What do I need to know about growing a sativa?

[nwdub]

I am looking for a bit different of a grow, and I would like to do 10 plants of straight sativa, I have picked up some seeds from seedbay and I can't wait to get started, but my experience has mostly been with indica/hybrids

What do I need to know about sativas specifically?

my setup will be two 8 bulb 4' t-5 lights (40k lumens a piece) and then they will be switched over to 2700k bulbs for bloom. 8x8x10 room will be covered in mylar, they will be in 12" pots with 2 inches of 3/4" river rock on the bottom and a custom blend of fox farm ocean forest and light warrior

What nutes do I run? do I feed less or more? water less?

Room isn't a problem but heat is, so I can't run HID or else I'd get a 1000 watter. ventilation is minimal so yeah

your opinions?

 

[neongreen]

Which strains did you get nwdub?

I've heard some strains prefer minimal feeding. I'd just feed with EWC tea and/or compost tea if you have access to some good quality compost. Mix in some amendments into the soil like kelp meal and bone meal/fish meal/blood meal (see the "organics for begginers" sticky in the organic forum). Basically you feed the "micro-heard" , and they will in turn feed your plants.

Don't use any bottled nutrients if you can avoid it, or you harm the micoflora and fauna that feed your plants and also loose all the benefits like resistance to disease and pests that go with a healthy soil!

Mix your soil light with lots of perlite, and perhaps some sand to improve drainage. Sativas usually like well drained soils, and hate being over watered, but that may not always be the case.

Good luck

 

[FreezerBoy]

Sativas in the wild can easily hit 15-20 feet in height. A floro tube's penetration is measured in inches. I would look into Scrog. The plant could be allowed to grow horizontally as much as it likes but, it's "height" would be restricted to 6-12 inches.

Sativas are usually light feeders. Especially Nitrogen.

 

[nwdub]

Thanks for the replies guys. they will be massively trimmed and LST'd to keep the growth under control

and the strain is mist of destruction

Can i train and trim a sativa like an indica? I've made some pretty cool plants with a bit of twine and a razorblade

 

[BurmeseDragon]

Neon green is spot on, sativas always come from tropical low N deep soils of the rain forest type. A sativa reaches deep and spreads huge roots to find what it requires. Indicas like the Rockies, they do well with rocks with composted forest crap. I think it gets to the point, where it doesn't matter. But a pure sativa and a pure indica have very different environments. Sativa's hate a large dose of N, P and K, Indicas do fairly well but they burn early on a lot less than an Indica....usually it is best to take it easy on both strains, it's easy to not care. Light warrior is strong stuff, for a very pure wispy sativa. Those things can grow for so many years, to an impressive stature in deep lose weak soils. I bet Indicas do as well in rain forest farms with ferts, but have more issues with bulk and mutate into more sativa characteristics.

I have never seen a Sativa get very Indica on it's own, but I am visualizing a few overgrown buds that got thicker than their native location. I want to know more, but now I am stuck!

I know some Indians down around Columbia, that made earth; things adjust but lose character.

 

[FreezerBoy]

Can i train and trim a sativa like an indica?

Sativas are much more flexible. This one went 17 weeks of 12/12 and never stopped stretching out. I had to tie several colas into circles to keep them out of the light. She ignored super cropping and straightened right up. Topping pissed her off royally, growth in topped stems exploded. The circle in Pic1 is the "top"



There were some interesting shapes come harvest.

 

[thc43]

heres a couple of sative strains i grew out looking for fems to smoke but mainly males to use in crosses. The females where decent for collected aussie bush but strain#3 without any signs of hermi, fast flower period and the males from this strain where kept for my first crosses of know genetics. Sat#3 male3 was used for the bulk M#3 x bigbud and BM#3 x white rhino

sativa#3

#2

#1

#6

#8

#7 unknown but extreemly slow to flower, some old school smoke from this 1

Hev/duty/fruity full indica

a sample of the bud nothing to look at but decent `!buds from pic#7 two shots above

flouros will be fine to veg but as said Sativas grow fast, stretch and will surely over fill most grow spaces dont veg long and expect 3 to 4 times stretch from12/12. A scrog grow or sog with all 10 plants would be the way togo but get them tipped and trained flat during there short veg. Scrog no more than 4 to 5 pot/plants per 600wt or 4x4foot or they will simply grow through netting faster than you can train.

