Here’s how to make sure you have a great finish to your outdoor marijuana season. © Copyright, Steve Davis, 2015Outdoor marijuana season is in its final and most important phase in most parts of North America.
The BigBudsMag.com team extends its sympathy to outdoor marijuana growers in Northern California, especially Lake County, where wildfires have consumed thousands of marijuana plants and dozens of indoor grow ops… along with homes, businesses, and other valuable property.
It’s a terrible disaster.
California Governor Jerry Brown says drought and fires are “the new normal” for California.
For most North American marijuana growers, harvest is within a few weeks (by the end of October and the first week or two of November).
No matter when the exact harvest date is, here are some crucial tactics to use to ensure that your outdoor marijuana season ends successfully…
Be Ready to Harvest Fast and Secretly: Insects, rippers, drought, rain, wind, hail, fire, snow, hunters, deer, mold, mildew, police copters…all can come in a heartbeat.
You want to have a van with no windows or a covered truck bed with no windows, preferably 4-wheel drive, gassed up and ready to go to your remote grow site in a hurry.
Camp Near Your Outdoor Marijuana Grow Site: You don’t want to camp in the garden, but you want to camp near enough to it to see if anyone is getting near it or has been in it.
Camp near your outdoor marijuana grow site during the last 1-3 weeks before harvest.
Have some fishing, hunting, or photography gear so you can have a cover story as to why you’re there.
Camping near your outdoor marijuana crop is risky, but some of us have to do it to protect our crops after a season of hard work and worry.
Monitor Your Resin Glands to Determine Harvest Time: If you have the luxury of harvesting when the time is exactly right for peak THC potency, your outdoor marijuana plants’ resin glands are your ticket to harvest time.
Have a Perfect Drying & Curing Room: The ideal drying and curing room is 74-76 degrees Fahrenheit with 55% relative humidity.
It has clean/filtered air and is totally absent of contaminants, spores, molds, diseases, pests.
It should have lots of exhaust fans and aeration fans.
It should be dark, except for when you need lights on for trimming and monitoring.
You want to have hooks or other apparatus to hang whole outdoor marijuana plants.
You also want drying racks for drying branches and trimmed buds.
If your outdoor marijuana buds are wet or there’s any pathogen threat or very high humidity in the outside world, you dial down your dehumidifiers and climate control for lower humidity temporarily until the dampness is evaporated.
Wash Your Buds: If you’re worried about bugs, powdery mildew, gray mold, dust, dirt, or other contaminants, you can gently water-wash your buds in big tubs of slightly lukewarm reverse osmosis water.
Shake them to remove as much excess water as possible.
This only works well if you have a humidity-controlled drying and curing space.
Security: Remember that police and rippers are looking for you and your outdoor marijuana before and after harvest.
They know when you’ll be cutting your outdoor cannabis, and they know what roads you’ll use to transport your fresh buds.
You have to outthink these clowns. Always package freshly harvested buds in stealth containers so you have odor and visual control.
Disguise Your Bud Containers. Make the containers look like sealed boxes of large appliances. Or garbage cans. Anything that hides the fact that you’re transporting plant materials.
It goes without saying your vehicle must have zero safety and equipment violations.
Drive in compliance with all traffic laws.
Your vehicle should look like you’re a plumber, electrician, tourist, etc.
In other words, don’t be driving a hippie van or a battered truck with pot leaf bumper stickers when you’re transporting outdoor marijuana!
If you’re driving late at night on back roads in a zone where lots of marijuana is grown, be aware the police are going to be waiting for you.
I prefer to cut my plants in the middle of the night, package them, put them in my vehicle, and wait off-road until 8 am or later to transport them.
Be Prepared to Harvest Early: Better to get something from your outdoor marijuana season instead of nothing.
If you have reasonable suspicion that bad weather, rippers, police, gray mold, or any other threats are coming to your outdoor marijuana garden area, and if you’re within 1-3 weeks of harvest, consider harvesting early.
Your buds won’t be as potent or as large, but they’ll have plenty of THC and other cannabinoids.
When I have to harvest early, and in situations when I have damaged buds, I use those buds to make cannabis concentrates.
Feed Your Outdoor Marijuana to Boost Yields, Then Flush: In the last 4-6 weeks before harvest, I use Nirvana, Overdrive, and Bud Candy.
These additives give you larger buds and more potency.
Then in the last week before harvest, I discontinue all feeding, and give a flushing formula called Flawless Finish that purges your buds to make them cleaner, sweeter, and easier to light and enjoy.
Outdoor marijuana growing is relatively easy if you’re growing outdoors in your back yard or another nearby controlled space.
This article is mainly meant for outdoor marijuana guerrilla growers, but some of the advice is useful for all marijuana growers.
We here at BigBudsMag.com hope you harvest many pounds per plant of sticky, strong outdoor marijuana this season and every season!
