Last winter I grew out some cuttings I took from my outdoor plants and crossed them with some regular seeds (Tangerine Dream) I popped in my tent indoors to make some seeds. From the 5 or 6 types of seeds I made, I decided to grow out two of them in the second half of the winter to see how they'd turn out. I grew 6-8 of both the Jack Herer cross and the Northern Lights cross. Both were 1:1 CBD initially, but the Tangerine Dream Auto was not. I really liked both of them and had pollinated one of each to make a few dozen seeds.
From what I gathered from looking into the punnet squares and such, these seeds that I've popped in this run should have roughly a 25% chance of being fully autoflowering and I'd like to end up with some Auto seeds of this cross.
My plan is to leave the lights at 18/6 and see if I have any of the 16/20 that have sprouted that will start showing signs of early flower. Then hopefully if that works out, I'll have at least one female and one male that can then pollinate it and come out the other end with seeds. Should be easy, right?
This is totally an experiment so I've got my fingers crossed and am looking forward to learning something. I'm sure there will be a surprise or two along the way and I appreciate anyone following along for the ride.
4'x5' Tent
DIY built LED 150-350watt
Worm Castings, Worm Tea, Gaia Green
These are the first couple weeks in reverse order;)
New Years Eve Update - Day 24 from seed
The cups are starting to feel pretty light, even with daily top of of water so I decided to add some fresh worm castings as a top dress to give them a bit more nutrients before doing any repotting.
I'm hoping to be able to distinguish the autos from the non-autos by about week 5 or 6 and then narrow down the number of plants I want to keep for the full duration before repotting. They are working on their 3rd/4th sets of true leaves and looking pretty healthy for the most part.
I've been a bit more measured in how much I am watering them, making sure not to just wet the top crust and let the bottom dry out. To achieve this level of objectivity, I've been using a kitchen scale to make sure they are getting enough water by weight, not just by look.
I'm doing my best to stay patient with this grow, which is always hard to do, and I'll need some accountability from you guys to make sure I don't end up growing all 17 of them all the way out. Some culling WILL be necessary!
I've also got a handful of cuts rooting in another area of my basement that I don't have any set plans for other than to do some comparison tests with different soil/castings combinations. So far the first test of rooting the cuts taught me that rockwool cubes are the best bet (100% 2/2), a peat/castings mix didn't work too well but I've got a couple that look to have been successful (maybe 20-30% success 2or3/9), and the good ol' cup of water was slower but still had about a 60-70% success rate (5/8). The latter I have yet to put into a proper pot and I might end up loosing a couple more in the transplant step.
That's enough ramblings for now. Thanks for stopping by!
Day 36 from seed Update:
I've been fairly hands off with these little ones aside from daily water top ups and am eagerly anticipating the early signs of both bananas and white hairs to be able to tell the boys from the girls and the autos from the photos.
This was maybe 7-10 days ago. They were mostly all working on the 5th node.
This was today. They are getting bigger, as they do, but not seeing any of the signs I'm looking for yet. I figure it should be in the next week or two that a few should be starting to show. They look like they could use a bit more in the way of nutrients since they are still in pretty small cups. I was hoping to be able to sort out the keepers before having to move into a bigger pot but I may have to do a top dress or maybe a worm tea for a few days.
There is one definite outlier in the bunch while the rest are pretty similar with a bit of variation in size. One was much slower to get started and has a much more sativa-like leaf structure. I'm tempted to keep it just to have something different.
The only notable thing with the growing style of this run is that I've been using a kitchen scale while watering to ensure that I'm topping them up evenly and more accurately. Seems to be working great, albeit a bit of a pain.
That's it for now. I'm undecided about the plan for a bunch of clones I currently have in a different space that need to be transplanted. I might add a few into the sides of this tent since I have the room. I'll decide that by the next update.
Thanks for stopping by!
Update - 43 days from seed
I have spread the plants out a bit as well as added a second DIY LED light to increase the footprint as they get a bit bigger. I definitely thought I'd be able to differentiate some of the autos by this time, so I'm getting a bit concerned that I might have screwed something up. I have kept pretty decent notes and am fairly confident the seeds were indeed the F2 cross that I intended to use for this project. I looked back through my old growing notes when I made the original F1 cross and the Tangerine Dream parent started showing their sex around a month in and dropping pollen at 8 weeks. If I did do everything right, what are the chances out of 21 plants that I'd have zero autos??? There should be about 3-6 I would think.
Since I'm trying to hold off on repotting ALL of the plants to save some work, I started supplementing the watering with a little bit of nutrient solution @150ppm pH'd to 6.4 to keep these little ones going in the small cups. There is one that is showing some yellowing on the leaves and is a bit lighter shade of green and I'm not sure what the deal is with it. The straggly runt with the narrow leaves is getting stronger but still a couple nodes behind the rest. Most have about 7-8 nodes at this point.
