Growing Sativas

damien50 · Jan 23, 2019

I'm planning a grow in an 8x4x6.5 tent under QB120's with mega crop using DTW and I've decided I want to grow Malawi from Ace seeds. I've only grown indica so far so I don't really know what I need to be prepared for.

What temps should I aim for? Leaf surface temps?

I usually run 70-75% RH in veg and 55% in flower. Do sativas have a different preference?

The malawi is going to be flowering for over 100 days, I use Growpito sim mix for my medium, what size pots should I use?

Is 2-3 weeks enough time to veg 8 plants or should I go longer? I want to fill the tent.

I do multiple feeds and I'm wondering how many feeds are too many? I've done 8 max but I can't say whether I saw a difference

Ace suggest lowering the light schedule in flower to 11/13 to hurry flowering, how does that work?

Anything else I need to know about growing sativa or landrace?

DyersEve · Jan 23, 2019

damien50 said:
I'm planning a grow in an 8x4x6.5 tent under QB120's with mega crop using DTW and I've decided I want to grow Malawi from Ace seeds. I've only grown indica so far so I don't really know what I need to be prepared for.

What temps should I aim for? Leaf surface temps?

I usually run 70-75% RH in veg and 55% in flower. Do sativas have a different preference?

The malawi is going to be flowering for over 100 days, I use Growpito sim mix for my medium, what size pots should I use?

Is 2-3 weeks enough time to veg 8 plants or should I go longer? I want to fill the tent.

I do multiple feeds and I'm wondering how many feeds are too many? I've done 8 max but I can't say whether I saw a difference

Ace suggest lowering the light schedule in flower to 11/13 to hurry flowering, how does that work?

Anything else I need to know about growing sativa or landrace?

How many are you planning on flowering out together? You've got 32 square feet with workable head room. With 2-3 weeks of veg you could pack 20 in there, but if you veg them a full four weeks you would do better with fewer and have better results than forcing young plants. It can stress young plants grown from seed, clones would do fine. That's the route I would go if I'm growing from seed. For pots I would go as big as you can. Sativas will keep adding to their root mass through flowering and the more you let them do that the more well formed your colas will be. You'll avoid spindly plants and fluffier buds with good root growth. As for temps, most sativas like them on the warmer side with 76 degrees fahrenheit being optimal the way I was taught, though they can take it hotter. Some seem to really thrive in the 80's even. As far as going 11/13 on the light cycle this makes the plant think it's in a just subtropical fall and speeds up the flowering, and more importantly the finishing, of the plants. Many tropical sativas will just keep on flowering on and on in a full months long 12/12 cycle. The problem with this is taking forever and leaving you with buds that are a combination of overripe and premature at the same time in the same buds. They also are more likely to produce some hermaphroditic flowers and e all know we don't usually want that. Some people will start sativas flowering at 12/12 and lower to 11/13 halfway through and often on to 10/14 in the last few weeks to get a good finish. Usually that works best when you have developed a feel for sativas and moreso for a particular strain. For your first experience with these awesome plants going with 11/13 all the way through will be fine.

If you want to pick my brain for more I'd love that. I am one of those guys that is into sativas above all else. I grow and breed lots of indicas and hybrids, but I always have some sativas going. Right now I just switched some Destroyers from Cannabiogen into flower this past weekend. They flower about as long as your Malawi will. I'm also about to germinate some of their Jamaican/Haze x Peyote Purple (Bubba Kush line selected for color, flavor and resin production) and their Malawi x Panama/Deep Chunk. The latter will be faster than your pure Malawi but the JHxPP can have some seriously long flowering phenotypes.

I hope this helps and good luck. You may end up really loving growing sativa and need it ;)

damien50 · Jan 23, 2019

DyersEve said:
How many are you planning on flowering out together? You've got 32 square feet with workable head room. With 2-3 weeks of veg you could pack 20 in there, but if you veg them a full four weeks you would do better with fewer and have better results than forcing young plants. It can stress young plants grown from seed, clones would do fine. That's the route I would go if I'm growing from seed. For pots I would go as big as you can. Sativas will keep adding to their root mass through flowering and the more you let them do that the more well formed your colas will be. You'll avoid spindly plants and fluffier buds with good root growth. As for temps, most sativas like them on the warmer side with 76 degrees fahrenheit being optimal the way I was taught, though they can take it hotter. Some seem to really thrive in the 80's even. As far as going 11/13 on the light cycle this makes the plant think it's in a just subtropical fall and speeds up the flowering, and more importantly the finishing, of the plants. Many tropical sativas will just keep on flowering on and on in a full months long 12/12 cycle. The problem with this is taking forever and leaving you with buds that are a combination of overripe and premature at the same time in the same buds. They also are more likely to produce some hermaphroditic flowers and e all know we don't usually want that. Some people will start sativas flowering at 12/12 and lower to 11/13 halfway through and often on to 10/14 in the last few weeks to get a good finish. Usually that works best when you have developed a feel for sativas and moreso for a particular strain. For your first experience with these awesome plants going with 11/13 all the way through will be fine.

