Bumper Crop

The 2012 Outdoor Medical Cannabis Forecast: Golden

We found one good thing about the end of summer: A bumper crop of exquisite, outdoor medical cannabis comes to market this month in California, offering a cornucopia of new, highly therapeutic hybrid strains, as well as decades-old classics.

The year-old federal on crackdown marijuana businesses hasn’t dissuaded farmers, so much as financed them, sources say. In a perverse form of Farm Aid, federal enforcement is creating a “risk premium” that is stalling the once-free-falling price of outdoor.

“People are planting more (lots more) but presumably the closure of hundreds of dispensaries has dried up pot elsewhere because prices are higher than anyone has seen in a while,” says Humboldt resident Kym Kemp, a marijuana expert and author of blog Redheaded Blackbelt. “I’m hearing $2,200 to $2,400 [per pound] for outdoor.” “Bidding wars for pot make the growers happy,” she wrote us. “Everyone is beaming about how prices were up.”

“[Outdoor farming is] increasing every year, substantially,” says Charley Custer, operator of Tea House Collective, a Humboldt collective of expert, organic medical marijuana gardeners. Yet prices aren’t collapsing, and “lots of small producers are being forced to compete like never before,” he says.

The upside, of course: discerning California patients with access to quality dispensaries can get a crack at literally the best sun-kissed cannabis on the planet, ever.

PERFECT WEATHER

In stark contrast to a soggy, moldy 2011, the weather this growing season has been hot, dry, and divine, NorCal growers report.

“The weather is lovely,” Kemp says. “Nothing but sunshine predicted through the next 10 days and hopefully that lasts through the first weeks of October.”

Planted in the spring and harvested before the first fall rains, the all-female bushes can grow to 15 feet tall before workers chop ’em down mid-September through early October.

Americans consume anywhere from 2,500 to 5,000 metric tons of the plant each year, and California leads in domestic production of indoor and outdoor.

Custer said harvest time is a “a big economic event,” in the Emerald Triangle. As the feds sweep public lands for commercial pot plantations, the triangle also nurtures a legal, high-grade medical garden scene that ships to dispensaries statewide.

Clubs down south used to sell only indoor, but the best outdoor growers have succeeded at pushing organic “sungrown” cannabis as a more wholesome and Earth-friendly alternative to indoor.

For one, indoor grows consume an estimated $500 million in electricity each year, researchers estimate. And lamps can’t replace the sun, many say.

“There’s absolutely no question that cannabis grown in full sun in good organic soil is better-tasting, lasts longer, smells better, has a more full effect than lamp-grown cannabis. I don’t know anybody who has really been a long-term cannabis user who thinks otherwise,” says Steve DeAngelo, operator of Harborside Health Center in Oakland.

HIGHLY THERAPEUTIC

Name brands like Sour Diesel, OG Kush and Grand Daddy Purple, as well as new, highly therapeutic strains rich in cannabidiol (CBD)—the second-most common cannabinoid in the plant—will dominate this year’s crop, DeAngelo says.

“High CBDs are becoming more sought after, but the regular strains—Super Silver Haze, OG Kush, White Widow, Blue Dream, Trainwreck are still standards,” Kemp writes. “TKO and Bright lights are a local favorite . . . I did just see an absolutely beautiful Coconut Kush that had sativa leaves but matured early.”

Harvest season is also great chance for patients to sample exotic sativas that too long to flower and grow too big for a closet operation.

“They don’t make any financial sense to grow indoors, but they come to us during harvest,” Harborside’s Steve DeAngelo says.

NorCal and SoCal will experience harvest a bit differently it seems. Harvest is traditionally a downtime for dispensaries in NorCal, as cheap, homegrown dampens demand for premium club strains.