I can very readily say that this strain performed exactly as advertised. Every single thing Spliff had in the description on this girl was accurate. About 9 weeks of flower, branchy and great for a scrog. Phenos usually produce a sweet, “strawberry-like” scent. Robust, resilient, a light-medium feeding plant that doesn’t require a ton of care or maintenance. The fact that it’s sativa dominant does assist with this and she was less effort to defo than others.
I give Spliff Seeds full marks and credit for knowing their product, as well as its potential. Thanks dudes, pleasure grow’n your beans👍👊.
Taste & Smell: 🍭🍭🍭🍭🍭
Effects: 🍭🍭🍭🍭
As far as a true scent profile in weed goes (given my limited sense of smell), this plant is incredible. There is a lasting sweetness to the smell which is undeniably strawberry. It’s quite surprising how much it comes out when you waft it in or break up the flower.
From the bong I found it surprisingly smooth (especially for a half dry initial sample). The better half however, was coughing like mad so at least this girl is 1:1 on her strawberry cough namesake. 4 or 5 good chugs and within a couple minutes that classic cerebral sativa stone starts to set in. Similar to the last jack Herer we grew out (which this one also happens to have in her lineage), this is the kinda stuff that’ll have you staring at the ceiling for 20 minutes... while you try to figure out why you can’t stop staring at the ceiling👍🤩😎. There really isn’t much of any raciness in er but there is still a definitive, yet chill sense of energy and motivation to do something. Actually really perfect for Putin in work on the plants👍👍👍. She seems to finish off with a hint of euphoria mixed with a nice mellow come down. My early take is that I’m incredibly impressed with this strain. Just a great sativa all around.
Update
Smoked a j of er tonight and this plant is the bomb through and through. Ground a few 2nd tier nugs and rolled one up - damn! This shit is the straight, stellar, bees knees kinda high that everyone likes👌😎. We cut this thing down at just about the perfect time I think. The trichs under the scope are a perfect mix of cloudy and amber. Exactly what we were looking for in terms of the finish👍. The smoke - precure was smooth and sweet, totally unexpected and awesome.
It was a sativa heavy line up this season and this girl is the second one off the production line. We won’t be giving away too much of this and selfishly keeping quite a bit of it for ourselves methinks😉.
Nutes 🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓
We continue to run at the very top of botanicare’s recommended feeding schedule. I’ve found it to be versatile and easy to cut back on when needed. Ran a steady dose of Cal mag and karma through most of the grow and right into the final weeks. She showed no signs of burn through the whole cycle and wasn’t a huge drinker during veg. I really can’t say enough about this line of nutes and they continue to make it difficult for me to consider another brand.👏 minus the occasional test grow (come’n up btw - couple all organic grows and a hydro run) botanicare will remain as a staple for most media moving forward, regardless of what gets added or subb’d.
Method 📊📊
Ran er on a mainline in the hopes that we could really jack out the cabinet on a large, 2-plant grow. Don’t get me wrong here, mission accomplished, Super happy with the results BUT - Spliff suggests you run er in an SOG or SCROG and I fully concur. The branchy-ness of this chick was very surprising and if I’d had the equipment ready at the time, I would’ve been reaching for the net even prior to the stretch. She gets a paltry 2 of 5 graph emojis for this reason and this reason alone. She also became quite unruly during mid-flower and leaf growth lower down the plant packed in far too densely, far too quickly to keep up with.
This is the first attempt under this grow light with a photo strain and she performed admirably. It was a great indicator as to the fixtures light penetration limits too which were surprisingly deeper than expected. Long, bulky and dense buds. This COB light has paid for itself multiple times over and I’ve only run 2 cycles through👍. No yo-yoing was required but that was primarily out of laziness and because the branches were packed together with the neighbours. If I had the anchors for the yo-yo’s in place on this cycle Id’ve thrown a couple in just to keep some of the colas from crowding out the gorilla glue next door.
Medium 🥥🥥🥥🥥
Coco is the go-to medium in lieu of soil when we grow indoors. Better drainage, faster growth rate (especially in veg.) and re-usable too! We just sort, break and mix all of our old medium together in a couple grow bags and grab as needed for either new grows or soil amendments👍. The fact that it’s nute neutral allows us to dictate exactly what the plant receives at all times. IMO - more manageable and precise than soil. Include a regular diet of calmag and ur good to grow.👍. The only knock is one of its greatest strengths. With better drainage comes more regular feedings. If you prefer to spend less time watering, then soil will get you a day or two more between feedings at most stages. Again however, this mediums biggest advantage is it’s versatility - it goes from nute rich to flushed & neutral in days which means you get to rev the proverbial engine on her uptake right to the finish. All with great drainage and the simplicity of amended soil👍😎.
