A Complete Gude To Growing Cannabis Outdoors in Australia

 

Australia’s legal cannabis market is estimated at USD 88 million in 2023 and is set to grow at a CAGR of an impressive 27.8% from 2024 to 2030. That’s a whole lot of potential! 

If you’re looking to grow Cannabis in Australia, today would be a good time to start! To summarise, you’ll have to start with the right seeds, a quality soil mix, a clean outdoor space, pest and disease prevention measures, and a few maintenance techniques.

Whether you intend to start growing cannabis for the first time or you’re a seasoned indoor grower looking at growing cannabis outdoors, this article is for you! Here’s all you need to know about growing an outdoor weed plant in Australia! 

Key Takeaways

1. Pick feminised seeds. They are more expensive, but they often yield the best. You can shop for reliable, disease-free feminised seeds at AussieHempSeeds! 

2. We recommend starting your journey with potting soil, but you can also consider organic soil or a mix of coco coir and perlite.

3. To make sure leaves do not roll over, you should apply a root stimulator during seedling transplants.

4. Neem oil, BT, and fungicides will help you fight pests and diseases.

5. For maintenance, watering, pruning, and grow control methods will help you get the best yields.

What’s the Right Cannabis Strain for Outdoor Growing in Australia?

Here are some of the strains that have proven to thrive here in Australia.

• Blue Dream: This one’s a very popular Sativa-dominant hybrid because it is resilient and adaptable. It handles the heat pretty well and you’ll get a good yield out of it.

• Gold Leaf Feminized: We often prefer feminised seeds, and we’ll explain that in a bit. 

• Green Crack Fem: Another feminised seed. Your Green Crack plants will thrive in warm, sunny conditions and are known for their high yield and energetic effects. It is an excellent strain for growers in Australia’s hotter regions.

We recommend you start with these tried and tested strains if you’re new to growing. You can shop for all of these seeds in our store.

Best Outdoor Grow Setup for Australia

With an appropriate licence, growing cannabis is now legal in most parts of Australia, so you can grow some weed outdoors in your backyard without any trouble. 

Also understand that growing outdoors is tougher because you can’t control the environmental conditions for your plants to guarantee the best results, but with some creativity with your setup, you’ll be fine.

The following are the elements to think through when starting a cannabis grow.

• Container Sizing

You want to start your seeds in a smaller container, no larger than a five-gallon bucket. You can also use solo grow cups. Check out our complete guide on how to grow cannabis plants using the solo grow cup method.

• Lighting Control

You may also need to put your plants in a darker area because Australians often leave their lights on late at night. Whether that be a shed or garage, find a space that will not get any artificial lighting from neighbouring houses at night.

In addition, keep in mind that plants in the vegetative stage need at least 16 hours of sunlight a day. Any less than that and you might have to provide supplemental lighting or they might flip to the flowering stage. 

Organic soil works great for growing cannabis outdoors in almost every region. You can purchase some to use as your base and then add some peat moss as a soil amendment to aerate and lighten the soil and also retain some moisture.

Another great soil improvement material that can be part of your organic soil growing medium is coco coir, which is coconut fibre. It creates air pockets in the soil and makes the medium airy and lightweight.

And finally, if you can’t get coco coir, a great substitute to enhance the quality of your soil is perlite. We use it because it keeps the oil aerated and fluffy, ideal for roots to grow.

Tips for Growing Weed Outdoors

Everything starts with selecting the proper seeds.

• Picking the Right Seeds

There are often just two options for seed choice: you can get feminised or non-feminised seeds. 

If you choose to purchase non-feminised seeds, you will get a mix of seeds that can include hermaphrodites, male, and female plants. 

This means that if you grow, say, four plants at a time, there is a chance that none of them will be female, and therefore none of them will produce actual buds. 

Feminized seeds, which typically cost more, will produce plants that are 99.9% female. 

With feminised seeds, you can clone your resulting plants by taking cuttings and rooting them. This will allow you to produce more plants from a single seed. 

• Simplifying soil choices

The cannabis industry is rife with debates about soil amendments, soil types, fertilisers, and all the growth improvement stuff that can be overwhelming when you’re new. 

If you’re not comfortable mixing your soil, just purchase a bag of potting soil, which is true dirt that mimics the best soil. It isn’t anything fancy, but it will do the job just fine. 

However, if you have a tad more experience, you can use organic soil mixed with coco coir, perlite, or peat moss, all materials that encourage the healthy growth of micronutrients and microorganisms. 

• Germination and Initial Growth

To germinate these seeds, soak them in water for 24 to 48 hours in purified water that’s about 20 to 30 degrees Celcius (70 to 85°F) and then transfer them onto moist paper towels. In two to four days, they should have sprouted a little white taproot, which means they are ready for their new homes. 

