Re-vegging an outdoor plant, anybody tried it?

[RandM999]

I've got a very impressive strain growing outdoors in the ground ( Mr. Nice ). It is about 3 weeks away from harvest and I am so darned impressed with its vitality and vigor that I want to save the strain for future grows. Unfortunately I didn't get any clones from it.
My question for the experts is this: Can an outdoor plant, after harvesting, be left in the ground an 're-grown" for the following year?
The location I am in has fairly mild winters, the ground never freezes. ( North central Calif) and we only get a few days of the year with snow.
What I was thinking of doing is one of two things
1) leave it in the ground, covered with straw to protect against freezing, and letting it grow out again next year.
Or
2) carefully uproot it and re-pot it after trimming the roots and brush back, and then putting it into my grow room under 24/7

I have limited space and would prefer to do the former ( #1 )

Has anybody given this a try befor? What kind of results did you get doing this? Would the plant still have the same vigor that it did befor being re-grown or would it degrade somehow?

Just a thought.

 

[trichomes]

u can clone a branch, or, u can harvest the buds and re-veg the plant.

 

[mcloadie]

I'm doing my first grow and I'm trying things I should probably know better but don't. I grew a plant(indoors, sativa, kush)and I ended up taking it outside, it was in bloom inside on a 13 light 11 dark schedule. It went out at the beginning of june, the days were still long. I took six cuttings with way obvious pistils and put them back under 24 hour light. They rooted fine , all the pistils died, and they barely grew at all for a month. I then took them back outside. I got paranoid and pulled them all but 1. It is now approximately 12 inches tall and covered with buds. It seems to me if you water and give the thing light you can do most anything you want to the plants(as far as cuttings or lighting), If youre just trying to preserve the genetics clone em and put em indors and I beleive they'b fine when they transition back to a vegging configuration. Don't know alot about weed, I have a degree in horticulture which is making all this new info relative.

 

[RandM999]

I tried taking clones from the flowering plants and none of them pulled thru. Could be because I'm just not very good at cloning. Some strains seem to just about jump at being cloned and others don't want to be cloned at all. I've done succesful clones off of many plants befor they go into flower but have yet to have success at cloning a flowering plant.

I still would like to hear from anybody who has overwintered a strain in the ground and what they encountered the following year.

 

[The General]

If you live in a colder climate, one good frost will kill the plant. If I remember right, 37F is the killer number for cannabis.

 

[RandM999]

I thought that maybe covering the plants with straw during the winter months would protect from any frost. I'm at 39 deg N. Lat. and about 3000 ft. above sea level in Ca. so we very rarely see much in really freezing weather.

 

[norman]

I'd just dig it up and bring it in... leave it where it'll get light, supplement with extra if you need to re-veg or keep alive. It really is a weed- it'll survive most abuse like this. Just be wary of critters for the first few weeks- thrips, mites, etc.- there will be no predators (other than you!!) inside, and the bugs will go to town. My growing friend had no luck cloning plants in full flower.

 

[RandM999]

Thats my plan then. I'll dig it up and pot it for an indoor re-veg. I do have six in the ground outside and may leave one or two in the ground just to see what it will do though.

 

[palladin]

Leave as much donor material including bud on the plants as possible, bend them over and insulate
with straw, leaf, pine boughs, etc. Do not use plastic as it will cause rot.
The longer they stay native the better, when the outside plants are dug and trans they seldom survive,
a small 2-1/2' tall plant that yielded 3 ozs that i had to take down due to theft ended up with a tap root
3' deep (we had drought in ontario can) and spread over 9' with feeder rootlets . . . not a chance of survival
if transplanted.
I am in the great white north, we can overwinter hemp and even tender fruits like fig trees if we 'heel them
in' and insulate with leaf and spoilt hay. Even with our -40C winters, frost seldom penetrates the soil if snow
and leaf clutter is allowed. Some of my Prairie Cherry strains have overwintered 3 and 4 years before getting
tired and taking the final sleep. Manitoba Poison is a Durban strain that overwinters great.
It takes an average of 47 days to get new growth from reveg, if you feed or water other than minimal, you'll
kill the plant, remember that and have patience galore or fail.

 

[RandM999]

So your saying just cover the plant with straw or leaves and overwinter it that way? Can you give a little more explanation on bending it over? You mean just get everything low to the ground so it can be covered? what can I expect to see the plant do in the folloewing year? Does it flower early due to short days and then reveg when the days get longer? What kind of yeild, compared from the previous year?I can get seeds for this strain, but I like the pheno I now have growing .

 

[palladin]

Where do i begin?
First, understand the p plant has a central tap root about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick that drives into the sub
soils about 2-4 feet deep, it also has spreading rootlets totalling about 8'.
you need to dig a shallow trench along one side only of the plant to allow it to be bent over along and on
the ground, cover this to protect from frost and snow with any type of insulator avail, pine cones, peat,
leaf, then a thin layer of perforated plastic to allow some breathing but to keep insul dry and at top value.

