How to Grow Super Silver Haze Weed [8 Tips]

The idea of growing your favorite strain is a dream come true for many marijuana lovers. If you’re fortunate enough to live in a state where cultivation is legal, our lists of steps and tips should prove essential reading.

Today, we provide you with a growing guide for Super Silver Haze – an award-winning strain that won the High Times Cannabis Cup in the late 1990s.

Super Silver Haze is almost pure sativa (just 10% indica) with a THC content of up to 18%. Super Silver Haze was created in Amsterdam during the mid-1990s. It is a genetic cross of Haze, Northern Lights, and Skunk. It is a strain known for providing a cerebral buzz that lasts a long time. You should also benefit from an exhilarating, euphoric high.

Origins

Super Silver Haze is only a quarter of a century old. It comes from the famed Haze sativa hybrid, which is arguably the most famous in the world. The Haze strain was created by the Haze brothers in Santa Cruz, California, during the 1970s. The duo cultivated and crossed a variety of cannabis lines using the seeds of premium-quality sativa strains, which were usually provided by ‘Sam the Skunkman.’

The remarkable Haze lineage began with a hybrid of a Mexican landrace sativa and a Colombian landrace. The following year, the brothers selected the best females from the hybrid and crossed them with a Southern Indian landrace. Finally, they crossed it with a Thai landrace! Purple Haze became the best strain on the market in the 1970s but was also exceedingly expensive.

The main issue with Haze is its 100% sativa genetic makeup, which makes it hard to grow indoors. As a result, breeders began crossing it with indica strains to ensure it was possible to cultivate inside privately. Eventually, in the 1990s, Neville Schoenmakers recovered seeds from a pure Haze. He selected two male plants (A and C) and a female plant, which he called B.

As the owner of The Seed Bank, Neville began experimenting with new strains. His company, later known as Sensi Seeds Bank, became famous for creating a myriad of Haze strains that were crossed with indicas. Super Silver Haze has become one of the most popular of all.

Today, this strain is used to treat a variety of mental health issues, including anxiety, depression, and PTSD. It could also alleviate the pain of conditions such as muscle spasms and chronic back pain. In this step-by-step growing guide, we provide you with eight essential tips to help you grow high-quality Super Silver Haze.

1 – Use SCROG (Screen of Green) to ‘Train’ Your Super Silver Haze

The image of asking your marijuana plants to ‘sit’ or ‘lie down’ provokes mirth (and a little concern). However, ‘training’ your plants involves bending, or even cracking, parts of the plant. The process can help improve yield size and quality of weed. The Screen of Green (SCROG) method is one of the best training techniques around for Super Silver Haze.

SCROG is an excellent training option if you are growing Super Silver Haze indoors, as it assists in a discreet, clandestine grow.

Even in states where it is legal to cultivate cannabis, you must ensure your plants are out of public view. One of the best aspects of SCROG is that you only require smaller lights, such as LED or compact fluorescent (CFL) grow lights. Along with lighting, you need a screen to complete this training method. You can use garden or poultry netting if need be.

Patience Is a Virtue!

Ideally, the holes in the netting will be no larger than two square inches. Some growers like to force their crops to hit the flowering stage early for a quick harvest. However, we recommend exercising patience and allowing your Super Silver Haze to grow through the screen en masse.

Place the screen between 8 and 12 inches above your growing medium. Once the plants begin to grow through the screen, tuck them back beneath it with your fingers. The goal is to train your crop to grow outward across the screen.

Make sure the grow room has proper ventilation to avoid problems with mold. It is necessary to trim back growth beneath the canopy to ensure the bud sites get the plant’s energy. After a flowering time of 10–11 weeks indoors, you should get a low to moderate yield of up to 10 ounces per square meter. Indeed, the SCROG method should help you get even more.

For outdoor growers, harvest time is in mid-October, and you should get up to 15 ounces per plant.

2 – How to Avoid Nutrient Burn

Super Silver Haze is predominantly sativa, which means it requires less feeding than its indica counterparts. When you add in a new grower’s understandable over-enthusiasm, it is common for them to burn their weed with nutrients. There are several causes of nutrient burn. They include overwatering, using growth stimulants regularly, overusing bloom boosters, and mixing nutrients more strongly than recommended.

During the vegetative stage, your Super Silver Haze crop needs a relatively high amount of Nitrogen – but don’t overdo it! As a rule of thumb, begin with 25–50% of a pre-packaged nutrient mix’s recommendation and gradually add more if necessary. Early indications of nutrient burn include:

• Leaf tips bent at 90 degrees.
• Discolored branches and stalks; they may turn deep red, purple, or even magenta.
• Calyx and sugar leaf tips turn yellow and begin to curl back.
• The leaves turn a deep green color.
• The tips of the leaves are almost fluorescent.
• Yellow burnt tips on leaves.

Once you identify nutrient burn, carefully remove the damaged parts of the plants. Get rid of all damaged leaves. Trace clusters of calyxes back to their branch and remove the whole lot. Use pH balanced water (between 6.0 and 6.5 if using soil, or between 5.5 and 6.0 if using a hydroponics system) to flush out your growing medium.

There are specialized plant tonics on the market that you can use to nurse your plants back to health. When feeding your Super Silver Haze crop again, start with half the nutrients you used before and monitor carefully.

3 – Here’s What Happens if You Overwater Your Marijuana Plants…

It is essential to ensure there is ample time between feeding and watering. Otherwise, the roots of your plants won’t be able to take in enough oxygen. Overwatering is arguably the most common mistake made by novice growers. They don’t realize that they are drowning their precious crop!

Perhaps the main symptom of overwatering is drooping leaves. This happens because the leaves of the Super Silver Haze plants are filled with water and curl in on themselves. Another sign of overwatering is yellowing leaves.

