What strains have given you the best yields? How do you measure yields compared with your inputs?
Also, have any of you compared dry mass vs wet mass?
How do you measure yields? Purely by the weight of product? Or by the quality of product. Some strains can be high yielding but with lesser quality Cannabis. The best strains might not yield the most - but they will blow your f’n mind…
The difficulty with comparing quality of products is that most people’s definition of quality differs. If you’re talking simple amount of terpenes (IE % dry mass), some people will complain that a strain overloaded with one particular terpene may not taste as good as one with less, more diverse terpenes.
Comparing dry mass of the final product is relatively objective though, and I think that’s what the question was aimed at.
Currently some of the best yielding strains I am working with are autoflowering. Best yielding in terms of time vs weight and space. With a number of the auto’s I am getting 120-200 grams (4-6 oz) with a 10 week seed to smoke timeframe. For an outdoor operation these can offer a number of different crops in a season and drastically increases the return per square foot. Current favourite autos include Northern Lights, Jack Herer, Moby Dick, Amnesia Haze, Nevilles Haze.
Very interesting @nathan! It’s good to hear C. ruderalis is proving quite useful in the commercial cannabis space. Have you played with their genetics much?
When I first started playing around with auto’s a number of years ago I was very dubious. Generally it’s just a wild ditch weed. Now the industry is very advanced - the ruderalis genes have been very well integrated and the smoke is on par with some of the best full season indica or sativa.
The ruderalis cross genes have opened up a lot of the longer season sativas etc to the outdoor grower in the northern climates.
That’s really great to hear. I think there’s a lot of potential in ruderalis, since it is a wild type. Much like all the dog breeds that came from wolves.
Here is a Northern Lights Auto primary cola/stem . This weighed almost 50g dried without stems. The whole plant gave 150+g. In 10 weeks from seed to harvest with about a 3 square foot total space. Needless to say auto’s are earning a strong part in our regime.
I am super interested in the auto flowering and are they also Ruderalis version?. I am trying to find actual experienced people who have grown and compared quality to Big Brother style plants???
I have grown hundreds of ruderalis crosses - from a wide range of seed labs and a number of my own cross-breeding. For a northern climate that could never grow a 12-14 week flowering sativa - now I can grow 2-3+ crops per season outdoors if I manage it well. The genetics are coming along in leaps and bounds.
Auto’s are still to come of their own - many growers look down upon them - but I have grown auto’s that will put even the most experienced skeptical grower/smoker on the floor.
Here is a current tent we are testing some new LED lights on - these are 6 weeks old - a mix of nevilles haze, jack herer, himalayan orange diesel, mango haze and blackberry kush.
Nathan So nice!!! love it , how many plants and how much space is that in??? I have two stupendous LED lamps that would be awesome, did you do the entire crop with LEDS?
I am interested in the Fabled Northern Lights, and a Big Bud Skunk, Jack Herer and mango haze along with any other super potent THC strains you can suggest. Also want to know what you would recomend for a high CBD count as i am a cancer patient?
also what was the total weight /plant count on that set up! every two months right auto flowering??
@Charlie That space is around 18 plants in 24 square feet under 2 x 900 w LEDS. I sprout and grow them under florescent lights for the first 2 weeks and then they go under the LEDS on 18 hrs. On this setup I average around 2-2.5oz dried per square feet in 8-10 weeks (+2 or more weeks for drying and curing) - around 50+ oz. There are a number of impressive auto CBD auto strains (eg Bubba Kush CBD Auto, White Widow Auto CBD) emerging now from Europe - Dinafem, Greenhouse Seeds, World of Seeds etc have all developed some impressive auto strains that are high yielding, vigorous and potent. The great thing is - no stuffing around with mother plants and clones, and a super fast and strong plant. I also suspect that the Ruderalis strains have a different potential mix of cannabinoids (Ruderalis is naturally very high CBD/CBN) that as we are allowed to study them more will show to have increased medicinal effects.
The auto’s play a key role in our outdoor strains - but winter in Canada and 3 feet of snow pushes us to test new lights and strains indoors in those long boring months…
Bumping this topic for the newer folks.