Best way to select optimal phenotype (5 seeds, grow 2 plants at a time, time not a constraint)

<<a bit more detail/context is at the END of post>>

GOAL: As a medical user, there are particular Sativa strains (Green Crack, Ghost Train Haze, Jack Herer) that I want to grow for myself, and plan to use for a long time. Therefore I want to take the time to select the very best mother as I will keep it around to grow from for years to come.

PLANNED SETUP: Let's assume I am going to grow TWO plants at a time (one plant per light x two lights). They will each have an identical setup (to try and allow for fair comparison). So let's say then that I have a 4x8 Tent w 2x1000W running on RDWC ; I will grow TWO plants (same strain) - one under each lights. In a separate room, I plan to DIY an aeroponic cloner, and will have some T5 lights for bonsai mothers to be kept in soil.

SEEDS: Let's say that I have 5 feminized Green Crack seeds from a reliable breeder (and let's also hold as an aside arguments about whether a feminized seed should be used for a mother). I germinate all (and lets assume they all take). I grow them in small soil pots (under T5?). Let's name these mothers A1, A2, A3, A4, A5.

HERES MY THINKING, IS IT DUMB?: It seems to me that ultimately I want some kind of playoff bracket. Since I only plan to grow TWO plants at a time, it will take a few harvests/brackets to find the ultimate winner. BIG PICTURE - I start by taking cuttings off A1 and A2 and get them going in the aeroponic cloner. I choose the single best of each (lets call them A1.1 and A2.1). Now I have two clones that should be of similar starting size, but from different mothers. I veg and flower these out (RDWC/SCROG). Near the end of this first harvest, I start clones from A3 and A4 to start the next bracket. Ultimately I keep comparing them until I find the winner and keep it. **Given my desire to only flower two plants at a time** does this method make sense for finding the best mother??

I know that I could also germinate all 5 seeds, and then only pick the "fastest starters" but does that necessarily mean I have found the most potent phenos? Or I could start clones from ALL 5 phenos at once, but only select from the fastest starters? Or I could start to VEG clones from all 5 phenos at once, but only keep the 2 that grow most robust? All of these seemed like shortcuts that introduced more variables.

So, *in the context of my planned 2 lights/ 2 plants at a time setup*, what is the best way to pick a mother from a pack of seeds?

Am I missing anything? Should I be thinking about this in a different way?

MANY THANKS!


<<This is my first time back to growing in 20 years. Back then it was "cheap and cheerful" with 1000W bulbs and soil to try to help pay for college. This time around I plan to do it RIGHT. I am EXCITED to LEARN the process, and delve deep into the hobby. This isn't just about yield and potency, its about process and learning for me. I have spent MONTHS reading websites (mostly this forum, growweedeasy, cocofor cannabis) and watching videos on YouTube. Back in the day I just happened to be lucky enough to know the right people to show me. It is so amazing the information available on the internet now! I am so stoked to get into this again!>>

First things first. How much cannabis do you want to have on hand? before you plan anything figure that out. Then environment is everything.

So when starting, that should be your focus.
Vegging/Clones Lighting: Seen you said t5. Go look at this Led Veg Light. 73 bucks. does a 3x4 veg area. I got 2 and love them.
Secondly 2k watts in a 4/8 tent is gonna be a bitch to keep cool unless your running a ac unit in the tent. Either drop to 2 600 watts or go 2 5x5 tents. I run a 1k in 5x5. with my ventilation set up my tent stays exactly 12 degrees higher then ambient room temp. It will be higher with hoods as the metal hood itself becomes a giant heat radiator. Imo if your in a tent just run naked bulbs and keep the room temp down by air exchange.

2plants 2 lights in 4x8: Why? If you got 2 lights and a 4 x8 tent then you should be growing 4-8 plants. Secondly, RDWC is great if your growing in a 20x20 with 16 plants in 15 gallon buckets and 1 200 gallon reservoir tank. Your a medical grower searching for phenotype. IMHO grow in organic soil. I used to be a hempy bucket guy. was all about it. But after growing in organic soil. Man... the taste profiles. mmmmhmmmm. Check out my vertical No Till Organic grow in my sig.

But with that style of set up id do 4 plants. 2 per light in 20 gallon DWC buckets with venturi pumps in 16 branch mainline style or Screen of Green. ( got a buddy that does 1lb plant in 120 qt rubbermaid dwc with 600w light. He grows 2 a year. its pretty badass.

