This is my thread that was completed last year. Im transferring it over, to archive the info. Overgrow is quickly becoming my favorite forum and I aim to make meaningful contributions to the community.
For 10 years ive been working on this one strain. I originally started this project because both parent plants performed exceptionally well outdoors, in the PNW. My goal is to breed a quick finishing strain that is well adapted to the PNW climate.
The mtf was a clone that I aquired from a dispensary in Bellingham. It was a cut that came from Alaska, no other info was available. The SFV OG were seeds from a breeder in SFV, CA. I use to live in the LBC.
I tested all of the f1 seeds in 2014, outdoors and saw a decent amount of variation. I selected the best traits and made F2 seeds that I tested indoors over the course of 4 years. I selected two vigorous plants and made F3 seeds outdoors. I am testing the remaining F3 seeds and will be making F4 seeds.
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I got a 40/60 female to male ratio. Its not great, but it will do for now. One of the females is a strain called Brandywine. I acquired the seeds from a breeder in Bellingham, WA.
I keep all the plants in 1 gallon pots until I can sex them. It saves a lot of time and resources. I top all of the ladies when I transplant them into the beds, and strip all the growth under the 3rd node. I will take clones from the 4th and 5th node, in about 2 weeks.
I was planning on force flowering everything but I think I will have to let them grow natural. The Valley Ice can finish properly in a greenhouse without any major mold issues. It is resilient and well adapted to this PNW climate. Unfortunately the ladies are a little behind schedule because the weather hasn’t been great this year. Live and learn. Next year I am going to have much larger plants because I will start everything earlier and under lights. I might also expand the bed and double it in size.
Regarding the pollinators
I have selected three males with three distinct traits. One male has all the traits ive been working on stabilizing, such as beautiful sharp leaf structure, compact, and super resinous stalk. The second male has more common hybrid traits that will be a good match for the Brandywine. The third male has uncanny haze like traits. Long internodes, thin sharp leaves, etc. (I will post some pictures of the males later.) For cross pollination, I will be using the sandwich bag method. Place pollen in the bag, wrap it around one the lower larf flowers, shake it, and leave it on the plant for 2 days. The humidity will destroy all the extra pollen in the bag and it will no longer be viable. I will be crossing all three of the selected males with every lady. I should end up with a few hundred seeds for next years project.
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These ladies are starting to fill up nicely. I took a few cuttings yesterday, and will be vegging the cuttings for a few months. The plan is to keep a Valley Ice mother with the best flowers traits. I will take clones from the mother and make several hundreds of seeds, pollinating with the F1 (Brandywine x Valley Ice) males. I will be selecting males that are exhibiting more of the Valley Ice traits. This line will be separated from the original Valley Ice lineage for a few generations. Then crossed back into the original Valley Ice line.
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Here are some updated pics of the ladies. 8 in total. I put up the scrog net 2 weeks ago. Ive been topping and bending them whenever possible. I think they are filling up nicely. I plan to put up a second net once they start flowering in early September.
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5 days of growth since last pic. The girls are filling up! Ive practically ran out of net space. Its time to let them grow upwards. I will place the second net in 2-3 weeks.
I caught 2 caterpillars today. Those chubby little bastards…
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As promised, here are pictures of the three males. All three have very different and distinct traits. Ive decided to take clones of the males and set up a small indoor area for quicker breeding. As much as I love growing outdoors, it really slows down the whole process. I am personally interested in testing my strains outdoors because it gives me a better understanding of their genetic limitations.
Male #1 a sativa dominant phenotype. Flowering later than the other two males. The structure of this plant is very haze like. Long internodes and not very good at branching. Excessive topping would be required to increase yield with this one.
Male
#2 has more balanced hybrid traits. Nonetheless it stood out among the other common Joe’s because of its glistening resinous stalk and terpene profile.
Male
#3 is a stud. It checked off all the boxes. Flowering early, beautiful cluster of flowers, and an excellent compact plant structure. I would say that this one inherited most of the MTF traits. The terpenes lean heavy towards fruity.
The females are not as mature as the males, because they are in different environments. The males are at the top of the hill where they get direct sunlight from sunrise to sunset. The females are in the greenhouse and they lose a few hours of sunlight because of the surrounding Douglas Fir trees. Having said all this, I will have to store the pollen for a few weeks. I want seeds from the girls in the greenhouse because the offspring’s chances of adapting to the PNW climate will increase.
