Sickmeds: Green Crack S1 Feminized

As comparison, for the ones who were questioning the purple from the original Sickmeds stock images, I've lifted them and put them here.

I'd say its a pretty good match between his images and mine; the ad copy doesn't lie:

View attachment 2502924View attachment 2502926

awesome coloring! nice job.

HARVEST: Day 60

I've got the 5-10% amber I was looking for, so I chopped. I probably "could" have done this any time in the last few days, but timing was convenient here. Not much to add since the last update so I'll let the pix do most of the talking.

Here we are with the fan leaves stripped off:


Purple!



Manicured:



Yield:

Closeup of trichomes:

Grow Summary and final impressions:

-Feminized se-ed sprouted quickly.

-Plant grew fast in vegetative mode, originally showing an indica-like growth pattern with lighter than usual green leaves, larger than usual fat indica-like fan leaves, and a thick stem.

-Plant was female, as expected, but took about two weeks after 12-12 switch to start to make flowers.

-After switch to 12-12 plant switched to a decidedly sativa-like flowering pattern, with a "rapid stretch" phase where the plant grew lots of stem quickly. Also, stretch of the side branches at flowering was especially prominent, with small side branches suddenly stretching all the way up to the top, forming a sort of canopy. Buds grew as large round single buds, not making real colas.

-Smell of flowers was incredible; the sweet mango that has been associated with this strain was present, unmistakeable, and strong.

-Resin formation was high, with large trichrome heads coating all buds, and definite clear, white and amber phases.

-Fan leaves and especially flowers started to turned purple a few weeks into flowering with temps no lower than low 60s F. Purpling became extensive as flowering progressed.

-Zero issues with nutrients (too many or few), mold, insects, hermies, etc.

-Overall flowering finish was fast. Plant was definitely "done" in 8 weeks flat, and it was easy to judge maturity. The fast flowering time seems even faster considering the plant didn't even start to make flowers for two weeks after switch to 12-12.

-Final yield was medium.


In summary, this particular plant took me a little bit by surprise, starting off like a short stubby indica, but then turning into a tall branchy sativa during flowering. This was probably related to the pheno I got. Again, these feminized S1 se-eds do put off a wide variety of phenos, and reportedly they will vary quite a bit in terms of overall plant structure and yield.

On yield, it definitely could have been better, but I also wasn't expecting much given the relatively fast flower time. Retrospectively, I think my individual pheno may just not have been the highest yielding, plus I probably could have trained the plant a little better. Also, its not really fair, but compared to the William's Wonder I just grew, ANYTHING is going to seem low-yielding!

On the other hand, overall quality of the buds is just absolutely outstanding, as I think my pictures above show. Not only do they have awesome bag appeal being round, dense, purple, and dripping with resin, but they smell absolutely great. With that level of bud quality and the true 7-8 week flowering time, I can see now why everyone loves this strain so much.

If we go back to the top of this thread, I said on page one that my questions for this grow are just the following:

-Will these plants have the same characteristic fruity smell/flavor as the original?
-Will the line be potent?
-Will the flowering time be fast like the original?

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So we definitely had the delicious fruity smell and fast flowering time, so we have success so far. The buds definitely LOOK potent. . .stay tuned for the smoke report.

i am growing the same green crack from sickmeds right now (flowering day 15). your grow report is very detailed and nice to read and the pictures are very good. waiting eagerly for your smoke report, bro!

M Dogg said:

My preference for a 45 day finish is based on different trials that we've done. [...] You can pull bigger yields leaving the lady go longer but 45 days gives you an almost psychedelic high. [...] Our theory for the name is that if you are a light-weight or inexperienced with this strain you might focus on the fact that G.C. can make you a bit twitchy and paranoid ie. "cracked-out".

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this sounds very interesting, especially the psychedelic part! could you please give a little more information on your experience with longer/shorter flowering periods and how it effects the high? the green crack i am growing right now is supposed to help someone very close to me fight depression. i would really appreciate it.

Jorgo , outstanding grow and report, kudo to ya !

Peace.

cinnamon333 said:

i am growing the same green crack from sickmeds right now (flowering day 15). your grow report is very detailed and nice to read and the pictures are very good. waiting eagerly for your smoke report, bro!

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I'm also waiting eagerly for my smoke report! It will take some time, but it will come.

In the meantime, feel free to post any pictures of your own here, if you like.

Speaking only for myself, I do have a few more unsprouted ceeds, and I'd actually love to see how other phenos of this same S1 line look.

It would be cool if someone did the work to cross/select this into an inbred line, though I don't know how well that would turn out, and that someone certainly isn't going to be me!

It has been really nice watching your grow Jogro! Despite your yield they look incredible! Just thought I'd say thanks for sharing your grow with us all

i am growing with a fluorescent 125w light and own a compact camera only, that's the best quality i can squeeze out of it. hope you like it. if you are interested in something specific, feel free to ask!

ps: i am running dangerously high on nutrients. no more nutrients for my little lady for some time from now!

