Outdoor 3 Strain Auto Grow In N. Alberta

[LabRat]

Thought I'd post a little journal about my 2nd attempt at growing autos outside in the Great White North. Last year out of 4 auto fems, 2 strains, one of each were males that only got about a scrawny foot tall, two grew as photos and when they began flowering in mid-Aug one turned out to be male as well. Argggg!

The one female got huge and I got a good pound of hi-CBD bud off her still chilling in the freezer. Supposed to be up to 20% CBD and less than 1% THC so good medicine I hope but I was finishing off some other CBD pot before dipping into that stash. Needed a greenhouse around her with a heater and probably needed a couple more weeks to finish but near froze to death when the breaker blew for the heater so chopped her down, gave her a light trim and froze it all fresh in sealed cans.

11th of Oct last year a week before the 'incident'. Huge colas on her and I just started flowering a plant grown from a cutting I got off her down in my basement grow room.

The fateful morning.

Enough of that.

This year seems to be going better. I added a bunch more Promix HP, compost, peat moss, couple different manures, bio char and a few supplements like bone meal, gypsum, fritted trace elements and DynoMyco tho with all the compost there should be lots of good fungi and bacteria in there already. Somehow I thought it would be a good idea to make mounds for each plant so they had lots of extra soil under them. PITA to water them like that so I won't be doing that again.

Strain info.

Three Mazarilla auto fems from Urban Legends. They're a cross of Mazar auto with GG#4 auto so should be a decent buzz. I have found Mazar to be very good medicine for my chronic depression/PTSD so looking forward to trying them out. One is in a 9L pot that I may up-pot to a 20L. These were sprouted first on June 7 and grown for a couple weeks in 3" pots as the weather was rainy and cold so are the biggest. The biggest one grew 2" in the last day and is now 18" tall. not sure if it's just rapid growth or it's stretching as it started flowering in the last week. All showed pre-flowers on the 7th of July so just a month after sprouting.

Three Dragon Tongue auto fems from Sebring Seeds. Another hi-CBD, no-THC strain.

Four Dragon Heart auto regulars also from Sebring. Supposedly a 2:1 - 1:1 CBD:THC strain. Already have a robust male covered in balls that needs to be put in a pot and moved inside to get pollen from and make a few seeds with his sisters and whoever else I feel like knocking up.

Made up a seed gift for a new grower recently and sent him 5 each of the Dragons and two others. I'm growing a few of those Sebrings Revenge Patch Adams ones inside atm. The previous version of them was nice and pretty good medicine made into cocobudder. Not autos tho.

The biggest Mazarilla is front left, 2nd is front right and the smallest of the 3 is in the pot. The ones up the middle are the Dragon Tongue but the front one isn't gonna make it. Just growing yellow like a serios iron deficiency but I fed it some chelated iron over a week ago an nothing changed. It was a replacement seed as some of the Dragons died after sprouting because of the f'n heat wave when I planted the sprouted seeds. Behind each of the Mazar are two Dragon Hearts with the male just to the right of the potted Mazar. Next year they all get started in 3" pots for a couple weeks before going into the garden. Will be a different spot where they can get more sun too.

This is the sickly Dragon Tongue girl. Zinc deficiency can look like low iron too so I'm thinking I'll dose it with some zinc citrate tomorrow and see if she improves. The first leaves are still green but those newer ones have been going more yellow spreading from the centre since they came out. Same soil, feed and water that all the rest are getting so it's got to be a bad seed.

Lastly for now is the Dragon Heart male. Balls a poppin' all over. I've been pinching off any that look ready to spew but that's a losing game so into a pot he goes tomorrow.

In case anyone was wondering the plot they're in is 8x8'.

L8r

 

[LabRat]

A whole month between updates! How time flies when you’re not having fun.

A lot has changed. The 3 Mazarilla are all doing well and looking like 3 more weeks for A & B with the C plant in the pot smaller, lighter green and small bud structure compared to the two in the ground that are budding up and building colas like real troopers.

MazA is 30" tall and really starting to get some phat colas. B is an inch shorter and almost A’s twin in structure and bud development. C is a different pheno for sure. Only 19" tall with very little bud development in comparison to her sisters but I tried some of the older pre-flowers in my pipe and got that Mazar grin right away where I’m not sure I’m feeling that from the other two. Must try each as the first toke of the day to get a cleaner feel for them.

