spigolaro
Well-known member
Bloody killer sprout
A Taste of Africa from Malawi
- Thread starter Zanddar
- Start date
Thank you @dubi am keeping up with her feeding. Yesterday I was concerned about her leaves as shown, turning half brown and wilting. But after monitoring closely I am convinced she will bounce back. What happened was, first, colder weather and so I hung tarps to keep out the wet & cold and the sun's warmth in. But I was then away for a week and during that time the weather warmed up again, sending the inside temperatures up to a level like 34C/94F at the top of the ceiling. That heat stress -- imho -- may have caused that reaction, which looks like a potassium def (even though she gets ample K) from heat stress. The covered area enables me to grow late flowering sativas, but has its risks. In any event, just some of the fan leaves were affected, and the rest looks healthy. Here some photos from today.
Last edited:
a lovely picture!
Here's a question, maybe a little bit of topic. As a 45.9 lat poorman, I can only dream of having an outdoor Malawi plant. Would it be possible to finish her of before november if I was to have them in pots, so that I could induce flowering a couple of weeks earlier by putting them in a dark room and then transplant them outside?
Hi @skoviik I really appreciate your question! Or questions. In fact, talking about latitude poverty, I am right there with you in that boat or maybe worse off.
At 47 N, the only way I could grow tropical sativas was to build a greenhouse of some kind. So I did that and the ACE strains this year benefitted from the additional warmth (sometimes too much). I won't get the same quality of Oldtimer's Haze I'd get at say 30 N. Maybe it won't be as great, but I think I'll get some good weed. Even dangerous!
My Malawi has been in a 35 L / 7.5 gal pot since end of June. It grows well in a pot, and planting in the ground is immovable. What you are suggesting -- moving her indoors to induce earlier flowering -- works of course in an inside grow but is difficult to manage in outdoor. I once tried it and it may have even worked, but I don't really know. I brought the plants in for 13 hours of total darkness for 2 weeks. It was a lot of work, plus trying to get the light change at the exact same moment each day, well, it's playing with the plants and maybe they can get confused. Confusion could also come from how long the daylight lasts at the moment you've induced flowering and the plants go back outside, day should be no longer than the 11 hours they had during the last 2 weeks -- or they'll reveg, stop flowering and continue in veg.
I still can't say how the Malawi will finish at 47N. In a greenhouse she was warm this last month. If I can do it at 47N, 45.9 might be doable. Check back in a few months, after she cures.
Cheers
I realy appreaciate your answers, thanks! Wow, that was a lot of work! I think the biggest problem is rapid shortening of the day and dampess, which is also a consequence of the shortening of the days that's why getting her to start flowering earlier is imho better than to try to protect her from "the elements" in november and maybe even december.Hi @skoviik I really appreciate your question! Or questions. In fact, talking about latitude poverty, I am right there with you in that boat or maybe worse off.
At 47 N, the only way I could grow tropical sativas was to build a greenhouse of some kind. So I did that and the ACE strains this year benefitted from the additional warmth (sometimes too much). I won't get the same quality of Oldtimer's Haze I'd get at say 30 N. Maybe it won't be as great, but I think I'll get some good weed. Even dangerous!
My Malawi has been in a 35 L / 7.5 gal pot since end of June. It grows well in a pot, and planting in the ground is immovable. What you are suggesting -- moving her indoors to induce earlier flowering -- works of course in an inside grow but is difficult to manage in outdoor. I once tried it and it may have even worked, but I don't really know. I brought the plants in for 13 hours of total darkness for 2 weeks. It was a lot of work, plus trying to get the light change at the exact same moment each day, well, it's playing with the plants and maybe they can get confused. Confusion could also come from how long the daylight lasts at the moment you've induced flowering and the plants go back outside, day should be no longer than the 11 hours they had during the last 2 weeks -- or they'll reveg, stop flowering and continue in veg.
