So I sent Malawi Gold seeds to a friend of mine who lives very close to the equator. I figured, as it has to flower for a really long time that should be ideal, right?
The thing is, it started flowering really really small. Can he expect it to grow much more during its flower time? Anyone have experience with Malawi Gold, or long flowering sativas in general…
Think about it. At the equator they only get about 12 - 13 hours of daylight all year round and the land races there are used to that so can grow huge before beginning to flower. That Malawi Gold has been bred for different conditions and needs a longer day to grow into a decent sized plant. They still may take 16 weeks to finish flowering but want that longer day to stay in veg mode.
I used to grow Kali Mist which is a heavy sativa dominant that took 14 weeks to finish but still stayed veg under 18 hours a day of light and didn’t flower until flipped to 12/12.
His plant is likely to get a lot taller before it’s done but won’t likely yield a hell of a lot. True sativas are not huge yielders to start with unless big as trees.
Nice looking plant, but the leaves appear to have some indica influence. Pure sativas grown in the tropics will still get large, while indicas tend to start flowering while they are short, similar to an Autoflower, after around a month of growth. True sativas are unaffected by the short daylight hours, and still take a couple months to begin flowering in earnest when in their home turf. How old is the plant? Who is the Malawi from?
This looks probably like old genetics, nice. This could have derivered from a malawi mountain and thats why it has wide leafes? and well probably reacts with rapid flowering-triggering. I would stay open and judge the effect. (im not knowledgable in african)