If you want to pick my brain for more I'd love that. I am one of those guys that is into sativas above all else. I grow and breed lots of indicas and hybrids, but I always have some sativas going. Right now I just switched some Destroyers from Cannabiogen into flower this past weekend. They flower about as long as your Malawi will. I'm also about to germinate some of their Jamaican/Haze x Peyote Purple (Bubba Kush line selected for color, flavor and resin production) and their Malawi x Panama/Deep Chunk. The latter will be faster than your pure Malawi but the JHxPP can have some seriously long flowering phenotypes.

I hope this helps and good luck. You may end up really loving growing sativa and need it ;)

I'm thinking of doing 8 in 3 gallon smart pots. With sativa, Malawi especially, will I be topping frequently? I usually don't top and mostly LST/Super cropping. I don't know if 3 gallon pots will be big enough, my auto northern lights filled the 3 gallon well.

Do you think mega crop would be enough on its own for the Malawi?

Is Super cropping and lst enough or should I consider scrog?

DyersEve · Jan 25, 2019

Sorry it took me a bit to get back to you. Alright, so I have a tendency to go the less is more route. That said LST would work for you. Lots of sativas seem to not respond well to topping in my experience unless you're going to veg them up huge. I'm talking a 10 week veg. Monster sized. Your best bet though is going to be SCROGing. It's what I would do at least. I had a Durban that I used to experiment with different training methods on. I got very respectable 2 to 3 even up to 4 ounce yields of dry bud , well manicured, from various methods with her clones. Then I SCROGed her. The first time I did it I got 11 2 to 2 1/2 foot colas on her. When all was said and done I had about 9 1/2 ounces off of that one plant. Damned respectable. She was a big yielder to begin with, but I thought that was insane at the time. Since then I've had some other very good yields with SCROGing, and no matter what I've never found a better method for indoor high yield growing. Outdoors is a whole other story. I've grown Ace's Malawi and some other great sativas they've put out with the Meao Thai mother. I'm betting what worked so well with the Durban will work well with the Malawi. They're pretty damned similar plants. I didn't SCROG it when I grew it but I've done other sativas. The only thing I would add is that when I've gotten big yields like that I vegged them long enough to fill a few square feet of screen, not really worrying about veg time. Then when I flowered I didn't keep weaving them into the screen. I just let 'em go from there. I also had to tie those colas up to the ceiling. Hope this helps. Keep me posted.

damien50 · Jan 25, 2019

DyersEve said:
Sorry it took me a bit to get back to you. Alright, so I have a tendency to go the less is more route. That said LST would work for you. Lots of sativas seem to not respond well to topping in my experience unless you're going to veg them up huge. I'm talking a 10 week veg. Monster sized. Your best bet though is going to be SCROGing. It's what I would do at least. I had a Durban that I used to experiment with different training methods on. I got very respectable 2 to 3 even up to 4 ounce yields of dry bud , well manicured, from various methods with her clones. Then I SCROGed her. The first time I did it I got 11 2 to 2 1/2 foot colas on her. When all was said and done I had about 9 1/2 ounces off of that one plant. Damned respectable. She was a big yielder to begin with, but I thought that was insane at the time. Since then I've had some other very good yields with SCROGing, and no matter what I've never found a better method for indoor high yield growing. Outdoors is a whole other story. I've grown Ace's Malawi and some other great sativas they've put out with the Meao Thai mother. I'm betting what worked so well with the Durban will work well with the Malawi. They're pretty damned similar plants. I didn't SCROG it when I grew it but I've done other sativas. The only thing I would add is that when I've gotten big yields like that I vegged them long enough to fill a few square feet of screen, not really worrying about veg time. Then when I flowered I didn't keep weaving them into the screen. I just let 'em go from there. I also had to tie those colas up to the ceiling. Hope this helps. Keep me posted.

So what I'm thinking I'll do then is 8 Malawi in 3 gallon pots and scrog. I've found some trellis nets on Amazon. Thanks for the help.

gwheels · Jan 25, 2019

Malawi is delicious...good luck.

damien50 · Jan 25, 2019

gwheels said:
Malawi is delicious...good luck.

Tell me more please.

DyersEve · Jan 25, 2019

damien50 said:
Tell me more please.

I don't know about gwheel's experience but when a buddy and I grew Malawi in a greenhouse set up it smelled and tasted like anise and tropical fruit. Depending on the individual plants there was also a flavor I could only describe as 'fresh'. Kind of like when you're super thirsty and drink really pure clean ice water. That sweet cool taste. That may sound strange but it's the best description I have.

damien50 · Jan 25, 2019

DyersEve said:
I don't know about gwheel's experience but when a buddy and I grew Malawi in a greenhouse set up it smelled and tasted like anise and tropical fruit. Depending on the individual plants there was also a flavor I could only describe as 'fresh'. Kind of like when you're super thirsty and drink really pure clean ice water. That sweet cool taste. That may sound strange but it's the best description I have.