The grow space also deserves some token mention here. It was specifically designed and constructed to run up to 4 plants, in line, per cycle. The idea was to spend heavy on a strong penetration grow light and go higher instead of wider when it came to the actual enclosure. It was a great decision. We save on depth by being skinny but sacrifice nothing with respect to the potential for plant size👍. I understand that bar lights are making a strong case for max coverage but if you’re looking for a single point light source, you definitely can’t go wrong with something like this COB tech.👍
Yield🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴
Let’s be clear here - it was obvious almost from week 1 that this plant was gonna be a beast. She did nothing but flourish from the very start and I again give Spliff Seeds a lot of credit for this.
She trimmed (and dried) a lot more than expected. The scissor hand was aching on the finish and it took us 2 nights worth of work to get the whole plant clipped out. The top drawer buds are dense as all hell, absolutely covered in frosty crystals. Maturation is evident to about the bottom of the 2nd tier buds, a full 12” of prime smoke on each main cola. The lesser branches dried up significantly to probably a quarter of their wet-trimmed size.
We ground and decarb’d most of the trim (big fans in the compost, sugar leaves and larf in the keeper bin) for future edible use and we have a ton of it. As this is mostly under developed bud and loose plant matter we follow a general rule of double the amount of decarb trim per recipe for butters and oils. Results are somewhat varied but it does produce a much less heavy hitting edible experience which can often be preferable to the more debilitating, heart exploding, full strength goods that utilize mature flower. And you can eat more servings usually too😉👍.
Now we did lose about 25% of one main cola due to bud rot. Spotted it early and running off the head thankfully so clipped it out as necessary. As mentioned, she dried up quite a bit after chop but the end result is still much more than we expected. Approximated average yield is possibly the only thing Spliff got wrong in their description.
The numbers... sweet Christ, she’s a beast -
Total dried yield of 8.75oz.
Approx. est. yield: 500g/m2 divides by 4.8 (approx. for 1/3 the cabinets sq/ft) = 104.16g per 0.21m2
Actual yield: 8.75oz./0.21m2= 245g/0.21m2
This is a trend with the new space and crunches out to about 60% higher actual yield than breeder approximated numbers based on square meter footprint.
That’s back to back to back, record breaking grows indoors. The yield off this one plant challenged for the total combined yield off the last 2 autos we grew out under the same conditions. Given how well those turned out at 5+ and 4+oz. each - that’s a gong show crazy result for one plant🤩😎. If you look at total, expected harvest yield across all plants for this cycle, there’s almost no point in drawing a comparison anymore. We looking at as much as 2/3 of a pound each cycle out of this one space. That’s just ridiculous for such a relatively small footprint 👍😎👌💪🤩.
Props👊👊👊👊👊
Huge props and thanks to all who stopped in to chat on ‘er or just lend some support. We’ve had so many diaries on the grow this year that’s its made it really hard to keep up with what everyone else is doing these days. Add personal life considerations into the mix and it’s a wonder that we have time for this venture at all. Hope to be back creep’n on everyone’s grows once the summer slows down and we finalize the chop on the big ‘uns we have outdoors. This community continues to be chill and chalk full of awesome folks. Thanks again to GD for bringing us all together.👊. And all the best to everyone with an herb on the grow👊👊👊.
Thankfully, no real questions for the community on this one. However, I’m lookn for some new gardening music so take’n a poll on people’s fave tunes while they’re work’n on the garden. Best song of the bunch gets best answer for GOTM😉. Thanks in advance😎👊
@LongJohn420, @thebudwhisper , plenty of high class hip hop coming out of stones throw and jakarta records these days Octavian is all the rage in my town
@TheBudWhisperer, yep it was same here. then somebody told me that elphants on acid that new album sounds like temples of boom.. well then I was sold 😅 it is good album this new one.. rare these days in hiphop IMO.. and ou yes 90's hiphop was da shit!!