I've found that a 45 day finish results in my favorite kinda high. It's a very strong Sativa buzz, racy, twitchy, and yeah, a bit paranoid. I've seen alot of people smoking this strain for the first time get a little freaked out. One old hippy chick asked me what I had laced it with!

This strain is amazing! I would say experiment with different flowering times if you like, leave them go long if you want for more yield. I don't think I've seen "bad" Green Crack even when grown by questionable growers.

M Dogg said:

I've found that a 45 day finish results in my favorite kinda high. It's a very strong Sativa buzz, racy, twitchy, and yeah, a bit paranoid.

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the high you describe is also my favourite. thanks for writing, i know when to harvest now. and yes, i will definetely experiment with different flowering times. cheers, bro!

Looks awesome that's some serious purple. Not the largest yielder by far from the looks of that but we'll have to see how I do. How big of a container did you use? I just picked up 16 4gal blow molded pots and just spent the whole night mixing my medium up (Pro-Mix HP/Compost/extra Perlite/Dolomitic Lime). Didn't have enough water that's sat out to wet the shit ton of dirt I got mixed up so I'm gonna wet it tomorrow. Anyone know if I should let it sit? As far as I know and have done before in the past is just use it after 24hrs or even right away but I've noticed that the lime takes like a week to adjust the ph of the soil to 7 so think I should let it sit for a week before I use it?

cinnamon333 said:

the high you describe is also my favourite. thanks for writing, i know when to harvest now. and yes, i will definetely experiment with different flowering times. cheers, bro!

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Just FYI, the Green Crack S1 has different phenos, and they probably are NOT all ready at the same time. Also, its probably fair to assume that most of the phenos will take somewhat longer to finish than the original "clone only" strain (which is a notoriously fast finisher).

Sickmeds says this one is ready in 45-50 days on the pack.



If you just look at the images I posted earlier, in my opinion my particular plant definitely wasn't "done" at day 45, at least not by the usual standards of mostly brown pistils and some amber trichromes. It wouldn't have been "crazy" to harvest it that early, since it was still pretty frosty, and had a good number of brown pistils and white trichromes, and it probably would have been pretty good, but personally, I try to err on the side of too late, rather than too early. Based on what I saw, in my case, I think a reasonable "early" finish would have been day 50. In fairness, maybe there are some earlier-finishing phenos, and maybe this could have finished a bit earlier in a different setup. Its also possible that the best "high" occurs before the plant is mature.

Anyway, if you want to try experimenting with different harvest times, one thing you might try is to just harvest 1-2 buds off the same plant at days 45, 50, 55, etc, making some notes about pistil and trichrome development so you can apply the results to other phenos. That's probably the only fair way to do the comparison with these variable S1 plants.

Ason said:

Looks awesome that's some serious purple. Not the largest yielder by far from the looks of that but we'll have to see how I do. How big of a container did you use? I just picked up 16 4gal blow molded pots and just spent the whole night mixing my medium up (Pro-Mix HP/Compost/extra Perlite/Dolomitic Lime). Didn't have enough water that's sat out to wet the shit ton of dirt I got mixed up so I'm gonna wet it tomorrow. Anyone know if I should let it sit? As far as I know and have done before in the past is just use it after 24hrs or even right away but I've noticed that the lime takes like a week to adjust the ph of the soil to 7 so think I should let it sit for a week before I use it?

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Its a small grow. Plant was grown in a 3 gallon bucket under half of a 250 HPS (so really only 125 W of HPS). I think the container size was more than adequate for the lighting and overall grow space; I don't think that's the limiting factor here at all. You can argue about how well you "should" do in terms of yield, and people talk about 1 g/w, but I just don't think that's practical under a setup like this. 250 HPS light itself isn't as efficient as bigger 400W HPS, (let alone 600 or 1000W), and without getting into details, my setup deliberately compromises efficiency for stealth and ease of construction.

I think if you can pull 4-5 ounces out of a 250W, you're doing well (so that would be 2+ oz/plant). Its possible to do more, if you're setup is really dialled in AND you're using a high yielding strain that you're experienced with, and you optimize things (ie you have a perfect SCROG, etc), but none of these things really applied here.

Again, limited yield was partly due to less than optimal plant training on my part, plus just not the heaviest yielding pheno. Obviously, you always want the most yield possible, but for me quality is WAY more important than quantity. In this case quality appears super high, and you do have to temper the yield a bit based on fast overall flowering time. If I had to do it again, I would have topped this plant early, and put it into a SCROG for flowering.

On your soil, I don't think it matters much how long you let the stuff sit, once you add water, the pH should equalize fairly quickly.

Jogro said:

Anyway, if you want to try experimenting with different harvest times, one thing you might try is to just harvest 1-2 buds off the same plant at days 45, 50, 55, etc, making some notes about pistil and trichrome development so you can apply the results to other phenos. That's probably the only fair way to do the comparison with these variable S1 plants.

