Please excuse my extremely long-winded (and very lightly edited) testing report, below:
PNW HP x SSDD Tester Report:
6 Female/4 Male/1 Died a Seedling
Started indoors under an LED in a grow tent, vegged for roughly a month. By end of month one plant keeled over and died, another’s growth stopped at the first node, with the single blade leaves getting bigger and bigger. Eventually this sprouted new growth and went on to be mutant female #5.
Put outside end of May/beginning of June to veg. First thing I noticed is that insects love these plants. I had several other varieties growing around them, and these plants were like magnets for everything. As a consequence they got pretty well eaten up, but still soldiered on. And wow, super loud in veg, many times I wondered if an actual skunk had sprayed something in the field. Pretty sure it was coming from these plants.
Plant sized varied a bit as I had a few in 9.5 gallon nursery pots, the mutant and one other (F#3?) in a 5 gallon grow bag, and one plant in a fencing/weedcloth DIY container that was roughly 20 gallons. I have to admit the 20 gallon was a late addition, with the plant only going in a few weeks before flowering began. At full flower nothing was much over 5 feet tall from the soil surface.
Plants were not quick to show male flowers. At least one male didn’t show until the females were showing late into the summer. No signs of hermaphroditism.
All but the mutant were in a first timer supersoil mix with FFOF and FFHF as a base – received insect frass, kelp meal, alfalfa meal, Epsom, etc. The mutant got Canna Terra nutes and CalMag.
I did note that all of the supersoil plants besides the one in the huge container (which also got a recharge with new soil when uppotting) threw some major deficiencies. Could easily have been a legroom issue on its own, or perhaps a nute issue as well. I was experimenting with light feeding, I think it’s fair to say they could’ve used more or simply a larger container. The mutant showed almost no nute deficiencies until quite late in flower and even then, not a big deal. An unusually dry summer, but did fairly well on the budrot and botryrtis front.
Plants ran into two major issues, a windstorm that slammed the standing plants, and a Sept frost that might’ve slowed things down a bit. Had I better supported the plants from the get-go the windstorm likely would’ve done less damage, but I’m not sure there was that much I could’ve done (it toppled the DIY planters).
Yields varied broadly, with the mutant yielding only a modest amount, and the 20 gallon plant yielding quite well despite some late season challenges.
Flower Time: Varied, flowering typically begins by second week of August here, I harvested as plants “looked” ready over the course of a month. One here, two there, etc.
Stretch: Outdoor, so was pretty gradual. Would say 2x or less.
Issues: As already noted, in terms of grower-error, there was something going quite wrong this year re: early fade, lost so many leaves throughout flower – I chalked this up largely to container size. In terms of the plants, only attractiveness to bugs, but the plants survived. Probably not the lightest feeder. Oh, and the mutant thing, including that two or three plants beyond the actual mutant female had that weird double-top cola (I read online that this is common with SSDD crosses). People suggested that might create an environment for mold, but I didn’t run into too many mold issues, a spot of bud rot here and there, quite possible it was all from caterpillars I missed.
Plant Size: Medium-Large? The 20 gallon plant was the tallest, maybe pushing 5 and half feet, but with a lot of candelabra spear sidebranching even after lollipopping.
Yield: Medium to heavy? To be honest I wish I had put more of the plants into the DIY containers earlier, because I think I would’ve ended up with way more flower.
Aroma: Loud and skunky in veg, many scents during cure. Dry some are basically scentless in the bag, but then open up into a range of scents when broken up. Others are fruity/sourish in the bag and keep that in the bowl.
Flavor: A wide range of flavors, from indescribable stank (is that a flavor?) to fruit, sour, metallic earthy. Kinda all over the place depending on which plant. At least one has an incense, sandalwood or maybe lavender, thing going on, and it sticks on your tongue in a delightful way. Some strike me as generic 90s kindbud-y, maybe the PNW HP influence?
Effect: Somewhat creeper on a lot of plants, more daydreamy than superpotent (pleasant but doesn’t knock you on your ass). Positive and upbeat.
Bag Appeal: Again, a range, some plants the buds are nice and dense but wouldn’t wow in a bag in terms of looks or smell, on the other hand the mutant plant’s bud looks awesome (and smells and tastes awesome, ironically I don’t find it terribly potent). Keep in mind this was outdoor, but probably between 6 and 9 out of 10 on the whole depending on the plant.
Overall Impression: I find this herb really interesting. Most of them taste nice (pre jarring there were some truly wonderful flavors… some of which are returning as they age), have a pleasant effect, but aren’t insanely potent, keeping in mind I have a pretty high tolerance. In normal times I would try to give it away wide and far and try to get some feedback from people with different habits and chemistries, but that hasn’t been possible this year. One of my goals this year was to increase my self-sufficiency through diversity, and these plants definitely aid in that goal. As plants, thinking back there was a great deal of physical resemblance, but the final herb varies plant to plant. If you’re going for variety, as I was, that’s a plus, but I think some serious pheno hunting may be in order if looking for a longterm keeper.
Keeper: As a general rule I don’t keep plants, but I feel like there are likely worthy plants in this line. That mutant #5 for example, is some tasty herb. If I had only grown this tester (and kept cuts/could grow indoors over the winter) I could easily see keeping cuts and seeing what panned out in an indoor run. As it happens I had two other standout plants from seed this year that really work for me, and to be entirely honest if I ran the testers and the other two plants in the same year and had limited resources I’d more likely to put the energy into keeping mothers of the other two plants.