@bigbudsplz, cheers! And same here👍. Really looking forward to it for sure. Alls I can say right now is that the folks at SpliffSeeds are awesome, super fast and super responsive to any shipping issues👍😎. Thanks for taggn along👊
@TheBudWhisperer, I had some plants in veg during that time and they seemed to have a growth spurt. That was the only thing I thought was different. I figure a humidifier and small heater. We'll see.
@BarrieGrower, good idea if u can. Indoors it’s made a huge difference for my grows but just dumb luck (or bad luck) due to heatwaves. I’ll take it - without the bud rot next time hopefully🤞
@TheBudWhisperer, I know, it's been beach weather. Sucks for growing. The plants do look great though.
Seeing this I am definitely going to try to up my humidity during veg, it seems to make a difference.
@MG2009, cheers buddy - honestly, she’s gonna be one of those crazy, big yield grows I think. Nothing stops this plant and I just wish I’d had time/opportunity to scrog her. Oh well - we’ll just go with untamed, wild jungle instead and pray for limited leaf density👍😂
@Experimentgreen, and BTW - I’ve been listening to Lars frederikson and the bastards on repeat since your suggestion. Great song dude and appreciate it the intel👍👊
@MovingOn, lol! The epic battle between science and anecdotal evidence continues! Lol. There’s so many factors that go into it but you pretty much explained my conundrum here. My own research suggests the same; that there’s a happy medium between pruning/defo and letting live - usually driven by common sense. That said I think you convinced me to just let er go and see what happens. One way or the other I know it’s gonna be a great grow regardless👍😎
@TheBudWhisperer, well, I wish I weren't so much of a noob still, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt, but a lot of botanical science material (by actual botanists vs. closet growers with anecdotal opinions) that I have been reading lately favors less pruning and defoliation. So even if you have a mess, as long as your plant(s) can have an undercurrent of air at their feet, the yield is generally better than if you removed parts of the plant excessively.
So that's kind of where I'm at right now, I'm going to limit my pruning and defoliation and just see what happens. I had to cut my veg time significantly this time around, so it will be a good experiment for me anyway. I'm going to compare my 4 week veg yield with a fim on my current grow to the 11 week manifold yields from my previous grow. There are other factors affecting the grow too, so I have to be cautious of my assessments either way, but it will be a good experiment nonetheless.
On a side note, I've seen people just use string strung across their tents as a makeshift screen. You would have lines instead of a screen grid, but it works the same. Or maybe even using the bottom section of a tomato cage can help you spread out the shoots. Anyways, best of luck whatever you do!
@MovingOn, that was the plan but this thing branches like crazy so now I’m not so sure. It’s leggy and don’t think it’ll grow dense so I might consider letting the other side branches on each shoot extend out instead of cutting em off🤷♂️. So 25ish colas instead of 10???🤔🤔🤔. That could turn into a hot mess real quick so I’m gonna wait a little and see how it develops. Honestly - this plant was made for a scrog and I wish I had the time to fabricate a net and get a drainage pan under the pot. If staying manifold would you keep it simple at 5 a side or gamble with the hot mess and see what happens? I’ll take a poll on that question from everyone! 😂
@Godesskats, honestly - best overall strain we’ve ever grown and smoked. @Spliffseeds puts out quality. Period. If you ever have a line on their strains - get some!👍
After my current grow I'm going to be doing a GHSC white strawberry skunk as half of my first actual sativa grow. Sticking with the low growers for the time being though since I'm still a noob. Good luck with your strawberry, Bud!
@TheBudWhisperer, I also just added some headspace. Ordered a 1ft (30cm) extension to my Gorilla Grow Lite. It seems to help with some of the heat dissipation as well.
@MovingOn, and cheers and thanks again buddy! Yeah I’m super stoked with my new space. I finally have the headroom to get in trouble with some stretchy sativas so gonna make the most of it for sure. 😎
@CliveBiggsby, lol! No doubt! Full disclosure though - I’ve found I go through a ton more boveda packs with these ones as opposed to the regular screw top masons. Keep a look out for dried out humidipacks 👍
@MovingOn, my Long winded diatribe on an awesome grow buddy. That said, I see at least 5 clear winners already with a field like that. Like you, both a little perplexed and quite humbled to be there👍. Cheers P and good luck to ya👊
@mr_h_kovert, cheers Harry, very much appreciated. Pretty sure she’s gonna break a couple personal bests of my own as well so I’m happy to set the bar bro!👊