The Cannabis Growing Season – Southern California

MichaelCannabis, Growing at Home, Growing Cannabis Outdoors, Harvest, How to Grow Weed Outside, Marijuana, Marijuana resources24 Comments

Best Time to Grow

“When is the cannabis growing season?”  Today, growers can grow indoors, outdoors, greenhouse, light deprivation, auto-flower, etc.  These methods allow for cannabis to be grown and flowered at anytime of the year. So when EXACTLY can I grow plants outdoors?

The Southern California Cannabis Growing Season Calendar

The Southern California cannabis growing season:

Cannabis Growing Season Calendar

 

Anytime of the year, you can take advantage of the Gas Lantern Routine and increase your plant size before flowering. Most Southern California growers harvest between September and October with most strains.  June 20 is summer solstice and is the longest day of the year. In Southern California, you can expect around 14h 18min of daylight on this day. Early flowers generally appear in late July. On September 25th, daylight reaches 12 hours. At this point, your plant should be well into flower.

Every Cannabis Plant is a Little Different

Most varieties available on the market come from a select few landraces.  These landraces have centuries of growing experience in their respective climate.  Hybrids and indica’s generally have shorter harvest times, landrace sativas like our Colombian Gold originate from a very different climate.  Harvest for Landrace sativas is much later in the year between December and February in Southern California.

The Cannabis Plant Flowering Trigger

In nature, cannabis strains are naturally trained to grow in their respective climate zones.  For growing indoors, we are taught to grow something like – 18/12 for veg – 12/12 for flower. With a 12/12 light cycle, cannabis usually takes 5 to 7 days to be triggered into flowering and an additional 5 to 7 weeks until harvest.  This is why consistent darkness is important to maintain this trigger.

Concurrently, while growing outdoors, if light hours outside does not reach the 12/12 schedule until September 25th, how does it flower?  Well, outdoors the trigger naturally takes longer, for most plants it’s something like 3-6 weeks depending on the strain.  Cannabis has to take into account the gradual decline of daylight over this period.

The SoCal Growing Season Hack

Southern California offers an incredible advantage to most climates in the U.S. and the world.  The climate here hovers around 60-90s in the days and 40-60s at night, year round.  Well hardened plants can easily survive these temperatures, even the 30s and the 100s for a short period of time. The suggested gas lantern routine for growing larger plants for a larger harvest is anytime during February to November.  If you do not use the Gas Lantern Routine, you can put a plant outside anytime from Mid-June to Mid January.  A maximized growing plan in Southern California can yield 3 harvest from June-March with no supplemental lighting.   The larger the plant after summer solstice, the better.

Other Growing Tips and Tricks

You don’t need much to have a successful outdoor grow. Here is a simple checklist I created with products I use regularly. I would describe this list as the short list because it is pretty basic, but it definitely will set you up for success.

Feeding plants is a key ingredient, literally.  Check out our blog about compost teas.
I talked a lot about the Gas Lantern Routine, read more on the blog.  Learn how you can save energy and vegetate plants anywhere year round.
Growing organic has a lot of talk going around right now, learn what we use in our garden.

Reference a sunrise and sunset calendar here.

 

24 Comments on “The Cannabis Growing Season – Southern California”

  1. Hey Michael,

    You have a lot of good points about the various conditions needed to trigger flowering. Do you have indoor growing experience?

    I would love feedback on a cannabis grow monitor ( http://getpulse.co ) that I’ve built. Are there any essential parameters that we should be tracking besides Light, Temp, Humidity and VPD?

  2. Hi Great post,
    But you didn’t actually explain how you get the three harvests. Growing outdoors for first time and live in socal. Once october hits and you harvest, how keep the plant in a state to grow more buds and harvest again??

    Please let me know
    Brendan

  3. After you harvest in October, you can start another grow immediately. Remove your old plants and insert new ones. Your new plants will start to flower almost immediately so the bigger the better.

  4. I started vegging Nov 1st. When is the latest I can harvest outdoor?

    I fear is that plant will go into flowering stage then gets 18/6 sun to night hours that will cause the plant to revert back to vegging stage.

  5. I used neem and bt last year and it was fine, but in the back of mind I questioned if there was any chance of toxcicity when smoking?

    Thanks

    1. Hi Bill,
      I would avoid spraying your plants 2 to 3 weeks before harvest to be safe… though Neem Oil and BT break down very easily. Learn more about Neem oil here. Learn more about BT here. Hope this helps! If you have any other questions, LMK.

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  10. This is a great help! I am in mild Los Angeles, just harvested a Purple Punch I grew outdoors from a store-bought clone.
    Now I’m ready to try again, following a better plan.

    If I will plant a 8″ rockwool clone into a 30Gal pot outdoors, and it’s now late October, what advice can you give me? Sativa preferred? Does this matter? Many thanks!

    1. Where kin I buy a gas lantern? I do use 100 LED as supplementary during cold or cloud-cover times……DON’T use neem for bugs, but, Bronner’s soap as microbes already challenged by cold or wetness…also recommend the milk formula as propylaxis to any mold bout 2-3 week flower…..yield bout 50% of summer, but just as flavorful with more color….if this harvest successful, jus wrap Xmas ornament light round them on timer for 18 hrs, and reveg em in spring for monster summer crop! Threw native pea to ameliorate and replenish soil to success!

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  14. if trained a clone from 24 hour light downto 16 0r 17 over 2 months i i put them out may first and they vegged then i started seeing pre flower the plants are in 40 gal happy frog soil and are close 2 two feet tall and i cant put my arms around them then they stunted as of the last week and half but there caged and topped to maximize bud sites i bend my branches down to exspose the inner shoots i top every 6 set of leaves i wrap cage around small when young now i put one cage almost as big as the 40 gal pot and keep training branches to not cover other budsites and as they get bigger i wrap cage again but my delima i knew better i wish i had read your article before i put plants out i thought to put out may cuz i see seed fem germanated april first and by may put out side and massive so my plants are pre flower can i cut the
    pre buds off and will they re vedge ?so they have soft light 5 am dierect light at 10am till 645 to7pm then its dark at 9 so anyways it lokks like they got 2to3 weeks flowering i had pinched all of them half off so it could send out new shoots but there still kinda budding so i put string drop lights and for 3 days now i have the light on when its still a bit of light then by 9 its dark and im giving them a extra hour of light i think ill do that for a another week or two im praying they come out of it becouse there stunning genetics from darkheart nursery .all gas og ..aka humboldt og x venom og .. alien og . and knights templar og the templars are the only ones that barley triggered and are vegging .also have 2 707 lime and lemon og .ive been trying to find lime og kush the real cut over 12 years now every year i search every seed bank but this year i found a few new lime and bubba kush which sounds good anyways i dont know if you even reoly to these but if you have any ide if you think ill still turn out or should i just re plant ? the sad part is there pretty big and suber branched out .anyways if you can help with any info id be grateful .james

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