Dear Sur,
Hello from the PNW!
So which did you decide to grow out? I am voting for the Colombian Red.
See the above post for my selections this year. The VN Black and Maui came in the mail from friends overseas this week. A last minute change in plans, but plenty of time to germinate, sex, and GH grow them this year. If the VN is really late, I will finish it indoors under lights.
Really think you can harvest in Oct??? I need to ask how???? Light Deprivation?
I love what you do. Wish there were more pics, though. I am ultimately interested in sativa landraces, bummer tolive in OR sometimes....
. Have you heard of cobbing/ fermenting weed?
As for late harvest Colombian and North Mexican landraces, I have grown several years indoors through winter and sized up plants, set them out in March and they start blooming. Once they bloom, generally the bloom right through summer. The winter is really late here this year and I had lots of snow up until this week (finally melted) so it is a good thing I did not do that this year. My garage got way too cold and I had to bring my clone babies inside for the last month. Several Lebbies and the GDP clone that I got in trade, as well as some Durban clones I have from last year.
As for fermenting weed, I do not do that. I have seen it done several ways, typically wrapping it in corn husks and letting ferment (so called 'cobbing' or corn cobbing). I studies Colombian curing methods, which I believe originally came from Thailand. In Thailand, they would pile lots of fresh harvested tops in piles, cover them and let them basically compost to ferment out the chlorophyll which would turn brown in a few days. They also did this for a while in Colombia, but they soon changed that to simply harvesting and pressing/bricking up the weed when the colas were still green, and letting it ferment on the backs of trucks as it was hauled out to ports and shipped overseas. This methods was typical in later years with lowland Colombian red weed, which was basically 'brown' in color, but people selling it called it Colombian 'gold.' It was narcotic and put me to sleep. I have lots of seeds from those brown/red bricks.
Personally I cool cure my weed for long lasting storage. I dry it at 65-70 deg. F in cardboard trays, and then I cure it in paper grocery bags for a month to 6 weeks at 60-65 deg F. Then I bag it in plastic bags for long term storage. In jars it tends to rot, so I do not use them for weed storage any more. I can keep my cured weed for a couple of years. The only real issue with aging weed over long time periods is that the THC will naturally change into CBN at a rate of 10% the first year and then less the following years. CBN is good too though, as a sleep remedy. One hit and I am off to dreamland. I tend ot have a hard time getting to sleep sometimes, so I go for my old weed stash and take a hit.
Not all sativa landraces bloom late. Southern Mexican landrace strains tend to mature in early October. Also my grow last year of Lebanese landraces were really early maturing. They are called indicas, but IMO and observations, they are really sativas. Even the indica pheno is more like a sativa. They are also floral and lighter in strength, so they would make excellent breeding stock with other later blooming landraces to get the flavor and terpenes of other sativas and move up the harvest time by a month or two.