2x2 Pheno Hunt

Hey guys,

I wanted to get some input on my plan to pheno hunt in my small 2'x2'x4' tent.
If you have any ideas, experience, or even question feel free to post

So i got a couple 10-packs on sale but they're all regular seeds. I want have an abundance of seeds so I can preserve genetics as well as make some crosses between them down the line. I understand how long it takes to make your own strains, but I'm not looking for professional quality. What I am looking to do is to get grow through these packs as quickly as possible to decide which strains I like and save the best from each of them and make new crosses that would combine the best of both. Unfortunately I don't have a large (or even medium lol) sized space to operate in. How can I make my dreams come true with my current limitations? All I have is a 2'x2'x4' tent. I may be able to setup a smaller 1.5'x1.5'x2.5' down the line but that's not guaranteed right now.

I was thinking of doing:
-10 solo cups for a month from seed(with possibly top or lst)
-flip to flower to sex (choose strongest or favorite male, or both)
-remove unwanted males
-Should have about ~5 females & ~1 male
-switch back to veg and transplant to 1 gal pots( is this basically monstercrop?)
-veg for a a little, cut clones, then flower
- try to only pollinate a branch on each female(save rest of pollen for crosses)

then after smoke test i will decide favorite females and trash the seeds from females I dont want
Then if I want I can run f2s vs mother clone and either backcross or f3 right?


What am I missing out on by following this plan? Also, what issues may I run into?

All help is appreciated, thank you so much!

It's going to be a challenge with the space you're working with. Ideally you need a minimum of 2 tents so you can isolate plants.

If you're trying to preserve genetics then start out with that before making crosses. That way you'll have an abundance of seed. Plant seeds of one strain. 5 seeds should ensure at least one plant of each sex. Grow them for 2 - 3 weeks maximum and then switch to flower. Don't top or do any training. Let them grow natural. You can speed up the flowering process by using a 10/14 lighting schedule.

When the plants show sex keep a close eye on the males because you want to move them right before they start releasing pollen especially if the females are showing pistils. You can cut the tops off the males and put them in water and they will continue to produce pollen. They won't need much light but they will need it.

Collect the pollen and pollinate the best looking female to make seeds to preserve that strain. Flower the rest out normally to smoke.

Solo cups will be a pita with them falling over and shit. I would use something that wouldn’t tip over so easily

Nizza said:

Solo cups will be a pita with them falling over and shit. I would use something that wouldn’t tip over so easily

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I hate solo cups. I know many people use them but I can't stand them. I prefer square nursery pots that fit 8 to standard nursery tray. It's just more organized and modular.

So my space is a little bigger 28”x26” and another 2x3x5 tent that is really a 2x2 and another section 1x2. I’ve found that I def need all the spaces when doing what your looking to do.
I start by popping all the seeds in a pack, usually 10-15. Most often I’ll have a couple that don’t grow, but even if they all do I try to waddle it down to 9 total early in veg. Let them grow big enough to take cuttings and then do so. It’s usually this point I’ll chop any weak, sick, or just bad looking plants and make sure I have no more than 9.
Once the cuts have rooted the parent plants will have shown they sex through preflowers and I personally toss all the males clones.

Then into flower the parents go to make Whoopi and make seeds for the future.

The main reason I always take cuttings is I want to see how the females perform when they are rent full of seed. This will also give me an idea of what seeds I may want to go with first when I do get around to popping them. But I also take clones simply cause I once grew and flowered out a plant that I’d still love to have to this day. Sadly it happened at a time I had to shut the grow down and reveg wasn’t possible but if I had a small clone then I could’ve kept that alive during the down time through various means.

Anyway it is possible to do a seed run in a space of your size but it would not really be possible to do a true pheno hunt as you’d need a second spot to keep and grow cuttings while the parents flowered and expressed their phenos.

Take a cutting label it and put it in plain water under 12/12.
10-14 days later you will have some answers as to gender.
No need to root.

It is remarkable how long the plant cuttings can live in plain water....

Get some small light so that you can take the males separate from females and harvest pollen in other room(make sure there are no drafts from room where males tare to room where females are and you dont get unwanted seeds).

First put 9 plants in containers sized so that they barely fit there(if its square tent, then using 10 pots would mean using quite a bit smaller pots). Dont veg for long, but dont start 12/12 before they can start flowering, so 3rd week maybe. And just when the first males would open the pollen sacks take them separate from females and select the best male. Continue growing the best male under that small light you have on other room until you get pollen. Harvest the pollen and rub it on some lower branches of each female. Then when they finish, you know which female gave you the best smoke and just use its seeds. Or maybe you got two or more different kind good ones(like some short bushy others more spear like or some more indica or what ever traits that you might want to differ a bit at times) and want to keep them separated.

It doesent have to be a big branch for you to easily get 200+ seeds from it, which should be plenty for a long time.

What you could also do is to take cuttings from each plant before putting them to 12/12 and then only seed the cutting and seed only the one you want and seed it fully. Or you could forger the males completely and just use the best female from these cuttings and make fem seeds with it using colloidal silver. Then you get more identical copies of it that are all female. Or you could use that best female converted partly to male to seed the second best one(or seed all the cuttings if you want to) and then you get seeds that are purely the best and mix between best and second best, all feminised seeds.

CannaOnerStar said:

. Or you could forger the males completely and just use the best female from these cuttings and make fem seeds with it using colloidal silver. Then you get more identical copies of it that are all female. Or you could use that best female converted partly to male to seed the second best one(or seed all the cuttings if you want to) and then you get seeds that are purely the best and mix between best and second best, all feminised seeds.

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Selfing a plant won’t give you exact copies. You will see a good amount of variation in the fem seeds from a selfed plant.
There is a lot of “untapped” genetic material in every plant so when you self it you will see plants that will look and grow with completely different phenos than the selfed parent. Selfing a plant isn’t much different than crossing with another plant just with a narrower gene pool which can be good or bad.

J-Icky said:

Selfing a plant won’t give you exact copies. You will see a good amount of variation in the fem seeds from a selfed plant.
There is a lot of “untapped” genetic material in every plant so when you self it you will see plants that will look and grow with completely different phenos than the selfed parent. Selfing a plant isn’t much different than crossing with another plant just with a narrower gene pool which can be good or bad.

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I said more identical, not exact clones because they are more identical, but not the same. If you have a stable strain and you make S1(selfed first gen) seeds from a plant vs seeding female with pollen from other plant, you get less variation in S1 than in the next generation made from two separate plants.

Its not like cloning, but more like something between clone and otherwise reasonably stable strain. Im not 100% sure, but i suspect that the stability of the strain where the S1 has been made also effect how similar those seeds are.