In theory, breeding in a tough environment should produce tough offspring. Breeding indoors in a controlled climate tends to produces sensitive plants, in my opinion.
Nature is all about survival of the fittest.
Cheers
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Male #3 is starting to drop lots of pollen every day. I have more than enough of this yellow dust to produce a decent amount of seeds.
Male
#1 Has a beautiful purple pheno. It is a little behind in flower. I was able to collected some pollen from it today. Im actually very eager to breed with this male because I love smoking sativas. Im not big into the couch lock heavy indicas.
Ps. I scraped male
#2. It failed to keep me interested.
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This Brandywine strain is ahead in flower. It is already showing trichomes.
Valley Ice is starting to show trichomes. Right now the flower smells fruity with hints of banana. The fruity notes is the main terp profile ive been selectively breeding.
The leaf structure is also something ive been selectively breeding. I really like the serrated pattern and the thinner leaf blades.
With my recent discovery of the purple pheno, I plan to create a separate sativa dominant hybrid. I know for sure that I want to cross it with some silver haze. I would like to breed a purple version of Silver Haze that has a more fruity terp profile.
Slowly but surely they always end up bigger than anticipated… Lol. I really wanted them to cap out at around 6ft this year. Three of the plants have already surpassed that height limitation.
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Today I finished pollinating all the ladies. I used both males to produce F4 and F1 seeds.
I took clones of everything a while back, and decided to keep 2 mothers and 2 fathers.
Mother #1 posseses all the traits ive been selectively breeding. This plant also displayed incredible vigor and flowered early. Trichome production is excellent.
Mother #2 was selected because it displays a beautiful purple pheno. Its the first plant ive seen with this trait, out the dozens of seeds ive tested. This plant also possesses all the other traits mentioned above.
The 2 mothers are currently under simple 100w LED lights.
The males are currently in a seedling dome under 24 hours of light. It will take some time before they reverse back into vegetative state. Coincidentally, this will be the first time I keep Fathers around.
I believe that I am finally at the stage where it makes sense to backcross and cube this strain. The plan is to select a few plants from the F1 Brandywine x Valley ice. I intentionally selected Brandywine because it shouldn’t be very compatible. As a result, I should be able to easily identify the plants that are Valley Ice dominant and create F2 seeds that will be used for crossing into the F4 Valley Ice. Here is a picture of my updated plan for this strain.
As you can imagine, there will be dozens of seedlings tested from every single batch of seeds.
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Everything is looking good in the greenhouse. Im quite surprised by how smooth everything is going.
There are two plants that are really behind in flower. I decided not to pollinate those two. I will eventually have to breed out that late flowering gene. This is a clear example of why I like testing my seeds outdoors. Im not sure if I would be able to notice something like this if I was growing them indoors.
On a side note, im pretty sure I got everything sorted out for my indoor set up. I was tempted to turn the spare bedroom into a full blown grow room, but instead decided to invest in a tent.
My goal is to keep improving and stabilizing this strain. Growing out smaller plants in large volumes seems like the best tactic.
My general plan is a SOG perpetual cycle. A total of 12 plants always in the flower tent. 6 plants will be shuffled in and out every month or so. The seedlings will have approximately 4 weeks of veg before being shuffled into the flower tent.
Since all of the Valley Ice seeds are regs, I will have to double the number of plants being shuffled in. They will be kept in quart pots until they are sexed. The girls will then be transplanted into 1gl pots. The males will be cast out into the wild so that it toughens them up. 
I might use some of the pollen from the males that survive being outdoors in the winter… Lol
I will go over more of the details some other time.
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Two of the valley ice plants are displaying a purple pheno. Making that a total of 3 out of 7. Im pretty surprised that this beautiful purple pheno has appeared out of nowhere.
One of those purple plants has a beautiful haze like structure. The flowers are developing beautifully.
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Both males are successfully reversing into vegetative state.
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The two plants that I selected to keep as mothers as performing better than the rest.
There are two plants that appear SFV OG dominant. Those two plants incidentally flowered the latest. I will be really focused on breeding out this late flowering trait.
** I am going to upload flower pictures once a week, of the 2 females that I will continue to breed with.
Female #1. Deep purple flowers and haze like in structure. Trichome production is decent, but it definitely needs some work in that regard. I will improve the trichome production of this purple variant.
