Too late in season for marijuana?

A question from a fellow grower:

I got some outdoor seeds from you and was wondering if they will produce bud this season or will I have to wait till next season.

Yes, you are good to start growing now if you want a good size plant. The plant won’t start to flower normally until late fall to winter outdoors as it needs a solid 12 hours of uninterrupted darkness to flower.

I started my White Widow outdoors on July 4th and the seedlings came up this past Monday. I have one outdoors in a large pot and two planted in my fields. I think they are getting on average 6-8 hours of sunlight per day. Is this enough sunlight for them to grow and harvest before winter gets here? September and October are pretty mild where I live. The temps can drop down to the 50’s at night in October.
Another question I have is how much on average does one White Widow grown outdoors produce? This is my first grow and I’m so excited about it. The only challenge is getting water to the plants. Luckily I can transport a few gallons at a time using the riding mower!

It isn’t so much how many hours of direct sunlight, although that will affect how fast they grow in volume, and can effect the outcome of the quality and density of the buds in the end. They will not flower, unless they are autoflower strains, until they get 12 hours of solid uninterrupted darkness, pretty much complete blackness, no more light than they might get from starlight. You will have to protect them from extreme cold during the winter months. But unless you are growing an autoflower strain outdoors, there is pretty much no getting around them flowering only in the late fall to winter months in the northern hemisphere. However you can look into covering them with big lightproof bags at the same time of day every day to simulate more darkness outdoors to get them to flower early.

W.W. has the capability to produce ±650 gr/m² or ±23 oz/ft². This likely will not happen on your first grow, it is very dependent on “grower’s talent” and the use of various pruning, “topping”, “super cropping”, FIMing, SOGing, ScrOGing and other cropping and training techniques.

Thanks for the tips on covering my plants later in the season. I live in southwestern VA and not sure when they will get 12 hours of darkness … need to check the almanac. I read all the info on topping, cropping, FIMing, training, etc. Since I walk my dogs in my fields everyday I have a good reason to be in the area and can check on them, especially later in the fall when the temps start to drop. Thanks for the info re autoflower strain. My WW-fem is not the autoflowering type. About how tall should they be before I start covering them at night?

I would train them to keep a manageable height and cover them when the temps get too low only, unless you are trying to trick them into flowering earlier with lightproof coverings. Most size and yeild stats are found on the seed’s web page in the “details” tab.

Thanks MacGyver … I read the seed page about yield and it was per 2 sq.meter. Since this is my first try growing, I’ll be happy with a couple of ounces per plant. There really is a BIG learning curve in growing your own! I checked the almanac and I will probably have to start covering them around the start of October. Will just wait and see what to do next as the weeks go by.

Yeah, there is a typo in the conversion, it should be more like ±650 gr/m² or ±23 oz/yard², not square foot, as a meter and a yard are closer to the same but even then it isn’t an exact conversion, but it isn’t exact in any situation anyway, just an estimate of upward averages. So more like maybe 6 to 7 oz, roughly in my head, per square foot.