Thank you.
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Banana terps donāt interest you??? Hell, even the possibility of having some CBD from the mom excites me 
But no really, banana terps have been elusive for me. Itās one of the three profiles that I canāt quite find to my satisfaction.
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Having smoked bodhiās Ethiopian banana cut, I definitely see what the hype is about. That afghani/paki male is great for producing super mom leaning plants, so for me at least the main appeal is having a seed line with the rare and unique Ethiopian banana terps and effect but with a more production-ready structure.
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Did the Ethiopian Banana have heavy banana terps? Iām not very familiar with that one. I am picking up the Banana OG x AfPak for the 
. I do have [Ethiopian Banana (bodhiās cut)] x [Dragon Energy] in the fridge. =)
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What was the smoke like?
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I canāt say Iāve smoked anything bananaesque.
But artificial banana flavour reminds me of nasty childhood antibiotics.
I like to eat bananas though - itās the fake stuff that grosses me out 
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A friend got me addicted to those shitty artificial banana cream puff bars once upon a timeā¦ and ever since Iāve been obsessed. Iām not proud of it. But at least I I kicked those 5% nicotine saltsā¦
Still crave the banana taste though.
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The smell was the most true banana expression Iāve ever encountered. Not even like fake saccharine sweet artificial banana (Iām looking at you, banana OG), but like actual honest to god banana fruit. Like peeling a banana and sticking your nose right between the peel and the flesh. Also some undertones of something that smelled kind of like freshly cut grass. It didnāt exactly translate to the smoke 100% but it still smoked super nice, bright and creamy and sweet in a fresh fruit kind of way.
The effect is what really stuck with me on this one. Definitely different from your average equatorial east african, way more giggly and unfocused but with an emotional and physical lightness to it. Itās something I could give a toke of to a friend who doesnāt smoke weed and theyād probably have a really good time. In larger doses, however, that shit fuckin slaps! Soaring, euphoric psychedelia after a fat ass joint, and a very high ceiling compared to modern varieties, especially for a high cbd landrace.
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File under fun maybe factoid of the day: Having only experienced the Cavendish bananas we all eat today I have no idea whether this is true, but itās my understanding that the artificial banana flavor we all find weird is much closer to the way the old Gros Michel bananas tasted (what used to be the standard banana before a blight affected production, way back when).
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Blew my mind when i first heard this, and that concord grape smells of artificial grape.
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I missed the email and am hoping that he still has some in stock! That Ethiopian Banana is a bucket list cut for me. Next best thing looks like the Bananastans!
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No way. Artificial grape just smells āpurple.ā I kind of like it 
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Take it easy with that description there!! Im starting to sweat just just reading your description. Seriously though thank you so much for sharing. That is exactly what I am looking for with these Ethiopian Banana crosses. I really hope I claimed my packs in time!
Unrelated but I dont want to triple post.
So heres a little bit of information that Iām finding interesting. Iām about 1 week away from harvest on a run with my Black Energy keeper and have been experimenting with irrigation patterns on two zones with the same cut. 9 plants per zone. Ill start off with a graph.
What Iām noticing is that different irrigation patterns significantly change the expression of the plants. Zone 4 was made up of plants with the best root development prior to transplant. These plants drink like nothing else and really hit high media EC and extreme drydowns. Conversely, zone 5 was made up of the weaker plants so they did not drink as much. Drydowns were less extreme and the media EC hovered right around 2.5 or so, same as the input feed.
When I first ran this plant, it seemed to be a swamp feeder. Basically meaning that it liked the media WET and loved being watered to runoff. I wanted to see what would happen if I pushed this plant like an equatorial and I found some interesting results.
So now for some photos of the flower from each zone!
Zone 4:
The excessive drydowns and elevated EC in media (the two are linked, the dryer things get the higher EC gets pushed), caused more stringy and foxtaily growth compared to the wetter zone 5. The number of bud sites and bud mass is greater in zone 4, but the terpenes and resin production just arent very good. These plants have really pronounced 88g13hp traitsā¦ That hashy jalapeno smell is present on almost all plants in zone 4 and I can tell that quality will not be as good as the seed run. It seems like pushing these plants towards drought stress also causes more 88g13hp expression. My cut is very very Black Triangle dominant, so that actually makes sense! Ive seen the same trend with other OG x 88g13hp crosses. The dryer things are allowed to get, the more ghash leaning traits are expressed.