The sats i use generally come from aussi homegrown and bush grows from my area, What a Typical bush strain looks like this one from a well known wine growing area further south where it gets cold and away from the solid clay soils where digging holes can be done by hand

aint tropical but very dry except june to end of Aug when its wet. These sats generally are use to an extreemly long veg and flower season so they get huge and the mostly sativas take awhile to finnish sometimes with bar all yield but a more enjoyable/ different smoke to the heavy Indicas.

Nutes
i run canna range in coco, maby my indica white rhino is a light feeder but find the sativa like a touch more food and show earlier stains if ec is too low but this could also be an PH issue because all plants and rooms run from a single res so i cant mix perfectly plant to plant.

Heat prob
if you have heat problems its the room setup to need to look at no mod to the shade will help. Get some thermometers in room get a reading (doors shut venting on)=? now open door of grow room does the temp drop?
Heat in room with flouros sounds odd, hows you in/ out venting? remove ducting(fan may have no power to push through) I guessing its way under
powered and would be worth pumping a quick grow out with the money saved not buying herb get a 250mm centrifugal fan and maby a filter. The filter combo will alow you to run 1 to 6 600wt lights if free flowing..

Ps cant have too many temp guages outside GR temp vs In GR temp (lights on will help, then you can search for hot spots that maby an oscilating fan can dispurse. Ive been where you are specially in summer, its worth setting the room up well the first time.


Goodluck fellow stoner

After 5 to 7 days veg under HPS i have to flower if not scrog~ing to keep this bigbud under 1meter.


A week later day 5 flower. I just harvested this room filled corner to corner 95% full with above avg yield in 10wk total

This is one of the chosen fathers as a flowered clone (batch3 male3) the father of cross to clone only strains

My hybrid cross Bush x white rhino (first test with a single seed germ/grow) luckily was fem and retained the stinky rhino traits, see the size difference when alittle indica dom is added to the same Sativa male3 i crossed with Bigbud.

Seed

early flower bush x rhino planted 1/11/08 or 11/1/08 for the US peeps, next to the rhino cut there is little difference just not as oily/putrid smell has a sweet smell to it now but same stature, pistles, early trics 14to 18 days and come harvest no need to trim leaves only being fan leaves i trim at bagging.

around 8 week BB xWR the cross looks promising with this single seed i cant wait to open up all the phenos in future grows.. thumbs up if grown for personal let it veg abd maby go to 9 week flower, this strain is better picked on the earlier side if you like big oily white trics.


Thc is always around although it is mushroom season excuse the comedown rant that drifted way off topic.. but hey we all get to see some known and some unknown Oz genetics i poped last year..

Bye

 

[nwdub]

i think it will be more like 6 plants and I think I'll plant the rest outside

 

[habeeb]

Which strains did you get nwdub?

Don't use any bottled nutrients if you can avoid it, or you harm the micoflora and fauna that feed your plants and also loose all the benefits like resistance to disease and pests that go with a healthy soil!

what's wrong with bio-canna?

 

[nwdub]

those tomato cages are a great idea. I'm totally going to use those.

and what's bio-canna

 

[neongreen]

what's wrong with bio-canna?

I don't know it. It might be ok, but ultimately, you don't know what's in the bottle. Chances are you could mix the ingredients yourself for 1/10 (or less) the price, which again I don't know, but going on the last time I checked prices for similar products. The EJ "catalyst" that I paid good money for is basically molasses and water for example. Never again..

I used to use EJ (still do occasionally since I have some left over) but realized there's no point paying what they ask for it round here, but the real point is that if you mix things up yourself, you can tailor your soil mix/feeding to exactly what the soil needs.

Plants can't absorb organic nutrients directly. That is where the micro-herd comes in. They turn the organic nutrients into inorganic forms that are available to the plants.

This is why you should bubble your solution before you give it, which gets the microbes going. I think even with the "semi-organic" nutrient products like EJ, you are probably not getting the bio-diversity and volume in numbers of micro-heard as you do when applying properly aerated compost teas. Since you are giving only one product (alternatively, you could spend a small fortune and buy the whole product range in some cases), I think there may also be a likelihood that you may get a build up of a particular nutrient in the soil that can hinder the micro-herd and uptake of nutrients.

I'm still learning myself and am new to organics, but that's the reasoning behind my reply as I understand it.

Also, all you need to to is start a compost pile and a worm bin, and it's no more paper trails from buying stuff on the net. Those few ingredients that you might not be able to produce/collect yourself like kelp meal and dolomite lime easily be bought from ordinary garden/agricultural retailers.

Lots of other good reasons not to buy bottled nutes. Read the stickies in the organics forum here, and you'll get a better idea about how it all works.