Sedin,
In flowering, plant size doubles or triples, give or take. The concept is, for example, that a plant vegged to 1’ tall becomes a 2’ tall plant at the end of flowering, and so 1’ of growth is gained in that outdoor season’s flowering phase. However, if the plant were vegged to 10’ tall, the same season would see it grow to 20’ tall by the end of flowering, and so 10’ of growth would have been gained in that outdoor season’s flowering phase.
The concept from that article is this: That in our limited years as cultivators, we can produce more cannabis, if we ensure that each summer season’s free-ripening period is leveraged upon larger plants. To achieve these larger plants, we use earlier and longer periods of vegetative growth indoors.
For example, I started seeds in November 2017 and each seedling was sexed, then the females were vegged and trained and up-potted in stages throughout the winter, until they were each 4’x4’ bushes in 15gallon pots in April 2018. Then in May 2018 they were transplanted into 30gallon pots and in-ground, to grow outdoors all season. Because the plants were bigger at the start of the season, they are better able to leverage the daily available sunlight in a given area. Think in terms of combined square footage of all leaf surface area throughout the plant. A larger solar panel harvests more photons daily than a smaller solar panel, where the aggregate leaf mass provides this metaphorical solar panel.
So the writers are basically saying you can go crazy with veg stage. You can veg a plant in a heated greenhouse with supplemental light for 10+ years if you wanted, and get it to 100’ tall, and flower it like a California Redwood.
Or you can plant seeds in July and have a nice compact 2-3’ shrub to manage.
These days I like to start outdoor plants from seed in 1gallons indoors under 12/12 until they sex, and move the sexed plants into 2gallon pots with a 16/8 veg by February or March. I like having 2-3’ tall plants, with the first few lower nodes cleaned out, to go outside in early May (@ 49th). I’ve seen many cases that plants placed outside April 17th to April 27th go into early flowering and mess up the vegetative potential of the plant that season.
So I try to get my plants into greenhouses with supplemental light (16/8) in late March or early April and let them harden for a bit. End of April I start bringing photos outside, but I leave spotlights on outside that come on from 9pm to midnight to keep ethylene concentrations diffuse until the first sunny week of May.
I’ve also seen overcast weather with low photon levels cause early flowering in short Spring days which otherwise wouldn’t have. For example, a clone that has gone outside April 20th for a few years without tripping into flower, one year with a gloomy April, began flowering April 27th simply because the light levels were not adequate enough in the shoulder hours (dawn/evening) to diffuse the accruing flowering hormones.
Have a great season!
-Dr. Zinko