I'm excited now! Got a bunch of stuff to order. Thanks for the help

DyersEve · Jan 25, 2019

No problem. It helps me to go over old grows. I'm betting you get the sativa bug from this grow. You picked an awesome strain to start with. And man, Malawi packs a punch! I decided to pop a few Malawi x (Panama x Deep Chunk) because of this thread. Thanks for reminding me ;)

gwheels · Jan 25, 2019

DyersEve said:
I don't know about gwheel's experience but when a buddy and I grew Malawi in a greenhouse set up it smelled and tasted like anise and tropical fruit. Depending on the individual plants there was also a flavor I could only describe as 'fresh'. Kind of like when you're super thirsty and drink really pure clean ice water. That sweet cool taste. That may sound strange but it's the best description I have.

Thats a pretty good description. Like anise tropical fruit. Strange and compelling and the high is really nice. It changes during the high and if you want to figure things out its pretty awesome for critical thinking. As soon as i move im putting in the tall tent and running some.

DyersEve · Jan 26, 2019

gwheels said:
Thats a pretty good description. Like anise tropical fruit. Strange and compelling and the high is really nice. It changes during the high and if you want to figure things out its pretty awesome for critical thinking. As soon as i move im putting in the tall tent and running some.

Yeah, I was just thinking about that. I have some Malawi crosses (seed), but I also have some pure Malawi seed we made from some landrace stock. I can't remember tha name of the seed company we originally got it from. I don't think those guys are even around anymore. They had another strain called Tribal Vision that was an African landrace sativa cross. Oh yeah, Afropips. That was the seed company.

Dbear180 · Jan 26, 2019

If I remember correctly @RuralFarmer just ran some ace malawixpanama not that long ago. I could be wrong, been a while since I've seen him here. I know for sure he was talking about it tho.

DyersEve · Jan 26, 2019

Dbear180 said:
If I remember correctly @RuralFarmer just ran some ace malawixpanama not that long ago. I could be wrong, been a while since I've seen him here. I know for sure he was talking about it tho.

Nice. It's a kick ass cross. The seeds I have are from one of the best kept secrets in the business. Cannabiogen's Deluxe Mix. For about $30 you get five of each of Malawi x (Panama x Deep Chunk) , Sandstorm x Peyote Purple (a selected purple line from Bubba Kush) and by far one of the best strains I've ever grown in over 30 years, (Jamaican x Haze) x Peyote Purple. That last one uses real old school Haze and Jamaican Lambsbread. On top of all of those strains being seriously bad ass they're beautiful. They come in a 9 pack of fems too. I currently have two packs of regs and a ten pack of straight Peyote Purple. I'm going to run some of the JH x PP and a few of each of the others next. I really hope to get a male PP but the strain only puts out about 1 in 20 males to females.

Cannabiogen is one of the top five breeders out there imo. They work closely with Ace sharing the same breeding stock for much of their work.

damien50 · Jan 27, 2019

DyersEve said:
No problem. It helps me to go over old grows. I'm betting you get the sativa bug from this grow. You picked an awesome strain to start with. And man, Malawi packs a punch! I decided to pop a few Malawi x (Panama x Deep Chunk) because of this thread. Thanks for reminding me ;)

Thank you! I'm going to order everything in a bit and hopefully get this grow going mid to late February.

gwheels · Jan 28, 2019

I grew Malawi X Panama in my garden last year. It grew 5 feet tall and ended up with 2 1/2 oz of the best tasting sativa i have ever smoked. Like the Malawi crossed with a weird pineapple dragon fruit. And the effect is my favorite of all sativas too date. Ace seeds has tons of landrace and land-race crosses.

I have two bangi haze that came with 6 malawi/panama and they might be next .....

damien50 · Jan 28, 2019

gwheels said:
I grew Malawi X Panama in my garden last year. It grew 5 feet tall and ended up with 2 1/2 oz of the best tasting sativa i have ever smoked. Like the Malawi crossed with a weird pineapple dragon fruit. And the effect is my favorite of all sativas too date. Ace seeds has tons of landrace and land-race crosses.

I have two bangi haze that came with 6 malawi/panama and they might be next .....

Do you have a grow journal on it?

gwheels · Jan 28, 2019

I have a couple of pics.

PETRICHOR · Jan 28, 2019

damien50 said:
Tell me more please.

I've seen Malawi (one plant btw) take up an entire 4x4 x7 foot tent! This particular strain will turn into a full bush like a lilac if u super crop and top as necc. Between his Malawi, Thai crosses u really can't go wrong! Talk about resin production dude? Whoa p! Have fun!

PETRICHOR · Jan 28, 2019

gwheels said:
I grew Malawi X Panama in my garden last year. It grew 5 feet tall and ended up with 2 1/2 oz of the best tasting sativa i have ever smoked. Like the Malawi crossed with a weird pineapple dragon fruit. And the effect is my favorite of all sativas too date. Ace seeds has tons of landrace and land-race crosses.

I have two bangi haze that came with 6 malawi/panama and they might be next .....

He JUST came out with a new Malawi hybrid he claims tops all others previous ....so yeah I pulled the trigger of course! I will journal it here once I'm properly set up.....I'm thinking I couple 600 has eye hortilux kool tubes for the ladies with supplemental led on sides should provide what I need to Achieve apical nirvana! Pulling up a seat, if I can help I will.

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