Growing Cannabis Outside in Alberta

When it comes to grow anything in Alberta , it could be challenging due to a weather conditions. Customers ask me questions like when is the best time to plant, what is the best soil to use, is there special kind of cannabis to plant outside?

Planting Your Plant

First you need to know that as a rule of thumb, the best time to plant your plants outside in Alberta would be on a last long weekend of May. Start training your plants to adapt for outside conditions around two weeks prior planting. You do not need specific outside strain, any cannabis plants could be trained to be planted outside. The challenge in Calgary is a weather conditions. Because of the hail or snow Calgary has during the summer, it would be advisable to plant your cannabis plant in a bigger size pot or build some kind of a structure to cover the plants from the hail. If you decided to plant your plants in the pots, the ideal size would be 7 Gallon. This size of a pot would provide enough space for your plant to root and also you can bring it inside if the weather turns for the worse. There are different kinds of soil available on the market and any wouldn't work with your plant. Try to stay away from using 100% coco mix because it will get dry out faster and you will end up watering 1-2 times a day:)) The best ratio would be to use 80% ProMix or Sunshine dirt(which has perlite in it for a better porosity) with 20% of coco.

Now, very important fact!!! In Alberta, the summer is very short and the time change 12/12 does not happened till mid-end of September, the exact day for 2020 is September 24th (see link bellow). What does that mean? For the cannabis plant to start flowering, the light schedule must be 12/12. Well it would be too late for your plant to go into flowering in mid-end of September because it will need another 8-14 weeks to complete the cycle. So you need to trick your plant into flowering. This can be achieved in two ways. If your plant is growing outside in the pot, you can start bringing it inside and place it in a complete dark room for 12 hours and take it out during the day for 12 hours. You need to do it for a few days to trigger plant into flowering. Once your plant start flowering, it will continue to the end. Now, if your plant is growing outside in the garden, then you will need to use additives to trigger flowering. Choose the day from which you start adding flowering agents so the plant will have enough time to finish flowering 8-12 weeks depending on the strain. We started 2nd week of August to be finished cycle mid of October.

Feeding Schedule

If you decided to go with planting your cannabis plant in the garden directly into the soil, you would use way less fertilizers. You can use light dosage of Grow and Micro once a week during your vegetative period and add Bloom and Terpine enhancer during the flowering stage. 

If you doing flower triggering, then on the last week of vegging give them Bud Ignitor and spray with Cycocel (see note bellow). Then, on the first week of flowering, feed them with Bud Ignitor +whatever food you are using. The second week of flowering, spray Cycocel again. You also can increase your Bloom fertilizer here and there to promote faster blooming. That should do to trigger your plants into flowering :))

https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/canada/calgary?month=9  

*Cycocel is widely used by green houses: however, Health Canada does not allow to use Cycocel on cannabis.