Happy Croptober! But what is Croptober?

Needless to say, you won’t see Jean-Pierre Pernault talking about it on TF1’s 1 p.m. news. Yet in the United States, Croptober is the cannabis equivalent of our grape harvest.

Every year around this time, the harvest season begins for outdoor cannabis crops. Just like grapes, tons of weed have ripened on the plant before being cut, dried, and cured, and finally trimmed before reaching the medical or recreational market.

By Christmas, the clinics’ shelves will be stocked with’outdoor, just like the American grinders.

«Seasonal farming is how cannabis is grown in much of the Emerald Triangle,», explains to Leafly Amanda Reiman, vice president of external relations at Flow Kana, a major California-based producer of outdoor-grown cannabis. «Cannabis is an annual plant that is harvested once a year, typically from late September to early November. The leaves of the cannabis plant change with the seasons, just like the leaves on a grapevine—some turn red, purple, or yellow. Here in Mendocino, the October air smells like Skunk [Editor’s note: a pungent odor], and every truck on the highway is towing a small container.»

Outdoors, cannabis grows from a seed into a plant that can sometimes reach over 4 meters in height within 10 months. There are, of course, different methods, but generally the first few months are spent in a greenhouse, and the plant is moved outdoors later in the season, once the frosts have passed. It then begins to flower as the days grow shorter in late summer, producing the resinous buds so prized by consumers.

Cannabis harvest season is a bustling time but also hard work for seasonal workers. The massive influx of cannabis onto the market over a short period of time generally causes prices to plummet, a development welcomed by consumers but less so by producers, who are also looking to take advantage of expensive new technologies to harvest more efficiently.

While states that have legalized cannabis celebrate Croptober, we’ll just sit back and watch the ##Croptober hashtag on Instagram, until a few resinous buds make their way across the Atlantic one way or another!