We are not quite at the real start of the indoor part of the outdoor growing season, so let me take a bit of space to answer some questions about cannabis.
Where it has been legalized Outside, this plant has been hailed as the new tomato for home hobby gardeners. Lots of folks are trying to grow their own for the first time. Well, it is clear to me Alaska gardeners are no different.
The question I'm most frequently asked — and one which is important enough to keep me from writing about my favorite subject, invasive species, for one more week — is when to start seeds. This is an especially big question among first-time growers, of which there appear to be many this year.
The answer is not as simple as "start them x days before the last frost." Look in the books or on the internet and you will find vegetative cannabis plants will start to set flowers when day and night hours are at equal — at the equinox.
An Alaska garden is very cold from Sept. 21 on and plants don't do very well, even in a greenhouse, unless it is heated.
What this means is regardless of when you start cannabis plants, growing them outdoors is going to be problematic (but see below). You simply don't have enough time for flowers to fully develop. That can take three weeks or more.
Add to this that some cannabis strains can be harvested in as little as 2 1/2 months while others can take almost 5 months (the average is 3 to 4 months).
As the industry comes out of the shadows, information such as days to harvest will start to accompany cannabis seeds on the packet just like it does on our tomatoes. In the meantime, you can look up the strain on the internet. Cannabis growers are like Alaska gardeners; They share information readily.
[Chasing thunder: Searching for Alaska's most legendary cannabis strain]
So only if you have a greenhouse, with heat, do you have the luxury of counting backward from the equinox to determine when to start your cannabis seed. One exception is if you have a system whereby you can decrease the amount of light to 12 hours before Sept. 21. This can accomplished by placing black garbage bags over plants or covering the greenhouse on a daily basis.
Or you can use an indoor grow location, lights and a timer make this very easy. In Alaska, this is the way to go.
Another solution, if you want to grow cannabis outdoors, in Alaska, is to use "auto-flowering" or "day neutral" plants. These are specially bred varieties that don't care how long or short the days, only how many of them there are.
Auto-flower seeds develop into plants that are very fast growers and as such require the very best care from the start. This means you should only start them this time of year if you have adequate supplemental lights under which to start and grow them.
Otherwise, wait to start plants for growing outdoors. You will have to wait until the middle of April or better yet May to get adequate amounts of natural light for them to do well.
All cannabis benefits from the addition of the mycorrhizal fungi Rhizophagus irregularis (aka Glomus intraradices).
A second question involves clones.
Cannabis will root readily from cuttings, known in the cannabis world as "clones." You can often buy clones from dispensaries or take your own cuttings and root them.
If you plan on doing the latter, you are more dependent on the mother plant than on the time of year, when it comes to starting. The mother plant should be near flowering when clones are taken. In addition, these clones, once rooted in a week or two, will not flower, unless you provide them with light deprivation as noted above.
Finally, what kind of lights do I advise for growing cannabis? Again, the answer depends.
The best system seems be be a combination of light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, and high intensity discharge lights (HID) like high pressure sodium or metal halide. Either use these in combination or just employ the HID lights as the plants flower to get really big buds, as they say.
This is obviously an expensive setup with lots of moving parts. It is what a dispensary grow would use.
The home gardener can do very well with just an LED system. They are relatively cheap, last forever and require no maintenance. The only problem is they don't provide light over a huge area, so plenty are need for a commercial grow.
We home gardeners are limited to six plants here in Alaska, so a couple of LED fixtures or so (they usually measure 1-foot-by-1-foot) would do fine for six plants.
The lights available locally and are really easy to set up. Best of all, you can sneak a few other vegetables under them, too.
Your best source for information on growing cannabis is" "The Cannabis Encyclopedia: The Definitive Guide to Cultivation & Consumption of Medical Marijuana."
Jeff’s Alaska Garden Calendar
Alaska Botanical Garden annual meeting: 6:30-9 p.m. Wednesday, BP Energy Center, 900 E. Benson Blvd. Always fun. Always informative. Learn about the new greenhouse and other plans. Open to the public.
Celery, leeks: Last call to start. Hurry up.
Lights: You know the drill. If you want to start seeds indoors before April 1, you need them.