Greenhouse growing in the Pacific NorthWest

HHHG

Well-known member
I'm moving to the PNW next year and was wondering what is the latest month I can start flowering outside, or better yet, what is the last month a plant can be in flowering?
 
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Hi
I Know Of An Excellent Article Submitted In A Cannabis Culture Magazine Where A Grower In The Vancouver Area Grew Year Round Outdoors Using Greenhouse.
Its Circa 1996-97 , If Memory Serves Me Well. Enter " Growing Year Round In Vancouver , By Vansterdam ";)
I'll Try Find It Before You Do,lol . Have You Read My Signature Link ( 13 Thoughts ) ?
JKP
 
I would think as long as your greenhouse is warm enough you can veg plants and stick them out to bloom all winter until the days get long again. I would think even 8 hours a day of real sun in a greenhouse is better than 12 under an hps yield wise and quality. Good luck brother.
 
Greenhouse photoperiod

I say you will need some lighting to veg plants from about September till April and this doesn't mean HPS it can be smaller cfls or anything that is enough to break up the long nights. The lights need to run about 2 hours in the night to reduce length of consecutive darkness Especially since the NW is extra rainy in the winter , plants won't veg in a greenhouse without lights when they would be flowering outside. Greenhouse is like outdoors as far as photoperiod.

So basically you need to plan on scheduling like you would for outdoor, unless you plan on doing blackcloth to initiate flowering early or lighting to veg. You would see a big difference in quality with something flowered in Dec/Jan compared with what flowers in sept/oct because of differences in light intensity and photoperiod.
 
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Thanks for the replies

The vegging will be done indoors with LED panels.
 
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Speaking of LED

I plan to replace my HPS with something like this for indoor flowering...
504W Vertical LED Grow Light | High Output 1W LED Grow Lights

I have been using 2 of their 126w panels for vegging and flowering for a couple years and have been very happy with the results and have never had any problems with the panels. My estimate is that each panel provides the equivalent of 250w HPS.
 
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Using LEDs could extand as far as photoperiod ? I would like to try grow indoor when in winter.
 
Nw grow seasons

Hey, I'm located in Seattle area and I grow indoors and out up here. Colorado said it very well, it's just to wet up here to really kick out top shelf if you push to early with light dep. i run a 24'x48' and a 10x36 hoop, I prefer a April start, and rather than try for 2 runs, I veg em bigger, flip em July 4th or so, light dep them and I usually can see between 4-6lbs a plant..
But as colo said the light dep makes the difference, a later 'natural' finish gets you much more popcorn buds, less 'even' plant finishing, and less trichrome production than the hotter earlier sun. Not to mention more chance of crop loss due to molds with 'wet season' finish. I scrog my outdoors essentially, having 2-4 layers of trellis netting installed as they grow, it helps control height and gives the weight somewhere to lay without snapping all the branches.
I run 4' single lamp t-5 fixtures above each plant in hoop, on timer until the days are long enough for mama nature to take over and keep them in cycle, but this does not translate to much of a power load.. These are just to maintain cycle, while being very narrow and not blocking natural sunlight.
Anyway, I've seen much medicine lost to mold up here, bring a hoophouse when ya come if you want certainty! Lol:
 
Hhhg if your just doing a standard outdoor no hoop I'd look at first part of June, end of may.
With cold temps and humidity and lack of sun, hard pressed to run em year round without incurring to much cost. Plus I'm a dad, I like to be able to take a break after harvest. And the cancer collective keeps me hopping.
 
I have 4 UFO 90 watt LEDs, I tried running them in the hoop for veg, but that brilliant purple looking light makes the hoophouse look like a tube that could be seen from mars. My LEDs are relegated to power outages, excellent for keeping plants in veg mode while I have to run generators and need to shut down a few 1k lamps ect
 
Thanks for the advise guys. I've been here for about 6 months. The weather couldn't be more opposite of what I grew up with on the Gulf coast. Even though you can't feel humidity like in the South, it is definitely high, at least during the rainy months. I had a box of fertilizer in the garage that turned rock hard in just a few weeks. Because of humidity, temps, security, etc I am going to stick to indoor growing for the moment.
 
Plans coming together

I'm going to convert my covered patio into a greenhouse. It has 12' white corrugated panels so I just have to replace them with clear and wrap clear plastic around the 2 sides. ANYONE KNOW WHERE TO GET CLEAR CORRUGATED PANELS FOR LESS THAN $30 EACH? There will be an exhaust fan and carbon filter too.

Because of the short dry season here I need a fast flowerer. Most of the plants will be used to make RSO so I need maximum yield too. Shanti recommended Critical Mass for quickness and it happens to be the biggest yielder so it's a no-brainer.


