Greenhouse Seeds - Indica Mix E

I'm going to try my hand at growing Greenhouse Seed's "Indica Selection E". This is a pack of 5 feminised seeds one of each from the following strains

Big Bang
Big yielder. Supposedly smells of apples. Heavy hitter.
8-9 weeks

Cheese
Supposedly from a clone that came from the UK. Old school skunk with a cheesey smell. Branches out and takes up a lot of space.
8-9 weeks

White Widow
Arjan makes a big deal on the web site about Greenhouse owning the original White Widow. Big yield. Heavy Hitter
8-9 weeks

Himalayan Gold
I think this is Greenhouses "pot of gold", big yielder
8-9 Weeks

I'm hoping to get mothers from Big Bang, Cheese and White widow.

El Nino
El nino is more of an outdoor plant apparently quite stretchy, so it doesn't appeal. I don't really fancy it much.
8-9 Weeks

Himalayan Gold
I think is their version of Pot of Gold, I've already got a good POG mother so I'm not too fussed about this one.
and - you guessed it - 8-9 weeks

I can support up to five plants in my 25 litre DWC tubs under a 600w HPS. It's a grow tent 1.2M2 floor space and 2 m high, with good extraction. I wouldn't be too fussed if the El Nino doesn't make it or the HG.

The biggest problem for an old stoner like me at this stage, is in keeping track of which seed is which. They come colour coded in the pack, but they do warn that this coating disappears in water.

Here's the pack and the five labelled plastic cups that I will be using.

Note the scissors. If you try opening a pack of GH seeds without scissors, chances are that you'll do what I did with my Trainwreck. I ripped the pack and as soon as it came open, the five seeds flew all over the room. I recovered four of them, the fifth one still eludes me. I really hate this kind of shrink wrap.

After soaking in water for 24 hours, I transferred them to damp tissues. Labelled them and popped them into my Disney Princess tin to keep them dark and humid.

Two days later, and I realise my first cockup, the labels absorbed all the moisture and the ink from the marker started to run. Fortunately there was enough colour left on the seeds to still identify and re-label them, puting the labels onto the plate this time instead of the wet tissues.

Three of the seeds have cracked, the white widow, el nino and cheese. I've put these into small rockwool cubes soaked overnight in a weak solution of formulex. Still waiting for the other two

24 hours later and the big bang and himalayan gold have finally cracked, time to put them into rockwool

So here I am one week later with three healthy looking seedlings, a very ropey looking Himalayan Gold and a shy Big Bang that hasn't reached the surface yet.

From left to right

back row

• cheese
• el nino
• white widow

front row (nearest)

• Himalayan gold
• Big bang

They're in an unheated propagator, under a 125 W blue "envirolite" (6400 KHz). Temps 25-29 C. Light cycle - 24/0

Well here we are six weeks later. Just to sum up the past few weeks. After about 1 week the roots started to show through the small rockwool cubes so they were transfered into larger ones.

Unfortunately the Big Bud never made it. The seed had cracked and a tap root had appeared but it just stop growing for no clear reason. That's a shame because the big bud was the one I wanted the most out of this selection.

At this stage I normally would keep them until the roots had grown through the large blocks. Unfortunately I had a bit of an emergency that meant I had to go away for a few days at short notice. My solution was to put the still very young plants into net-pots pack them with clay balls and put them into the bubblers. Otherwise they would have dried out in a couple of days.

So they've been in the bubblers for about five weeks now, and have all developed a small root bundle outside the pot.

I'm keeping the EC at about 1.5 and the ph between 5.5 and 6.0. The bubblers are about 25 litres in size and I'm using Vitalink Grow as the feed (about 45mls of A & B for each bucket). They're under a 600W HPS bulb, in a 1*1*2 Metre Grow tent. We've had some warm weather recently so I'm using Pythoff quite liberally as well. In my experience plants grown in bubblers tend to be very vulnerable to pythium, characterised in the first stage by a rapid drop in PH. 4 mls of Pythoff in each bubbler should do the trick.

Here's a picture of the ladies. There's been a difference in the speed that they've grow. On the picture

Top Left - Cheese
Bottom Left - White Widow
Bottom Right - El Nino
Top Right - Himalayan Gold

The HG is particularly runty and the cheese is looking good.

I'm planning to put the cheese in to flower first, so I've taken half a dozen cuttings in the hope that at least one will root, that I can grow in soil as a mother.

The cuttings were all taken from the bottom of the plant. I cut the stem at the base with scissor and drop them into a jug of water.

Next step I use a razorblade under water to cut the base of the stem into a V shape, and cut the larger fan leaves in half.

They then go into clonex, and then into small rockwool cubes soaked for a couple of hours in a weak Formulex solution. Into a simple propagator on a window sill and for the next couple of weeks I'll just check them each day and wet them with a formulex solution to stop them from drying out.