I am planning on letting my plant grow to its maximum height which I understand to be between 8-11 ft. Is that really the typical height?
Is there an age of the plant at which it is safe to expose it to living outdoors in Florida for the winter?
Not really any size or age per say, Florida tends to be tropical and sativas and indicas are often grown in tropical areas. If it is not grown from seed outdoors or is a more sensitive strain you just need to acclimate it kinda slowly to the outdoors. Maximum height is kinda dependent on the strain, sativas get taller than indicas but a whole lot has to do with how you train it.
Is there a reason you want to grow it to its tallest?
It will not necessarily give you a higher yield. It may break and or fall over easier. Training the plant to a manageable size with numerous shorter tops will often increase your yield the most. Techniques like topping, FIMing, low stress training, trellising(screen of green) and supercroping are among the most popular outdoor techniques to maximize your yeild.
The reason for my interest in growing a “tall” is not based on any logic or facts. Instead, my “dream” is to have a “pot tree” that produces enough product for my family of 4 adult smokers.
The image I have is of a tree that provides enough for my needs and eventually have enough that I can give away samples to a few close friends.
So far “Frank” who I asked about 2 months ago, is growing well, outside in a large container and no longer has any bugs thanks to the website advice. I also discovered thanks to the growers bible manual that frank was actually “Frankie” a girl plant. The thought is to bring her in this winter but by next spring plant her in my woods to grow into my “pot tree.”
Marijuana/Cannabis is an annual plant, grown outdoors and flowering to its full ripeness, the plant dies shortly thereafter. I’m not sure how successful an outdoor “re-veg” would be. To bring a plant back from its natural life-cycle of “seedling/clone, to fast growing bush/large plant(veg cycle), to flowering and eventually to death”, you need enough healthy underdeveloped undergrowth left after harvesting the “tops” and the remaining plant needs to be put back into a say 18 hours of light cycle to get it to start growing new branches that will lead to new flowers. As you can imagine it would be hard to do this out doors, maybe you can with a lot of high-power spotlights, but sorry, in general you can’t grow marijuana like a fruit tree and just wander out and pluck a nugget or bud to smoke once in awhile. Growing a huge plant outdoors will mean more of a one time huge crop that you can then cure, store and use slowly over time, that and the fact that there is no substitute for the real sun are the only reason to grow huge cannabis plants outdoors.
Although; I have always been envious of my West coast friends that grow trees…I agree with MacG; You would probably have a better experience topping, but I like that all growers; New and Old, have a personal choice as to their personal grow techniques; So; Go for it; If that is your “Dream”. I will be glad to watch and help out if necessary, as will all of us here @ILGM.
MacGyver Stoner has a lot of good points. Peace 
OK it’s disappointing that I can’t grow a Pot Tree. But the question then arises, with all the hybridization that goes on the obvious question is why hasn’t someone cross bred a fruit tree with pot, I have to assume that they are incompatible?
We have been awawaiting your discovery. LOL
I am sure you can graft a cutting from a pot plant to someplant; Just donot think it would be viable in the long run, Just peculating.
I am just an old pot head that has a nice couple of plants growing, so I do not have a “skills”. But, it just seems to my ignorant mind that so much time is “wasted” in the process of germinating and then growing a plant, someone by now would of tried grafting a plant to keep it alive?
Even if you graft it, the tree you graft it onto will continue to live but the cannabis flower you graft will still die after it has served its purpose and ripened, grafting doesn’t change the genetic makeup of the flower that was put on the tree, the flower still has the genetic programming that tells it to ripen and then to stop functioning, kinda assuming it needs to die and dry to release any seeds that may have been produced. All that will be left is the fruit tree’s branch and next year or the next fruiting of the tree will only be what ever the tree is and not a new cannabis flower/fruit/nugget.
If it was possible to speed up harvest in such a fashion it surely would have been discovered by now. It is a nice thought but it is just not realistically possible. I guess it’s like heart or liver transplants from animals to humans, it can be done, and the organ will work and keep the patient alive a while, but the organ s still a pig’s liver or a baboon’s heart, it doesn’t change o be more like a human just because it is grafted into a human body.
Your best bet would be a a rotating harvest/grow, known as a continual harvest or perpetual harvest grow room. The idea is as one plant is growing from seed or clone in a smaller room, a bigger one is finishing/ripening in the “flowering” room. So as soon as it is ripe and cut down, you have a large plant from the smaller room ready to be moved to the bigger flowering room. In this fashion you can harvest every couple to few weeks continuously, even with very few and kinda small plants.
MacG…I love your post; There are very few people I enjoy reading. You are one of the few! 
Thanks
Definitely a perpetual grow is the most effieicient method of continual production.
Seeds
Seedlings
Veg a month
Blone rooting
veg clones
sex clones
take cuttings
root clones
veg 2-3 weeks
flower clones
harvest massive yield
Soory about the perpetual rant!
OK, it ,makes sense that grafting it would not solve the issue. But, maybe I don’t want to give up the dream just yet!
I get it how unrealistic my idea is, and how easy it is for some to be professional growers. I am just an old pot head with a dream, but with all the work in hybridization, I have to assume that someone has tried this, somewhere?
Meantime, the beauty of a dream is it doesn’t have to be real. Thanks everyone for your opinions and knowledge sharing.
I don’t think it is that hard to set up a perpetual grow.
One thing to keep in mind, no matter the plant species, pretty much all plants provide their fruit or are harvested seasonally. It is actually a good thing that cannabis is a fast growing weed and not a tree, because many fruit trees have to be 3 or 4 years old before they will bear their first fruit and even then many fruit trees may only bear fruit every other year and not every year at the right season.
Taking cuttings from your currently growing plants to make small clones is not as difficult as one might think and we are here to help you get a garden up and running that will suit you and your families needs. Building a room that can control the light isn’t as hard or expensive as one might think either. I’m sure with just a little effort you could find a type of gardening technique that will work for you.
Oh yeah, do check out the autoflowering strains. They might suit you very well, that way you can have your plants flower out doors even in the summer, where with other strains there would be too much sunlight daily to get them to flower. Autoflower strains pretty much need to be grown from seed to harvest without being able to take clones, but it is ideal for summer grows or even indoors if someone didn’t want to have a timer or build a closet to block light. But you still do need lots of intense light to grow any cannabis plant healthy and especially for autoflowering strains.
If you are looking for a simple grow where you don’t really need to learn about light cycles or taking cuttings and maintaining clones, then the autoflower strains are exactly what you want. They only grow to around three feet tall though, but they are squat and bushy and can produce a really nice yeild and they will grow from seed to finish in about 3 to 4 months, so just by developing a simple schedule where you start a new seed every month, with only about 4 plants at any one time, you’d have a plant being harvested each month for your own perpetual grow.