Now to pheno hunt.

you 5 seeds. Germ them all. label . As soon as plant has gotten some branches and is able to be cloned pull 3 clones and start them. Use your cloner machine those are awesome. Go to nursery and get yourself 6 bags of quality soil and some 3 gallon nursery pots. (my nursery would give these to me for free for buying soil there). Transplant your rooted auroclones into the 3 gallon pots and as soon as they have all produced 2 new nodes, flip em and bloom. keep em small with 3-5 tops max. Decide from that what mothers you will keep.

To be honest however, if your talking 2 plants per cycle at 90ish days per cycle then your only talking like 8 seeds per year max. Just order them. Right now on Herbys I went in and put 78 bucks in the cart. Jack 47 (Sweet Seeds) 3+1 seeds (feminized) 38 bucks. Thats 6 months worth of seeds right there.
Then Sugar Black Rose Early Version (Delicious Seeds) 5+2 Sugar Candy (feminized) There is another 6 months with 3 seeds left over. every order gets a free GG auto. and when you spend that amount you get 3 more free seeds that you can pick. So pick one more GG auto, then the other 2 non auto seeds. How did we end for our 80 bucks spent?

14 seeds
5 cloneable strains
2 autos
2 years of growing just from seed. Not worth the cost of mothers and pheno hunting unless your growing 20 times the amount of plants your talking about.

Had to come back and add the following: you said its not about yield and potentcy, its about process and learning. However Yield and potency is EXACTLY what you are learning. What the point of growing if you dont have a end goal? To get the most (yield) face melting (potency) cannabis out of my grow set up possible. For myself it was how to get the most face melting cannabis with very little time to tend to my grow. It needed to be very automated with me only checking in once every few weeks.

m4s73r:

1. Thanks for taking the time to make such a detailed reply.
2. There are a million different ways to grow pot. This is why in my op I stated my question *in the context of the setup I described* as I wanted to avoid a deluge of suggestions on other ways to grow weed (different media, different numbers of plants per light etc). In the next year I plan on adding more light, and in total will have 5 x "4x4" areas with one plant each (there are plant count limits where I live). I will wind up growing more than I need. I am sure I will find something to do with it.
3. Given that my goal is *consistent* weed that is the *best of the best* within a strain, I don't see how your strategy of "buy new seeds for each grow" makes sense .In fact your suggestion is kind of the opposite of what I am trying to do. I know your intent is positive though so all good brother.
4. Potency and Yield are the OUTCOMES of caring about the PROCESS of growing. What I meant to convey is that I find the process of absorbing myself in a topic, learning, and experimenting to be just as enjoyable as the outcome. In other words, I will have as much fun building hydro systems, pheno hunting and learning as I will smoking the end product.

Which brings me back to the start. What is the best way to find out which of my 5 seeds is best, given a limitation of only wanting to flower two plants at a time. I thought this would be a good way to hunt for a good pheno - since both plants will have the exact same lighting, and be sharing the same DWC system. But maybe there's a smarter way?

Well at the rate of plants your growing at 2 plants it will take you a year to just grow each of the seeds out. So i guess just grow them and keep a cutting of each until your done growing all 5. then pick the 2 you liked the best. But you wont know how good it is until you grow it, chop it, dry it, cure it. So over the next 2 years you will learn how each of your 5 seeds is. And knowing how good quality genetics are, you may go through 20 seeds of one strain before you get one that stands apart enough to matter.

I guess what im saying is, what your wanting vs how your wanting to do it makes very little sense. Your looking for something special. How you gonna look at 2 spots at a time. Buy a bunch of seeds of the same strain and maybe 1 or 2 will do something different then the rest. I did a pheno hunt on a super lemon haze. Popped 50 seeds looking for that coveted short, compact, fastly blossoming, indica-dominant phenotype and nothing. all sativa dominant.
but good luck.

hot_box_enthusiast said:

What is the best way to find out which of my 5 seeds is best, given a limitation of only wanting to flower two plants at a time. I thought this would be a good way to hunt for a good pheno - since both plants will have the exact same lighting, and be sharing the same DWC system. But maybe there's a smarter way?