 
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I'm going to convert my covered patio into a greenhouse. It has 12' white corrugated panels so I just have to replace them with clear and wrap clear plastic around the 2 sides. ANYONE KNOW WHERE TO GET CLEAR CORRUGATED PANELS FOR LESS THAN $30 EACH? There will be an exhaust fan and carbon filter too.

Because of the short dry season here I need a fast flowerer. Most of the plants will be used to make RSO so I need maximum yield too. Shanti recommended Critical Mass for quickness and it happens to be the biggest yielder so it's a no-brainer.



Hi HHHG,
I wasn't aware of your move, until now.
I hope you get to love it up there. It sounds like a change for you.
I think you will have bigger and better results on the converted patio.
Will you be doing any light dep?
You will still need to watch the height.
Two years back when I first came to the forum I was having mold problems outdoors about two weeks before harvest. I pm'ed Shanti to get a strain recommendation . He said CM would be a good choice.
My experience with the rot(mold), it always hits the biggest cola , and the fattest section of that cola first. (about 1/3 of the way down).
I was hesitant about the CM because of the large size. But the last two years of experimenting with spray solutions I think I have the mold beat. At least under control!
You might think about proactive mold control. The ventilation is a must,for sure.
Best regards,(and best of luck)
Charmilles
 
Hi HHHG,
I wasn't aware of your move, until now.
I hope you get to love it up there. It sounds like a change for you.
I think you will have bigger and better results on the converted patio.
Will you be doing any light dep?
You will still need to watch the height.
Two years back when I first came to the forum I was having mold problems outdoors about two weeks before harvest. I pm'ed Shanti to get a strain recommendation . He said CM would be a good choice.
My experience with the rot(mold), it always hits the biggest cola , and the fattest section of that cola first. (about 1/3 of the way down).
I was hesitant about the CM because of the large size. But the last two years of experimenting with spray solutions I think I have the mold beat. At least under control!
You might think about proactive mold control. The ventilation is a must,for sure.
Best regards,(and best of luck)
Charmilles

I have a list a daylight hours for each day next spring/summer. I guess I'll have to bag/light deprive the plants at some point. I don't have that figured out yet. Even though the patio won't get as much light as a greenhouse and doesn't have a side open to the South, I hope to get more yield than I get indoors with a couple thousand watts. The plants will be topped/trained/mainlined to keep them from getting too tall.

Any advice on how large a pot I should use for flowering outdoors in soil?
 
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Hi HHHG,

If you can go at least 20 Litre pots, but as you mention you need to restrict the size of your plants so maybe 10L pots would be more ideal. I wouldn't go smaller than 10L.

I use the following site to help calculate daylight/night hours, maybe you and other MNS members will find it helpful...

Daylight calculator (number of daylight hours, with sunrise and sunset)

Happy gardening

Thanks BenPlantin. I have a plant limit so I need to grow the biggest plants I can outdoors (greenhouse). 20 Liters (5 Gal) is pretty small. I just don't want to go larger than necessary.
 
I'm still planning the greenhouse grow. Haven't figured out how to cover the plants to keep them on 12/12. The greenhouse is too tall to cover. I would think that laying a tarp on top of the plants 12 hours a day would not be good for them. Any suggestions?

We get 12+hrs daylight from middle of march until end of september. That means I can harvest an 8 weeks strain four times. I'll have to use a heater in the first couple months.

This looks like the easiest method to keep soil plants watered, but not sure if cannabis would like having a continuously soggy bottom soil...
 
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Hi HHHG:

I grew for years outdoors in Santa Cruz and while we didn't have the same sort of annual rain you have in the PNW, I did have an outdoor greenhouse that I used for light deprivation. I didn't see any photos of your patio but if its a square or a rectangle you might consider the same type of system that an automatic pool cover, or those electric extendable awnings you always see advertised on the TV. Basically they are just tarps mounted on a rail system with two small electric motors attached so you can open or close at the push of a button, and you can mount them horizontally or vertically. Super easy to install and it wouldn't be too difficult to hook them up to a pool timer so everything gets opened or closed automatically. Might be something to consider..:)
 
The plan

I want to start on the attached greenhouse next month
 
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Soil

I'm starting to rethink using soil for all the 20 Gallon plants. 6 plants per harvest times 3-4 harvests per year equals 360-480 gallons of soil. That's a LOT of work for me to do alone and even though I'm legal I don't feel comfortable letting anyone know about my garden.
 
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For the same reason I began looking into direct water culture (DWC) . . . the waste is so much easier to dispose.
 
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