DID YOU KNOW? If you add too much water to your Super Silver Haze, you can starve the plants of oxygen – and even kill the entire crop!

If you see any of these symptoms, the obvious first step is to water less often. However, you must also check to see if the soil has good drainage. Make sure that excess water is draining out of the plant containers.

When checking to see if your plants need watering, stick your index finger into the soil as far as the knuckle. If it is dry, you should water your plants. If some of the earth is moist, wait a couple of days and check again. Marijuana plants require watering less often than you think.

4 – Make Sure You Grow Your Super Silver Haze in Relatively High Humidity

It is essential to understand the relationship between humidity and cannabis plants. As you know, plants respire CO2 from the environment via their leaves. During this process, they lose a portion of the water previously retained. In dry air, plants lose more water when respiring than in moist air. This process quickly reduces the moisture content in the plants.

When humidity levels are too low, the dry air results in your Super Silver Haze plants closing the pores in their leaves to keep moisture loss to a minimum.

It is an effective tactic but reduces their CO2 intake, which leads to cell death and limp cannabis plants. When humidity levels are too high, you decrease the amount of air in the growing medium. You could inadvertently suffocate the plants and enhance the risk of root rot.

When growing Super Silver Haze for the first time, you may need to experiment with humidity levels. The temperature of your grow room also dictates how humid it should be, but here is a starting guide:

RELATIVE HUMIDITY GUIDE FOR GROWING SUPER SILVER HAZE

As Super Silver Haze is sativa, it is less likely to develop bud rot in humid conditions than indicas. You can decrease humidity levels by:

• Using a dehumidifier.
• Increasing the supply of cool air.
• Watering the plants at the start of their lighting period.
• Pushing hot air out of the room by running your exhaust fan vent at high velocity.

On the contrary, you can increase humidity levels from your Super Silver Haze grow by:

• Reducing exhaust fan velocity to ensure warm air stays in the grow room.
• Misting your plants.
• Increasing the temperature in the grow room.

5 – Keep the Temperature Warm

Super Silver Haze grows best in a warm and humid climate with an average temperature between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Of course, this is not the entire story. If you allow the temperature in your grow room to fall too low, it will reduce evaporation through the leaves.

The suction force, which absorbs nutrients via the roots, is reduced. The unused nutrients remain in the growing medium. The high acid levels cause your plants to absorb less water and nutrients, guaranteeing slow growth.

Here is a quick overview of temperature ranges to shoot for according to your plants’ growth cycles.

TEMPERATURE RANGE FOR SUPER SILVER HAZE PLANTS

6 – The Best Soil for Growing Super Silver Haze

When it comes to finding the best soil for your cannabis plants, focus on water retention, drainage ability, and texture. In general, the best marijuana soil for Super Silver Haze will include the following qualities:

• Dark and rich.
• It has a loose texture.
• It has excellent drainage.
• Holds water without becoming excessively muddy.

If you are intent on adding amendments to your soil, consider natural and organic ingredients such as:

• Fish meal
• Blood meal
• Bat guano
• Greensand
• Mycorrhizae
• Earthworm castings
• Perlite
• Azomite
• Kelp

You can have sand, silt, or clay soil, but loam consists of all three. It gives you an almost neutral pH, excellent water retention, outstanding drainage, and great nutrient retention. It also supports microorganisms, is fertile, and is very easy to work with.

DID YOU KNOW? For marijuana growers that prefer Super Silver Haze, loam soil is the gold standard!

If you have no idea what loam soil looks or feels like, here’s a quick primer. When you squeeze loam soil, it should result in a loose ball that briefly maintains its structure before threatening to fall apart. In contrast, clay soils won’t fall apart, while sand and silt soils are not easy to make compact.

Loam soil has a dark and vibrant color and a distinctive smell. In general, most pre-mixed soils are loam, but they include different types and quantities of nutrients. If you are an experienced gardener, it is worth adding the above organic amendments yourself. New growers should purchase high-quality potting loam soil that contains all the nutrients your Super Silver Haze plants need.

7 – Should I Grow Hydroponically?

If you are perturbed by Super Silver Haze’s 10-11 weeks flowering time, consider creating a hydroponics garden. This growing method involves using other growing mediums in addition to soil, enabling you to harvest earlier than if you use soil.

Although there are dozens of potential growing mediums available, there are three commonly used options. We recommend sticking to one of them:

USING HYDROPONICS TO GROW SUPER SILVER HAZE MARIJUANA

If you decide to grow Super Silver Haze hydroponically, make sure the pH remains in the 5.5 to 6.0 range. This pH level is 0.5 lower than when you use soil. Please remember that you are responsible for providing all of the nutrients your crop needs to survive. The margin for error is smaller than it is with soil.

8 – Boost Light Intensity for a Higher Yield!

Increasing light intensity is one of the best ways to bump up your yield. Once your Super Silver Haze plants have reached the vegetative stage, make sure they get enough light. If you fail to generate a sufficient level, the plants will stretch out to reach the light and leave too much stem between the leaves and nodes.

By using the best grow lights possible, you can provide plenty of photosynthesizing energy. Your plants will grow strong and healthy with minimal stretching. When your Super Silver Haze crop reaches flowering, light intensity increases bud production. Here’s where to place different light types:

THE BEST GROW LIGHTS FOR SUPER SILVER HAZE CROPS

Lastly, make sure you have an exhaust or cooling system in place to prevent heat stress. This practice also ensures your plants benefit from fresh CO2. Once you have reached the limit of what your plants can take in terms of heat, increase CO2 levels in your grow room.

The more CO2 you add, the more heat your plants can tolerate without being stressed. Make sure you don’t expose yourself to enhanced carbon dioxide levels because too much CO2 is harmful to humans.