Lemon Drop Feminised

Latitude decides more about a Lemon Drop crop than anything you buy. New Zealand runs roughly 34 to 47 degrees south, and that span turns one 50/50 hybrid into two different plants: a Kaitaia grower fights airflow and humidity through a muggy February, while a Southland grower is counting the weeks to first frost. Neither problem is about heat. If frost rather than heat is your limit, the strain finder sorts the catalogue by finishing time.

Indoors the outside world stops mattering and the job is control. Outdoors it is the whole brief.

Upper North Island — Northland, Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty. The longest season in the country and the wettest finish. Bud rot, not sunshine, is what costs you a crop here, so plant where morning air moves and thin the interior early rather than admiring a dense canopy in January. More open flower architecture is an advantage through a humid autumn.

Lower North Island. Hawke's Bay and Gisborne are the driest and sunniest stretch; Taranaki, Manawatū and Wellington trade that for rain and wind. Wind decides how tall you let a plant get more than the genetics do.

South Island. Nelson, Tasman and Marlborough offer the best outdoor conditions nationally — high sunshine hours, low summer rainfall. Canterbury, Otago and Southland run a genuinely short season where flowering runs 8-9 weeks is the number that matters, because everything is a race against the first frost. A greenhouse or polytunnel buys the fortnight that makes the difference. If your season is short, the outdoor-season list is the better starting point.

Euphoric, Creative, Calm is the consensus, and consensus is worth exactly what it sounds like — a starting point. 20% THC sets the scale; limonene and the terpenes alongside it shape the character rather than the strength.

Onset is quick by inhalation and slow by ingestion, which is where most bad experiences begin. Expect either, depending on how much you take.

If potency is what you are shopping for, the high-THC seeds category is sorted for it.

Limonene leads, caryophyllene sits behind it, and linalool runs underneath.

Temperature changes what you get. Vaporised low, around 180 to 188 degrees, caryophyllene and linalool come through cleanly while limonene stays in the background. Combusted, limonene dominates and the finer detail is largely lost. Same flower, two different experiences.

Who does well with Lemon Drop? Growers who want to control plant size and harvest date, and have the vegetative space to use that control. Anyone past their first grow.

Still deciding? The indoor-friendly genetics list is the narrower place to start.

• Finishes in 8-9 weeks
• Under lights: Moderate
• Grown out: Moderate
• Height: Medium (150-245 cm)
• Difficulty: moderate