Apollo 13 Feminised

The way to plan Apollo 13 is backwards from the day you intend to cut, with 400 g/m2 per square metre indoors and 500 grams per plant outdoors as the figures you are working toward, at 25% THC. Count 45-55 days back from that date and you have your flip date. This one does not dump its weight in a fortnight the way a short indica will; it adds through the whole bloom. Growers who panic about autumn rain and chop a fortnight early routinely hand back a fifth of the crop. Depending on your province the honest window runs from late March into May, and the terpinolene-led profile only arrives in the last fourteen days.

Yield on Apollo 13 — the 400 g/m2 indoors and 500 grams outdoors quoted above — is decided in three short stretches of the 45-55 days bloom rather than evenly across it.

The first ten days after the flip. Whatever stretch happens here sets your canopy, and an uneven canopy wastes light for the remainder of the grow. Stretch runs to 50-60% of pre-flower height. Supercrop anything breaking the canopy line inside the first week or you will be lighting empty air.

Weeks three to five. This is when terpinolene production climbs, and it answers to the gap between day and night temperature rather than to either number on its own. Keep at least 6-8°C between them. Outdoor growers in the interior provinces get that swing free in March and April; indoors, aim for 25-26°C lights-on against 18-20°C lights-off, with potassium-led bloom feed at EC 1.6-1.8.

The last ten to fourteen days. Stop feeding, flush with pH-corrected water, and read trichomes daily under a 60x loupe. Cut at 5-10% amber, before the clear-headed character starts sliding toward sedation. Outdoors that usually lands between late March and mid-April.

Difficulty: easy. In flower for 45-55 days. Stands 90-120 cm. Medium. Indoors it returns 400 g/m2. Outdoors, 500 grams a plant.

The effects most commonly reported for this cultivar are happy, energetic, creative. At 25% THC it sits in a bracket where there is a usable working range. Vaporised between 175°C and 185°C it lifts mood and mental energy in a way that suits creative work, a hike, or a long afternoon around a braai. The body stays light, so for anyone with a THC tolerance it holds up as a daytime option. The Terpinolene/Limonene pairing leaves a shifting profile that keeps turning up new notes on the palate.

Where it fits: creative work, company, being outdoors, and unstructured daytime hours.

Leading with Terpinolene, then Limonene, and Ocimene underneath. Read across a cure, these three compounds do not stay in the same order. Fresh off the dry, terpinolene leads. After three or four weeks in sealed glass at 16-18°C the ocimene undertone comes up and the bouquet gains a layer it did not have at harvest. Vaporising between 180°C and 195°C captures the widest span of them — run it hotter and the volatile ocimene molecules are the first thing you lose.

Apollo 13 is a reasonable fit for growers with the basics already in place. Understand pH, know roughly what nutrient ratios do, and be able to hold a light cycle — it will not carry you, but it does not punish the occasional slip either. Photoperiod genetics leave size and timing in your hands — hold it in veg for a bigger plant, or flip early when headroom is the constraint. A September-to-May outdoor season comfortably covers a 45-55 days bloom in the frost-free provinces. Posted discreetly anywhere in South Africa, with sourced grow figures shown on every strain page.