Flowering time

[Jackalope]

I see lots of threads about budding plants. Flowering times are always a subject. Here are some of the things I have found that are seldom mentioned. So much goes into flowering. Start times, finish times, All the hybrids out these days can have different blends of flowering times.
A early maturing plant has to start early so some of those are out of this equation. Very few people know that some long maturing strains start flowering early also. It is not when a plant starts flowering its how long it takes to mature once it does. I have had strains that start late and finish fast as well as the one's that start early and take forever to finish.
Early on in breeding, start and finish time's were one of the things looked at while making a hybrid. The blend of early start and a with a slightly later finish gave us those early cash crop strains. This gave plants more time to make bigger badder buds.

 

[TorturedSoul]

YES! At least outdoors. Plants begin flowering well before the number of hours of darkness increase to 12/day. A friend asked me to start a few plants for him to grow outside so, earlier this year, I was trying to figure out what would actually finish outdoors here before the helicopters, hunters, and/or snow appeared and the nearby cover began fading - based solely on reported indoor flowering times. And I couldn't figure it out. If one strain begins flowering when it's still receiving (random numbers ahead, lol) 14.5 hours of light per day, and another one - that has the same reported indoor flowering time - doesn't begin flowering until it's only receiving 13.25 hours per day... Then the former should be well ahead of the latter by the time the latter ever starts to flower, right?

But the light schedule outdoors (here) isn't a static thing. As time passes, the nights get longer and longer. HtH do I know how that'll affect different strains' flowering, lol? Might the one that began flowering later actually catch up - and pass - the other one because, as the night-period increases, it flowers even faster?

IDFK . It was at that point that I got frustrated/confused, said, "Screw it!" and started four auto-flowering plants for him .

Which made my buddy happy, at least. The few strains (in my possession) that I had outdoor guestimations in regards to flowering times for (without knowing my approximate latitude, I figure ALL breeders' reported outdoor flowering times must be guesses) started at mid-September and went through late(?) December, and when I initially suggested something that listed an early- to mid-October finish... he panicked and asked me if I had anything that finished by the end of August (seriously, lol, WtF?). So he's probably happier with a few autos, anyway.

 

[Jackalope]

So true. Trying to take the indoor thing outdoors in questionable areas is confusing as F#*k. I just grab the earliest strain and hope for the best. In some case's regulars will finish before Auto's. Just because they start flowering on their own does not mean they can finish in the few short months of some grow areas.
They tried breeding auto's for outdoor growing with poor results. I am not sure if they found a better way or it just worked better indoors. Now it seems most auto's are made for indoor growing.

 

[Blew Hiller]

I expect my photos to start flowering mid-August even though sunlight charts say they are 14 hour days....

Midcoast Maine Hours of Sunshine.png

• Blew Hiller
• May 9, 2018

Hours of Sunlight

 

[Blew Hiller]

They tried breeding auto's for outdoor growing with poor results. I am not sure if they found a better way or it just worked better indoors. Now it seems most auto's are made for indoor growing.

I've had good luck this summer starting autos mid-May so they could take advantage of the June/July sunlight...that and using 10-gallon pots has seemed to work well...I still have another 6 weeks of growth for them ...the blurry one in the back is a @SeedsMan OG Kush Rolex (auto) in a tomato cage...

autos.jpg

• Blew Hiller
• Jul 4, 2018

Auto Alley-Blew Hiller Summer 2018 GH Grow

 

[Jackalope]

Cool. I know that Auto's do well outdoors most places. Its the sketchy places where a regular might work better. It would be great to talk with the early breeders of Ruderalis. I would like to know if they changed how they were doing things or just moved it indoors. For years Ruderalis hybrids lacked power. What changed?

 

[Dankman_420]

You are definitely correct about the modern autos having " more power". Myself and my freinds tried autos years ago and they had low potency ( at least the ones we grew ) the modern ones definitely are stronger! I wonder if they are my genetically leaning towards the regular side and less towards the rudarails

 

[Jackalope]

So they are stronger. That is a good thing LOL. They either found the "right" ruderalis to use or they are keeping it a lot more Sat/Ind side. Maybe just changing their focus did it. Making them more just to auto-flower and less to making a strain flower early in harsh conditions.

 

[Blew Hiller]

People can't really tell the difference between my autos and photos....some are stronger, some weaker...genetics and the luck of the draw mainly....I only started growing cannabis 18 months ago, so I don't have any reference for autos before that. I like them because I can harvest them before my photos are in flower, and Maine law allows six (6) in flower plants per adult (wife and I =12)...so I am currently growing about 10 photos and 6 autos. I started 8x autos, but killed off 2x of them with my soil...I have found some autos don't do well in hotter soils...

 

[TorturedSoul]

Cool. I know that Auto's do well outdoors most places. Its the sketchy places where a regular might work better. It would be great to talk with the early breeders of Ruderalis. I would like to know if they changed how they were doing things or just moved it indoors. For years Ruderalis hybrids lacked power. What changed?

At a guess, simple breeding / backcrossing to fix the wanted (auto-flowering) trait while discarding the unwanted ones. If you look at Sweet Seeds' (for example) website, you can see that their auto-flowering strains are listed as being n generation. Cream Mandarine XL Auto is a "4th generation" one, Green Poison XL Auto is a "3rd generation" one (even though it appears to be a newer strain), et cetera. There is (or, at least, was) a page on their website somewhere that discusses their use of the term "generation" as it applies to their autos. If I remember correctly, the percentage of ruderalis genes drops with each new "generation."

One assumes that the breeders were always interested in producing potent strains, lol. I grumble from time to time about "pollen chuckers," lol, but maybe this is an example of what I complain about? Those early versions - and I'm not speaking specifically of any one breeder here - were more along the lines of what I'd consider "pollen chucking." That is to say, a simple "Ruderalis x Photoperiodic" cross. Or, I suppose, since the auto-flowering gene is a recessive one, a cross of the results of that union crossed with its siblings, etc. just enough to raise the incidence of auto-flowering to 98+% and then releasing the strain to the public. Which, I'm guessing, gives a strain that flowers automatically... but not much more. But there are still undesirable traits at that point (basically, sh!tty cannabis ). "Further work is required" and all that.

Doing this (correctly, over enough generations) with two otherwise disparate strains - something like an "auto-indica" and an "auto-sativa" - would even allow the breeder to regain hybrid vigor by then crossing those two together, I suppose.

You could breed for red haired kids. That's a thing (and the red-hair version of the MC1R gene is recessive). So you find a spouse who also carries this gene, buy a bottle of wine, and... That's just one gene. If you are tall and skinny and your spouse is short and fat (and these happen to be genetically-influenced traits), then you are mixing more than just the gene that controls hair color.

There are a LOT of genes in our 23 pairs of chromosomes, lol. Modern versions of Homo sapiens actually came from a rather small group of breeding stock. But mixing them (over and over and...) in various ways, over many generations, gives us red-haired (and not red-haired) people who are tall, short, intelligent, moronic, blue-eyed, brown-eyed, et cetera.

I'm just rambling.