I still can't say how the Malawi will finish at 47N. In a greenhouse she was warm this last month. If I can do it at 47N, 45.9 might be doable. Check back in a few months, after she cures.
Cheers
I remember in the late 90ies when I started to grow I sexed plants in april by putting them in darkness for 24h. They started to flower and I transplanted females outside...I was wondering if covering the plant for 24h with something that prevents sunlight would work?
Maybe someone really knowledgeable like @dubi could jump in here, but my feeling is that at 46N, your problem in growing tropical sativas isn't so much reducing the amount of light or the day length -- you already get longer nights now than at lower latitudes -- it's the low temperatures (where I am, it will be 2 C / 36 F tonight) and high humidity. I try to solve those problems in a covered and closed-off area with a heater to give warmth for continued flowering (keeping at minimum 18 C / 65 F), and the warmth also serves to lower the humidity in the covered area.
In your case, with your plant rooted outdoors in the ground -- you have to take what Nature sends your way. Yes, it's a challenge. Or get an indoor setup like @Kiefcake. Good luck!
Last edited:
I think I was missunderstood. I'm looking it this way - my problem is that they finish too late. Even if the T are warm enough, november is ussualy a dark month, you know it if you are at 47. Not quite possible to get 4h of direct sunlight a day, which I think makes it harder for the plants to finish. But true, novembers are ussualy quite cold but not so much, especially in the lowlands.
So if they finish too late and I can not influence/shorten the duration of flowering then I would say that another option is to make them start flowering earlier. If it flowers 3 months and I would like to have her ready for oktober 15, then she should start flowering on july 15th. In nature impossible because of the long day but if I could artificialy induce flowering it would be great.
maybe we're off topic and there is a thread on this topic somewhere on icmag?
goingrey
Well-known member
I think most sativa strains will be very eager to go back to veg with long days and you will need to do light deprivation every night for 12 hours until like September, not just once for 24 hours. Worth a try though - what if it works, game changer..
What a crazy looking Malawi @Kiefcake wow! She is really lanky, with crazy structure, but i have the feeling the flowers at the end will be killer!
Emeraldo at your latitude consider to light dep your outdoor sativas in late July, so they will start to flower more than 1 month ahead than under your natural photoperiod, having more chances to finish there.
Emeraldo at your latitude consider to light dep your outdoor sativas in late July, so they will start to flower more than 1 month ahead than under your natural photoperiod, having more chances to finish there.
They certainly look like they will be killer. It is certainly lanky, it had like 8x stretch, it wasn't very tall after topping it when it went into flower.
Malawi smells richly of freshly cut timber -- wood -- with hints of oil, a bit of floral. She's had a rough time with leaf burn from heat stress (owing to the position I gave her in the covered area, which I will avoid in future). But her trichomes under the microscope are looking increasingly cloudy and a bit of amber, so I've cautiously started a staggered harvest yesterday, taking half a dozen of the ripest branches. Next week I'll harvest more, this way I'll try to get her effects at several stages of -- dangerousness!
Last edited:
those are some big a** trichomes, nice pic!
Thanks @dubi, light dep would shorten flowering time by kick-starting them into flowering earlier than would occur in nature. This year I tried to give the plants a good flowering temperature / environment in a greenhouse.
I tried to grow three Ace strains this year: Malawi, SMH, and Purple Haze x Malawi. PHM did not go into pre-flower until early September, and next year I need to account for that in the grow plan. By the time I saw that my selected PHM was male, I had no female left. This year I am left with Malawi and Super Malawi Haze reg females, which will finish nicely I hope in the greenhouse though SMH may finish while it snows outside in December. I would like to grow Purple Haze x Malawi again next year, perhaps germinating in late May (instead of April) for a shorter veg and using light dep (bringing the plants into a dark room for 13 hours) for a month from mid-August into September to get flowering going so PHM could finish earlier. Certainly seems like it would be worth a try.
Last edited:
