Staff from WeedMD’s operations in Aylmer and Strathroy, along with members of its leadership team and Strathroy-Caradoc Mayor Joanne Vanderheyden, rolled up their sleeves and planted marijuana in a 10-hectare plot previously used to grow asparagus.

More than 20,000 clones – small cannabis plants grown from the cuttings of a mother plant – will go into the ground in a fenced section of the company’s 64-hectare property that also houses its greenhouse operation.

The farm is outfitted with an irrigation system and plastic row coverings to keep weeds from growing.

“I can confidently say that we’ve thought of everything here. We will have an amazing bumper crop,” WeedMD chief cannabis officer Derek Pedro said.

A handful of different strains – including white shark, ghost train haze and blueberry seagal – were selected because of their proven ability to grow outside, Pedro said.

“They are fairly hardy,” he said of the strains, noting all have high concentrates of THC, the component in cannabis that produces the euphoric high.

The plants will grow to nearly two meters in height before they’re harvested in mid-October, yielding between 30,000 to 60,000 tonnes, Pedro said.

“I’d like every single plant out of the ground by Oct. 19. This plant can take a frost, it just can’t take repeated frosts.”

Health Canada, the federal pot regulator, has awarded outdoor cultivation licences to at least a half-dozen cannabis companies in recent weeks. Many others still are awaiting approval, but the window for this year’s planting season almost is closed.

WeedMD is the second licensed producer in Canada to begin growing outside. Earlier this week, Aleafia planted 15,000 clones – grown at its Paris operation – on a three-hectare farm in Port Perry, north of Oshawa.

Outdoor cultivation is significantly cheaper — about 10 to 20 cents a gram, said WeedMD chief executive Keith Merker — than growing cannabis inside, where costs run $2 a gram, or in a greenhouse at $1 a gram.

The outdoor pot will be sold in the medicinal and recreational markets, as well as processed into concentrates and extracts at WeedMD’s Aylmer plant, said Merker, who got his hands dirty planting clones alongside his team Thursday.

Critics have questioned whether cannabis grown outside will be good enough to sell as dried flower, but Merker dismissed those doubts.

“People just don’t fully understand what the possibilities are,” he said, crediting his team for working tirelessly during the past eight months to get the outdoor operation up and running.