Grow Diary Mataró Blue: Part One

It was that time again! The jars were getting empty and the summer getting closer, time to get the grow on before the hot weather really kicked in and made cultivating indoors a little trickier. After visiting the Spannabis Expo in Barcelona earlier in the year, I picked up a few different strains that I had heard about and I was keen to get some of those Spanish seeds wet!

It was that time again! The jars were getting empty and the summer getting closer, time to get the grow on before the hot weather really kicked in and made cultivating indoors a little trickier. After visiting the Spannabis Expo in Barcelona earlier in the year, I picked up a few different strains that I had heard about and I was keen to get some of those Spanish seeds wet!

The Strain

From the four or so packs that I picked up in Barca, the Mataró Blue from Kannabia was most tempting. A three way cross between one of the seed bank's most indica rich blueberries, an original Afghan Mazar and a Black Domina - one of my personal favourites; I was expecting strong, resinous buds and a pretty big hit. This would be one to look forward to!

The Set Up

I decided on a sea of green grow as the shortened veg time would hopefully mean I would get my harvest in before the hot summer months arrived. For those that aren't familiar, the sea of green technique is where you fill your grow room with plants spaced close together and flower them early (within one to three weeks), this theory being that you get a decent harvest from a lot of smallish plants - that's the theory anyway!

The current grow room is towards the top of the house and the warmer temperatures can be a problem, this made me steer towards soil. I know that growing hydro in warmer temps is certainly possible, but I fancied less maintenance for this outing and it had been a while since I had a got my hands dirty!

The rest of the set up was as follows;

Environment: HOMEbox Original Tent, one metre square size. I installed an 8inch oscillating fan to keep the air in the tent moving around.

Extraction: 8inch RVK fan and an 8inch Carbon Filter. A little bit overkill, but it was leftover from an earlier two light, 1200 watt grow. I used a speed controller to drop the fan speed down to about 70%, more to kill the noise than the actual rate of air exchange - I always thought the more air exchange, the better - but it sounds like a vacuum cleaner in the tent! However, the good thing about it is that I could always up the air exchange if the weather turned warm.

Lighting: 600 watt dual spectrum HPS with a euro reflector and magnetic ballast - cheap and cheerful, but all you need really!

Nutrients and Compost: This one would be a full Gold Label soil grow as a good mate of mine passed me a few bottles from their new nutrient line to try. This comprises of;

- Roots - concentrated root stimulator, looks like treacle and smells nice and organic
- Soil A+B - the base nutes, pretty concentrated dosage rate that start at just 0.5ml per litre and finishes at 3ml per litre
- Ultra MG - the growth stimulator, used at the end of the veg stage and continued into flowering
- Ultra PK - the bloom stimulator, used for the last 5 to 7 weeks of flowering

The MG and PK additives are even more concentrated than the nutes, with a starting dose of 0.25ml per litre and finishing at 0.5ml. They are much more concentrated than any other liquids I have used, so I would need to keep my wits about me. No smokes before feeding, I didn't want to get these measurements wrong!! From reading the Kannabia website, the Mat Blue can handle heavily fertilisation. Sounded like a good match.

The compost used was Special Mix Light. As the name suggests, this is the lighter, less fertilised version of Gold Label Special Mix - the well known, heavily fertilised compost - one that I have used a few times with nice results. The less fertilised mix is certainly very light and fluffy and gave more control over the amounts of nutrient that the Mataró's would be receiving - very handy considering the concentration levels of the liquids!

Propagation and Vegetative Period

Ten feminised seeds went into some wet tissue paper and straight into the airing cupboard where they had the wet, warm and dark environment that they needed to germinate. Three days was all the girls needed to crack and from there they went into small - 3 inch - pots filled with the light mix and into an unheated propagator.

I kept things pretty simple with this grow; no propagation cubes, heated propagators or even a cfl propagation light, I just used the HPS lamp from the start and kept it around 30 inches from the top of the propagator.

There is no doubt that specific propagation equipment will improve your success rates, but they are certainly not essential - so if you are just starting out and are a bit cash strapped, concentrate on a decent light and extraction set up.

I let the seedlings get established for a couple of days then added some of the root stimulator on the first feed, there is some nutrient added to the light mix, so there was no need to add any additional until the first pot up. The Mat's really seemed to like the root stim - and the amount of light they were getting from such a young age - they were sitting a good 6 inches tall a week after the first feed; time to be potted up into the larger square pots.

After two and a half weeks of vegging the Mat's underwent some incredible lateral growth - we're talking fan leaves the size of my forearm! They were only around 10 inches tall, but had just packed on girth and were ready to be switched to flower; all was going good, little did I know that my sea of green was about to turn into a jungle!

Keep an eye open for part 2 in the next Soft Secrets to check out the flowering, harvest and - most importantly - the smoke report!