The Outdoor Cannabis Calendar: Presenting At The Stratford Hort ...

Stratford, Ontario, is a fantastic place to be a gardener.

The city’s status as a recent Grand Champion of the national Communities in Bloom competition is well deserved.

From its beautiful municipal parks and landscaping to its popular community vegetable gardens, to the many garden centres and tours it hosts… if you dig plants, Stratford is where it’s at.

The people of Stratford have been digging plants for a long time… the Stratford and District Horticultural Society (aka the “Hort Society”) has been bringing together our area’s gardeners for over 140 years!

After 142 years of Annual General Meetings, the Hort Society’s 2020 AGM (which took place on January 27) was most definitely the first to offer education on Stratford’s new favourite plant: Cannabis.

And who better to provide tips and techniques for Stratfordites looking to grow cannabis in their gardens than GreenSeal’s very own Master Grower Chad Morphy (who himself was recently honoured as Canada’s Top Grower by Grow Opportunity magazine)?

Chad was accompanied by Steve Stacey, GreenSeal’s Business & Production Coordinator (who you might recognize from our previous post on the Stratford Chefs School’s Cooking with Cannabis classes).

Chad and Steve started their presentation off with some important basic principles all gardeners should know when growing cannabis.

Photoperiods: Cannabis is a photoperiodic plant which means its flowering is usually triggered by the regular interruption of its light cycle for 12 or more hours.

Choosing the right strain: Home growers should choose feminized seeds, and Indica strains are more compatible with Canada’s outdoor growing conditions than tropical Sativa cultivars.

They also talked about the relatively new phenomenon of autoflowering cannabis and the fascinating origin story of this new class of cannabis strains:

They covered the basics for watering and irrigation (tip: when you’re growing in pots, let them dry out completely before you soak them again to prevent harmful anaerobic microbes from forming. You can tell they’re completely dry when you lift them and they’re light).

Chad then broke down the ABCs of NPK (Nitrogen-Phosphorous-Potassium, the main macronutrients in plant fertilizers) and explained the importance of the micronutrients calcium and magnesium for growing exceptional cannabis.

Steve offered some advice on security for backyard plants (Wifi video cameras are widely available, and well-built trellises can play a dual role in supporting your plants while also making them harder to steal).

The final general principle was focused on properly drying and curing harvested cannabis (which should promote the slow release of moisture over time to preserve cannabinoids and terpenes).

Once these basic principles were covered, Chad and Steve walked the audience through their “Cannabis Calendar,” a month-by-month breakdown of all the tasks for growing next-level outdoor cannabis at home.

We’ve reprinted it below (bookmark this page for handy quick reference) or you can view a PDF of Chad & Steve’s full original PowerPoint presentation here (ages 19+ only).