Nearly one year since the legalization of cannabis in Canada, local producer WeedMD is harvesting one of Southwestern Ontario’s first outdoor crops.

The Strathroy-based producer and distributor began harvesting more than 11 hectares of cannabis. About 35 strains, including Ultra Sour, Pedro Sweet, and Ghost Train Haze, have being cultivated outside.

“This is one of the largest legal cannabis cultivations in the world,” Keith Merker, WeedMD’s chief executive, said in a speech at Thursday’s harvest event. “We kept growing, and we kept learning.”

More than 21,000 plants will be harvested by Oct. 19. While the wet spring delayed planting by three weeks to mid-June, WeedMD’s chief cannabis officer Derek Pedro said it’s been a successful first growing year.

“I was a bit concerned in the beginning when we had such a wet spring,” Pedro said. “But this plant has been growing outside for millennia.”

“The true master of this is not really my hands, it’s Mother Nature.”

WeedMD produces cannabis for both medical and recreational markets. Outside, they’re also growing new, experimental strains while they discover what works best outdoors.

Some of the largest outdoor plants could yield up to 2.3 kilograms of dried cannabis, Pedro said.

Earlier this year, Health Canada issued a handful of licenses to grow cannabis outdoors.

“We’re an incredible agriculture community, and this is just a part of it,” said Strathroy-Caradoc Mayor Joanne Vanderheyden in a speech. “This is the perfect community to grow in.”

In 2020, WeedMD plans to expand its outdoor cultivation to 40 hectares. The company has experienced growth in the past year, increasing its workforce from 100 people to more than 210, and boosting its yield of dried cannabis from 10 tonnes a year to 50 tonnes.

WeedMD also is developing its Aylmer site into a new processing and extraction plant for oils and “cannabis 2.0” products.

The company is calling its cannabis cultivation the “most prolific outdoor harvest in the industry to date.”