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Plant for a Patient: Patients need patience in plant maturation process PDF Print E-mail
Written by Jorge Cervantes   
We do not advocate breaking any laws with the information provided in this column.

We continue our expanded goal, provide a publication where patients can show their gardens, tell their story in a few words and provide inspiration to other patients and caregivers. This month’s column is packed with photos of a beautiful outdoor medical garden. This garden provides much needed medicine to help medicinal cannabis patients live a less painful life.
LATE BLOOMERS — Sativa plants like this Lambs Bread grow very big and are ready for harvest about November. They must be grown in a long-season, mild climate for the best harvest. Photos courtesy of Jorge Cervantes
LATE BLOOMERS — Sativa plants like this Lambs Bread grow very big and are ready for harvest about November. They must be grown in a long-season, mild climate for the best harvest. Photo courtesy of Jorge Cervantes
Whether growing indoors or outdoors, it is important that the plants not merely flower, but fully mature before being harvested. Growing outdoors, it is possible to cultivate varieties that use most of a year to mature. When trying to get a full year’s dosage out of a relatively few plants, they are often started in late winter / early springtime in a greenhouse or indoors, to get a jump on the frost. The trichome-encrusted stigmas turn a warm amber color and ripen later than the smaller indica hybrids, and may not be ripe and ready to harvest until late fall.

This heavy Morning Star bud has several weeks to go until harvested
This heavy Morning Star bud has several weeks to go until harvested.
With concerns over theft, wet weather that could bring bud rot, and drug police looking for that last bust of the grow season, there is a lot of pressure to harvest early, before the female flowers have fully matured. Unripe flowers lack the weight and resin content of those that are ready to be cut and cured. Of course, sometimes circumstances force an early harvest, but if you have a climate where the season is long between frosts, growing full-season plants can give you a decent yield without the risks of growing large numbers of smaller plants.

The white pistils on this Morning Star bud are just starting to turn dark, which means it is entering the last phase of growth before harvest.
The white pistils on this Morning Star bud are just starting to turn dark, which means it is entering the last phase of growth before harvest.
Many, many medical marijuana patients are too ill to grow their own garden. We are very interested in photos of gardens from medical providers that do not sell the medicine they provide. The added expense of medicine that is not supported by a government program is another hardship for medical patients.

Buds that suffer cold temperatures often have few white pistils, leaf fringes can turn purple, more resin develops and plants take longer to mature.
Buds that suffer cold temperatures often have few white pistils, leaf fringes can turn purple, more resin develops and plants take longer to mature.
Caregivers are urged to send in photos of their medical gardens. We cannot receive enough photos! Send a brief description of your garden and tell readers how the medicine you grow helps patients enjoy a better standard of life.

* Cervantes is author of Marijuana Horticulture: the Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower’s Bible (2006), Jorge Cervantes’ Ultimate Grow DVD (2005) Indoor Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor Bible, Marijuana Indoors: Five Easy Gardens, Marijuana Outdoors: Guerrilla Growing, Jorge’s Rx and Jorge’s Ultimate Grow DVD He writes for 12 magazines in six languages. Jorge’s books are published in Dutch, English, French, German and Spanish. See www.marijuanagrowing.com for info.
Lightweight grow bags are a convenient way to get an early start on a crop, and are easy to use, clean and store.
Lightweight grow bags are a convenient way to get an early start on a crop, and are easy to use, clean and store.

During the vegetative season, spring to mid-summer, the plant is staked up and spread out to extend the canopy area and allow for heavier branches to develop. This immature flowering plant uses bamboo supports. The patient used fence post and wire grids to position and support the immature plant’s branches in the next photo. Oaksterdam News photo.
During the vegetative season, spring to mid-summer, the plant is staked up and spread out to extend the canopy area and allow for heavier branches to develop. This immature flowering plant uses bamboo supports. The patient used fence post and wire grids to position and support the immature plant’s branches in the next photo. Oaksterdam News photo.
Internal supports help support heavy branches outdoors
A Red Bluff patient’s red haired ladies

I just got a copy of your newspaper and read about the garden competition, so here are some pics of medical cannabis; this is the natural remedy that I used to get off of this drug called oxycontin and 13 other legal drugs — and stay off!

Oxycontin is essentially the same as heroin. Some 75 million patients are on oxycontin, most cities have big troubles with this drug. Not so for cannabis; somebody should do a comparison of these drugs. There are many schools in the Bay Area where it can be done.

Tell the world that cannabis works. The sad thing is my insurance company should be the one that buys it for me, but the law says it doesn’t have to, so I have to grow my own meds — why? My oxycontin was paid for, why not my cannabis?

Thanks so much for the newspaper! We would love to get more of your papers up here; many people here have been looking for copies. Most people in the north state don’t come to the city, so I have found five locations to put it out for people; they all have been wanting copies.

Image So if you want to make the north state informed please increase your circulation.

{quotes right}I’ve been trying to change things in my county; and your newspaper, Oaksterdam News, is helping to open voters’ minds.{/quotes}

— J. in Red Bluff
 
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