Time until harvest

[reeferman]

Hello all,

 

I am new to this forum bizzo but ozstoners looks a great site, and I am curious about the typical time taken for a plant to fully develop outside. I know there are many factors at hand, such as the strain, growing conditions, etc, but from reading posts I have noticed that many plants take the whole season from Sept- April to fully develop from seed to the final budding stage. Does it always take this long, like, if a plant is planted in September will it necessary take the whole 6 month period to be ready for harvest? I am particularly curious about how long Devil, Durban Poison, Northern Lights x Big Bud and Holland's Hope would take if planted in September outside in typical Aus conditions (WA, near Perth)? Any input would be greatly appreciated as I know there is a great knowledge base here at ozstoners. cheers.

[bluntman_77]

im not that down with the outdoor methods but essentially as the plant is controlled by the light period for when to flower it wont flower and be ready to harvest until the end of summer when the days get shorter . if you start the plant early it will just veg until the light perdiod drops and then start flowering , ie it will become really big . if you plant it later in the year , closer to the drop in sunlight hours it wont veg as long and will take less time but wont be as big .

 

you could try and artificially start the flowering by blocking off light for periods of the day and things like that and some strains do start to flower earlier but essentially thats the basics of it

[Shezdog]

yeah skyhigh is exactly, EXACTLY right.. you are better off planting in sept for large plants but u can still flower outdoor plants if you planted em in december, they will just be mini versions of the large ones.

 

all strains have their own growing characteristics etc. but sept-april will get you a bumper harvest if you do it right.

cheers

[reeferman]

Ok, cheers for that - just one more thing- is it true that the plants will only start to flower with less than 12 hours light? I looked at a sunrise/sunset time site on the net and it looks like where I live the daylight will be less than 12 hours right at the end of March- meaning a May harvest. is this usually spot on for you outdoor growers? sorry for the newbie stupidity.

[Luke Skywalker]

Some strains are more sensitive than others to small changes in photoperiod, and some aren't sensitive at all.

 

Indoors, it's easy to use 12/12 to simulate a point where most strains will turn to flowering quite quickly. And as the dark period is within the critical point, but you have more stable light levels overall than outdoors, you can get excellent harvests that way.

 

Outdoors, the plants tend to react to longer changes of the photperiod, rather than getting to one particular point and suddenly switching. It's the lengthening on the darkness hours over the late summer and autumn days which changes their growing to flowering, and some strains will be able to cope with long nights before actually turning. Those strains from longer days and nights like the temperate parts of the world have fast flowering strains which are able to flower earlier and finish earlier than those strains where the climate is more equal over the year, with daylight and dark hours only varying by small amounts over the seasons... These equatorial strains are more likly to stay vegetative long into autumn, and by the time they get the "signal" to get flowering, it may already be very cold. MJ is not a particularly frost tolerant species, and will quickly succumb if exposed to cold conditions for too long.

 

You will only be able to really tell when your harvest time is if you plant out varieties from the areas you live, or on similar lattitudes. It is possible to winter plant in some areas of oz, and you can indeed get smaller plants this way, but really you're never going to acheive the fantastic yeilds you can get with that uber-hid, the sun.

 

Hope that helps somewhat, and good luck.

[Infinitee]

Would i be correct in assuming that optimum time to harvest would be June 22nd (Solstice, i think) coz then the days start getting longer again, and you're doing the re-verse of flowering.

 

Also, just curious, what do you think the chance of survival would be for a plant, planted in say, december (i don't have one, just speculating) that you let flower through winter, but didn't harvest it, would it be likely to re-veg (healthily) after winter is gone?

 

Am i rambling?