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Growing Finicky Sativas - A Quick Guide to Growing Sativa Strains

NebulaHaze

NebulaHaze

Administrator
Growing & Caring for Sativa Strains

When it comes to growing cannabis indoors, Sativa plants are typically a little tougher to care for than Indica plants. Sativa strains originated from hot regions near the equator, and as a result they have a few properties that can catch an indoor grower by surprise.

Note: It is very rare to find a "pure" Sativa strain since nearly all marijuana strains available today are some sort of hybrid. The following is talking about strains with a lot of Sativa plants in their ancestry and as a result carry a lot of common Sativa characteristics!

Appearance of Sativa Plants
  • Often have long, skinny leaves
  • Generally stretchy appearance with lots of side branching and plenty of space between sets of leaves (as opposed to the the short, squat Christmas tree shape of an Indica plant).
  • Tend to grow tall and fast throughout their life, but may double or even triple in height after entering the flowering stage.
  • Their size can quickly get out of control in a small grow space, though an experienced grower may be able to use the fast growth to their advantage!
  • Buds often have "foxtails" and may be loose or airy compared to Indica buds, which tend to be solid and dense.
Typical Indica vs Sativa plant - grown indoors together under the same conditions

From seed to harvest, these plants were given an equal amount of light from the sides. The Indica plant stayed short while the Sativa plant on the left grew far taller in the same conditions and time.

Long, thin "fingers" on leaves, compared to Indica leaves which tend to be round and fat.

Buds often have "foxtails" (buds grow in little towers) and/or may be relatively "wild" looking

This is what the buds of a "true" landrace Sativa looks like - basically all foxtails! Most available "Sativa" strains are actually hybrids with at least a little Indica genes mixed in to help increase bud density and improve overall structure.

Sativa plants (Panama strain) grown indoors - amazing and unique buds effects, but also big and tall plants!

Sativa plant in the flowering stage - may grow with lots of stem between sets of leaves

You might not want to choose Sativa-based strains if you're using a small grow space like this!

​

Other Common Sativa Characteristics
  • Sativa strains may need 3+ months in the flowering stage to be ready to harvest on the standard 12/12 flowering light schedule. In order to "hurry them along" they may need longer than average nights until harvest, for example a 11/13, 10/14 lor even 8/16 light schedule!
  • Sativa's generally respond well to high levels of light and don't mind a little heat, but can easily get stressed by cold temperatures
  • Sativa buds tend to give a more cerebral "in-your-head" effect than the more "body-based" Indica effects. Sativa buds may feel more energizing, so some people prefer Sativa strains for daytime use or in social settings.
  • Some Sativa strains have trichomes that may never turn amber even after months of flowering. If your plant has fully white trichomes, it's possible it may be time to harvest even if no ambers are appearing.
  • Harvest when trichomes are mostly cloudy with a few clears left for the most psychedelic effect
  • Can be more common to get hermies, especially under stress or close to harvest if buds are not pollinated. If buds appear mostly done and suddenly throw out a bunch of bananas, it could mean it's time to harvest
  • Can be nutrient sensitive, especially in dry heat, low light levels or if plant does not have many leaves. Not uncommon to see nutrient burn or Nitrogen toxicity at standard-strength nutrient levels.
  • If you're naturally seeing a significant amount of stem between sets of leaves (as is common with many Sativa strains), defoliation can sometimes do more harm than good. With a stretchy plant, the buds and inside of the plant are often already as exposed as they need to be for optimum results. Defoliation is most effective at increasing yields of bushy plants where buds get hidden by leaves, which is much less common with Sativa than Indica strains!
Did I miss anything important? What are your thoughts?
 
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Thanks for the great idea for a Sativa tutorial alltatup ! Here are Alltatup's own list of tips for growing Sativas, which is what inspired this post in the first place!

