Purple Kush Outdoors in Ontario

I'm planning to grow these outside. I'm hoping this variety will do well in my hardiness zone (zone 5). I'm having a hard time finding information about specific varieties hardiness zones. Purple Kush is my very favourite variety, with no exceptions :)

Off to a good start. The first sets of leaves look good, and roots are starting to show at the bottom of the pot. I will be transplanting this week most likely. I'm going to put them in 10g pots for big outdoor plants. This variety is not known for being huge... so we'll see.

I topped them this week. They are growing nicely :) I'm excited to see how they will grow in the back yard this summer :)

The plants are looking healthy and are growing well. They are topped and shaped for mainline growth :) Nutrients started last week. The snow is starting to melt, and the garden has been designed. Can't wait for May 2-4.

They are pretty big now! Signs of a bit of nutrient burn... but it doesn't look too severe. Will water them down a bit for the next few days.

I'm a little nervous to harden these off and put them outside. So far I have only every grown indoors in a very controlled environment. I am considering leaving one indoors and putting only one outside... I love my PK so much that I just don't want to take a chance :P

I have been hardening these ladies off this weekend. Still nervous about putting them outside.... eeek.... Both plants are really big and they have not stretched yet. I’m guessing they will end up over 4 feet tall which would be my tallest plant yet. Are we taking bets?

These ladies are outdoors to stay unless they need to overnight in warmth on a cold night. They are going to start flowering with the night now :)

They have been outside since last weekend. They suffered a little bit with the cold temps (~6C) at night. But they look good and are growing well 😊

They really stretched out a LOT over the last week. It looks like it's grown about 5 inches or maybe even more! I'm excited about this one. PK is my favourite and I'm getting low on the dried but from my first PK grow. Can't have that!!

Nice purple leaves :) They have REALLY stretched over the last week or so. I think they are about ready to push out some buds. Can't wait!! They are starting to smell good too! I'll be switching out the nutrients next week for flowering.

They are still growing like crazy. I find I have to water them most days since the sun dries out the pot relatively quickly. They are in a nice sunny spot and are happy. And that makes me happy 😊

I’m loving the way these ladies are growing up. They are almost as tall as me now. And the stalks are full and dense. No signs of flowers yet.

The outdoor garden is starting to smell really nice :) These ladies are still in full veg. Yesterday was the summer solstice so the daylight will start to decrease day by day now. Can't wait to see if they stretch before flowering. If so they will be pretty big! Right now they are around 4 feet tall (including the height of the grow pot).

I put them in the ground. The 10 gallon pots weren't big enough and they were showing signs of root stress. They seem so much happier already!

Now that they are in the ground they are growing like crazy. I'm going to have to start providing bamboo poles for support this week. We have had severe thunderstorms this weekend and I was worried, but the plants seem to be holding their own :)

They are taking off now that they are out of pots and into the garden. I can't tell if they are stretching for buds, or if they are just expanding now that the roots are free. They are almost as tall as I am now.

They are taller than me now... I think they stretched. I am insanely excited to see these ladies go to flowering. The veg stage is completely out of control! You can see that I've added a soak hose to the garden to later the roots over night. I want to make sure the roots receive total saturation to bring nutes all the way down to the deep roots.

These are getting really big. I had no idea they would get this tall! Last week they some 6 inches! They are all taller than me now. I think they stretched, but what do I know? Ha.

They just keep on growing. I thought they might have been stretching to prep for flowering, but nope. They just keep getting bigger. I'm trying to get my mind around the potential yield here. I have a total of two Purple Kush plants, two Chemdog (which I didn't start journals for), two CBDream (no journal for those), and one Mystery Seed (in a separate journal). I think I'll be stock piling bud in my deep freezer :D

They are flowering now!! And they are well over 6 feet tall. I have cleared off the suckers from the lower limbs of the plants. They are FULL of bud sites.

We have been on vacation so I haven't had time to take good photos. These ones were taken when we got home from the East Coast to demonstrate the height. These ladies are taaaaaaall. I'll add some photos of the baby flowers. There are LOADS of bud sites, just like I expected to see.

I had no idea these plants would grow to tall. I thought Purple Kush was a "smaller" variety, and it is compared to my Chemdog and CBDream, but it's still a huge plant. Next time I'll leave more space between my plants. Next year I'll have a full garden with 8 plants. We have two households on our property so we can legally grow 8 here in Ontario :)

They are done growing now. There are loads of bud sights and showing early signs of getting frosty. I'm prepping to support the colas in case they end up heavy.

The local temperatures are dipping down into the single digits now. Day time temp is around 17-20C generally. The flowers are growing nicely in spite of herm. I think I'll have seeds in these buds, but that's okay by me :D

The night temperatures are now dropping into the single digits. We have seen a low of 6C so far. I'm building a large frost shelter to extend the grow if needed, and also, next year I will try to get my plants into the dirt a couple of weeks sooner. I have learned a lot this summer, given that this was my first outdoor grow.. There are a number of things I will do differently next year. For example, I'll put them in the garden directly instead of leaving them in pots. I feel like the roots were constrained too much during the early stages of growth. I will space my plants out differently too. I had NO idea they would grow so big. I thought that only expert growers with a 'magic touch' would pull that off. Also, now that we have the new irrigation system (root soakers) I will be able to make sure they are watered properly from the very beginning. We didn't get that in place until several weeks into the grow. I will chose varieties with the shortest flowering periods possible so I don't have to sweat bullets about frost as the grow season comes to an end!

Flowers are filling out nicely. Beautiful purple pigments are becoming prominent. Won't be long now. I posted a photos of the tricomes... there is enough amber in there that I'm comfortable harvesting at the end of this week :)

Done and done. This is the final stage and the plants are ripe. I'll post the harvest details next. Stay tuned!!!! I'm so excited to have more of my favorite PK

This was my first time growing outdoors, and this variety did well in Eastern Ontario region. I started seeds indoors and put the mainlined plants in the garden in early May. They were done flowering September 27th. The plants were beautiful and purple. The flavour is sweet and earthy. This is remains my favourite variety. One thing I learned from this outdoor grow is that I need to allow more space between plants. One of these Purple Kush plants was choked out and didn't grow as well as she could have. Next year I'll do a better job.