Canadian Grow Thread - Northern Climate Grow Advice/Strains

[Nuikala]

Hey. I thought it would be nice to have a thread for people that grow in a more northern climate.
Advice on planting times, growing techniques, and the best strains to plant in harsh environments.
If you grow in a northern climate, let us see your techniques and results.
Short summers, wet Autumns, and frigid, long winters make for some difficult outdoor growing.
Leave your comments/Advice/Or questions here;

 

[Nuikala]

When do you Plant?
How do you hide it?
What are the BEST Strains grow in short summers (aka Ontario, Northern Michigan) or the like? Hardy Strains that can take wild temp/humidity fluctuations, wind/rain.
What is the Bud Quality compared to indoor?
Best outdoor fertilizer?

 

[buckets]

Kootenay mountain seeds - three strains - early grizzly, white grizzly, jumbo grizzly are good for BC. You can get them at hemp depot.ca. A canadian seed strain developer(s) that I know about are at the royal Canadian marijuana collective. Start with highrise seeds there. Their patriot medicine finishes during Canadian summers. Texada Timewarp strains - many variations you can find at hempdepot.ca but if you're growing to sell, you'll be lucky if you get $500 a pound with it is what I am hearing if done outdoors. BC seedking.com has fem purple kush and their BC big bud and apparently these finish outdoors in BC as well. Then there's fast freeze and you can find that at the rcmc. The list goes on and on.

 

[buckets]

I thought of a few more finishers for the summer outdoor season. Brown Dirt Warrior's Brown Dirts Revenge. You can try and get that from sending him an email through his site but he is pretty much out of stock at the time I write this but no harm in contacting him through his website browndirtwarrior.com. I also heard that manitoba poison does well. So does C99XMOB at highrise. Good luck man. There's so many strains that can do well outdoors but it's how we take care of them that gets them to the finish line.

 

[BCJohn]

Nice to see a Canadian thread!! I was just thinking we needed one.

I can't give any thoughts about good outdoor strains since I'm too new to growing MJ. But I have grown lots of stuff over the years and have been successful growing things in places where they should not survive.

Take a look at my Fall Prep thread to see what I did to prepare for next years outdoor grow. A few ideas should be handy.

My main focus is early starts with maximum establishment before the last frosts. My goal is to be growing when the night lows are still dipping to -5 or so.

Here are some ideas to help...

- Raised beds are first. Faster start and better control of weeds and water.
- Dark colour and heat sink to absorb the suns warmth for temp regulation at night. Tires work. Water bottles work.
- Mini greenhouses. Go buy a couple different sizes of transparent (see thru) storage containers. Take the top off and flip it over. Instant greenhouse. Put a little one over your little transplant then a big one over that.
- Water bottles (filled) placed between the two storage containers.

I can add more to this or make them bigger if needed. The general idea is protect them from the cold and wind. Give them a source of warmth at night (passive heat source). You are creating a Microclimate for them to grow in. This is a standard gardening idea in the North. Been done for a very long time. Very common in the UK. I can grow zone 5 flowers in zone 3 by creating a little microclimate for them. And that means keep them alive over the winter even with temps dropping below -40 Celcius every winter for multiple days at a time and -35 being normal.

Just cause we live in the far North doesn't mean we can't grow.

Can't wait to hear from some more Canadians!

 

[BCJohn]

Hey Buckets,
I'm curious about the low price you heard about for Timewarp. I haven't bought anything for many years so I am totally out of touch that seems crazy low for a pound. I thought Timewarp had a good reputation. I was thinking of trying it or it's crosses outdoors.

 

[OGEvilgenius]

I ran Anesthesia from Breeders Choice (Sannie) outside in BC this year very successfully. Not adapted to the climate but it finished early October which was fine for me - late for some parts of Canada though. Lost some to bud rot but they were in what can only be described as a massive rain storm late in bloom and I still managed to harvest probably 75-80% of it. Grew very well structurally and yielded well at over a lb per plant (put em outside at around 18-24" tall in early June, finished around 7ft - basically took up the bed it was planted in).

Nice quality smoke too. Don't really like the taste.

Next year, if there is one, I'll probably run one or two of them again and try some other stuff from the RCMC. They have a good reputation for Canadian OD genetics and some interesting genetics to try.

 

[OGEvilgenius]

Hey Buckets,
I'm curious about the low price you heard about for Timewarp. I haven't bought anything for many years so I am totally out of touch that seems crazy low for a pound. I thought Timewarp had a good reputation. I was thinking of trying it or it's crosses outdoors.

It's good (not great mind you) but you can get lbs of indoor Kush AAA for around 1000 bucks right now and the market demands Kush far more than it demands Timewarp. The market is totally flooded.

 

[mojoganjaman]

I find trainwreck is a good strain for my area of BC...out of 28 wrecks @ 7ft I lost about 8 partial-tops to rot, and zero mold issues...here is a thread that shows my efforts this year.... https://www.rollitup.org/outdoor-growing/731551-sept-29-13-a.html#post9662613



mojo

 

[BCJohn]

It's good (not great mind you) but you can get lbs of indoor Kush AAA for around 1000 bucks right now and the market demands Kush far more than it demands Timewarp. The market is totally flooded.

