My plants budding too early - Advice please

[Dboybakr]

Hoping somebody can help me out here. I started 6 plants from clones about 2 months ago. All are Grand Daddy Purps. I grew them in pots and brought them in every night until about 2-3 weeks ago when they were about a foot tall. I then transferred them into the ground and they were doin great. They all grew to about 2 1/2 feel tall. But today I noticed theyre starting to bud.
I live in sacramento, CA and the weather has been fairly inconsistent for the past month or so. Mostly warm-hot but we keep getting random cloudy days and cold nights. Im assuming this has caused them to bud.
Theyre barely showing signs of budding so im sure theyll revert but does anyone know of anything I can do to help them revert since theyre in the ground already? Any advice will help. Thank you.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Re: My plants budding too early. Advice please...

Simple - interrupt the dark cycle.

 

[Imhigh85]

Re: My plants budding too early. Advice please...

Don't interrupt the light cycle it's a very good chance you can make them hermaphrodite your best bet is to just let them go and do your best with this one and learn from mistakes if you have any other questions you can find me in the Forum called LMAO cloning for dummies

 

[Dboybakr]

Ya. I dont think disrupting the light/dark cycle is a simple thing to do outdoors. Theyre getting around 12, maybe 13 hours of sunlight a day.
I havent had this issue in previous years. The same location. I kinda figured there wasnt gonna be much I could do other than wait and see what happens but i was hoping to learn about some ancient secret to force revert.. lol
The days are still going to get a little longer and hotter so Im hoping that will be enough to revert without too many issues.

 

[Dboybakr]

My neighbor recommended I should trim/prune the plants, removing any potential buds and basically thinning the whole plant. Then give it a couple really good feendings of a nitrogen rich fertilizer. But this sounds like it might shock the plants too much and kill em. Any opinions on this??

 

[CaliOGhead]

Rookie grower here.

My advice is not to cut the buds unless your going to bring them back inside under 18/6 or more light (re-vegging)

The next piece is what I just told my little cousin who is having the same issue down here in southern california.... let it flower and hope for the best, unless u can bring it back inside to control it... but again, I'm a rookie and I'm sure there's others on here with better advice.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Ya. I dont think disrupting the light/dark cycle is a simple thing to do outdoors.

It depends on placement, I suppose. If it's a backyard legal grow - turn the porch light on, lol. If it's so deep in the woods you have to crawl on your hands and knees for miles... an old friend used a 25+ year old battery-powered (two 6v batteries) fluorescent lantern (it doesn't take huge amounts of light, or long periods of it). If this is a guerrilla planting amongst the plant display at your local city park (or outside the mayor's office ), well, yeah, that could be... tricky.

The days are still going to get a little longer and hotter so Im hoping that will be enough to revert without too many issues.

Probably so. The odd-looking leaves mean it's making the attempt.

Don't interrupt the light cycle it's a very good chance you can make them hermaphrodite

Err... I assume you meant the dark cycle. If the OP is growing a strain that has a high incidence of hermaphrodism (some Thai landraces, Gorilla Glue bag-seed that was produced in the first place by self-pollination, et cetera) then this could be a concern. OtOH, it'd be a concern with such strains in any event. And I'd think that getting the plant "straightened out" quickly would tend to be less likely to provoke such a response than letting things drag out for a more extended period of time. But, yes, plants that do not handle stress well... do not handle stress well :rolleyes3 . IF that's the case with this particular plant, a person could attempt to help things along quickly and end up seeing a few - or even more than a few - male flowers; but the same thing could happen if the OP waits (again, if the plant happens to be... delicate), and I'd guess the disappointment level would be higher at that point because it would be further along in the growing season, perhaps too much so to swap it for a replacement that is known to be more robust (or at least hasn't entered flowering yet).

If you plan on running clones from the same mother again next year, perhaps if they are grown under slightly more hours of darkness initially (while still indoors) would help. For example, if they only received four hours of darkness this time, try increasing that to six or even eight hours next time.

Not every plant requires 12 hours of darkness per night to begin flowering (in fact, many do not). That's just used because it works for most strains. Also, consider the equatorial sativa types - these strains come from regions where the light/dark hours simply don't change much throughout the year. I would not be surprised if such strains trigger from more minor differences in the light/dark schedule (even though some people flower them under 13 hours of darkness, to shorten the overall flowering period).

If you cannot interrupt the dark cycle (and every night for about a week), don't worry overmuch. It'll probably still finish reverting in time to grow a bit and then flower normally. And it may end up being somewhat bushier than usual. You are certainly not the first person to have ever experienced this phenomenon.