Ortega Auto

Ortega carries myrcene as its lead note: damp earth and something sweet gone slightly over, the smell of a hedgerow in late August. Humulene sits beneath it and shows up second, dry and bitter in the way a sack of hops is. The plant tests at 14% THC across a 75/25 split, though what decides whether any of this reaches the jar is the cure, not the seed.

Growing Ortega for terpene expression and growing it for weight are not the same project, and it is worth deciding which one you are on. The Myrcene/Humulene/Linalool profile does its best work in living soil, where the biology produces compounds a bottle does not contain. Good peat-free compost and worm castings are available in any garden centre here, which makes that approach far less specialist than it sounds.

Stop foliar spraying after the second week of bloom. Anything that lands on a developing trichome is still there at harvest and is tasted rather than seen. In the last three weeks the night temperature decides which terpenes lead: held at 16-18°C the myrcene comes forward, while a warmer finish protects the lighter linalool notes.

Then the cure, which is where Irish growers lose most of what they built. A ten to fourteen day hang wants 17°C and something near 58% humidity, and the ambient air here will not supply either for most of the year — a closed room and a small dehumidifier will. Into glass afterwards, burped twice daily for a fortnight. The humulene layer arrives somewhere in weeks three and four, not before.

Flowering: 50-60 days. Indoor yield: up to 600 g/m2. Outdoor yield: up to 600 g/plant. Plant height: 90-120 cm. Medium. Rated medium difficulty.

The catalogue lists relaxed, sleepy, happy, and that matches what growers here report back. At 14% THC this indica sits where the dose is the whole question. One bowl through a vaporiser at 185°C leaves the head working and the body easy, which is what most people are after on a weeknight. More than that moves it firmly towards sedation. The Myrcene and Humulene together leave earth and faint sweetness, with fruit at the end.

Suited to evenings in, recovery after work, and the hour before sleep.

Primary: Myrcene · Secondary: Humulene · Tertiary: Linalool. The three shift relative to each other across the cure. Straight off the dry the myrcene dominates; three or four weeks sealed in glass at 16-18°C and the linalool underneath comes up to meet it. Vaporising between 180°C and 195°C catches the widest span, because heat takes the lighter linalool molecules first.

Ortega suits growers with the fundamentals in place. Understand pH, rough nutrient ratios and a light cycle before committing to it; it asks for competence rather than expertise. Autoflowering genetics remove the light schedule from the equation, which matters in a shed or a spare room where full darkness is not realistic. A bloom of 50-60 days fits inside the season here for outdoor growers, with a tunnel making it comfortable rather than tight.