I’ve harvested about 8 ounces of the Gold Leaf Strain from an indoor test grow of 3 plants and I must say; I really really like the gold leaf strain developed by Robert Bergman.
First of all it’s great weed. So great I have 4 more plants with 35 days left in the flowering cycle plus a couple of clones ready to be planted in my garden outside and I’ll be using 30 gal grow bags for those.
The first time I actually smoked it was in April. I bought some feminized Girl Scout Cookie Extreme and Gold Leaf seeds from the Bergman website and germinated them on Christmas day.
I use Bergman because I’ve never had a bad experience buying seeds on his website and the plants are always great.
I grew them in the veg cycle until the 2nd week of February then switched to the flowering cycle until April 15. They dried pretty fast and were ready to smoke by the end of the month.
The veg cycle is always shorter for me because I’m a stealth, indoor grower with ceiling height restrictions; I can’t let my plants get too tall or they’ll grow into my lights.
Anyone growing in a basement, spare room or grow tent must consider the height of the plant when deciding when to start the flowering cycle.
Note: there are methods, training etc. that I don’t do if you need/want smaller plants. Search that on Google for more info.
I personally grow all three of these strains because they are FANTASTIC !!!
I’VE GROWN ALL OF THESE STRAINS.
GET YOURS SEEDS RIGHT NOW BEFORE YOU FORGET-CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW NOW
Because my basement has a 7 foot ceiling with actual tree trunks as ceiling joists I need to keep my plants around 48 inches tall or less. If a ratchet type hanger and hook is used along with modern LED lights they’ll hang down about 12 inches.
This is not a rule and it’s very strain dependent but if you want to keep the top of your plants about 20 inches from the lights they need to be kept at a height of less than 52 inches tall.
I have switched to using the new style LED lights that are white and really bright. You MUST be careful how close you allow your plants to get to them. I have seen light stress at 18 inches on three different strains; AK 47, OG Kush and Gold Leaf which has been a problem for me (note to self: LED driver has dimming adjustment-figure out how to dim the lights already).
In order to keep my plants 48 inches tall or shorter, I top them when they are about 8” tall. Then I’ll wait about 2 weeks or until the new shoots start then top them again.
The Gold Leaf Strain is perfect for me because they respond to the topping very well and give me a lush, bushy, 42- 48 inch tall plant with about 6 sticky tops that after 30 days in the flowering cycle, I have to wear gloves when I’m trimming them, removing leaves etc. because they are so gooey already. I get almost 3 ounces from each plant.
The buds are a nice size and compact and when I say compact, I mean they are really tight. They are perfect for using a one hitter. A nice push/scrape and it fills perfectly every time.
Be careful if using a grinder. The buds are so tight they can get ground too much and I suggest giving them just one turn and use your fingers to break them down further for joint rolling.
As far as growing the plant; they are hearty, can handle nutes and need very little care. The seeds germinated in three days using 4 inch peat rings in a covered plastic tray on a heating pad.
Without the heat I would guess they would germinate in 5-7 days if not longer.
I stopped using paper towels to germinate seeds 10 years ago LOL and I don’t soak the seeds in water unless they don’t pop in the peat rings which doesn’t happen very often.
I use the peat rings because it makes moving around a delicate seedling, for lack of a better word(s), easy peasy.
Why anyone would want to use tweezers or their fingers to pick up a fragile sprouted seed is beyond me.
All you have to do is place a dry seed in the moistened peat ring and you’ll never touch it again.
Keep your seedlings from stretching too much by having light directly over them while keeping the air moving.
You don’t want to knock them down but I have noticed they stretch less when the little seedlings are kept moving.
This is my soil mix formula; it’s great, easy to put together and if you use it along with Dyna-Gro nutrients you’ll have perfect plants. I will be adding a fish fertilizer as a test for my next grow. I’ll see if I get any improvement in my plants.
Read this article about pot size to help you decide which size is best for you.
Do be careful how close you allow your Gold Leaf plants to the lights. I burned the tops of one plant when it got about 16 inches away from a Mars Hydro TS 1000. For the price it’s hard to beat the Mar’s light.
Moving them to about 24 inches away solved that problem and until further notice I’m using that distance. I do have to figure out how to dim the lights. The LED driver has an adjustment screw that I haven’t tried yet.
As I mentioned earlier I also start flowering my plants a little earlier because for most strains, they have a growth spurt after the flowering cycle commences so I’ll start to flower after only about 6 weeks in the veg cycle; this along with topping early helps keep the plants at the perfect height for me.
Note: I have recently switched to the Veg light schedule of 20 hours on and 4 hours off and my plants have responded well to this change. Because my veg cycle is shortened I wanted to boost the growing a little and it has worked well.
During the veg cycle I use Dyna-Gro’s Foliage Pro, Pro TeKt and PH down during every watering; roughly about once per week. Gold Leaf has no problem with this.
I also use a new product from Dyna-Gro called Dyna-ZYME which is supposed to keep the roots clean for faster absorption etc. I use that every other time I water. I’m still testing the Dyna-ZYME and will publish something about that in the future.
I have well water that is a 7 PH out of the faucet and when I add the nutrients to the water, the PH stays the same. For me, weed grows best at my house with a PH range of 6.0 – 6.5 so I treat it with PH-Down every watering.
Finding a decent priced PH meter is tough. Forget the $10 ones; they are a waste of money. I finally settled on a meter from Luster Leaf for about $25 on Amazon. It took me a while to get the hang of it but now I can get the PH fast. Note: it only works in soil.
About two weeks before I start the flowering cycle I’ll switch from Foliage Pro to Dyna-Gro’s BLOOM, continue to use the Pro-TeKt, PH-Down and Dyna-ZYME plus add Mag-Pro every other watering.
Mag-Pro is a supplement high in phosphorus, magnesium and sulfur which is great for the flowering cycle.
I flower the Gold Leaf for 65 days. When I harvest, I’ll pull off the large leaves while the plant is still in the pot. Then I’ll trim a little closer saving all the trimmed leaves for later use as I’m going to make hash or something out of them for the first time. Just think, I’ve been tossing the trim away for 30+ years!!
I’ll hang the whole plant in a dark fairly cool room and use a fan 24/7 to keep the air moving. I also try and keep the branches from touching each other. This is a critical time and you most watch for mold.
The Gold Leaf plants dried in around 10 days. IMO, the buds are ready to be picked and placed into a glass jar with a lid when the branches snap when you bend them.
Every day I open the jars for 10 minutes to allow the moisture rich air to escape. This is an important step so do not forget.
The bud can be smoked at any time after it’s ready for the jars but will not crumble very well or be easy to handle. Easiest way to smoke a really fresh bud is just grab a chunk of a bud and use a pipe.
If you want to dry those fresh buds a little more so you can roll a joint use an oil filled space heater; the kind that looks like an old fashioned heat register. Put it on high, place a sheet of white paper on the heater top. Place your buds on the paper and cover it with another sheet.
On top of that place a magazine or a weekly newspaper. A 1500 watt heater will dry those buds in about 20 minutes but you must keep your eyes on them as they could get dryer than your mouth after a joint of OG Kush.
I think Gold Leaf is an awesome strain, it gives me a great high and it’s easy to grow. I will keep a mother on hand for the next year or so for cloning.
You can learn how I stealthy grow all types of marijuana strains indoors at my website: https://growingweedindoors.org/
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