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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.

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“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.”