outdoors planting

How old do seedlings need to be before they are planted outdoors? Also, how warm do the nights need to be for them to survive outdoors? (I have California skunk/big bud.)

Keep them above 40F at night. Preferably above 50F.

You can start them from seed outdoors, but lots of people start them inside, harden them off and then plant outside.

Yea, I got a small green house out back and flower out there during the winter, temps get to the low 40's at night and they do alright. I would think you would be more concerned about how much daylight they will get. Don't want them flowering too early.

Cruzer, actually I might need to worry about that. I am doing my first grow, and I really don't know what I'm doing. I started my seedlings in January and was needing to know when they can be transferred outdoors. I just don't want to get them out there and they freeze because the night time temps drop too low.

Phyzits, how do I harden them up?

Dude, you put them out there too early and they will flower on you early. some will re-veg but that takes time and that's time they could be putting on weight, Yea, harding them off isn't that hard, just shade them some the first day or two. You wanna get them used to the sunlight yea but you better be sure you got more then 13 hours of daylight and that's late May in my neck of the woods.

Ya know what you could do if the temps stay above 40° is to take clones and put your girls out to flower now.
Veg up the clones and plant them late May.

Joseph Flippo said:

Phyzits, how do I harden them up?

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Cruzer explained it pretty well. Just slowly acclimating them to the weather.

If you aren't getting 14+ hours of outside light, make sure you put out some solar lights or something to keep them in veg until the days lengthen.

thanks. I started my seedlings in early January. They are about 6 weeks old now. I started with 170 seedlings, but they shriveled up and sied one at a time. Now I have about 60. Some of my larger ones have leaves with 3 points on them. Some of the smaller ones (all were planted at the same time) still have their baby leaves but are getting longer. I haven't figured out how to put up pics yet, but I will when I do. I want to put them outside. Right now I have them under lights for 24hrs because a local grower told me that I should until I put them outside. He said to only turn the light out on them for 8 hrs a week. What is your opinion on that? This is my first growing.

i have a plant skunk no.1 given to me buy a friend and i have a himalyan blue diesel flowering and im use a red spectrum light, it is not too big but its taken up pot space in my grow box could i put it outdoors even though it gets quite cold in da night and its raining alot, i shouldnt put them outdorrs tell me when i should please

If you wanna veg fast then yea some people veg 24/7 Personally I veg 18/6 and it seems to grow just fine and they don't need water as often.

Looks like your in the LA area, I think that about 33° latitude.
Heres a link to a Calander of daylight hours, http://www.sunrisesunset.com/

Better yet, just change the latitude in this calculator and you can slide the bar to see hours all year long.
Daylight Explorer

Thanks, I'll use it.

Yea, it works good.
I saved a copy myself.

These are my updated pictures. The green planter pot is my plant ICU. I have cfls in my overhead outlet and I have a GE 250 watt heat light and a GE 75 watt soft light flood light. I have added my reflector box (?) to help them get a more consistent lighting. I also added an os fan.

What you need is a lot more light man, see how they are stretching?
Get the lights closer as soon as possible or they will start falling over. You may want to re pot those and sink them down a few inches.