[HeatherChurch]

Hello, ICMag.

My name is Heather and I am a grower and dispensary owner in Portland, OR area. This is my first post on this, or any MJ forum, for that matter. I have been cultivating MJ for over a decade and have B.S. in Horticulture and spent a few years in the nursery business. But enough with introductions...

I see some very accomplished outdoor cultivators on this site and I'm very interested to hear if anybody has any experience cultivating outdoors in my general area? My situation is that I have recently been awarded a recreational cultivation license and I am allowed a nice bit of outdoor canopy. It's been quite some time since I cultivated seriously outdoor and that was always in a different region. I plan on using hoop houses with blackout curtains, as I worry about plants maturing this far north.

Does anybody have any input on when they place their plants outdoors in the northern Willamette Valley and when they initiate flowering with blackout curtains? I'd appreciate any input. I have quite a few vanities at my disposal and I know some will not finish properly outdoors here.

I will be try to a fairly active member of this forum and start a thread soon to document my outdoor growing season after I get soil tests taken care of for my property. The water tests came back great (yay!), but I did those prior to purchasing the property, obviously. We have lots of solar panels going in and, depending on the soil analysis and the feasibility of amending it this season, will be running fully organic (USDA). Otherwise, I usually mix my own fertilizer blends and that may be necessary this season. We'll see!

Thanks in advance for reading my long first post and for any advice at all. Also, please let me know if I'm making any newbie faux-pas! Other than not knowing how to pluralize faux-pas...

[1madtrapper]

At the 45 , you can do most strains I am at the 49 And I make it work with no cover .Cheers welcome

[kelly1376]

Sounds awesome. You'll probably get a lot of responses if you post this in the oregon forum under states. Quite a few folks post there regularly.

[HeatherChurch]

Originally Posted by 1madtrapper

At the 45 , you can do most strains I am at the 49 And I make it work with no cover .Cheers welcome

Thank you for responding. I should say my main concern isn't simply the latitude but the weather gets very wet in this area by October with the nights being quite cool.

[PDX Dopesmoker]

When to put your plants out depends on how the season is going, but somewhere around 4/20 or May Day seems to be pretty typical. If you want your plants to finish by September 30 or so the only way I know to do it is to have locally acclimatized genetics which start flowering in late July/early August and harvest on time. I've never done light deprivation, so I can't help you with that, but there are a number of varieties which are popular with local outdoor growers because they behave properly in our climate and don't need light dep (which seems like a lot of extra work).
I had some fantastic plants last season which I didn't like all that much because they didn't finish on time outdoor, so I had to take them inside for their last 3-4 weeks and they came out great (I won't grow them outdoor again, but its really primo smoke), so that might be another way to approach the outdoor grow (assuming you have a big enough indoor flowering area and some means to move your nearly mature plants when the weather turns to crap in October).
faux-pas is both the singular and plural form

[1madtrapper]

Sweet cheese , green poison, erdpurt, wolf island sativa, (Iranian auto/haze/og/g13/c99)
freezeland, maverick, almost any GG, Turkish delight, golden mighty bramble, Goldmine,ET all of these strains will finish at your local.

['Boogieman']

Originally Posted by HeatherChurch

Hello, ICMag.

My name is Heather and I am a grower and dispensary owner in Portland, OR area. This is my first post on this, or any MJ forum, for that matter. I have been cultivating MJ for over a decade and have B.S. in Horticulture and spent a few years in the nursery business. But enough with introductions...

I see some very accomplished outdoor cultivators on this site and I'm very interested to hear if anybody has any experience cultivating outdoors in my general area? My situation is that I have recently been awarded a recreational cultivation license and I am allowed a nice bit of outdoor canopy. It's been quite some time since I cultivated seriously outdoor and that was always in a different region. I plan on using hoop houses with blackout curtains, as I worry about plants maturing this far north.

Does anybody have any input on when they place their plants outdoors in the northern Willamette Valley and when they initiate flowering with blackout curtains? I'd appreciate any input. I have quite a few vanities at my disposal and I know some will not finish properly outdoors here.

I will be try to a fairly active member of this forum and start a thread soon to document my outdoor growing season after I get soil tests taken care of for my property. The water tests came back great (yay!), but I did those prior to purchasing the property, obviously. We have lots of solar panels going in and, depending on the soil analysis and the feasibility of amending it this season, will be running fully organic (USDA). Otherwise, I usually mix my own fertilizer blends and that may be necessary this season. We'll see!

Thanks in advance for reading my long first post and for any advice at all. Also, please let me know if I'm making any newbie faux-pas! Other than not knowing how to pluralize faux-pas...

I'm at 43°N in the Midwest, you have very similar conditions as I do. I start my plants indoors mid April and take them outdoors late May/June 1st. You don't want to set mature plants/clones out to early or they could bud too soon, then reveg which screws everything up.

[MJPassion]

Oregon Forum
https://www.icmag.com/ic/forumdisplay.php?f=65660

Good luck with your grow. I hope you can produce some super high quality buds for your market.

I haven't had a garden as nice since I left Beaverton.
You've got some wonderful natural volcanic soil.

[HeatherChurch]

Originally Posted by PDX Dopesmoker

When to put your plants out depends on how the season is going, but somewhere around 4/20 or May Day seems to be pretty typical. If you want your plants to finish by September 30 or so the only way I know to do it is to have locally acclimatized genetics which start flowering in late July/early August and harvest on time. I've never done light deprivation, so I can't help you with that, but there are a number of varieties which are popular with local outdoor growers because they behave properly in our climate and don't need light dep (which seems like a lot of extra work).
I had some fantastic plants last season which I didn't like all that much because they didn't finish on time outdoor, so I had to take them inside for their last 3-4 weeks and they came out great (I won't grow them outdoor again, but its really primo smoke), so that might be another way to approach the outdoor grow (assuming you have a big enough indoor flowering area and some means to move your nearly mature plants when the weather turns to crap in October).
faux-pas is both the singular and plural form

Thanks for the reply. I will be growing in 500yd mounds so there is no chance of moving them. I would consider anything less than 5lbs per plant a disappointment. We are building automatic blackout screens into our year-round greenhouses so it's no trouble.

[HeatherChurch]

PDX Dopesmoker, would you name a few if the varieties you're familiar with?