Early Flowering Outdoor Plants

[OZZYJON]

Hi to all within the community.

 

This is my first post on the forum and I would appreciate any assistance you may offer.

 

I had 4 plants in my tent that I thought I would give a head start to before putting them outside for the sun to take care of.

 

I had the plants under a 600watt HPS set for 18 hours per day.

 

I should have known better but as soon as I put my plants outside they went straight into flower and finished 8 to 9 weeks later because they were only getting natural sunlight for about 10 hours a day.

 

I grew them from cuttings for approx. 10 weeks prior to putting them outside, they were approx. 1 metre tall and quite bushy.

 

It was the middle of October  2015 when I put them outside and they finished last week. Approx 8 to 9 weeks.

 

Can anyone tell me how I can transplant from my indoor hydro system where my lights are on for 18 hours a day  to outside where the plants will receive a maximum 7 to 11 hours a day of natural sunlight.

 

Next season I would like to again start some plants early and then put them outside mid September / October.

 

I am not in a position to supply suplimentry lighting to increase the daylight to match that of my indoor setup, as I have neighbours quite close.

 

All I want to do is give my plants a head start as they are positioned within a greenhouse / shade house  covered with 50% shade cloth which hinders the growth cycle.

 

Thanks to you all,

 

Regards,

 

Ozzyjon...

 

 

[Naycha]

Why not decrease your indoor light hours closer to that of outdoors but still enough to vegetate?

 

If the sunlight hours are never over 11 hours where you live you will not be able to keep them vegging outdoors with no supplemental lighting.

 

https://cannabis.community.forums.ozstoners.com/topic/30110-hardening-off/

 

Welcome to the forum.

[Sir PsychoHashy]

If you can't get more than 12hrs/day of light on them then you will have to put up with them flowering.  Doesn't have to be super bright light though, so leaving back verandah lights on for a few hrs every night could be enough, or I've used solar spotlights, 2-3/plant, effectively.  Or, another way of looking at it would be that you can flower your plants out outside all year round at will, which could be handy.

 

I've had the same sort of issues in the past, hence the solar spotties, and found it worse with some strains over others, and particularly with clones for some reason.  What I tried last time was to veg them under 14.5hrs/day of light so they were roughly matched up with the daylight hrs when I put them out bush.  Seemed to help as I had 1 strain where 1 plant was done like that and another had been started earlier and allowed to start flowering briefly before a change of plan and reveg, the revegged plant just wanted to keep going back into flower where the other was happy to stay in veg.  Takes a few extra days under lights to get to the same point, but that's how I will be doing it in future.