Limited-growing season thread

[Thomiq]

Hello guys. I am kinda want to know about early flowering commercial strains. There's my climate. I am 54 degrees north. Tables of temperatures and rain in 2009. That year was medium for growin', sometimes we get drier september (rarely)



I don't trust breeder's harvest date. They keep fooling me. For example TOP44 strain supposed to be harvested at september, but I had to work a lot at killing mold and defending them from frosts till the 4th week of october. Yeah, it took 1 month more than it was written in the breeder's website.

I hope you guys can give me some strain reviews from your own experience. That you grew succesfully. Lattitude would be good either .

By the way, my photoperiod is a little longer than Holland's. It's almost the same like Denmark.

Also waitin' some you experience about sooner harvest tips and tricks. Forced 12/12 photoperiod wont work for me because I am guerilla grower.

This discussion is not about autoflowering strains, because you can grow them anywhere .

Strains grown succesfully in my climate:

• New Purple Power (1st week of October. Very nice strain. Yield - 7/10, resistance to mold, pests - 10/10, high - 6/10
• Early Skunk (2nd week of October. Very little mold. It's very potent as for early strain)
• KC33 (late harvest but very little mold. Incredible high).
• Easy sativa (crazy stuff. It started flowering in JULY! And flowered for dam 3 month. No mold. Sowed it in may, I had 2-2.5m plants, but only like 4 ounces dried stuff per plant.
• Early Dane (Took harvest in 4th week of September. Kinda unpotent. But no diseases)
• Early Misty (kinda bad, because lots of mold. At least 40% of crop was lost to mold, and I had to do early harvest. I harvested it in 2nd week of October, but I should gave her 1 more week. At least high was fucking killer )
• First Girl (pretty fast harvest in 2nd week of September, but very unpotent )

Strains grown bad in my climate:

• TOP44 (very late harvest, at least 30% of crop lost to mold. Later I was pissed of and sprayed it with fungicide. Then water cured :/ )
• Night shade (I don't know what I did wrong, but it didn't even finish to harvest. It started flowering in 4th week of september and died in 1th week of November).
• Early durban (same like Night Shade. It's supposed to be early flowering, but it started to flower in 3rd week of september)
• Skunk #1 (harvested it like in 5th week of flowering and made hash oil. Harvest date was 3rd week of October. WTF ? :/ )

Now write down some of your grown strains. Best if you are limited-season grower . Let's help each other, limited-growing-season growers ).

Post anything related to this. Grow journals, your own experience etc...

Sorry if there's already thread like that, at least i didn't see it.

 

[Thomiq]

Strain suggestions or strains that I am certainly going to try:

• Mountain Mist;
• Guerilla Gold;
• Super Skunk (by the way, I grew it indoor. High - 9/10 );
• Durban Poison;
• Big Bud (I don't even think that it will finish in time. Well, at least worth a try );
• Afghan;
• THC Bomb;
• G13 Haze (I don't know about this. I'll try to put them in greenhouse. I would kill myself if I'd lose these plants to frost or mold ).
  
  What do you think ? Maybe other strain suggestions.

 

[steampick]

Here's one not to grow: Arjan Haze #3. Didn't even start flowering until September.

I'm trying Querkle outside right now which is supposed to be a mid-October finisher. I've heard AK-47/48 is quick to finish.

I'm going to try some Early Queen from Mr. Nice for indoors this winter to see if it is worth it. If so, I'll try it outside. Also going to look at Reeferman's Cherry Bomb Indica as it is also supposed to finish quickly. Both of these I'll try inside, and if I like the smoke, put them outside next spring.

 

[Thomiq]

Thank you steampick. I will add it to the list of not-to-grow. Can you please add your lattitude ?

AK-47 is a 6-week plant, but my friend told me that he took his AK-47 in mid October, cause' it started budding only in early september. Probably only indoors you get 6-week budder. Outside it flowered 6 weeks but friend said he could easily gave'er at least 1 more week. Looks like that it tends to attract little mold almost in the harvest time .

By the way waiting for more posts. I can't believe that you guys are all from California or Spain where growin' best buds is easier than growing tomatoes

 

[steampick]

46 degrees latitude, baby! Yeah, I gotta really watch what I plant outdoors.

I can't believe AK didn't start budding until September. Perhaps it was in a poor location (not a lot of direct light).

A dude gave me some advice last year: stay away from anything with the word "haze" in it. Haze = sativa = longer flowering time = bad idea for short seasons.