Transplant the plant and apply some root stimulator to avoid any problems arising from poor water supply to the leaves. If your garden is too dry, you can control that by humidifying the space.

Make sure the seedlings get plenty of sunlight, and more experienced growers use techniques like topping and defoliating to try and create an even canopy and help sunlight reach the more hidden leaves that may not naturally receive much UV. 

Topping is not a must, but if you choose not to top, you might end up with a single large cola. If you do top, you can end up with more colas in a larger, bushier plant. 

Here’s our guide on how to top cannabis plants correctly.

• Identifying and handling male plants

Male plants are easy to identify. Females have pistils, while males have little green pollen sacs. 

If you have male or hermaphrodite plants, you will have to remove them, or your females will pollinate and develop seeds. 

To avoid these unwanted variants in the first place, be mindful of what your neighbours may be growing in their backyard, as their males can pollinate your females. 

If you’re the only grower on your block, you’ll be fine, but remember, your plants will mirror the characteristics of the original seed, whether it was hermaphroditic, male, or female.

Pest Prevention

You need to watch out for pests like caterpillars, aphids, spider mites, and more. Signs of an infestation include yellow leaves, holes on leaves, white/brown/dark spots on leaves, wilting, and leaves curling downwards.

Check out our full guide on cannabis leaf problems and diseases and how to resolve them.

Organic solutions like neem oil or insecticidal soap can help you control aphid, whiteflies, and spider mite populations, while fungicides like potassium bicarbonate are great for conditions like powdery mildew. 

BT (Bacillus Thuringiensis) is another great and simple-to-use solution for caterpillars and other pests. You simply mix BT powder with water as directed on the label and spray it onto infested plants. 

Watering 

Generally speaking, you should water the cannabis plants daily (or at least once in two days for most climate zones). To be more precise, when the top 1 inch (2.5 cm) of soil is dry, that’s when it’s time to water. 

For rainy climates, you may want to add more perlite, gravel, or clay pebbles to the soil to avoid waterlogging the soil. 

• Pruning 

Pruning, aka, trimming the foliage regularly, is also essential for disease control and for directing the plant’s growth. Pruning will encourage your plant to grow in the way you want it to, which is to maximise your yield. 

Here’s how to correctly prune your cannabis plants.

When using organic fertiliser, make sure to add microbes to keep the soil biologically active. Without microbes, organic fertiliser is essentially dead and won’t provide much benefit to the plant.

As your plants flip from the vegetative stage to the flowering stage, you can switch their nutrients to a bloom formula, which is higher in nutrients like phosphorus and potassium but lower in nitrogen. 

This will encourage the plant to channel its energy to grow the flowers instead of the foliage. 

• Flushing and Harvest

Flushing is another term used in the cannabis industry to represent a way of starving the plant of nutrients and washing the soil with cold water during the last third of the flowering period. 

The theory is that flushing forces the plant to draw nutrients from the leaves into the buds. However, this practice is hotly debated and there are growers on both sides of the coin with differing opinions. 

You also need to time your harvest correctly. Harvest just around the time when your trichomes switch from clear to cloudy amber. Another simple way to tell if it’s time to harvest is to look at the pistils. When most of the pistils have transitioned from white to orange or brown, you can begin harvesting.

You’ll need some pruning shears, gloves (optional), trimming scissors, and a drying rack.

The harvest process itself is simple; you just have to carefully cut the main stems of each plant near the base with the help of sharp pruning shears, and remember to trim any excess foliage along the way.

Hang these trimmed stems upside down from a drying line (or drying rack). When the plants are dry, use your scissors to carefully remove large fan leaves, remove any remaining stems or leaves and what you have left are the buds.

Common outdoor grow challenges and how to overcome them

The key difference in outdoor grows is that, unlike indoor ones, you cannot control the environmental conditions in which your plants are growing. 

• Weather 

Weather is unpredictable, and you’ll have to protect your crops from rain, frost, hail, strong winds, and too much heat. 

• Pollination

You can’t protect cannabis plants from pollination from neighbouring hemp fields or contamination from chemicals sprayed.

• Pests like caterpillars and aphids

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• Nutrient sensitivity

Some strains are sensitive to nutrients, so you might be unable to use full-strength nutrient mixes. Watch your plant carefully and cut back the food if necessary. 

Conclusion

Ready to start growing outdoor weed plants? Start with the best feminised cannabis seeds from Aussie Hemp Seeds to give the little babies an excellent headstart.  

Then, get top-quality soil and supplement it with coco coir or perlite. Watch how much water you give your plant, and regularly inspect your plants to quickly identify and deal with any issues.

Good luck, and all the best in your outdoor growing journey! We, AussieHempSeeds, are rooting for you!