Leaving for 30 days - Can I Combine Indoor light and Sunlight?

[Clancy]

Hi, Here's my issue: I have two nice white widows growing in a great place indoors with 400w of HPS. The plants are 2 weeks into flowering in soil.

I have to leave for up to a month. I have someone to watch over the grow box and lights for fire safety while I'm gone but for a number of reasons I can't ask them to help water. It's out of the question.

The last time I left the plants were in veg and I left for 14 days. I've done that before and yes, the plants took a bit of a hit...some leaves dried up but after a fresh watering and trimming they look good as new. I left a plant once for 17 days and still got an ounce and a quarter of good quality off it.

This time it might be 30 days and that's just too long even for me. And this time it's not veg but flowering so I'm worried about bud formation.

What do you think if I move the two white widows outside while I'm gone after a few days of letting them get accustomed to it...partial shade etc ? I can place them in a garden where there is lots of water. Will the move to sunlight mess up flowering? When I come back, what would be the effect of moving them them back under the lights to finish?

Thanks for reading and if you can help with some knowledge that'd help a lot.

 

[Clancy]

Re: Leaving for 30 days---Can I Combine Indoor light and Sunlight?

I did some reading on my problem:

It sounds like if I put my flowering (2-3 weeks) indoor plants outside they will now be getting more than 12 hours of light so less than 12 hours of dark. That will lead to a halt in flowering and a transition back to the vegetative state.

At the end of my 30 days of absence if I bring them back indoors to the 12/12 grow box they should begin to flower again. Ultimately, putting them outside now seems like it will prolong time to harvest.

Maybe someone else will be helped by this and if I'm wrong in these assumptions please let me know.

 

[dbkick]

Not to hard to put together a drip system, not that much cost either.
Timer, water pump, reservoir and some tubing , a few irrigation parts and your plants won't suffer a bit.

 

[Clancy]

That's true dbkick. Thanks for your input. I'm going with a timer and hose hooked up to my garden faucet. The timer allows for various cycles with as little as 1 minute to 200 minutes of water being released. I just have to play with it a bit to set it so that it doesn't give too much. I think though when I have more time I'll work on your idea...less chance for problems I'd think. I have two white widows growing well in the grow box so I'll set them up with the timer and hose. I also have two Early Miss autos from CropKing that I may just put in the ground an hope for the best while I'm away.

 

[dbkick]

I take it your soil has nutrients included?
Straight tap for 30 days is much better than no waterings at all but what about nutrients?
There's also blumats which may work better in your situation.

 

[Clancy]

Sorry I missed your last post dbkick...thanks for your assistance. I'll check out blumats. My soil is prepared soil by Schultz with some other prepared soil by no-name companies. I'm not a huge fan of adding fertilizers anyway so I don't mind leaving them without more nutes. I always add like a small quarter teaspoon of MG tomato fert in the watering a couple times per grow---just to cover my ass in case something is really missing. I guess I'd get more yield with extra nutes but for now I was satisfied with the ounce + off my last plant. This latest grow (should it survive my absence) looks like I could perhaps double my last yield.