MazA a few days ago at sunset with the flash.

Today in the sunshine. Building nice phat colas like her sister, the B plant which is very similar so will skip a pic of her for now.

And now the red-headed stepsister of the 3, the C girl. Getting nice purple colours and putting out plenty of sweet Mazar flavoured resin but very little bud compared to her big sisters. Almost no white hairs so looks like flower production has ground to a halt. I'll giver her another week or so to ripen up then may take her down. Trichs are mostly cloudy. Only 19" tall where her sisters are 30.

I chopped down the two Dragon Heart girls. Non-producers with tiny pre-flowers instead of buds. No new white hairs in over a week so down they went.

Does this look worth keeping?

Not in my eyes.

So now only 5 plants outside and the tallest Dragon Tongue may go soon too as it’s not much better than the Heart girls tho a lot bigger. The other Dragon Tongue is a squat bush with very little bud but very frosty leaves around the small clumps of flowers. I won't be growing any more Dragons.

My best CBD source seems to be the Earth Lover girl I first grew outside as an auto but it grew as a photo. The cutting I got from her is now flowering inside and I've been treating a branch with STS to get pollen. I had given up but last night found some 'nanners popping out on it. Some were already open and one I touched gave off a small cloud of pollen. She may already have self-pollinated a bit and has about 5 more weeks to finish so hopefully I'll find a some S1 seeds on her when I harvest. That branch is in some water and getting set up to collect some of that pollen. I have 2 clones rooted from her so either way I'll get my seeds eventually.

 

[William]

Cool someone else growing autos I'm in mt near the border

 

[LabRat]

Cool someone else growing autos I'm in mt near the border

Well it is an autoflower forum so some of us are growing autos.

What strain(s) have you got going down there? I'm way north of you in Alberta so autos are about the only thing that can finish up before the snow flies. I should have got into these 20 years ago but this is just my 2nd year trying outside after 2 decades of indoor growing up here tho grew my first buds in '78 then on and off over the years. Moved here in '01 with 6 hash plant clones and haven't missed a day without some pot growing in the house.

Thanks for dropping by for a peek!

 

[DCLXVI]

Neat grow! Looks like it's going decently. I was thinking you haven't got much outdoor time left being so far up there.

EDIT: Shoot, I forgot to ask... was the incident.... frost/freeze?

 

[LabRat]

Neat grow! Looks like it's going decently. I was thinking you haven't got much outdoor time left being so far up there.

EDIT: Shoot, I forgot to ask... was the incident.... frost/freeze?

We have had frost as early as Aug. 16 but that was years ago. Our autumn has been getting longer as global warming progresses it seems. The north and south has higher temp rise on average than the mid latitudes according to the climate science. We've been here 20 years as of last Feb and are getting a lot less snow that a decade ago for sure and less rain in the spring/summer too. We've had less than an inch of rain since the heat dome thing in June and that's really different tho it could just be an off year/statistical blip and we could be soggy all summer next year. We're almost at 56°N so fairly far north.

I figure the two bigger Mazarilla plants will be ready about mid Sept and the rest gone before then. My indoor flowering plants should be done about the same time so I'll be in trim jail for a good week and only 3 weeks to get it cured and in the cans before taking off to BC for 3 or 4 weeks to visit family. Fires should be mostly out by then so I can get thru to the Fraser Valley in time to get some salmon fishing in with my son.

The 'incident' was the wife plugging in a water heater unit for her chickens into the same circuit as the little heater for my plant and popping the breaker on the ground fault plug outside. Was -15C that night and snowing lightly so the leaves got some serious frostbite tho mostly came back to life once it warmed up during the day. Was a real PITA to keep having to cover her up with a thick blanket for the overnights and forecast to go down to -25 for a few days so I decided to start cropping her right away tho I think a couple more weeks would have been better. Very frosty colas with about half gone cloudy on the big colas. Still lots of fresh white hairs so she was putting out new flowers still. Her clone will get to finish properly then a sample will be sent off to a lab to find out just what she's made of. Fingers crossed for at least 15% CBD. Might pay extra to get the terpene profile as well. $60 for CBD/THC and the same to get the terps.