Mix of Malawi, Malawi PCK, Congo and Zapateca tribute

[nattyroots]

Hi, how's it going?. Here's a little outdoor run, summer here, and they got off to a late start. Two Malawi regs in the fabric pot, three Zapateca Tributes at the end, and two M x PCK fems and Congos on the opposite side. (the smaller pot is something else) I started these indoors under fluoros for two weeks under 14 hours and now they're outside, and getting similar amount of day hours. Prob about three weeks old total from breaking ground. One of the Congos i fucked up on transplant, it was too dry, rootball fell apart, shame on me. It was very vigorous, but has slowed down. Plants have been attacked by small catterpillars and maybe also some leafminers. I was away from the grow, blumats help but they also make you less on top of your IPM, at least when you're running them for the second time like me. Hopefully, I've learned. I'll start seriously fighting back and see how they respond. Soil is peat, compost, perlite, some bio char, rock minerals, bokashi, and some ground up shells.

My question is I have another 35 days of veg or so before they flower, i don't want them to get too huge (over 4/5 ft). Should I top them, and when and which ones? They've just put out their fifth nodes. Which ones should I def top, and which ones should I not. I'm not sure what shape to expect. Also, I think soil has enough nutes for a while but would be good to know which ones I should feed once they start to flower.

Thanks all, love this forum. Really looking forward to trying these genetics. Last time, it was Peruvian bx and Malawi x Moz , and it turned out pretty good but pots were smaller so were my yields. This time I'm hoping for more with bigger pots. Fabric pot is 20 gal, and other pots are 5 gallon.

 

[nattyroots]

Quick update. Plants really liked their bigger pots and have almost doubled in size in about 10 days. I'll have pics next time. I topped all between the 4th and 5th node, hope that was a good idea, except for the sluggish Congo that I hurt during transplant which I did not top. I also started some IPM treatment with diatemaceous earth, sprayed, to help with critters, although I noticed a few white flies, which i might have to use something else against. Veg is the time to get your IPM in and I need to make sure every week or so I hit the plants with something else to ensure a relatively chill flowering period.

The Zapateca tribute, one for sure, maybe two seem to have gone into flowering. I'll wait another week to be sure, but I'm thinking for my latitude I would have been better off vegging them indoors under 24 and bringing them out to flower when big enough. At around 23 lat I feel like they've jumped into flowering a bit before I wanted but hey they're supposed to be early flowering varieties so I should've planned accordingly and not just planted them under natural day length. The Malawi, Congo and MPCK show no sign of flowering, and I hope they veg for another month or so before showing sex.

I'll have some pics next time.

 

[dubi]

Welcome nattyroots and sorry for my delay in the reply.

I usually like to wait until seedlings start to reach their sexual maturity before start pruning (i always had the feeling is too stressful to do it before that), but it's fine if you already did it since you were worried about their final size, anyway don't think they will get that big with the late sowing. Please keep us updated, thanks!

 

[nattyroots]

No worries dubi. Thanks for getting back to me. I now realize it's often best to post in the appropriate sticky thread but since I had a few strains going, I tried the regular post approach first.

A lot has changed since those pictures.

On the Zacateca I had 1 out of 3 females. They flowered a little early for me, so next time I'll either start them sooner (or veg indoors longer and then put them out). The one female that flowered has some really great scents on it and density too. Almost like a flowery macarroon. I get a lot butter and sugar from it, a little like the wedding cake varieties and the such but more complex. Since she flowered before the others and I think maybe she likes nutes a little more, she's showing a bit of a deficiency which I tried to remedy last time I saw her. I want to try her again but my hot and humid climate invites a little PM in summer (doesnt help she has a deficiency to boost) so I might veg indoor and run her on the winter/spring when it's drier.

The big Congo fem has really taken off. It's got a bit of purple in it and scents are starting to show though it's still timid. I trained her a bit extremely but she really stretched and I wanted to keep her under 4/5 feet. Doesnt seem to have suffered much from the training. I gave her a half feed of nutes last time as it's now around week 3/4 for her. Her sister, which got some transplant shock, shows no purple and looks like it might finish before her bigger purple sister. It has some more classic mango tropical fruits scents to it but I bet it will evolve. No pics of her for now.

I also have two Malawi PCK fems that just started showing pistils. They both look vigorous but no pictures of them this time. As for the Malawi regs I got unlucky, lost one as a baby, then a second one got devoured by ants and the third one was a male. I still have some seeds so I;ll try them again next year but hopefully the M PCK will give me a taste of the Malawi high.

Looking fwd to the next few months. Hopefully not too much rain.