What Makes An Outdoor Setup
Do you have a favorable grow environment?
A Favorable Environment
​
Ideally, you will want the plants to be in an environment that is not too hot and not too cold (60−90°F), not too dry but not too humid (40−60% relative humidity), and with enough sunlight in the spring and summer months to support a vegetative stage (over 12 hours) and less sunlight in the fall and winter months to trigger the flowering stage (under 12 hours). If your outdoor environment meets most or all of these requirements, then outdoor growing is a great option due to its biggest benefit: natural sunlight.
With sunlight, there is more than enough lighting to support a plant from all sides, which produces a plant that will grow more evenly in the vegetative stage and side stems that will produce more yields in the flowering stage when compared with indoor plants which typically only fully develop the parts of the plant that are closest to the grow lights. This also makes training techniques typically unnecessary, making outdoor plants easier to work with. Also, outdoor plants do not have the same height restriction indoor plants have. When coupled with an extended vegetative stage, this can produce huge plants during each grow season that can not be matched with an indoor setup.
​
However, if any of the key environmental ranges listed above are off, it usually takes a lot more work, effort, and money to correct than it would with an indoor setup. Growing outdoors also increases the risk of abiotic and biotic issues — from dealing with unpredictable weather, such as heat waves and snow storms, to bugs and animals eating the plant.
​
Finally, without additional equipment, you will only have one grow season a year, unless you utilize automatic seeds. If you are growing offseason with automatic seeds or with additional equipment such as an outdoor grow light, you will still need to ensure a favorable grow environment in the off-season months to support a healthy vegetative and flowering stage.
Did this guide help? This article was taken directly from The Absolute Beginner's Guide to Growing Cannabis book, so if you like the advice above you'll love the rest of the book, which includes a lot of exclusive content not found anywhere else. You can find both the e-book and paperback copy on Amazon, and it's free with a Kindle Unlimited subscription!