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Buy a good clone. 2 plants at a time could take a lifetime.
There is no way to know which of the five seeds is the best without growing them all to harvest. Take clones early, or reveg the winner

@m4s73r (I've tried to avoid bogging down the extra details but here it is ; ultimately I will have 6 lights - for a total of 6 plants so it won't take *that* long if I focused on one strain at a time - and besides - I said I have time and patience - and plant limits. If you don't want to offer advice based on my setup that's fine

Boatguy said:

Buy a good clone. 2 plants at a time could take a lifetime.
There is no way to know which of the five seeds is the best without growing them all to harvest. Take clones early, or reveg the winner

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Definitely this. I am hoping once I have some buds of my own, I can start looking to trade with local folks and create the requisite connections with other growers. As of now in my province there is no way for me to find any right now.

hot_box_enthusiast said:

for a total of 6 plants so it won't take *that* long if I focused on one strain at a time

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2 at a time, 4 to 5 months per grow. So a year or more. Also no way to get your keeper back if it was one of the earlier plants.
You cant judge the plants till you've dried and smoked em

OP what is the plant limit count, it sounds like it matters for your 2 plant max rule.

You could pop all 5 and keep them all as mothers. Then cut 2 off and flower them out. And yes make a ‘bracket’. If either of the two stand out to you then put a check in the box. Then flower another 2 from the 5, and see if they are better. Then I guess pick of those 4 which is best, and the final 3rd grow , grow it against the last 5th seed. That’s one way.
The issue with the plan is keeping 5 mothers alive for 3 hole grow cycles, hopefully there are no issues.

Another thing, since you sound like you want it to be scientific, The poster above who says to pop 2 at a time, and take clones of each, is a better plan.

If you pop them at different times and keep some as moms for longer, it is different than coming straight from seed.

Looks like all 3 strains have 9-12 weeks flower periods (allows for some optimistic numbers from breeders). Green Crack will be 8-9 weeks. Without getting into growing techniques or equipment
Start all 5 seeds.
Veg for 4-6 weeks until you can take at least 3 good cloning cuts from each plant.
Load the cuts into the cloner
Flip the 5 plants to flower.
It should be 10-14 days before your clones are ready to go into their grow medium. That leaves 6-7 weeks of veg time for them until your 5 plants in flower are ready to harvest. If you're pressed for space, keep at least 1 of each clone type but discard any noticeably weak plants.
By the time you harvest you'll have some very healthy plants ready to flip or keep as mothers.
The only flaw in this process is your cloning technique. I would suggest experiment a bit until you're confident you'll have as least a 75% success rate. It would be a pity to start your 5 seeds and not have viable clones to work with. The seeds can be replaced, but you'll have lost a lot of time.

hot_box_enthusiast said:

@m4s73r (I've tried to avoid bogging down the extra details but here it is ; ultimately I will have 6 lights - for a total of 6 plants so it won't take *that* long if I focused on one strain at a time - and besides - I said I have time and patience - and plant limits. If you don't want to offer advice based on my setup that's fine

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I think thats the point bro. And if you look at the rest of the comments its been a repeat of what i have already said. And your not getting a direct answer cause your plan makes no sense.

Boatguy said:

2 at a time, 4 to 5 months per grow. So a year or more. Also no way to get your keeper back if it was one of the earlier plants.
You cant judge the plants till you've dried and smoked em

Click to expand...

Boatguy said:

Buy a good clone. 2 plants at a time could take a lifetime.
There is no way to know which of the five seeds is the best without growing them all to harvest. Take clones early, or reveg the winner

Click to expand...

but to answer your question, put all 5 plants in cups. first one to pop up out the soil is your mother. plant 2 and 3 in your set up and kill 4 and 5. as they were the runts.
If you ever actually do this put up a grow journal. I want to watch you hunt for phenos 2 plants at a time....

m4s73r said:

but to answer your question, put all 5 plants in cups. first one to pop up out the soil is your mother. plant 2 and 3 in your set up and kill 4 and 5. as they were the runts.

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This was helpful thanks. If I only have 5 seeds and expect only 3 to be worthy, the hunt will certainly be quicker.

I think you and others missed the part where I said I am patient and in no rush. I've smoked weed for 25 years, so if it takes me a year (or even longer) to find a fantastic mother worthy of keeping, so what?

As I said earlier, I will eventually have 5 plants and 5 lights (by this summer) in which case, in theory it only takes one single harvest to find the winner of 5 mothers, wouldn't it? I am not asking in a passive agressive way, I am generally curious. If I have 5 lights, my whole experiment shouldn't take THAT long, so I am not sure where the negativity comes from? Anyways all good!

