Grandaddy Purple Grow: A Big, Productive, and Super Potent Indica

Welcome all to my Grandaddy Purple grow report! I love a good Indica, and boy am I glad I decided to grow Grandaddy Purple along with two other strains.

My Grandaddy Purple grow was easy from start to finish as the plant took well to HST, including two toppings and two heavy defoliation sessions. After 9 weeks of veg and 10 weeks of flowering, I got 140g (4.94oz) of dry bud with a fruity and sour taste and a strong relaxing effect.

One of Grandaddy Purple Seeds Germinated as an Afterthought

I had a spare 9l (2.38 gal) pot with a broken rim, so I filled it with CocoStar and planted one Grandaddy Purple seed, already germinated. The bean was 8 hours behind the other two—Mazar and Hindu Kush—but this seedling soon caught up with the rest and became the biggest one.

I used nutrients right from the start: the Flora Grow/Bloom/Micro series (as a source of all essential elements) plus Diamond Nectar (fulvic acid extract) and BioRoot (to stimulate the growth of roots and rootlets as well as microorganisms in the rhizosphere). All these supplements are by GHE, and they did great.

I also added some Ionic Cal-Mag Pro by Growth Technology to the mix because no coco grow can do without extra calcium and magnesium. I don’t want to overload my Grandaddy Purple grow journal with too much detail. Suffice it to say that I used nutrients at recommended doses and everything went great!

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Grandaddy Purple Grow Pattern in Veg: Tall and Leggy

My GDP grew perfectly symmetrical and healthy, with a comfortably open bush structure and huge fan leaves. The side growth needed stimulation though, so I topped the plant on day 26, and she immediately began to develop more branches.

I kept feeding her the same nutrients as before but occasionally added the molasses- and kelp-based Earth Juice Catalyst and sprayed the foliage with G.H. Protect which lays a protective and repellent film on the surface of the leaves. Sometimes, I would use CannaBioGen Delta 9 for foliar sprays. Throughout the vegetative stage, TDS went from mere 150 ppm in week 1 to 800 ppm in weeks 8 and 9. As for pH, I let it oscillate in the 5.7-6.2 range.

In week 6, I accidentally topped GDP again. That was very unfortunate because as a result she lost two well developed tops with something like 4 or 5 nodes each. Or maybe it was for the best as my Grandaddy Purple strain was kind of tall, and now she had 5 pairs of side branches of almost equal size, making the canopy easier to manage.

On day 47, I did some defoliation, but in only two days you wouldn’t know it. And by the end of the vegetative stage of my Grandaddy Purple grow, this amazing plant was the biggest. Well, she may have had fewer tops than Mazar, but she looked way healthier, with no issues whatsoever.

The Flip to 12/12 in Week 10

As it happened, my Grandaddy Purple grow was almost equally divided into 9 weeks of veg and 10 weeks of flowering. I’m glad I let this girl grow so big before I switched to 12/12. She would fill half of my 3’x3’ grow tent with all those flowering tops and yield very generously.

In the first week of 12/12, I did two things: I defoliated every girl in the garden, stripping them next to nothing, and I installed the ScrOG net — not so much for training, but rather to provide support for future colas.

In the second week of 12/12, the flowering was already well underway. Btw, I didn’t change my bulb for the budding stage. I used a 400W HPS from seed to harvest. Maybe this was the reason my babies got so tall and leggy in veg.

I did a second round of heavy defoliation at the end of week 3 of flowering. I’m not sure it was called for because there were no bud sites and leaves below the ScrOG level, so the upper leaves weren’t shading anything.

I managed to spread most flowering tops along the mesh, but a few colas nearest to the pot grew way above the canopy.

On Cruise Control for the Rest of the Grow

After I was done with the canopy management and the flowering stretch was over, my Grandaddy Purple grow was all about feeding her the right amounts of nutrients and watching for deficiencies. Which there were none. I kept TDS readings at 850 ppm for the whole of the flowering stage with the exception of week 15 when I decided to give my girls a break and was flushing them with FloraKleen.

The staple of the diet was still the 3-part GHE Flora combo along with cal-mag supplements and Delta 9. To this I added two organic formulas: Mineral Magic as a source of silicone to make plant structure more robust and Bio Bloom which activates the budding process and increases nutrient absorption. As for Diamond Nectar, I stopped using it in week 11.

Watching Trichs, Boosting with Ripen, and Flushing

I started to watch trichomes in week 15 from seed when my Grandaddy Purple had some nice golden pistils, but it was only in the 8th week of flowering that I found the buds mature enough to start using Ripen.

For those of you who don’t know, Ripen is another great General Hydroponics product which gives a final P-K boost to your cannabis. Of course, I stopped using everything else. Except the CALiMAGic supplement because I didn’t want to run into a cal-mag deficiency so close to the finish line.

While feasting on this for the last two weeks of flowering, the colas became so heavy they began to droop. They didn’t break and fall only thanks to the ScrOG. In the 10 week of flower, I flushed Grandaddy Purple again with FloraKleen. Then she spent days 62 and 63 in complete darkness and was finally chopped. All in all, it was a pleasant and easy grow.

Grandaddy Purple Grow Outcome

This Grandaddy Purple (Blimburn Seeds) grow report wouldn’t be complete without my mentioning the quality of the final product.

Thanks to long internodes, the buds were well spaced, so I had no problems with mold. The colas foxtailed a bit, with flower clusters shooting in every direction. This made trimming the buds a bit difficult, but I didn’t bother to trim them clean anyway because the sugar leaves were very resinous and smoked great.

The effect felt 100% indica — all happy relaxation and serenity, without a trace of Sativa influence. Very mellow. The taste of the smoke was great, too: fruity, with hints of mint and a sour finish. I enjoyed it very much and would recommend growing Grandaddy Purple strain to anyone!

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