What lessons have been learned this year?

My lessons are all about keeping them smaller and denser with high production, all with the limited light I have in my yard. I'll be putting them in the ground later, topping them more intensely, and then like others here have said, *definitely* building light dep/manipulation into the enclosure design so that I can finish early. I thought I'd need to finish early to avoid the rain, but it turns out the biggest reason I need to finish early is so that they have enough overhead sunlight to finish with decent bud size (before it dips behind the trees to the south of me cutting the light-time drastically).

I'm still debating whether I'll try to run a light over them 20 hours and then cut the light early July to incite flowering, or start covering them them early July to cut existing light. Using a light to lengthen the days has the advantage of being something I can put on a timer and not have to physically deal with twice a day for a month or so. Covering them has the advantage of not having lights glowing from behind my fence until midnight. I've got 9 months to decide...

The 6 P's: Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance

two lessons learned from a first time outdoor grow in southern california
1.) Caterpillars can cause tons of dmg through-out flower! If you are new to this like I was without a green house expect Heavy Caterpillars seriously!! cannot over emphasize this!
2.) check the weather if your buds are huge and you get rained on hard in the middle of the night you risk getting some gnarly looking mold inside.
stay vigilant is my lesson learned and be prepared for budworms!

Hmmm. First, don't let the plants do their own thing again. (I just stuck them in the ground and they became ten and eleven foot monsters) I'd like to grow outdoors again, but I'll have to learn how to train them low.

Second:To get feminized seeds, or force flowering to find the males. I spent all season with a magnifying glass detecting males. Then I left for a six week tour, and my boyfriend had done a great job finding males. But with plants that tall, I'm guessing they showed way up top first, and popped, and then he found them... All my girls are seedy. No big.

Third: Find a better spot maybe... A few friends ran across the plants, but luckily they were cool.

Or inside altogether. The paranoia about getting caught is aging me.

I have more to learn, like trimming, curing, making bubble hash, and making budder.