Hi all. I’m wondering if planting outdoors too early in the season stunt overall growth? I don’t mean weather wise when I ask this though. I mean like them getting too old by the time flower comes around or something like that. As long as the weather is proper is there such a thing as planting too early in the year?
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Yes it can stunt the growth
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I have not found that to be the case. As long as you get them out when the days are long enough that they don’t try to flower, they cruise right along to harvest. If they do try to flower and go through reveg then that will set them back a bit and give them a strange structure. They should still be healthy and make it to harvest either way.
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Check the hours of daylight, I put mine out too early and they started to flower, then veg, then flower again, it stunted the bud growth a bunch.
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You could keep them in containers and keep them warm until the threat of frost has passed. You could start germinating them on the vernal equinox (or thereabout) and bring them inside when it gets too cold and put them in their permanent homes in May (in the Northern Hemisphere) or November (in the Southern Hemisphere). If you have the option of growing indoors, you could keep them under lights until after the last frost.
Please take everything I say with a big grain of salt. I’ve successfully grown cannabis a total of 3 times in my entire life.
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The big question for this is seed plant or clones?
If I put clones out to early they start to flower. This is followed by a reveg and back to flower. Definitely diminished yields and quality.
Seed plants I can put out as soon as weather permits and everything is good
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Deff depends on if it’s a seedling …or clone as @Emeraldgreen stated
If it’s a seedling
The sooner the bigger !
A plant just won’t get "to old in veg… for an outdoor season if it’s healthy it will keep climbing and stay in veg … till the daylight hours dwindle causing it to go Into flower …wich results in a vigorous stretch…budlets and then stacking and bulking up … “its never to early …it’s always to late”
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It will definitely cause them to start to flower. Then they have to reverse. Not what you want. Some never fully revert back to veg. It will definitely hurt your yields.
As far as the plant getting to old…that is not a problem but having them start to flower is. I never put out until May 15th at the earliest for regular photo periods. Early flowering and the new “fast” varieties you need to wait until June 1st, as they are bred to trigger quicker and flower early, meaning they start to flower under a longer light period
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I grow in Northern California in the San Fransisco bay area. Frost really isn’t a problem. Haven’t had any issues with too little light causing them to flower then reveg. I just noticed that how long a plant’s branches grow symmetrical nodes vs asymmetrical nodes seems to be a matter of the age of the plant, and not a matter of veg vs flower necessarily, so I was wondering if this age factor might cause a plant that was germinated from seed too early to end up having it’s growth stunted by getting too old due to a long growing season. This past year I started germinating indoors under a good growlight on march 9th. This next year I was thinking about starting earlier.
2 years ago I actually had a sapling grow up out of the pots I had used for that years plants, starting in November or so. It must have grown from a seed that was already in the super soil or from one of my fems herming a bit or something. I figured it would die or go all weird because cannabis plants aren’t supposed to start growing in November in this part of the world, when I am cutting down that others that were done. But it refused to die, so eventually I started giving it water, and it basically grew normally all the way through to the next years harvest season which was nearly an entire year, although it started growing asymmetrical pretty quickly in comparison to other plants it seemed to me. Even in the middle of our very temperate winters here, if never flowered too early or anything like that. I called it the miracle plant because by all logic it never should have existed since I was growing from feminzied seeds, let alone survived or thrived the way it did. It was super weird. So that experience left me with many questions.
Also this years harvest was pretty disappointing overall, and although I am 99% sure that is due to significantly infrequent watering, especially once I compared to my first years grow journal, I am also exploring other possible factors that may have contributed in order to make next years grow my most successful yet.
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110% THIS. 
I tend to do stupid shit like start my summer outdoors in November and up-pot in veg until I have massive root systems ready to go. However last year I one of the plants I sexed as female went wonky during it’s reveg and never grew the way it was in veg BEFORE sexing. This being said the plant produced just say a 1lb of forearm sized branches and finnished flowering in early August where I had expected early September!? 
No complaints as it worked out better than I though but now that reveg hiccup is something I keep an eye out for now.
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I like to wait until the 2nd week of May before putting plants out. I start them from seed indoor and are usually at least 1-2 ft tall when I put them out. I wait this long because of chance of a late frost and April can be very rainy. A lot of this depends on what latitude you are at also.
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I’m in Toronto, Canada (zone 6a); and our “last frost” date is near May 24. The city is rife with ravines and we’re right on lake Ontario so we have different micro-climates depending on where you are in the city. Being so close to the lake with a steady trade winds due to being on the upper elevation of the city’s topography I luck out with more stable weather than many (like my dad who lives farther from the lake).
Additionally climate change has me rolling the dice now and reading the skies every day now rather than relying on “the old usual”. Had that Manitoba Poison not finished in August it would have just rotted away with the humidity and rain that came along with 2022’s September!!! Even my autos which were cropped end of August started having spots of bud rot appear on the largest of nugs 
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Yep that’s why I said latitude matters. I use to live in the finger lakes area of NY and had lake effect weather also and usually didn’t put out plants until June. Still it was always foggy in the mornings and dew would create problems. I found the key was to stay away from strains that create really dense bud or they will mold. And nothing to Sativa or they won’t finish in time. So strain selection was a key factor. I ended up using early skunk and other early strains that were Sativa dominant and weren’t as dense and not as susceptible to mold.
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The number of times i yelled “SILENT HILL” when going outside to find my plants in the John Carpenter inspired fog was rather disturbing. 
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To avoid this, I plant indoor and let them sit in the window till it’s warm enough outside. They get a bit leggy but 9-10 footers are a sight to see. I obviously don’t start the veg or micro until they are outside permanently.
We have a verrry short growing season here and the blackout needs to start at the end of June in order to finish. Hope this helps my friend.
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you can start with autos first plant your regs on time your autos will flower on time and you will have a good smoke to hit as you garden the regs all summer