 

[Thomiq]

Yeah. Hazes is somethin what flowers 12-14 weeks, and it starts flowering later than indicas. Man you are 46 north ? It's not even real limited-season . I am 54 north. Now it's a challenge to grow something out there .

About AK47. Hm, it was in forest clearing, I am sure it got 8 hours of direct sun. But no direct morning and late evening sun, cuz of trees shades. You know sometimes it's just unpredictable. I think that as much stress they get in vegetation, the more time they will need to finish flowering, and some strains really needs more time to finish outdoors than indoors. Or maybe it's because that August was very rainy that year.

By the way, as I wrote in my to-do list, G13 haze is not actually haze. It flowers in like 10weeks, probably too long for normal northern guerilla grow, but it should be good if I manage to build small greenhouse. Dam I am dying to try this stuff .

 

[OlePhart]

I was 7 weeks late because of weather and my greenhouse growing of my clones. They are in 10 gal. containers, and the fifth image shows my WOG, wall of green, that is slowly filling-in. These are Blue Diesel. I have already treated them with extra 5-1-1, and some iron. They have not responded as quickly as I'd have hoped. The next few shots are of the individual BD's and the worst leaf.

The others are Big Bud, (GDP), an AK, and a Blue Dream.

Thanks for commenting on a noobie.

How are they doing?

 

[Thomiq]

What can I say ? They're very nice looking plants

 

[Thomiq]

Nice strain guide I found in the internet:

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=47579

 

[steampick]

Bookmarked!

Well, my Querkle male definitely showed its sex and was dispatched last night. It's weird how the male shows well before the females, but at least I don't gotta water it no more. The Querkle females are still not showing, as expected.

One thing I will say for growing outdoors in a limited growing season is to grow them in pots. With pots, you can bring them inside at night to stave off frost and mold (I'm thinking inside a shed or garage, not house as they are a bit stinky after 8 weeks of flower).

 

[Thomiq]

That's great if you can do that, but there's not much you can do if you are guerilla grower.

You can keep them healthy all grow, then they will be more resistant to mold. And there's various tehniques how to actually destroy mold. For example - hydrogen peroxide, and there's some organic anti-botrytis stuff to buy. But if the weather is rainy, mold will probably comeback in like 1 week. Well, I can tell you that one year september was very rainy. So I sprayed 2 flowering plants with hydrogen peroxide. Result was nice - it had almost no mold, while other plants of same strain had 15% molded buds. Later I didn't thought about testing h2o2 affected buds and other buds. But I think that they didn't lose potency or taste. For this year's grow I am not even waiting for mold to show up. If I'll see that september is very rainy, I will spray'em with that stuff at least 1 time a week.

From frost you can use special agri-film to cover your plants. From my experience - water can't form (condensate) on it, and it keeps plants alive at -4C. Why bad? It can be seen easy. I would rather choose a strain that would need low maintenance and have early harvest. It's nice if you have some of your land to grow, but if not

 

[Thomiq]

Does any know where I can buy Guerilla Gold ?

 

[crfhonda]

seedboutique there out of stock now though. They are listed under the Smoke a lot breeder

 

[Thomiq]

A little update. When i say limited, I mean we need strains that would finish in +50N.
My guessing on few more strains. This time Danish, and 1 Canadian:

• Timewarp
• Royal Dane
• Nepal
• Thyphoon
• High Power
• Rocket Chunk

 

[steampick]

Just saw another thread from somebody growing Iranian "Autoflower" at like, 56 degrees N up in Scandinavia. That'd be an interesting thread to follow if one is looking for plants to finish. I think his problem is too much daylight, though.

 

[Thomiq]

Can you give meh link ?

By the way, most danish strains I gave is something what is called semi-autoflowering. But I don't like to call them semi-autoflowering, because they react to photoperiod. They start flowering when there's like 16/8 . In my case - middle of July, and it finishes early september. Rocket Chunk is something perfect for northern guerilla growers. Unless you can get Guerilla Gold

 

[steampick]

Just go to the Seed and Strain section of Roll It Up, it's in there.