So the question becomes, do I want to continue with the 18/6 light cycle and keep vegging these plants to see if any start flowering, or do I shift to a 12/12 cycle and finish these off for head stash since I've only got a few grams left of it from the plants I got the seeds from last year?
Thanks for stopping by!
That's tough man, I would select a few to flip to 12/12 and hold out hope you get some autos you can keep breeding and playing with. Seems like you have a high enough plant count that statistically some of them should carry that trait, though I guess if they're going to beg for this long you might as well just grow photos 🤣
@mmw I didn't think about trying to flip a couple separately first but that's a decent idea.
I was also wondering if having them in such small pots is preventing them from wanting to flower. Does that make sense?
I was also wondering if having them in such small pots is preventing them from wanting to flower. Does that make sense?
My experience is the opposite. Smaller pots stress autos and can encourage premature blooming
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@monkeydo I was thinking that as well but I’m really reaching for an explanation recently.
Another thought I had was that possibly my light spectrum might not be wide enough.
Day 50 from Seed - Update
Over the last two days I've decided to make some moves and do something a bit different with this run. I was able to positively identify 1 male auto out of the bunch of 17 and repotted it into a bigger home so it can thrive and hopefully produce some decent pollen.
I then picked 3 or 4 of the best looking siblings in the range of sizes (a taller one, a shorter one, and a couple in between) and repotted them into slightly bigger pots that can keep them from going root bound and maybe I'll see some hairs show up in the next week or so.
Because I couldn't bring myself to chop and compost the rest just yet, I decided to just top them instead so that they could stay in their cups and come up with a better plan for them later.
That brings me to today, and upon looking in my tent at all the extra seedlings and clones that I have, I thought I needed to move a few, so 3 seedlings went into my countertop hydro setup after trimming the roots a fair bit to fit them into the little cups. Totally just an experiment and I'll see what happens there. It has a built in 18/6 light timer, but I might plug it into another timer so it shuts off after 12h and get them flowering in there.
I took the remaining 6 seedlings and moved them into a small makeshift space under the stairs with my blurple light on a 12/12 timer and we'll see what happens there too. I have a small living soil bed that I've been rehydrating over the last week that I think I might transplant them into and see how that goes in a few days.
I did notice after I topped a bunch of them that there was one of the tops that had a few tiny bananas on it so I know there's another auto male in the mix but I didn't get to see which one it was. Should have been paying closer attention.
Not sure if I'm going to keep the rest of the clones in the tent, but they seem happy in there right now with all the light. They are all control experiments on different soil:castings mixes and it's a bit too early to tell much of a difference.
My growing projects definitely get a bit out of control when my wife's away and I have more time to spend on them. I just love seeing all the little experiments I can run in the winter while inside. I do have to have a bit of a plan to wrap up this run since I'm going to be going on a holiday mid March. Perhaps I can have my mom check on everything every couple days when she comes to feed the cat.
I hope to get some seeds still, but I'm not holding my breathe for full-on autos like I had hoped.
Thanks for stopping by!
@gworton keep at it my man, use that male auto pollen and cross it with a sister, hopefully the more you breed it the more you can bring out that auto gene!
Update - 10 weeks from seed
I've been long overdue for an update over here but not a ton has been going on.
I'm down to my single male auto plant, and 2 prospective females that were starting to show some early signs of flowering when the rest were not, but they both have been hesitant to go into full flowing mode despite the 3 weeks of waiting under the 18/6 lights.
When I started this run, I was super excited to make some auto seeds and thought it would be very simple and straightforward. Then I was a bit let down and thought the whole things was a waste of time. Then there was a ray of hope when I saw some little hairs poke out of the couple females, and now I'm a bit let down again and adjusting my expectations.
On a positive note, I have moved 7 of the remaining females to an alternate space under a blurple on 12/12 timing and after a couple weeks of that (and a transplant into a small living soil bed) they are in full flowering mode. Lots of good looking bud sites shooting out hairs. Since these are all extras, I have not held back at topping them to stay contained within the space and hope to get a small harvest of smoke from these.
There is 1 of the 7 which seems a lot more sativa-like than the rest and I have a certain feeling that it's going to be a bit special but it might come at a cost. It was so slow at the beginning and remains a bit scraggley compared to the rest. It is not showing the same degree of flowering as the others and I wonder if it might take 20 weeks to get there. We'll wait and see. It certainly like the living soil though.
In order to ensure I get a few seeds, I did some hand pollinating with a q-tip tonight, just dusting a couple of the buds on the photos, and trying to get the few node hairs on the auto-ish females in the tent.
Remaining in the tent are the set of clones for my worm castings trial which have taken root pretty well and should be transplanted in the coming week or two, but I still don't have a full plan for them. I don't want to make too many plans until I'm confident when the seed project will come to and end.