That makes total sense.
Thanks

 

[BCJohn]

MGJ,
That is an excellent looking grow!
I really like the pink. I'm totally starting to love the look of some of the coloured strains. Really looking at the Pakistani Chitral Kush. Beautiful plants!!

The person that pointed me in the direction of the PCK also recommended I look at Ciskei from Tropical Seeds because of the altitude it is grown at. The crosses with PCK look amazing so I will probably break down and buy some eventually. I don't know how well they would do outdoors here but it might be fun to try.
Check them out.

 

[poorboy1]

hey boys,

great to see a great north thread, got back into growing after a long while out,,,,,,, this year I ran super skunk ,cheese, klaskinova, and timewarp, all were fems, all germed on 4 20, and put outside mid may. The grow plots were located in a sandyloam riverside patch, with a huge meadow so really nice for concealment. all grew in natural soil, that was limed as well as long acting ferts and lots of vermiculite. due to the decent soil moisture and timely rains no irrigation was needed this season. had a good grow had some problems with bud rot on the klaskinova, due to the heavy dews in august the yields were very nice .5 to.75 lb per plant, only issues was these girls got huge I mean trees so wind storms beat them up some, needed to string some as well. the super skunk was the lowest on yields but killer buzz, with great aromas. got lucky and had the killer frost here mid October so the cheese and timewarp all finished up decent with great colors and bag appeal. was a good year to get back in the saddle got some issues to work on the spring but man it feels good to be back out there,,,,,,,,,,poorboy

 

[BCJohn]

PB,
Sounds like a great grow considering.
Do you telling us a little more about how you plan to improve the grow for next year? What are the issues you need to solve?

 

[poorboy1]

hey, sure, when i was scouting spots in the spring, I overlooked the fact that the trees threw alot more shade then I expected so i need to take that into account this spring also I have access to huge amounts of compost/manure so I want to see if in the late spring i can haul some into the plot and work up the plots as early as possible using some sort of camo of course, did not have time this fall......like I said got real lucky this season with the rains, but would like set up a rain barrel to catch snow melt and rain water and have a marine battery hooked up to small electric pump in case we get a good hot summer,,,,,got the whole winter to plan and replan poorboy

 

[Indoor Sun King]

I was late this year starting my plant (May 17th)...we had an awesome weather year and it grew excellent but ran out of time to finish properly, not a single trichromes turned amber, and many were still clear.

So IMHO...from a west coast perspective, we have only May, June, July & August that are the hot months....and Sept can be decent to finish the grow but by October things are cooling off and the rain/fog often can dominate the weather

Next year I'm going with an auto, as our season is just too short to wait until July for the flowering to start

 

[BCJohn]

ISK,
The short growing season is exactly why I try to find ways of starting early. May 17th is a little early for here. Most vegetable gardens aren't even in the ground until the end of May. We can still get frost and snow that last week. Some years are good but some are very bad. That is why I have been working on learning how to create micro climates.

Here is my thinking for creating a little MC for guerrilla grows:
- south face is mandatory.
- wind protection on the north and East sides, trees and shrubs, ideally evergreens. West as we'll if wind comes from that direction.
- lots of mulch on the planting site. Make it thick and wide. 4-6' diameter and 4-6" thick.
- warmth at night can come from dark stones that are placed around the plant. This will and the mulch will control weeds as well.
- you can't do a cover that will blend in but you may be able to increase the shelter on the north side to come over the back half of the plant. This will require monitoring though and there is risk of it falling on the plant. Careful!

I use some of these ideas around the yard for growing trees and flowers. Works we'll but does require a bit of work to maintain and it can fail.

 

[mushroom head]

SS early from wild rose seeds! Finishes mid to late sept. Nice stinky and potent, ive ran it outdoors in Canada for 3 years now!

 

[VTMi'kmaq]

A snowballs throw from the international border up north, lately its swiss strains that handle the weather we endure quite well. Have a friend who has had them do well by him in the northern great lakes region.

 

[BCJohn]

VTM,
Where are these Swiss seeds coming from?

We all can get seeds from the Canadian Breeders but I'm interested hearing what else is out there. I will happily grow the Canadian strains, don't get me wrong. I just like to hear about variety.

 

[okanaganoutdoor]

Last year I had great success with BDW revenge and bumper.. Both strains did over lb per plant with the exception of one revenge freak that pushed nearly 2 lbs! I was pleasantly surprised by some fem frisian dew seeds I was gifted. They turned amazing purples and finished end aug-sept7.. Very good quality for such an early strain. Ambrosia from Jordan of the islands was also a great turnout. My absolute favorite new outdoor MAMMOTH is bc bud depots "the big"... These girls gave me massive yield of pure dank delicious frost covered nuggets of joy! They finish late Sept and when I told friends it was outdoor grown they told me I was full of shit lol... Indoor quality look and smell..... So needless to say I will be using my best pheno generously this coming season. 2014 will also be doing Jordan of the islands afghani, blue timewarp, gods green crack... TGA qrazy train will also be favored this year after the amazing results I got from a single seed of it I had. I'll be adding a few more soon so I'll update when I'vemare more decisions. I was lucky enough where I live in bc that we had warm dry fall weather and have pushed some strains that finished on Halloween with no problems. I will be putting out only a few late strains this year as I know this weather pattern may change and bite me in the ass if I rely on it with too many plants.