Thanks for all the responses... Although simply changing from veg nutes to flower nutes will not speed up flowering or induce flowering... Flowering will only begin when hormones change in the plant and this happens only because of the photoperiod, and nothing else (except on ruderalis/autoflowering plants). Indoor flowering starts when the gardener changes the lighting schedule to 12/12.... Outdoor is a little different. Outdoor plants start flowering when they sense the days getting shorter. In the Northern Hemisphere days begin to get shorter and shorter every day after the summer solstice on July 21st, also the longest day (the day with the most hours of daylight). So basically it takes plants a few weeks to sense the days are becoming shorter, so most plants will begin to flower a few weeks after July 21st, usually in early August.
That being said, I already switched my nutes over from my veg nutes (24-8-16) to my early bloom nutes (15-30-15) because the plants were showing preflowers and being so late in August I thought that they would start budding any day. That was like 2 weeks ago.
Now its August 30 and with light frosts coming at the end of September and hard frosts coming the first week of October, its not possible for my girls to finish! The breeder says it takes these strains 50-60 days on one and 55-65 on the others... I originally had 18, 4 showed as male so im left with 14... of the 14 plants, about 10 showed as female and another 4 hasnt even showed sex yet.... only 1 or 2 have started to develop buds... im totally bummed...
Im not trying to jack your thread Flabos... im just trying to find a solution that will help us both seeing that we are in the same boat with mutual problems... somebody suggested to build a greenhouse to keep the ladies alive through the cold weather and hard frosts... this is my idea... im wondering if it will work? has any body ever tried this?
There is one problem with building a greenhouse. My plants were never topped and grown naturally.. they are between 5-8 feet tall... building a greenhouse this large for 10-14 plants would be difficult and stick out something terrible and be very hard to hide. The only solution i can think of is to slowly start to bend them over, kind of like LST (low stress training). I have never had experience LSTing and im not sure if it will work with plants this large and this far along in their life... my plants arent very bushy, just very tall, they werent planted until the end of June and brought outside until July 1st. So if I slowly start to bend them to the ground i will be able to build a greenhouse around them with a PVC frame and some 6 mil thick clear plastic. The greenhouse should give me a few more weeks of growth in October and hopefully gain a little more weight... Any thoughts as to if this will work? advice? please help anybody! it sucks to have worked this hard and not be able to have these girls grow to their full potential. I dont even know if LSTing is recommended this late in their life..
I do have a few pic i snapped today of them with a camera phone... I quickly took pics just to see the quality of the phone camera and they arent too bad, ill take more informative pics tommarow with a better camera and start my own thread, again sorry Flabos, hope you dont mind me posting pics on your thread.
Im not sure if these photos will come up, first time I ever posted pics... If they do come up I dont even know exactly what i was taking them of, like i said i was just testing the camera on the phone.... but if you do see them, you will be able to see the how far they are from budding and just what im up against.