The Great Outdoors
Towards the end of March, as the first indoor crop of the season is getting close to harvest, our shitty UK weather usually starts to change.
Towards the end of March, as the first indoor crop of the season is getting close to harvest, our shitty UK weather usually starts to change.
Towards the end of March, as the first indoor crop of the season is getting close to harvest, our shitty UK weather usually starts to change. We wake up in the morning and the sun is already up. That big winter parka jacket gets used less and less. We buy a new pair of white trainers and take the gamble that they won't get trashed from mud and slush. Our thoughts start to turn towards spending a little more time in the great outdoors, preferably cultivating our favourite plants.
Unfortunately, as I sit typing this... inside my house... with the heating on full... there is two inches of snow on the ground outside and the temperature is around freezing point. It's the start of April! This time last year we were in the middle of a heat wave, now it's fucking freezing!
Beautiful outdoor Mohan Ram
If there's one thing that you can guarantee with the British weather, it's that it's totally unpredictable, and that can cause problems for us growers.
Take last year for example; nice warm March and April, followed by a crappy cold and wet May. Total crop killer! This year, who knows what will happen? At the moment, it feels like we're sat in the middle of a particularly bad winter. Maybe the cold snap will finish and we'll have a great May with plenty of sun and a few light showers; ideal for planting out in, followed by a nice warm, sunny summer.
Personally, I'm not going to put all my eggs in one basket this year. Alongside a few, carefully chosen, outdoor locations in which I'll attempt to grow some trees, I'm going to sprinkle a smattering of Autoflowering strains.
Autoflowers are great for outdoor growing in the UK. They are a non-photoperiod sensitive variety of Cannabis which - in layman’s terms - means that you don't have to rely on the days getting shorter in order to get them to flower. They will automatically start to produce bud sites and begin flowering two to three weeks after germination, regardless of the amount of light hours they receive.
This makes them a safe bet for pulling some decent outdoor weed, because you can basically plant them out when the weather is already nice and warm, safe in the knowledge that they’ll be ready to harvest within 60 to 90 days. Yes, it’s true that the plants will be far smaller and produce a lesser yield than regular photoperiod sensitive varieties, but – if you plant a few Auto’s out as a contingency plan – you’ll be guaranteed an outdoor harvest. Plus, if the weather is decent, you could even get two crops in over the summer!
When planning Auto’s into your outdoor grow, you’ll need to treat them a little differently to your regular plants. Firstly, since the flowering period is determined by age rather than light hours, you’ll be cultivating them from seeds, not cuttings. A cutting taken from an Autoflowering plant will just start flowering and you’ll end up with a plant like a lollipop!
Take a look at some of the online seed providers and you’ll see a huge variety of Autoflowering varieties. In fact, most of the big seed banks now produce Auto versions of their best-selling strains, so it’s likely you’ll find your favourite strain is available as an Auto.
Your plants will need to be started off indoors, but this doesn’t mean you’ll need to splash out on a full on grow room set up. You can get everything you need for a few quid. Get yourself a cheap high dome propagator, some light mix soil, some 10cm pots and a 125w CFL lamp (make sure the colour is in the white / blue spectrum). Sow your seeds in the pots filled with light mix, wait for them to germinate and then bring them on for a few days under the CFL lamp.
Then you’ll need to harden them off for a few days; remove the propagator lid and keep the CFL around 60-80cm above the tops of your babies. Finally, it’s time to get them ready to go outside. If you’re lucky enough to have a garden, stick them in a shady spot during the day and bring them in at night. After a couple of days you’ll really notice them go a darker shade of green, then they’ll be ready to go outside permanently without suffering too much shock.
Auto’s stay fairly small, so they’re a good option for hiding amongst a few vine plants in a greenhouse or pot plants in a back garden - provided you’re not directly overlooked by any snooping neighbours! Or, why not go guerrilla? Hide a few plants in a hedgerow or sunny clearing. Wherever you plant them out, it’s a good idea to protect against the local wildlife by placing a cylinder of chicken wire around each young plant. This’ll keep the rabbits off your precious plants.
Since Auto’s have a shorter growth cycle and are much smaller than regular varieties you may want to feed them differently. When planting a regular strain outdoors, it’s a good idea to use slow release organic fertilisers like worm castings, bat guano, bone meal and feather meal. These can be added to the top soil over the roots of plants transplanted directly into the ground and will break down over a few months and release feed to the plants.
A buried fabric container of All Mix will keep them fed for weeks
To really maximise the shorter growth cycle of an Auto plant, you can put them in small fabric containers of All Mix – 5 to 9 litres - and bury them in the ground. This heavily fertilised soil will feed the plants for the first 6 weeks, so the plants will only require additional feed for the final few weeks before harvest.
If you’ve picked a spot that has easy access and you don’t mind visiting the plants often, just hand feed them with an organic bloom feed once per week. If you don’t want to visit the plants that often, just add some bat guano to the top soil – although you will still need to water this in once a week, unless it rains (which it probably will!).
With many Auto strains taking just 10 weeks from germination to harvest, if you stagger your crops and plant out a couple each week, you could be harvesting once a week from August to the end of September. That’s a heart-warming thought, whatever the weather!
Happy growing!
S
Soft Secrets