Im sorry bro maybe were not seeing the same thing. So like a a super lemon haze has like 6 phenotypes. So one is short and fast and looks indica. One is tall fast and looks sativa. One is short slow and looks indica. All of them produce super lemon haze.
So its not negativity so much as a strong desire to help you not fall into easily and possibly expensive mistakes.

So what size pots you running in for one plant to fill up a 4x4 space? are you scroging them or growing trees?

I dont think the idea is bad, just slow. It will take about 12 weeks veg (in soil) to flower out a 4x4 with 1 plant.

Pop 2 seeds, veg for 12 weeks or however long it takes, since you're using hydro, it will be faster. Take clones of the 2 plants before you flip to flower.
These 2 clones will be vegged to repeat the flower process. So while the flower tent is finishing, the clones will be about ready to flip to flower.
While you're flowering the clones, pick the winner of the the first 2, kill the loser, and keep the winner clone as a mother.
And then 2 options,
1.) Only pop 1 more seed to run against the keeper clone, and flower this twice, to compare the new Clone to the old clone
2.) Pop 2 more seeds, keep the original keeper plant as a mother, and repeat the process with the 2 new seeds. This will be faster than the first option.

You can get 4.5 harvests in a year by running perpetual. Hope all of this made sense

SnidleyBluntash said:

OP what is the plant limit count, it sounds like it matters for your 2 plant max rule.

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Right now I have a 4 plant limit which is why I am looking at it the way I am. I have applied for a medical license that would allow more, but with COVID my application may have ground to a halt. I don't mind dipping above the count by a few temporarily but would prefer to play by the rules until my license gets here.

Bosgrower said:

Start all 5 seeds.
Veg for 4-6 weeks until you can take at least 3 good cloning cuts from each plant.
Load the cuts into the cloner
Flip the 5 plants to flower.
It should be 10-14 days before your clones are ready to go into their grow medium. That leaves 6-7 weeks of veg time for them until your 5 plants in flower are ready to harvest. If you're pressed for space, keep at least 1 of each clone type but discard any noticeably weak plants.
By the time you harvest you'll have some very healthy plants ready to flip or keep as mothers.
The only flaw in this process is your cloning technique. I would suggest experiment a bit until you're confident you'll have as least a 75% success rate. It would be a pity to start your 5 seeds and not have viable clones to work with. The seeds can be replaced, but you'll have lost a lot of time.

Click to expand...

I think I am leaning towards something like this now, even if it brings me above the plant count.

m4s73r said:

Im sorry bro maybe were not seeing the same thing. So like a a super lemon haze has like 6 phenotypes. So one is short and fast and looks indica. One is tall fast and looks sativa. One is short slow and looks indica. All of them produce super lemon haze.
So its not negativity so much as a strong desire to help you not fall into easily and possibly expensive mistakes.

Click to expand...

You make a great point re my use of the word phenotype which may not be quite right. I have seen mention of some strains having distinct phenotypes (tall v short) like you say. What I meant was more along the lines of recognizing that seed stock will have inherent genetic variability, and my desire to find the best of what I have available to me (i.e. 5 seeds). Since I love Green Crack, I don't mind experimenting trying to find a great one. its the pesky plant counts (as well as my desire to have more than one strain around) that are going to make it take some time.

I was hotboxing my sauna thinking about all of this, trying to hear the message from everyone.
I want to try RDWC because I have time on my hands to build the system, and it looks like a fun way to try growing (having done soil in the past) and wanted to keep # plants low due to legal limits. Pondering the advice here.... maybe I should fast track things... do my first grow as a coco or soil grow, so a SOG with all 5 seeds (making sure to get healthy clones before flowering) and just say fuck it re: plant limit. Find my mother fast and then get started with more lights and bigger plants.

I appreciate everyone for chiming in. Happy to consider more.

Ok OP, so you are trying to find the best plant of these 5 seeds and these 5 seeds only, EVER? Never any new seeds? If that is indeed the case then, here is something to consider, since you only have these 5, the ‘winner’ you choose in your mind might change. So I would keep all 5 alive as long as possible and keep trying this bracket over and over until you are really sure. If you did this and chose one and killed the rest, that’s it. What is ‘best’ in your mind?