Outdoor Growing Basics Part 1: Location and Climate

Choosing a location carefully is important for outdoor growing.

Outdoor growing is the simplest and most productive way to grow your own cannabis. It is also the cheapest. Depending on how much you paid for your seeds or clones, and fertilizers, outdoor growing is almost free.

When planning an outdoor marijuana garden, one of the first things you need to know is how much daylight the plants will receive.

Marijuana needs at least 10 hours of daylight each day to produce well. There is an excellent Daylight Hours Explorer that can give you the details of the changes in daylight hours throughout the season based on your latitude (distance from the equator). 

Marijuana will begin flowering outdoors once the daylight hours begin to reduce, whether it is reducing from 13 hours of daylight or 18 hours. Regardless of the amount of daylight hours, marijuana plants require at least 4 hours of direct sunlight each day to provide rapid, healthy growth.

Climate is also an important factor to consider, though marijuana can grow in almost any environment as long as it remains watered and temperatures remain above freezing.

Seeds or clones can be started indoors in colder regions, where the temperature remains above freezing for only a short time. Starting seeds or clones indoors also gives the plants a head start, allowing them to grow larger than if planted outdoors after the last frost. The climate also plays a role in the location of the garden. In hotter climates, it is good to have some shade in the midday heat. In cooler climates this is not necessary.

Average humidity also has a large impact on the plants outdoors. In dry regions, plants will need to be watered more often, and fertilized with a lower concentration fertilizer. In humid climates, care must be taken to regularly check for mold problems.

If you live in an area with high winds, make sure you protect your plants with windbreaks, which can be a fence, a trellis or other plants such as bushes. High winds will dry out your plants the same way low humidity does. In a climate which is bone-dry and has high winds, water very often to avoid wilting and slow growth.

Plants should be protected from view, even if the garden is legal. Even for those of us who can legally grow marijuana, it is important not to make your garden common knowledge. As long as marijuana remains listed as a Schedule I drug in our federal government’s eyes, no one is truly safe from prosecution. Thieves are another concern for growers everywhere.

There are several steps you can take for your garden to avoid detection. Plants can be grown smaller (planted later) or simply trained (branches bent down and out) to remain out of sight. Several other plants can be grown nearby to camouflage the marijuana. Flowers are particularly useful as they can help mask the smell, which becomes incredibly potent (depending on the strain you choose) as the plants approach maturity.

We always welcome feedback from everyone with experience, so please describe your favorite outdoor growing locations, as well as tips for dealing with your local climate and keeping the garden out of sight.