It was a cold, drizzly night. The kind of night where the street lights don’t cut through the gloom. I was stuck in a place i knew i shouldn’t be but it was to late for contemplating regrets. I stood on the sidewalk and could feel the chill beginning to sneak into the spaces between my bones. As hope was pouring out faster then the spillway at the 3 gorge dam, two dim specks of light appeared through the haze. The drone of an internal combustion engine gew louder as the lights grew steadily brighter and the night seemed to brighten as a Sour Taxi screeched to a stop. I watched the driver lean over and start to roll down the window, it took a while , being an old hand cranker. As i leaned in to begin to barter a ride my olfactory was assaulted by a wave of raw fuel, chemical cleaners & rotting garbage. The taxi drivers eyes where mischievous, like he held a big secret, and his smile was quick. The lines on his face told the story, he’d been places and done things that an average citizen has not.
" You looking for a lift"?
Yes. Yes i am…
Ok, enough of the noire. Welcome to my adventures in exploring a great cross made by @Emeraldgreen that he lets me call Sour Taxi.
WTF is Sour Taxi?
Glad you asked. It’s a thoughtful cross of an Old Sour clone from NY state and Dirty Taxi, from Top Dawg, which is GMO (Chem D x cookies) x Chem D/I-95.
A little info on the Sour D cut that was used as a mother, from the seed maker…
“I was a commercial grower in Brooklyn starting around 1995. I was part of a loose group that would share information, genetics labor with each other.
Initially we were running 4-5 holland strains, which were replaced with blueberry indica. I had no idea of the sativa one at the time.
Sometime around 2000 one of the members was handed sour. That’s all it said. This cut was an eight week flowering time. She’s greasy and fuelly, always green.
The stretch was about 300 percent. We would put 12-15 inch plants in with 3-4 main leads. These would finish at about 4 feet tall. We would lollipop the bottom 1/3 or so. I have found herms on lower branches if I didn’t lollipop them. I never found any seed from these. Believe me I would be ecstatic if I had s1 of this plant!!!
She also loooves cooler temperatures. The max temperature during lights on with co2 was 75-78. The night temperature would be in the low 60s or lower. I have had my temperature get down to mid 30s with no color change or issues. It did slow the flowering process down a bit.
I held this cut until around 2021-2022 when I lost her. I foolishly thought I needed more and “better “ cuts. She got lost in the neglect of trying to hold to many moms.”
I’ve grown out a bunch from this batch circa 2022-3 and found them to be an outstanding bunch of plants.
Raw fuel, chemical cleaners, rotting lemon peel ontop of a pile of poopy diapers with a very narcotic hit.
In fact, i like one pheno enought make S seeds and some fem crosses between pheno types.
They turn out nice but , like many before me, i found that it’s not so easy to make fem seed with Sour D and have all the progeny be sexually dependable. The wk 4 nut sac or 3 was a running theme and even though once removed, folks where able to make a good harvest, it was not something I can get behind.
I found myself missing the potent effects and smells so i asked EG if he had anymore of those seeds and he gratuitous sent me a couple of flips to fulfill my plan. I want to explore the genotype, select some winners (as judged by a committee of tester) and continue the filials with regular seed making. Anything that throws a sex organ it shouldn’t is gonna be binned.
So, with all that beind said, lets get back into this awesome genotype and see what we can find!
I love your write up!!! Film noir was an amazing choice. Really happy that you are enjoying these seeds enough to keep working with them. Settled in for the ride
You should be a mystery novel author @Budderton, that is a great opening post to this amazing project you have going on… i cant wait to see what you find.
Looking beautiful!! I want all my plants to flower in a few nanoseconds, kermits, sidereal day and 77 jiffies!!
Looking forward to observations, thoughts and smoke report/ hash report
Got some down time so here’s my observations and thoughts on this run of Sour Taxi.
On the surface this appears to be a tale of two pheno cluster, the talls and the shorts. In two separate seed starts the shorts were more prevalent then the talls, at about a 3:1 ratio. So it looks like ST want to be predominately short and stocky, which is kinda surprising given the mom is a x3 stretcher and the GMO is a known stretcher as well. I guess the Chem and Cookies had something to say about it.
The talls are very much like the inbred Sowahh/Sour D Bx4 plants in structure, stretch ratio and some have similar smells (to the point where i felt necessarily to put some of the inbred Sour D pollen on them) but there’s a couple the you can smell the onion/garlic/bo mixed with the gas/chemical cleaner and they have a bit more "bulbous " colas. I assume it’s the Chem influence.
The shorts are the majority here and they are for the most part bulbous and foul but closer inspection reveales that some of the shorts have the same bud structure & terp profile as the gassy talls(high bract:leaf) only on a shorter frame, like a mini Deisel.
So it looks more its a tale of 2 flower structures/terp profiles and wherever you get it on a tall, stretchy frame or a short, tight frame.
I kept males from both clusters (tall/short) and had Initially planned to do 2 separate pollinations, tall to tall and short to short. Now I’m having 2nd doubts and wondering if i should continue to mix the 2 types. It’ll probably be hard to get it to be all one thing but a grower would get a wider selection of phenotypes. On the other hand , if i split it into talls and shorts it would be easier to make them each their own thing (height wise) but which would be Sour Taxi?
If you’ve read this far, what are your opinions?
Luckily I don’t have to make any decisions, short term, so I’m gonna hang tight and go off the results of blind testing, while all the females re-veg . The top tier are gonna be cloned, flowered and reevaluated to see if the cuts grow the same as the mother plant. Then I’ll make f2s from the ones that make it . I have lots of experience keeping males around in veg, so that shouldn’t be a problem.
Anyhow, most of them are done but the really Sour D lookers both tall and short) have a week or so to go.
I didnt pay much attention to the structure of my plant but yes the buds had a rounded top to them.
It was by far the stinkiest. A smell like sour milk but sweeter.
Id be happy to grow anything similar to that plant again. Everyone enjoyed it
I like taller plants with spaces between the buds. They usually require less veg time and I find I have less issues than with single cola plants. This being said, it’s more about bud structure, smell and high with this. Which to me translates to hearing the tester feedback.
I’ve never had clones run the same as seed plants. In general if I’m selecting clones I don’t even flower the seed plant. I take clones and flower them and get tester feedback for a decision.
I think keeping the talls seperated from the shorts is the way to go. Makes it easier to know what type of plant you are growing. How long to veg and what type of training is determined by if they are tallies or shorties
