OUTDOOR TUTORIAL#4

Planting and plant care

Planting seedlings and general plant care during the season.

Greetings everybody!

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Starting this off where we left outdoor tutorial #3 - our seeds are in our makeshift propagation unit sitting inside one very charged, fenced and ready to go garden bed.

From the day you plant your seeds in the tubs... and water them, you should allow roughly 4 weeks for them to sprout and grow their first few sets of leaves within the tubs, they will be happy as in there with no need to water them again.
When your seedlings are ready to plant, remove them off the top of your garden bed, open up an entry in your overlap in the fencing, get back in there with your shovel, and turn it all over again fluffing up the soil as much as you can.
I highly recommend if you have the space to do this next step outside of your garden bed.
Open up your makeshift propagation tubs, and by grabbing the sack on the sides very carefully lift all your seedlings out and place them on the ground. Doing this should naturally loosen the seedling mix holding your seedlings in and allow you to start at the edge and carefully lift seedlings out one by one to be planted.

When planting your seedlings into your garden bed start at the back edge and work your way forward. How far you space the plants depends alot on what you are dealing with. If you have sprouted a bunch of regular (non feminised) seeds, go for numbers and give seedlings a roughly 10cm gap between each other... and just choca block your garden full. This allows for males to come out and some to die off etc.. in a spot with a 2m radius you may easily fit 30 to 45 seedlings in... fill every gap possible (at the end of the season you may be left with 10 to 15 female plants.)
If you are planting feminized seedlings / clones try and spread them out as much as possible doing a max of 10 to 15 clones and 20 fem seeds to a 2 meter radius.
Use your hands to dig small holes that will easily bury all the roots, if your seedlings have stretched and gone all lanky, bury some of the stalk too so they are nice and sturdy not all bent over. Give them a gentle push into their new homes, not too hard as they like oxygen in their roots. 
Unless you are certain its going to rain the next day it can be a good idea to give each seedling roughly a cup of water once planted in their new homes.
From here on, there should be no need to water your garden all season unless there is a drought.
The first 2 months will be slow going, once the plants have found their feet they will start boosting, in terms of plant care - there shouldnt be much you need to do at this phase. 
EVERY visit to your garden remove any dead leaves from the plants, but do not remove any more than you need to... if a leaf is green, that is photosynthesising and doing good things to your plants, so only pull off the brown/yellow dead leaves. It is important to remove these because if you are to experience a season with mold and rot issues, dead plant material on your plants will be the root cause of it.
After a few weeks your plants may start sexing, in NZ cannabis can sex outdoors anytime between mid December (especially for autos), and as late as late February. Even if you have fem seeds it pays to keep an eye out, a hermie can ruin everything! If you have clones STILL check your plants as these times of the year can be a good time to throw some fertilizer on the soil.
About the time the first lot of males come out is the time i give the plants their first application of sulphate of potash, 2 solid handfuls per square meter, and one solid handful per square meter of super phosphate.
From then on, every second visit until 2 weeks before harvest ,visit to check for males (and remove dead leaves) they will get an application of sulphate of potash, the same 2 to 3 solid handful per square meter.

DO NOT give them any more super phosphate, 1 application of that is all they need.

Once all males are out, use some string to tie down and gently pull plants over into any unused spaces left by males, they will respond very favorably to that!!

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Harvesting and drying... I cant stress enough how important this step is. You could grow the meanest plants ever - mess up this step and its unsmokabe, harsh foul cannabis. 
I cut my plants when they are ripe... im looking for no more growth on my buds (no new white or pink hairs), at least 50% of the hairs (or pistils) brown.
Unless you have a very suitable drying room in your house i highly recommend drying your outdoor cannabis in the great outdoors!
Avoid full sunlight on them, but a dry well ventilated area in some trees with some string lines can do the trick... be care where though!!! It would suck to lose your buds now!!
Places NOT to dry include.. dusty old sheds, stale smelling rooms, humid areas, quick drying near a fire or heater is a big no no. A nice slow dry at its own pace is key. Where ever you do end up drying your cannabis... it is going to take in the smells, so if you have chosen a musty old shed or roof... your end product will be musty smelling and tasting too, outside in pines... a piney smell will come out in the bag smell.. so choose wisely... manukaka or kanuka can be a lovely smell.
I find 2 weeks in generally good weather hanging outside ( they can handle a couple of days rain) and your buds are dry enough to be further processed down.
From here is another important step. Curing.
Manicure your buds down removing stalk, leaf etc till its what would be sell-able product. From here the cheapest way you will cure it is filling plastic bags and tying them off puffing the air out (glass jars work the best), so they are air tight. Every day for the first week open your bags or jars, and air out your buds for an hour, as they should be quite sweaty, an hour airing out should crisp them up again, before going back in the bag jar.
After the first week air them out every 3 days, then after 2 weeks of that air them out every month or so. This step helps to take any harshness out if your buds for smooth smoking.

Is there anything i have missed? Any questions fire away 😊