plants in winter

[valleygirl]

hey i was just wondering whats the best way to keep my out door plants though winter

it gets pretty cold and frosty where i live

[SukonmiSkunk]

depends on where you are.. most parts of australia will grow winter crops.. the buds will be fluffy and obviously not as chunky as a summer grow.. but it can happen. The best way I think is to cunstruct some sort of hot house around them.... just plain clear plasic is the go.... a few slots at the bottom with a few at the to to create a little air flow. and you should be away...

also plants raised under lights untill they are a foot or so tall would get decent yeilds..... as opposed to a plant germinated out doors...

[risingsun]

hey i was just wondering whats the best way to keep my out door plants though winter

it gets pretty cold and frosty where i live

 

I dont know if your plants are in pots (so they can be moved) or in the ground? But you will need some hot house structure around them. If you get a frost you might want to consider putting 2 ltr bottles of water around because they can stop the green house temp from getting to low on a frosty night. Ive also read of putting the mulch pile in the green house because it generates heat.

 

If you can keep them growing all winter by the next spring they will be ready to grow big time for the summer.

[naturalmystic]

i Wouldve thought the short light of winters days wouldnt allow them to grow in veg through to spring , iva had outdoors plants dropping seeds in may and produce a bud at little more than seedling height ? I mean there not just gona keep growing ?? A hothouse would be the best option , but would be better if you could rig a light inside it aswell to extend the light period .

[Ozzy420]

I have keepet a plant through winter, i had this one plant for 4 years it will keep buddin through winter until the days start to get longer then it will start to reveg, all i did with my plant was harvest it when it was ready but leave a bit on it to keep it going then i just left in my green house until the days started to get longer and just trimed all the bud off that grew through the winter, from what i have lernt with growing a plant will handel the cold temps but the frost will kill it real quick, i live out Mount Druitt way in NSW when i was growing out doors and the temps can get -0 in winter...

[naturalmystic]

Interesting ozmade il have to try that , it makes sense with a mature plant definately , but not one from seedling etc

[fsagertyaef]

i still have the plant i first posted about when i joined last year it lived throught the winter got snowed ona few times theres new growth on it today but its not that big i chopped it down right b4 winter but there are now about 10 leafs on it if it still has its root structure does that mean it wont waste its time building it up and just focus on whats above ground just wondering and by the way it live after being buryed in 6in of snow no protection

[RobbieGanjaSeed]

I think you have to define "keepin going", and "keeping in veg".

 

Plants can be harvested several times, I did this ( I forget the map parrellel bit it was around Kingaroy area), whilever the plants are kept healthy ( I had assumed a mild enough winter, but that is assumption), until the days get long enough to start vegging again.

 

One year I picked 9 plants 4 times, One resonible harvest (they were young when they went into flower). Young, but not babbies, say 2 months old ( I like plants to be 9 months old when they finish). Very dry ground, so not very big plants. I took hellishly good care of them but, so they were nice and green.

 

Each harvest was

buddier, and of course lighter, until (to my surpise) October saw them re-veg.

 

Surpised because I had assumed (again with the assumptions ). they would have re-vegged in Sept (at the latest). 12 hour days were again gving us their grace by Sept, but right up until oct, and the days were 14 hours long did they flower.

 

Personally I don't like to do it. Once they stop flowering, say October, they go a tad dormant for a month or so, or very slow growing to say the least. That's the end of November. Get a month groing in before xmas, and that's just not enough for me. I like to have them fresh, healthy and powering on as early in Septempber as possible.

 

Common ol'French beans planted "early" while the ground is cold, will be out-performed by gardeners patient enough to wait for the ground the warm up enough, so that as soon as the plants kick off, they get a go on. Same deal, different circumstances.

The size of the plants I had re-vegged in xmas, compared to fresh clones I'd started under lights, and transplanted only when I was confident the cold weather had passed just had no comparrison. Even plants simply planted on location any time after mid Sept. So long as we get some of that rare and unusual stuf our fore-fathers called "rain". Just plant after the first heavy downpour in spring, and they passed anything I personally re-vegged.

 

This is my experience only however, and don't mean to put down any-body elses experiences. gardening is a non specific science and one of the joys of it at all (especialy outdoors) is that you never really know just what might happen.

 

But any plant left outside in winter, without "inteference" can't be kept in veg.

 

I read in or around 1970 odd, a bloke in Hawaii (as reported at that time by Ed Rosenthal) had strung a light into the bush to come on with a timer, so the plant was "disturbed" midway through it's night, by a strong light comming on and illuminating it.

He claimed he did it for 4 years on one plant, not letting it flower until it was a giant..

 

But you have to consider "sticky beaks" if ya gonna do that, because some-one's gonna go searching to see what's happening, or else call ghost-busters or something.

Maybe his plant was near a shed or something? One thing you can be sure of is that rarely does anything happen without being seen by some-one (even if you don't know about it), barely a single inch of this massive country goes untrod from one year to the next, and people can't resist investigating the un-usual.

 

On this point of light and darkness..., if you read enough Cannabis web sights, you'll come across this concept taught that if it's not so dark that you can't see the hand in front of ya face sorta deal, then you'll get hermies, plants will fail to flower, etc etc...It's usually dubbed "light polution", and has been blamed for just about every ailment I've seen some poor sod seek help over.

 

Personally, when I make a grow area, I make it dark for the flowering stage. I'm not knocking the idea of keeping it black as the ace of spades in there during flower, and as much as the next bloke will go to as much trouble as I need to so the plant get's 12 hours of genuine dark "night" be it day time or night.

 

But I've had crops out in the sticks that have had to be cared for in the middle of the night, (due to a falling out with the property owner who knew nothing about the dope), and planned my main work to be done on the night of the full moon. I've walked 6 hours there in the dark, through dangerous cave top finger range country side, with enough light from the moon and the stars to read a news paper if ya eyes were good enough. I walked every step of the waythrough this countryside without once using the tourch I took "just in-case"

 

I've fished beaches at night on all night competitions where a person had no problem identifying another person from say 20 metres away. And then to top it off, masses of grass is grown in people's suburban yards. Now I've spent manyyears living in the bush, and unless you have too, you probably aren't aware just how much un-natural llight there is in the average yard, every night, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. It's a joke, there's more light outside in the average suburb than any plant nature intended to experience. I used to sleep out under the stars when I was younger, but if go outside tonight, I bet I will hardly see one. There's just so much light out there. I had a mate grow a huge plant down the side of his house, and I only ever saw it during the night time period, without the aid of a tourch etc, because the street light was almost directly above it!

 

Haveing said that, I'v also heard people blame street lights for screwing their plants about, but I can't vouch for that. All the rest I can though, and think the "light polution idea" is one that's been exagerated myself.

 

Well way off topic now, sorry all.

cheers to ya everyone

rob