Ace Seeds’ Malawi Grow Report: a Low-Maintenance Sativa for Newbies

Greetings, fellow growers! This time, I want to describe a very rare African landrace strain. I was afraid at first to take a shot at pure Sativa, but, as you’ll see from my Ace Seeds Malawi grow report, this is a totally beginner-friendly plant.

After a slow start, my Ace Seeds Malawi grow picked up the pace, and in her fifth week, the plant was big enough for 12/12. She reacted wonderfully to multiple toppings, stretched big time, and despite calcium deficiency (my fault), brought me 200 grams (7+ ounces) of airy but huge and resinous Sativa buds. It all took only 15 weeks from seeds, so I’m more than happy.

Two Malawi Strain Seeds Germinated

My original plan was to grow two girls side by side in my 4x2 grow tent, so I germinated two regular seeds. One of them turned male in the end, and it was lucky because the remaining lady filled the whole tent and there wouldn’t have been room enough for two. So, my Malawi strain review is based on growing just one plant.

The beginning of this Malawi grow was nothing to write home about. After an overnight soaking and a day between wet paper towels, the beans went straight into the final 5-gallon smart pots. I didn’t want to do any repotting later on because the Malawi weed strain is known for stretching like crazy and I decided to induce the flowering after only a short veg.

One of the seedlings was much more vigorous than the other and, interestingly, would later turn female while the runty one turned male. Usually, it’s the other way around — the plants that show more growth and vigor are more likely to grow balls. So, I started with two seeds but harvested just one, and it was perfect for my not very big 4x2 tent.

A Botched Attempt of a Self-Sufficient Organic Grow

My Malawi strain grow was supposed to be organic, and, as a medium, I used Roots Organic Original which is a kind of living soil, or super soil. It’s a terrific option for beginners because this potting mix has all your plant’s needs covered and you can only use tap water from seed to harvest.

My mistake was to use an inorganic pH-down product, and it probably killed all the living organisms in the medium. I don’t know what I was thinking about — it's common knowledge that you don’t even need to worry about pH in organic setups.

The bottom line is that without all those living critters in the root zone, my Malawi strain grow was plagued with calcium deficiency throughout. Only thanks to the Malawi strain being so beginner-friendly, I still got my harvest and a spectacular one at that.

A Good Training Plan is a Must For a Malawi Grow

I chose mainlining as my primary training method because it’s so straightforward and frees a beginner from any hard decisions. You just top your lady two or three times at certain points in the timeline and use LST to make sure all those side branches are evenly distributed. As a result, you get many same-size branches (14 in my case) and as many colas that are fat and long and perfectly identical to one another.

All in all, I did two toppings:

• week 2; topped above the 3d node, leaving 2 pairs of side branches (4 tops),
• week 4; topped the lower and then the upper pair; there were 8 tops now,
• week 5; with secondary branches growing, I got 16 tops of more or less equal size,
• cut off 2 secondary branches and kept 14 tops till harvest.

Also, when you grow Sativa genetics, like a Malawi strain, you get an open bush structure and so don’t need much defoliation (if any). Another reason not to pluck any fan leaves is when you grow in super soil without extra nutrients. In this case, you want to keep everything that your plant has stored in the foliage. It’s too precious to throw away.

11.5/12.5 Instead of the Classic 12/12

I knew I could expect a lot of stretching and a long flowering time from a pure Sativa, so I decided to have all my bases covered. Besides having only a short veg, I chose a shorter photoperiod than usually recommended for the flowering stage — 11.5/12.5.

By making the days a half-hour shorter, I thought I’d have an earlier onset of flowering and no delays in maturation. And even with this light cycle, the Malawi weed strain takes more than two full weeks after the flip to start flowering. For me, it happened in the 7th week from seed, and as I said, one of the plants grew nanners and had to go. The other demonstrated pre-flower bunching on the tops the same week, and then pistils began to form.

A Constantly Thirsty and Hungry Girl

In flower, my Malawi was drinking about a third of a gallon and then half a gallon a day and I had to constantly feed her a cal-mag supplement plus an organic potassium booster. Even that didn’t stop the cal-mag deficiency completely. It was cycling: one day the leaves looked okay, the other they turned yellow, with brown spots and some twisting.

Despite this, the growth never skipped a beat, the flowers were stacking up and getting fatter. The stretch was considerable too — each of the colas grew to about 20 inches (50cm). Even an accident when I split the main stalk while tying down too aggressively didn’t slow down the progress. This is a very resilient and resistant strain.

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An Epic Harvest at the End of a Great Malawi Grow

Although my lady was in the self-devouring mode for much of the flowering stage and the leaves looked terrible, the flowers were awesome. First trichomes appeared in week 6 of flower, and in week 9, I checked them under a microscope for the first time. Most were cloudy already, but the plant continued in this condition for another 3 weeks, and almost no ambers appeared.

I was continuing with my organic feeding schedule and introduced black-strap molasses in the later stages, before flushing in the last two weeks. Everything was on autopilot, the lady looked more and more gorgeous, and colas were covered with a thick coat of trichomes. I kept the plant in complete darkness for the last 48 hours and then gave her axe.

I harvested 200 grams (7.06 ounces) of foot-long swollen colas. They weren’t dense because the Malawi weed strain is 100% Sativa but incredibly resinous. And I loved the one-of-a-kind smell of herbs and spices against a sweet background. The effect was the most clear-headed, lucid, energizing Sativa high I’d ever experienced. Not a hint of a negative thought, no anxiety, just intense euphoria throughout.

I hoped you’ve enjoyed this Ace Seeds Malawi grow report. For me, it was an outstanding cultivar and a perfect smoke. I hope your experience with this weed is as great as mine was!

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