What is life without challenges?
I’ve made it my quest to search for something that brings together two opposite things:
“early” and “true sativa”. Can we conquer or will it stay an oxymoron?
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When you find an early sativa, you get a sativa hybrid. Crossed with indica to make it faster.
Purists know that the high is muddled with. It is not that we cannot enjoy those kind of highs, but we know you lose the magic. We prefer the pure bliss.
The true sativa highs we seek are rare and fragile. Only those fortunate enough to have found these superb equatorial highs are in the know.
Those people form a very select club. That’s a pity.
I would argue that weed should feel fun, that this effect is what generations of our ancestors selected for. It is a gift from people of forgotten times. We can feel how they felt. We can feel how they liked to feel. It’s a story, a mini time travel.
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I encourage you to read this thread first so you get a feel on what I mean when I use terms like “kind high” and “happy high”.
This is the roadmap I am going with:
Phase 1: Select keeper pure sativa females
Searching through South American, African and southeast Asian seedstock.
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Phase 2: Make female seeds with them, linebreed
Not using males reduces the chance of working with the wrong kind of high. When the high we are searching for is locked in enough we can backcross the male ‘trait’ back in if we want to.
Selfed seeds and hybrids between them.
Linebreed S1, S2,… until the high expresses when outcrossed.
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Phase 3: Early Sativa Hybrids
I started as an outdoor grower and I plan to finish as an outdoor grower. My lifelong quest is getting this kind of high onto an early finishing plant. And my growing situation here at 52N demands something really light sensitive.
Things we could use for the early part of the genetics:
- The lowryder autoflower gene
- Other autoflower genes
- Light sensitive genes such as in Ultra Early Sativa, BOA Durban, Typhoon, Thaipan, Mighty Mite, …
- A combination of those
Selection based on smoketests and smoketests only is crucial. We want two things: harvest and a spectacular high. All the other traits are noise.
Selection in F2 generation is very important.
Stabilizing the high in seed form is a cool project for when we have finally succeeded, but not the initial goal. Cloning a unique F2 female plant that embodies the early plus the fun & kind counts as winning in my book.
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This is a seed club.
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We will share experiences and seeds.
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This seed club wants to find out which of the genetics that insert the ‘early’ are the most suitable for our goal. Can we find something that brings the light sensitivity that we need while keeping the high clean?
In the past I was able to finish these at 52North:
(UltraEarlySativa x Original Haze) F2
(UltraEarlySativa x Madagascar) F1
(PuntoRojo x UltraEarlySativa) F1
This made me conclude my quest was feasible. The highs were nice, but did not pass the test of “kind”. Besides “nice” is not enough, we want more than nice.
I then realized that I needed to find the perfect high first before I could start injecting her into early genetics. The three phases were born and I shifted most of my focus on phase 1.
The phases are not linear, they are merely a way to divide a grand goal into smaller subgoals.
Today I have found a few really cool highs and I am again excited to see how crosses with them behave.
I, myself, want to keep focusing on phase 1 & 2. So I am looking for people who want to participate in phase 3 by growing out test crosses.
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The UltraEarlySativa (UES) has the tendency to insert a less enjoyable thing into the afterhigh. The question that remains is: can we find females in the F1 or F2 were this is not the case?
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The lowryder genes that I selected to work with are a heavily worked autoC99 (by Phreedom man, Zygote, krk) crossed to Satva’s Punto Rojo male, then worked to F3 by krk. The high has features of the PuntoRojo, but it still carries too much noise.
My hypothesis is that it is possible to breed a sativa autoflower, but only if this is done by people only selecting by smoketests. Assessing the fun and the kind dimension only.
You get the high you select for and unfortunately for me, how I like my highs is not what other people select for.
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The BOA Durban has the high the closest to how I want it. It is clean, it has no afterhigh. It misses the sparkle true sativa’s have though. But more importantly: it is not early enough. It finishes end of the season. And secondly, it is pretty damn prone to leaf septoria (but if lucky a cross to the sativa could fix this right away).
So maybe a BOA x UES or BOA x auto or BOA x Danish is first needed?
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Thaipan seems to bring the flowering times down nicely in @Dogtown crosses. It is said to be quite prone to botrytis and I never smoketested it myself.
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MightyMite is very light sensitive but also leans heavily towards the indica on the high spectrum, so this is not a first choice.
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Dart from Da’Bean co is a cool non-lowryder autoflower that has nice highs. I never tested crosses with it, but it might be worth checking out.
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There are a few Danish that are said to have a more sativa leaning high: Typhoon, Pibeurt, Valhalla. Never smoked any of them, I am checking them out this season. The Danish varieties I have experience with were all very light sensitive and resistant. So fingers crossed for the highs.
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For this season I have three crosses I am curious to see grow in other gardens.
Punto Rojo Gold x Ultra Early Sativa F1 tester
Punto Rojo
Cannabiogen P1> Satva P4/5/6; 10 year of selection for the (Colombian) Gold phenotypes > Clone selection by Apollo.
Ultra Early Sativa
Reeferman > Harold > laldibap > Archangel > Arnold
Got Ultra Early Love(potion) F4 seeds in 2016 and worked it towards the sativa high as much as possible.
Selection on repro run > Clone selection out of favorite F5 female > new clone selection out of S1 seeds. & Also inserted the male gene back into it again.
The F1 is probably reserved for gardens at 45N or lower. This clone is a loooong flowering one, approx 20 weeks.
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Punto Rojo Gold x (autoC99 x Punto Rojo) tester
I have no idea on the light sensitivity on this one. What I can tell is that the autoPR cross was a late October finish here @52N in the F3.
Backcrossing it to the PR will probably result in big, late plants. A garden at 45N or less is a requirement for this one.
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Vietnamese x (autoC99 x Punto Rojo) tester
The Vietnamese is a 14 weeker so this one could be a bit quicker. Don’t have a lot of seeds, but curious to see how she expresses outside.
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Shoot me a PM if interested in growing a few plants out this season. Only people who can link me an outdoor growlog please. I don’t have a lot of seeds so I need to make them count.
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This is only the beginning. Watch this space.
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Much Love
Arnold
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