Zone 5:
The less extreme drydowns, watering to runoff, and stable media EC really helped with expressing those OG traits that I selected for during the seed run. There is zero 88g13hp jalapeno hashiness with these. Instead I get a pure kerosine/vanilla/nutty/pine profile. Bud development is more compact with higher density, resin quality is dramatically better. Stickiness is off the charts! Im also getting more OG-type leaf curl that I am used to seeing with the other OG dominant 88g13hp crosses. Overall this zone is dramatically better performing than zone 4 and I intend on refining this irrigation pattern to express these to their full potential.
Conversely, my Genius Thai x Dragon energy and Temple x Dragon Energy keepers express their best terpene profiles with extreme drydowns and high media EC. So basically the exact opposite preferences when compared to the Black Energy keeper cut.
I just hunted a new set of Electric Cowboy plants and selected a really nice (IMO) keeper. I ran it pretty hard with big drydowns and high EC during the hunt, so now Iām really interested to see if I can push more OG traits with less extreme drydowns and watering to runoff more frequently.
Sorry for the wall of text. I just cant get over how cool this is. Its like Iām growing two radically different plants. But they are the exact same cut, and the only difference between zones is the irrigation schedule!
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Iām running the Aroya system, which uses wifi enabled TEROS 12 sensors from Meter Group (Aroyaās parent company). I really like the system but I had to fight them to sell it to me because Iām such a small producer. Their customer service/sales team is not good and I would be just as happy with any other system as long as it was capable of reading ECpw and VWC.
I mainly got them for independent research purposes. Iām essentially trying to form irrigation/environmental operating procedures that allow me to run these more exotic equatorial/haze/heirloom crosses in a small production setting while pushing the plants to their full potential for resin quality/high. The world needs more uplifting/soaring/energetic bud without anxiety or paranoia. Cookies can go away.
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Looks like you have some real empirical evidence to support statements made that imply that unless people use the exact same methods/schedules/environments/inputs/etc., they will see differences in a plantāeven between cuttings from the same mother plant. Just imagine what this means for plants from a pack of seeds, where one person grows in an entirely different environment. One personās bust of a seed pack may be another personās treasure just due to the environment they grow in.
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Yep, environmental factors definitely influence how plants will turn out. It was super cool to see such a stark example of this.
This is a really extreme example of pushing a plant far outside of its comfort zone. Sometimes it leads to great resultsā¦ This time, not so much. Its not something Id want to do during a seed hunt unless its a line that I know does best with drought stress, like A5/Thai Bx crosses or equatorial dominant Dragon Energy plants. Anything OG based is always hunted with ānormalā parameters. Then keepers are selected and experimented with like seen here. If someones plants look like my Zone 4 plants during a hunt, something isnt right!
The Bananastans have been ordered! Iām going to hunt 40 seeds of Bananastan and Raspberry Thunder. Im so excited haha.
3 weeks away from getting to smoke the finished bud from my Genius Thai x DE, Temple x DE, and Black Energy. Cant wait to give a smoke report. Hopefully its as good as I remember!
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Canāt wait to hear your smoke report!!
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@minitiger
following up from a long time ago, here is archiveās rudeboy og grown outdoor in organic soil. This was grown in 2018 so it has cured to a full amber.
It wasnāt one of my favorites. I found it really generic, and it didnāt resemble an OG line at all in appearance or effect. The genetics are Irene OG x faceoff og.
The most positive things I can say about it are that it definitely has the same floral fruit loops smell as the Irene OG, and it produces decent concentrate yields.
The bud is harsh whether you smoke or vaporize it. I had tried it as dispensary bud and it was always harsh. I figured I could grow a much better product with the same clone in my organic garden, but it came out exactly the same as the commercial bud grown with synthetic nutrients. This is the only time I have experienced that. With every other cut I have grown, I have always been able to grow way higher quality bud compared to the commercial product.
This has no resemblance to the classic bay area and southern california OGās that people from california associate with the OG name. The structure is very apically dominant and produces a large primary cola with minimal branching. That is the opposite of a true og which produces small raspberry sized buds all over the plant, with lots of viney horizontal branching.