I was really hoping to grow some @monkeydo beans outdoors this summer and expose those genetics to the sunshine, but knowing I might be away for 5-6 weeks in August has me thinking I might just put some lesser genetics in the garden this year and do a 12/12 from seed with a bunch of different strains in the late fall inside. So much dope to grow and so little time!
Thanks for stopping by! Until next time,
Stay high!
12 Weeks from Seed
I'm starting to narrow things down as I'm getting a bit anxious for this run to come to a close. I've decided to flip the main light for the seed making project to 12/12 to ensure that I get some seeds made before spring. A week into that and one of the females is showing a lot more flowering action than the other so I might pair down further and only focus on the one male and one female for these seeds. The male which is for sure Auto-flowering is dumping lots of pollen and so I'm trying to collect a bit to save for some work down the road.
I've culled a couple of the less vigorous females in the under-the-stairs blurple in living soil secondary setup, so now I'm left with 5+1 plants that will be used for flower. The scraggly sativa outlier in that bunch has gained a bit of size and is starting to flower and I'm going to dust some pollen on one of those flowers to make a few seeds to play around with in the future with that phenotype. I'm hoping these will be done sometime early April.
The bunch of clones I'm going to use for some castings/control experiments are in another spot awaiting repotting to some bigger pots and I think I'm just going to veg. them slowly until my tent is freed up.
The wife gets home tonight after 8 weeks away so the next month will be busy, including a 10 day trip down to florida with the kids. That said, I gotta get myself a plan on how to water these babies while I'm away with a timer and a pump or something. I'll have someone come in to feed the cat every couple days and get them to make sure nothing has gone sideways.
That's it for now. Thanks for stopping by and until next time,
Stay high!
10 weeks into Flower update
Long overdue update and I really haven’t been doing a lot since being on holidays from mid-March. In order to hurry things up, everything is on a 12/12 light cycle and the two plants that got pollinated are just about done. The one in the back right is a week or two ahead of the front right.
The few scraggly plants in the living soil on the left are all females that didn’t auto flower but I hand pollinated a couple buds each for a bit of variety and the rest for smoke. I might make some fresh-frozen hash with them or something once I get the seeds out. The one in the middle is a bit of a mutant with really loose flowers and large but sparse leaves.
they range in smells from a bit fruity/citrusy to an earthy, grandma’s attic type profile.
judging on the recent interviews where breeding autos from photoperiod strains was discussed, it sounds like it will take several generations before I’ve got what I want rather than the 3 or 4 I was hoping for.
I think for the next generation of the fastest flowering plant I’ll try to germinate 40-60 seeds and increase my chances of getting some stronger auto traits come out, but that’ll be next winter.
does anyone have any advice on how to clean the seeds out from the rest of the plant material?
There will probably only be a couple last updates to this grow as I’m just letting the plants fade and finish with a bit of water every couple days.
Thanks for dropping by!
@gworton When im making seeds I usually leave them in the buds when they're curing, then I take the seeds out when I use the buds.
I squeeze the buds flat between my finger and thumb and push the seeds out that way, I find it to be the easiest way. Good luck with the new batch mate, hope you find a new super strain
@gworton if I’m just going to use the bud for edibles, I let it get very dry and crumble the bud to release the seed. If I’m smoking the bud I do like Stootie does, cure the bud and harvest seed as I smoke it.
Random acts of kindness make the world a better place
@monkeydo @Stootie I've followed those two strategies.
This wrap-up post is also long overdue but I should probably close this one down before starting my summer diary. I've cured the smaller miscellaneous plants to a point where I felt comfortable sealing them up. I've sampled the 3 or 4 different phenotypes and they are all a little different but nothing stands out as exceptional. Managed to find between 6-40 seeds each from those for potential future use but they probably wont get germinated any time soon.
The two that are loaded with seeds are still in their pots but have not seen light or water for over a month. Perhaps I'll just have to put a bag around them, give 'em a good shake, and presto:seeds harvested! haha. Wishful thinking maybe but those will be the ones I'll continue the project with in the next generation. To be honest, I have lost a bit of the excitement for developing this auto strain, but I'm sure that will become re-energized after the Fall harvest.
The tent needs to be cleaned out and will probably have some downtime over the next few months while I focus on outdoor.
Thanks to those that have been following along and offering advice/feedback. If anyone is interested in a medical strain with a mix of CBD and THC and fairly low on the munchies index, I''d be more than happy to send off some seeds for further experimentation, of course keeping in mind security and safety. Within Ontario or even Canada broadly would probably be reasonable.
Signing off,
GW Orton
@gworton I've heard that reversing a plant for feminized pollen can lock in traits that your looking for with fewer generations. That might be a way to cut out some of the breeding time in getting you where you want to be? You'd still need to pop a seed that is female and auto flowers, but S generations could be a way to go, or at least worth looking in to.
Also I'll happily test out some beans if you're willing to ship to the US!
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