Snow prevents frost from penetrating the soils, leaf and other dry material assist, come spring and the end
of HARD FROSTS 32 or less, uncover and allow nature to do its job, water the plant but do no feed in fall or
spring as natural inclination is to over feed and kill.

Note, those that think i am FOS can remember that cops up here have started taking plants with roots for
this reason (and also to deceive public about weight seized). Good luck and hav e patience, takes 45 days for
regeneration in spring and lots of peep give up too soon, once vegging, air layer and clone the hell out of, also look
into using glibarilic acide to induce male pollen flowers on completely female plants.

Most i have ever got is 3 years then the original plant becomes weak, herm and sickly, clones do better so don't
get cocky and not bother cloning.

Bon chance mon amis and it will cost you nothing in trying but the sore back of digging which is saved from spring
planting anyway. BTW, the seeds from overmatured, regen'd 3rd and 4th year plants which are 'fooled' into becoming
hermaphs results in 95% true female or all feminized seeds. I expect to do this with 10 'Jean-Guy' or M-39 as known
by anglos. Jean-guy is suspected to be the feedstock for OGKush and a true skunk type of international repute after
originating in french canada.

Keep us posted and don't kill it by overfeeding.

 

[Aardvark]

I just went through re-vegging the past few months.

If you know how to clone, take a branch and do that along with uprooting it and taking it inside for the winter.

In order for the "Mother" to go back into the vegetative growth mode, the plant will need to get at least 16 hours of daylight for two weeks before you will see growth. It is OK to trim 1/3 of the roots back if you keep everything clean and use some sea kelp extract to stimulate new root growth, it will kick-start the changeover. Within 4 weeks, you should have at least a half-dozen new branches to cut for clones.

An alternative to cutting & cloning - if you have the space - is to perform "air-layering", where you tie part of the upper plant down at ground level - or even in a separate pot - and prepare the section of plant as you would a cutting for cloning - scrape the dermis off and treat with cloning growth hormone, then cover with moist growth medium, such as a rockwool cube, super starter plug or peat moss and cover with plastic saran wrap, allowing it to breathe several times a day. Not matter how many hours of light you give it, new roots will be growing within 7 days (as few as 3). Once you get a good root foundation, you can cut the two (or more) plants apart.

Another thing to remember is that any buds that you leave on the plant when putting it into re-vegg will die and rot, so don't waste your weed! In addition, if the plant gets cut back at harvest time so radically that it becomes sickly from the lack of photosynthesis, the DNA will become damaged and the subsequent growth may turn out very different from your expectations.

Good Luck!

 

[gairbud]

yes regen out doors has been done when taking indoor. your above process should work good. but cut your lights to 16 hrs and mist the plants alot but watch for mold and humiditty problems. use diluted vinagar to solve thoose issues if they arise or a milk water solution. keep away from all other indoor opperations as everything in the world will polute the room. all outdoor grown stuff brings in every bug, virus mold ect into your grow space so keep extra special attention to them and keep away from all other indoor stuff. as they will [ the indoor] will surely die. for some reason outdoor stuff has a complete imune system working over time and indoor stuff dose not.clones preform diferently indoor and out in all areas of the growing stages. even the high will be noticeciby diferent. i have been growing for 35+ years and indoor and out and alot of times the stuff just grows better outside then inside but they will show traits you like. like my blue cronic buds real big and early outdoors and small to medium indoors with late flowering and buzz is diferent but similar. find what you like and do that. i grew alot of seed out door 2 years ago and found some really good traits that in most cases transfered very well indoors.

 

[gairbud]

as long as you dont get severe frost i have had 100% success with regening for the next year.

 

[gairbud]

i get 3 good crops out of every plant before i switch to cloneing a favorite. seed to veg to flower then harvest then regen to veg then flower then harvest then regen to veg then flower then harvest then regen to veg take clones about 20 to 30 of them with real good stucture then i just pull the original out. i have never reached a max on cloning i have did some strains over and over from clones for years with no degrading more then 20 generations. but did get degrading if regening the same plant over 5 times. but i even cloned it and it came back to full strength. as far as i can tell you can reset the plant genitics with cloneing works every time but more then 4 regens of the same plant you start to loose it.

 

[gairbud]

35dgf with a small wind gives ya a wind chill and will kill the plant. better to clone and a spiral bulb can handle 4 to 6 clones and you can trim the crap out of them till next spring then reclone and plant.

 

[gairbud]

no frosts for this year expected[cali] but lots of winter rain.

 

[RandM999]

Thanks folks. I appreciate all the input from you guys. We very rarely get any real frost, and snow is a rareity. I think I will try covering the stub of a plant after harvest with straw and see how that works out for me. I may try to uproot one of them and put it in a very large pot just to see if that will work as well. Anything I can do to keep the strain going until I can get clones off of it.
It might be interesting to see if I can get it to hermi and collect the seeds, but lack of room makes this a low priority, just getting clones would be good enough for me.
Thanks again for all the input.

 

[The General]

Please keep us updated. I would like see how this turns out. Good luck!

 

[gairbud]

this was taken from an outdoor favorite roots trimmed and buds trimmed to stub like in pic.

11 weeks latter.