Experiments and breeding

First time journal, second time growing. I did my first grow with white widow seeds I got from a friend. Unfortunately, it seems those seeds were very prone to turning hermaphrodite. All turned on the first batch, but I let it finish, and starting the second batch, I've for sure determined the seeds were a bust -- not dealing with that again, so I tossed 5 very nice plants just 2 weeks into flowering (RIP)

Now, onto the new grow! I ordered 9 new strains, and am starting with 6 -- Kilimanjaro (landrace sativa), African Buzz (basically just a selected form of Malawi Gold), Panama (lots of old landraces from Panama and Columbia bread into a new form of an old classic, Panama Red), Blueberry, Sour Diesel, and a new set of White Widow genetics.

The plan:
veg for a couple weeks on 18/6, top, recover for a week, then into flowering (space is limited for 6 plants.)

Keep out males of the landraces and carefully polinate a branch with each on all strains.

Take new seeds, grow them out, see what comes from them, and keep the favorites.

In the mean time, I'll keep updating on the plants, their developments, and what I'm doing with/for them.

As of this morning, the seeds are soaking in plain filtered tap water, and tomorrow will be moved to a paper towel to get started germinating, then onto solo cups to start vegging.

For this grow, my soil will be Fox Farm Happy Frog, with a touch of soil straight out of the Rocky Mountains (mostly for shits and grins, but also for the sake of adding microbiology and possibly some new flavors and nutrients.) All fertilizer will be Fox Farm powdered nutrients, as well as coffee grounds and molasses, and Earth Juice Micro Blast on occasion. Hopefully there will be no need for pesticides/fungusides, but in that event, spinosad will be used -- basically trying to go very natural/organic on everything.

The lights: Eight 23w, 6,500K CFLs for veg, and a 400w HPS for flower, with UV-B added for the middle 6 weeks of flower.

The rooms: A vented closet for veg, and a legit, locked, climate controlled, underground bunker for flowering.

Let's see where it goes! Updates will come...

-Peach

Here's a shot of each of the 3 big hermies that had to go. White Widow clones, rooted 2 weeks, vegged 3 weeks, on 11.5/12.5 for 2 weeks, 35" tall, 30" wide, monster cropped, and topped. They'd have been great producers if they hadn't hermied, but the new seeds are germinating now at least!

Well, 10 days later, about half of my seeds are up and forming their 2nd set of serrated leaves. Keeping the humidity super high at around 80% with lots of air movement and regular watering with plain ph'd filtered water. All of the seeds germinated except for the Kilimanjaro. I started another round, thinking they might be duds, and those haven't popped yet either. They do seem quite old and hard though, so I put them back into a cup of water for now to see if they'll pop. One did seem to barely crack open in the paper towel, so I've left it in there to see if it goes. Fingers crossed, cause I only have 2 more of those seeds, and really want to try it, and cross it with my other strains!

On a side note, this is very interesting having all of these strains, and all from seed. You can already really see the difference in each phenotype. Some are 1/3 the height, some have very pure sativa looking leaves, some very pure indica. Just very interesting to watch them develop so different. Also, surprisingly, my sour diesel looks very indica dominant so far. I mean, hard to say at this stage, obviously, but certainly odd for a sativa dominant hybrid to have super wide leaves.

Favorite plant so far: Blueberry. It's quite beautiful and a vigorous grower with nice structure.

Just a quick update:
Most all of the plants are doing great! It looks like no Kilimanjaro this time, as none of the 10 seeds have cracked yet, and I've tried everything. Two of the African Buzz look like they won't make it, just had issues getting up and out of the soil :/ The rest, however, are doing great, aside from a few with slightly weaker stem bases. Getting just about time for a small first dose of NPK. Interestingly enough, the phenotypical differences seem to be much less noticeable at this stage. Most of the leaves are looking quite similarly shaped, however the pure sativas definitely still do have narrower leaves.

Oops... kinda let the kids veg a little long. Like, a few weeks too long. Now this is going to be an interesting adventure to try to nail the height I want... Just switched to 12/12 today, finally. Most plants are around a foot tall now after topping and FIMing. My plan to control their height now is to cut their light down by a bit to control their flower stretch, and keep them to a max of 2 gallon pots. All have been up-potted, all feminized to 2 gallon, and all regulars to 1 gallon for now.

I had absolutely no luck getting any of the 10 Kilimanjaro seeds to sprout, but I've got some of everything else, including what is so far looking to be a couple males! Normally I wouldn't be so happy about that, but I'm certainly excited to breed a bit. I tried to FIM them all (first time FIMing), but clearly missed something on how to do it right, so I went back and then topped them all as well. Most are looking nice and bushy now!

I finally have my grow hole (or weed bunker, whichever you prefer) up and running again. As my flowering room it had been inactive for a bit, and got pretty flooded when we had a constant downpour for over a day. But thankfully no electrical issues from that, and after a few hours I had it back in shape and clean.

Anyhoo, they're all happy and healthy, and should be ready for harvest in ~10 weeks.