 

[Thomiq]

My friend grown Swiss Miss - it was 70% sativa. He grew like 50 plants and their finishing times varied. Some of them finished in mid-September, some of them only in mid-October. He told me, that the plants which finished earlier was in poor, sandy soil. Plants which was in perfect soil finished like mid-October. Now that's where the science comes. Sativas are from equator, where 12/12 is almost all the year. So sativa plants reacts not only into photoperiod, but in the soil either. When the soil is nice for them to grow, full of nutrients etc., they will grow big and nice plants and will flower very long either. If they have poor soil - they will start to flower earlier. I saw very interesting photo, where few sativas of same strain, in same place are in both veg and flower stages.

Main idea: Sativas are not scared of winter. There's no winter where they are from. The only thing that they're scared of is bad soil.

Conclusion: if you are sure that you are growing sativa, better don't grow it in perfect soil, because it will take longer times for them to flower out here. Of course, they won't react only into soil. With poor soil you help them to flower earlier. It's some good stuff for limited-growers

 

[Thomiq]

This post was originally posted by motaco:

NUTRIENT SECRETS AND FLUSHING. A FORGOTTEN KEY PART TO SATIVA FLOWER TIMES
This is something I don't hear very often and is pretty important. The amount of nutes you feed your sativa is also going to effect how long it flowers to a pretty dramatic amount in some cases. This is another place people try to grow sativas like indicas. With a hybrid plant as we all know those last 3 weeks or so is when all the real weight is put on. And you don't wanna skimp on ferts at this time. If the plant runs out of N its not going to produce as big of buds as it could've. So people usually feed up until about a week or a lil longer then they quit feeding. Which is what you should do for most plants.

But sativas aren't most plants. The reason those hybrid buds get so big and resinous those last few weeks is they think winter is coming. They are secreting resin trying to catch pollen, and desperately trying to produce enough energy in the buds to take care of seeds before a frost ends their life over night. Since there are no seeds they produce bigger buds.

But alot of sativas are from places there is no real winter to speak of. Most have no genetic background to be prepared for the concept of finishing for a frost. What determines finishing time for tropical sativas is nutrients. When they are in the wild there is no frost that forces them to try to make seeds. But if they run out of nutes they will die and so will their seeds. So when they start feeling nutrients running out in the ecosystem full of other nutrient thieves they know they need to put all energy into bud production for seeds and not growing more stem and leaves.

By keeping feeding your sativa N as fan leaves die during flower you are accidentally telling your plant that their ecosystem is thriving and they should compete to outgrow other canopy. Stem and leaves in other words which also extends the plants flower time dramatically. New growers often accidentally flower plants for nine months and stuff confused why new growth keeps coming out. Wondering when its going to end. This not only effects flower time but also the high. All those clear trichs aren't ready and produce anxious headache type stone mixed into your euphoric sativa.

As the plant yellows during the last month... good let it. Its natural. As long as it has P and K it will produce nice buds that are ready to finish in unison. Without all that new growth popping out of old growth. Sativas need very little N to produce growth; trust me. Let it finish you'll be happier with PROPERLY mature sativa buds for a change in a shorter period than you would have. This is the mistake so many growers make and why their weed is anxious and takes so long to flower. Also leads to alot of negative opinons about sats.

VEG NUTES FIRST FEW WEEKS OF FLOWER A BAD IDEA.
This is something alot of people picked up a long time ago, BOG helped spread it around, and it truly is a good idea, just not for sativas. When you grow hybrids that initial growth jump first few weeks of flowering where all new budsites is formed is a great time to have the plant flourishing on N to create growth. More budsites and more bud. But with sativas they use that energy to grow REAL TALL thinking they can get their buds up higher than the surrounding canopy and steal light for its seeds. But indoors all they do is grow right into your damn light. I can't tell you how many sativa grows I've followed and watched people do that veg nutes first weeks of flower trick only to find out three weeks later they have to cut all the dominant cola tips off the plants because they are growing into the lights. The people are always optimistic like "well I had to cut the main branches off but at this rate of growth I don't think it will hurt anything"

Yeah right. If you took your ak 47 and cut its main colas off so the lateral branches could grow up 3 weeks into flower you don't think it would hurt your yield? Dramatically. Lateral branches are great but they don't yield like main colas. Don't let them get too wild. Don't veg too long to begin with and if you do DEFINITELY don't hit them with a high dose of N going into flower like you would with a hybrid. Thats where most of these godzilla sativa stories come from.

I suggest using this information for indica/sativa strains either. Because sometimes it would be critical. Main idea - start giving your plants flowering nutrients sooner than they start flowering. Probably just before you getting 15h-14h of light. And don't give too much, just to help your plants build good buds