TIPS FOR GROWING SUPER SATIVAS

• Sativa-dominant strains tend to tolerate warmer temperatures and higher humidity levels versus indica strains during budding.
• Sativas like LOTS of light intensity. The more you give, the better they respond, so long as temperatures don’t exceed 85 degrees and humidity is maintained at 55-65 percent RH.
• Even though they grow like crazy, sativas typically respond better to light-fertilizer levels and less-frequent feedings.
• To prevent an overfed root zone, flush with half-strength Flawless Finish every fourth watering.
• Sativas tend to do most of their essential oil production at ripening.
• To help bring your strains to maturity quicker, try shortening the day lengths to eight hours ON during the final weeks before harvest is anticipated.
• Sativa strains are often unstable, extremely sensitive to environmental factors, and especially reactive to problems with nutrients, water quality, and root zone pH.
• Under stress, they tend to develop hermaphroditic (male-female) flowers, or their floral development is otherwise mutated or delayed.
• Many growers believe Sativa-dominant marijuana isn’t able to handle heavy feeding, but this isn’t totally accurate.
• It’s more accurate to say it doesn’t like inferior feeding with fertilizers that contain harsh compounds and weak pH buffers, such as General Hydroponics, Botanicare, Emerald Harvest, Scotts Miracle-Gro, etc.
• Use highly-bioactive, cannabis-specific beneficial microbial treatments such as Voodoo Juice, Tarantula, and Piranha, along with an enzymatic root zone cleanser and catalyst such as SensiZym.
• Feed Microbial Munch to your beneficial microbials to help them thrive.
• If you see 1/16th of an inch or less leaf tip burn from nutrients overfeeding, that’s acceptable.
• More than that isn’t, and you’d want to back off your nutrients PPM until the tip burn is reduced.
• Use less nitrogen than with other types of cannabis.This is tough because grow phase hydroponics base nutrients are nitrogen-heavy. My solution?
• Feed a bloom phase hydroponics base nutrients product instead of grow phase base nutrients every second or third feeding during grow.
• During early bloom phase, use Bud Ignitor—a supplement that creates more and earlier budding sites.
• Add a carbohydrate feed such as Bud Candy during bloom phase.
• Don’t forget to structurally support your plants. Supporting your Sativa cannabis plants by tying them from above is better than staking or netting.
• Do a minor trim of needless large leaves (especially at bottom of plant) and sucker branches midway through bloom phase to assist light penetration.
Be patient with Sativa.
Sativa-dominant strains that are 70% or more Sativa genetics have bloom phases that last nine weeks minimum, and most of the time we’re talking much longer, such as 9-14 weeks.
Let your cannabis plants mature to their full potential.
Only harvest when 10-20% of their resin glands are starting to fall apart.
Click to expand...

Thought you might be interested, too, DingusKhan intergalactic_harvester :)
 
Thank you so much Nebula and Tat, these are an incredible collection of sativa lore that after reading so many other pages, I was completely lost. It's great to have this all in one place. You guys rule.
 
Thanks so much Nebula for adding your information and pictures!!!

Just want to repeat what I wrote before: my information was what I found in various articles online: none of it is my original writing. Just my notes for growing my sativas.
 
Perfect timing. Just got my Super Lemon Haze seeds from Seedsman. How well do Sativa's do with training. Are they as easy to manifold and LST? I had some random free seeds from Nirvana that turned out to be almost pure landrace pheno's and they were so tall it was hard to find a good height for the light (either burning the tops or missing the bottom 2/3rds).
 
NebulaHaze : sativa's generally do not respond favorably to defoliation, especially extreme. Their plant structure is open enough and does not require it.
Sativa's are thirsty plants.
You can downsize the container by about 1/3- to help control in a small tent - ie usually use 3 gal- sativa= 2 gal grow.
 
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I just finished a grow of Nirvana Mystery seed- the most sativa I have seen in a plant- took 6 months form seed to harvest.
I wouldn't manifold, but they do great with LST- I just spiral them around the inside of a tomato cage and lollipop o get a good canopy depth.
 
Thank you for the updated info. I rang true for me when you discussed nitrogen toxicity. Thought I had done something wrong. Was feeding a sativa the same nutes as an indica and couldn't for the life of me figure why 1 had nitrogen toxicity and the other one not.
 
I also want to add. Stretchy sativas don't like to be supper cropped, they shoot right up and after a few days it's like you never touched it
 
I ran across the same thing while I was developing an amended soil-
Autos and Indicas did fine, but sativas started to yellow within a day or two of the flip.
I was able to increase the amendments so the sativa's did not yellow, etc. and the others were not affected!
 
I agree, if you're already seeing significant space between stems (as with most Sativa's), defoliation can do more harm than its worth. Defoliation is most effective with bushy plants (which is much more common with Indica strains)!

Great point, I'll add it to the list!
 
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