Is it too early to put vegging plant outside?

TessaMaria

TessaMaria

Well-Known Member
Happy Thursday Rollitup (:
I have a photoperiod plant that has been growing inside on 18/6 light schedule for about three months. I have been bringing it outside every day for a few weeks and then back inside at sunset to keep the light schedule and acclimated to the real sunshine.
Yesterday, I forgot to bring it back in..

I live in Santa Cruz County California coast, does anyone know if I could just leave it outside now? Or does it still need supplemental light hours?
I am very bad at doing the darkness hours later on in the season, if it flowered too soon and I had to do light deprivation to keep the flowering going. With my busy life the plants usually don't get a good light deprivation schedule and they have problems from that.

So I am just wondering if May 18 is too soon to put a photoperiod plant outdoors in Central California Coastal area.(Santa Cruz).
Thanks for the advice!
 

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obijohn

obijohn

Well-Known Member
I'm in northern Cali in the same boat, pain in my ass to keep bringing them in to get supplemental light. Good to know that with a bit less than a month I can just leave them outdoors.

My main concern, like the OP, was they will be losing 2 additional hours of light all of a sudden and start flowering
 
SFGiantt

SFGiantt

Well-Known Member
I grow up in Mendo and my rule of thumb is always to start planting the girls in their permanent home the 1st-15 of June depending on weather. (Don't want those girls to freeze!) That being said they are outside in the hooper during the day to get that sunshine and around 8 I turn on the generator for supplemental light. (I live off grid) I just use led shop lights to keep them awake. I don't get much vigorous growth but they don't go to sleep, which is the key. If u mess up one day and forget, it's not big deal. One night won't make start flowering. If u were on 24 and then switched to 12 hours of pitch black then maybe, but even then one day I don't think I'd shock them that much. If you decide to leave them outside and you are worried about them flowering, just leave them under the porch light for another couple hours to keep them awake. There is a website you can Google that will give u how many hours of light your getting based on your zip code and like someone said as long as they are getting 14 hours of light and they've been getting at least 6 hours of darkness they should be fine. I've had a couple seasons where thick cloud cover came in for 2 weeks straight and all my girls started to flower, I just hit them hard with nitrogen spray, pick off any flowers I see starting and when the sun comes they revert right back to vegging.
 
petert

petert

Well-Known Member
obijohn said:
I'm in northern Cali in the same boat, pain in my ass to keep bringing them in to get supplemental light. Good to know that with a bit less than a month I can just leave them outdoors.

My main concern, like the OP, was they will be losing 2 additional hours of light all of a sudden and start flowering
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. I’m northern Oregon at 45N we’re around 15 hours now. I start slowly cutting back my supplemental lighting a month or so before I plant outdoors after May 15th. May not be necessary but common sense tells me at the possibility of triggering flowering and then revegging would be more likely by immediately putting the plant from 18 hours into 14-15 hours of light especially for the early finishers.
 
SFGiantt

SFGiantt

Well-Known Member
petert said:
. I’m northern Oregon at 45N we’re around 15 hours now. I start slowly cutting back my supplemental lighting a month or so before I plant outdoors after May 15th. May not be necessary but common sense tells me at the possibility of triggering flowering and then revegging would be more likely by immediately putting the plant from 18 hours into 14-15 hours of light especially for the early finishers.
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Yeah that's why I said to leave them under a porch light or some other form of light to slowly knock them down.
 
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