This looked like a dutch indica, not an Ocean Grown. This would die a horrible bud rot death if you grew it in the foggy coastal conditions that real Ocean Grown strains are adapted for.
The high is kind of a dumb sedative effect with couch lock.
Again, I wouldnāt compare it to a real og. I would describe a classic california OG as having the calmness of an indica with a very heady perspective altering effect, body euphoria, immediate pain relief and appetite stimulation, and some other sensations that I associate with african or thai sativas.
The irene OG comes from atlanta, and it appeared at a time when any really high quality bud or bud from out of state was frequently referred to as ākushā or āogā regardless of the strain. There is really no evidence that it has any shared lineage with the classic OG lines. At best it may be a distant relative by way of the emerald triangle green bud that was bought to florida and became known as triangle kush.
So in fairness, this may be a decent representation of the irene og.
but itās still not as high quality as actual irene, so I donāt get the point of this rudeboy as a clone only. the irene was also a clone only and I liked that bud a lot better.
Archive said this smelled like gasoline and kush, and was like the classic OGās of the early 2000ās. That was just sales pitch, and it set me up for disappointment.
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Yeah, as soon as I started reading what you wrote, I immediately thought,āSounds like ten years ago, when everything was āBlahblahblah OGā.ā
I was JUST digging through one of my Uplift jars and was noticing how small all the buds are. I mean, I noticed that a long time ago, but yeah, literally five minutes ago I was looking at it and thinking how those plants just did not grow anything but little tiny buds. Which is fine. Smokes great. Seems like that one was pretty OG dominant. I agree about the high type, too. OGās have always been an almost soaring type of high for me, never understood when people said that Whatever OG knocked them out.
Anyway, thanks for remembering haha. Iād totally forgotten about that. I guess I wonāt be growing any of that Rudeboi cross any time soon. At least it was just a freebie.
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This year I am growing archiveās blueberry, and their Overflow OG (colorado flo x faceoff og).
People seem to really like their blueberry locally so I am hopeful about that. It definitely has the true blueberry leaf crinkle.
Archive has the legal clone market here basically monopolized, so I am really hoping to find something I like from them. Iām hoping Doc Dās use of the overflo is a good endorsement.
These definitely have traits desirable for commercial production.
I should mention, archive is consistently weird about their genetics and practices. What I hear from people in the industry who work with them, and even from their own budtenders, is completely contradictory to archiveās āofficialā story from their advertising, and social media.
For example, archive sells ārudeboi #7ā and ādosidos #33ā. They say they have one selected phenotype, and when you buy a clone from them, you are getting a cutting of a single selected phenotype that they hold. They say that their blueberry and sour diesel are old clone only lines that they hold.
According to their own budtenders and the manager of a dispensary that stocks their clones, all of their cuts are from seed lines. Archive frequently ārefreshā the mothers for plant health reasons and to comply with various legal aspects and testing requirements of our production system.
It sounds like they start a large batch of seeds and select the most similar female, probably through lab testing. I know this is how they make their selections for new lines. They grow out a large batch of females from seed and select the pheno with the highest thc percentage.
So there might not be a specific ārudeboy 7ā or ādosidos 33,ā as they rotate their mother stocks it could be a different phenotype which has probably been selected for a similar cannabinoid profile and terpene content.
In my opinion this probably a good thing, or at least it would be if they were straightforward about it.
They operate in the very tightly regulated legal market, and yet they are still selling seeds of their genetics internationally which is illegal here. None of the other legal production businesses in this state can do that. Archive clearly have some kind of exception or look-the-other-way policy from the organization that regulates and inspects licensed producers. I donāt know why they are the only people in the local legal market who are allowed to continue a grey market business while also operating legally licensed grow, sales, processing, and nursery facilities.
Itās possible that this is the reason for their inconsistent stories, and they literally canāt talk about their real methods and business because of their legalized commercial presence.
They could also have legitimate traditional reasons for being weird about their blueberry and sour diesel. Those were black market lines so I can respect it if they are simply protecting their sources. DJ Short doesnāt want anyone working with his blueberry, so thatās potentially a good reason not to acknowledge that source.
But I think a lot of it comes down to advertising, and maintaining proprietary control of their most valuable products.
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