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this is my very first grow ever. your idea sounds very reasonable and i'll take it into consideration. i have smoked too much of really bad indica and prefer the sativa high, since. i've also smoked some pretty decent sativa-dominant strains which gave me this dreamlike i-feel-amazing feeling with a very light body-stone. in the end, i'll sure have to experiment a bit to find my favourite high/stoned mix. thanks for your input.

ps: jogro, what was the temperature around your plant with the lights on? mine fluctuates between 85-93 which is too high, imho. furthermore, my plant started to make flowers immediately after switchting to 12-12, so there are differences from seed to seed (i think this is normal).

Good point on the possible difference between S1 Fem. phenos and clones Jogro.

I should mention cinnamon333 that I'm growing GC from clone and not from seed.

cinnamon333 said:

this is my very first grow ever. your idea sounds very reasonable and i'll take it into consideration. i have smoked too much of really bad indica and prefer the sativa high, since. i've also smoked some pretty decent sativa-dominant strains which gave me this dreamlike i-feel-amazing feeling with a very light body-stone. in the end, i'll sure have to experiment a bit to find my favourite high/stoned mix. thanks for your input.

ps: jogro, what was the temperature around your plant with the lights on? mine fluctuates between 85-93 which is too high, imho. furthermore, my plant started to make flowers immediately after switchting to 12-12, so there are differences from seed to seed (i think this is normal).

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This probably isn't the easiest strain for a first grow. Certainly not the hardest, but the stretch and branchiness are a little more than some strains, and this one can probably use a bit more attention in terms of pruning/training than some, particularly if you're growing in a confined space. Also, the pheno variability means that every time you pop a new ceed, you may have to tweak things again.

"High" quality here may also be partly pheno dependent; I don't really know. I've never tried the clone-only parent plant, so I can't compare, either. As a tip, if you have access to a vaporizer with an adjustable temp setting, that will turn basically any strain into a cerebral/head high/sativa effect if you keep the temp relatively low. It also greatly improves the flavor, IMO.

In terms of flowering, I introduced flowering a bit early on this one (IIRC, plant was only 28 days since planting), so it was still a little young and that may have been one factor in the slow response. Plants that have been in veg longer tend to flip more readily. As you say, pheno may have been a factor too.

To answer the second bit, my main grow themometer shows temp plus daily high/low. That really helps give a good idea of what's going on when you're not watching. High of the entire flowering period was 83F, and that was only a few days right at the beginning. The rest of the time, daily peak temp was about 78F. Flowering low was 62F.

I don't know how well this particular strain stands up to heat. Some strains hate high temps (delaying/prolonging flowering, and reducing final quality) , some don't care. 85F probably a bit higher than optimal, but it should still be OK, especially given that this strain is historically associated with Athens GA (where it gets pretty hot!). 93F is OK for short periods of time, but I think it may cause issues if prolonged over the entire grow. If you have the ability to improve ventilation, it won't hurt. You might consider air cooling your lights (even a CFL).

One thing about clones is they always switch to flower quicker because they are already sexually mature(same age as the mother). So usually a clone will switch to producing pistils and buds right away where when you switch your plant to flower and its not sexually mature yet your forcing it to flower. Do you get what I'm talking about? Clones will start flowering right away where when you force a plant to flower inmaturly it takes usually 2 weeks to show pistils.

Jogro said:

As a tip, if you have access to a vaporizer with an adjustable temp setting, that will turn basically any strain into a cerebral/head high/sativa effect if you keep the temp relatively low. It also greatly improves the flavor, IMO.

In terms of flowering, I introduced flowering a bit early on this one (IIRC, plant was only 28 days since planting), so it was still a little young and that may have been one factor in the slow response. Plants that have been in veg longer tend to flip more readily. As you say, pheno may have been a factor too.

93F is OK for short periods of time, but I think it may cause issues if prolonged over the entire grow. If you have the ability to improve ventilation, it won't hurt. You might consider air cooling your lights (even a CFL).

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i own an iolite which vapes at 190° celsius but should i ever buy another i will certainly choose one with adjustable temps. many ppl have written good things about them. but the iolite is ok for now (actually, its pretty sweet!). vaping own weed is like a dream coming true. i also have a small glass pipe which i take with me on social occasions. the pipe hits me pretty hard and i usually end up dancing/talking/listening for hours. the vaporizer is good when i have to function in everyday life.

i think you are right on veg lenths and flowering response. i've put mine into flowering after 60 days, which is double your time. Ason has also written something very interesting about clones being sexually mature and therefore flowering faster. makes sense to me.

my grow tent is 3 feet from my bed (i live in a small 150 square foot student's dormitory) and i've built a small custom ventilation from pc fans by myself which is silent, odorless, cheap but ineffective when it comes to keeping the temperature down. i've already calculated that i'd need at least 400 bucks to get a professional super-silent ventilation that would last for many years and not harm my sleep pattern. i'd also be able to upgrade to hps. well, i don't have the money. technically i do, but that money is tied up elsewhere (food, clothes, etc.)

i am already air cooling the lights (cfl gets pretty hot!), only the fan is dispersing the air all around the tent and will be replaced with a more focused one. i will also do a small upgrade to my ventilation by replacing the fans until my next grow. maybe it will help a bit as i'll use bigger fans.

you guys are just awesome! i am learning a lot from you. thank you big time.