Keep tokin'!
-Peach

Well, I got lucky, 5 males! Still slim pickin' by good breeding standards, but I'm pleased with the males I got out of this -- good branchingod and decent clusters as well. I kept male one each of African Buzz and Panama, and just collected the first bit of pollen off of the African Buzz today, which is now in the fridge (the plant is pretty bent up from that...) The Panama hasn't opened up yet, but it's getting quite close. I only ended up with 4 females flowering (instead of the full 6 I had hoped for) but they all are looking great! The Panama female has some catching up to do with the others due to pot size and less light for the first week of 12/12, but I'm sure being a pure sativa, it'll catch up quick. They are all looking stellar right now -- I'm glad I ended up with just 4, they've grown a fair bit, even with my attempts of keeping them a bit smaller. But, no hermies yet this time (thank god...) and I think I'm looking at a pretty alright total yeild out of them! Hoping to do my minimal pollination this weekend, then take a few clones after that of my males, and the females of Blueberry and Sour Diesel.

On a side note, this is just round 1 of breeding! My next batch will be crossing these males with Pineapple Chunk, Critical, and Aphrodite. I haven't grown or smoked any of them before, just got some free good seeds for them, and figured why not, this is for the sake of experimenting after all, so we'll see what happens!

-Peach

P.S. Yes, the fans are both off for the males -- no air movement stirring the pollen around and mixing it up.

Things are going great with the plants now about 25 days into flower. They appear to have gotten a bit deficient on P, K, and some micros (these strains seem to like heavier amounts of nutes, and each a different kind...) but that's all squared away thanks to some homemade organic NPK and micro nutes both root and foliar fed over the last week.

The pollinating has been done, and went very well. Both males produced pleanty, and the females took it right in ehen i brushed it on, and are already showing good seeds in the works. Just a few buds pollenated on each plant, and had only a tiny amount of spread to other branches, with just a few polinated pistils where they aren't supposed to be. They seem to still be packing on buds quite well everywhere that isn't polinated, so I'm very pleased.

They're done stretching, except for the Panama, are just getting trichomes started over the last week, and they seem to already be developing a great terpinoid profile. Just about 5 weeks til the Blueberry comes down, 6 til the White Widow, and 7 to 9 for the Sour Diesel and Panama. So. Damn. Stoked.

Next up, I'll be adding in a small amount of UV-B light to increase the resin production.

On a side note, I also snagged a few clones (male and female) of Panama, African Buzz, Sour Diesel, and Blueberry, and all of them are doing very well so far, especially for not having roots yet! Soon I'll be starting the seeds for the next round of genetics for more breeding work and some tasty new buds

Have a smoke filled weekend, folks!
-Peach

Well, the grow is still going! I got busy/ inattentive and unfortunately really made a negative impact on the plants. With the hot summer weather, a 400w SL HPS, and no vents, they got extremely heat stressed. I would say about 50-60% of the garden's fan leaves are gone now due to that. So, lesson learned, ya can't be neglectful growing good weed (wow, what a shocker, right?... ha.) I installed a vent (tricky to do when you're growing in a dirt hole) and gave them some seaweed extract. They seem to be doing better now, but are still recovering some. Unfortunately my yeild will be much lower now, I'm guessing 5oz total at worst, 10oz if I'm lucky as hell. The Blueberry and White Widow are now only ~24 days from harvest, and the Panama and Sour Diesel ~45 days. The UV-B light has been added, and boy are things getting frosty and smelling great. I have a rooted and growing monster cropped clone of each plant now, as well as a few new strains (Pineapple Chunk, Critical, and Aphrodite) started from seed now for the next batch. I'll be tossing the new plants down to start their flowering as soon as the Blueberry and Widow come down. Definitely still learning as I go along, I mean, it's only my third grow. But I'm pleased with what I'm gaining in a more broad sense of knowledge around cannabis plants of different kinds, and very excited for trying the finished product of this grow.

Have a great week!
-Peaches

Huzzah, the day has arrived! A couple days ago, I got to harvest 3 of the 4 plants -- Blueberry, Sour Diesel, and White Widow (Panama has another couple weeks to go, but it's looking great!). Surprisingly, even with as different as they looked, they all weighed in (wet) about the same at ~200g each. I mean, same treatment and all, but I'd have expected some drastic differences in yield... Definitely not an abundant harvest, but for the month of stupidly hot temps resulting in so many lost fan leaves, and the fact that they were fully organic with minimal added nutrients, it's not bad.

The smell so far is amazing on the Sour Diesel and Blueberry, and decent for the White Widow. Trichomes are quite abundant, to the point that this looks as good as any top shelf medical I've had. Currently drying in my grow room for the next few days at 50% humidity with direct airflow. All three plants had 10 weeks of flowering. Readiness was odd with that heat stress, but they all seemed ready by my eyes. I had actually chopped a branch off the Sour Diesel and week early (the branch polinated with African Buzz) and have gotten to test it out. Impressively good for polinated and being cut early, and a great smell. Taste definitely says it needs cured though And being organic, the smoke is super smooth. Looks like about 100 seeds per polinated branch to toy with and get some nice phenos for these new strains, though!

I have 2 more Blueberry plants and 1 Sour Diesel now in the flower room getting started, and will soon be moving down 1 each of Pineapple Chunk, Critical, Aphrodite, and hopefully African Buzz if I get a female of it. Still have my breeder male clones vegging, and will flip to flower once all the new plants are flowering. Quite excited for this next round now that I've fixed the mistakes of the last batch, and super stoked for getting to see my new F1 Hybrids for all these new and different strains! I'll post once more after the Panama has been cut and the drying and curing has been finished, and then keep an eye out (if you've been following this) for my next round of growing/breeding, and then the much anticipated journal for my new strains!

-Peaches