Female
#2. Possessing all the traits ive been working on stabilizing. I would say its definitely sativa dominant. Trichome production is excellent. The trail of trichomes extend to some of really large fan leaves. Also, im surprised by the faint purple hue on the calyxes. Im not particularly attached to the color, but it might be a trait that I can stabilize with the purple male.
We had some warm sunny days and the girls are loving it. Im not ashamed to admit that ive been procrastinating on putting up the second net. LOL
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Its looking good so far. I did have to put up the second net today. One of the plants tipped and fell overnight. I was able to lift her up without damaging her. Its a heavy yielder, for sure.
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Below are pics and some info about the phenotypes.
Officially mother #2.
Purple Sativa Dominant pheno. Dark purple, fruity aroma. Doesn’t resemble parents very much. I see some similarity in the flower structure to MTF but its not quite the same.
MTF dominant pheno. Fruity with hint of sour d. Structure of plant reminds me of Durban Poison.
SFV OG dominant pheno. Fruity bubblegum. Flowered late.
Officially mother
#1. A unique fusion of genetics. Traits of both parents are present but it does not lean towards MTF or SFV. This plant has all the phenos ive been working on stabilizing. The purple/pink is new. Its my first time seeing it and I like it. My camera did its best to capture the colors.
All of the plants are still going strong and happy. No pest problems, no mold, nothing. Just strong healthy plants.
Below is pics of Brandywine. This plant smells incredibly sweet. It had a minor spider mite issue earlier on, but I took care of it. Hopefully the pest resistance is improved in the F1. What I especially like about this plant is that it flowered really early. Unfortunately flower development has slowed down compared to the other plants. It might be a little sensitive to colder temps. Hopefully she gets a second wind and starts stacking again.
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I spent a decent amount of time in the greenhouse today. Cleaning undergrowth that has started to die off, which is perfectly natural at this stage. I also top dressed some more bone meal and 4-4-4 pellets.
Ive been paying close attention to the plants that I want to keep breeding. Ive noticed something really interesting. There are two Valley ice plants that look very alike, except for the flower structure which is starting to become easier to distinguish. Ive noticed that one of those plants inherited the SFV OG flower structure. Its quite beautiful. Below are pictures of both the Valley Ice hybrid and the SFV OG. Notice the similarities in the short pistils and density.
Pic of Valley Ice #1
SFV OG
Now here is a picture of the plant I have decided to mother. It has a flower structure that is a mix of both parents. It doesn’t look too similar to either parent, but both traits of the parents are clearly visible. The pistils are long just like the MTF mother. The density is fluffy, however, it is denser than the MTF mother. So density is in-between both SFV OG and MTF. The purple is the only thing that is kind of an anomaly at this point.
Pic of Valley ice
#2
MTF
SFV OG
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Doing some research regarding breeding plants indoors vs outdoors. There is a lof of useful information on the topic. Here is a quick overview of the points that interests me.
“Plants bred indoors for multiple generations (F3 or further) may exhibit reduced fitness in challenging environments due to lack of selection pressure. Without exposure to pests, diseases, and environmental stresses, natural selection doesn’t favor individuals with robust defense mechanisms.”
There is also research indicating that seeds developed outdoors after indoor pollination may exhibit enhanced adaptability. Seeds matured outdoors may produce offspring that is better at adapting to environmental stressors.
This is why my instincts keep pushing me to test everything in diverse environments. Certain flaws or vulnerabilities remain hidden if a strain is bred and grown only indoors. The Brandywine is a great example of this. It clearly has poor resistance to powder mildew because it was probably never exposed to it during the selection process. To know if a plant has a strong resistance to pests, etc. all of the plants that I am selecting from should be exposed to these stressors in order to find the plants that have the best resistance.
Selecting plants to breed only for looks, aroma, and potency has major flaws in this respect.
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Oct 14, 2024
Everything is looking good. Some of the flowers are starting to ripen.
Purple sativa
MTF
The SFV OG is finally starting to beef up. It will be the biggest yielder, for sure.
The Brandywine is showing some purple leaves. Colder temps at night are starting to stress her.
Valley Ice
Not much else to mention. Ive been lightly spraying baking soda water twice a week as a mildew preventative. Then I shake the plants to get all the extra water off them. I was reading that stressing your plants can increase terpenes and THC. Im pretty sure shaking them aggressively is a stressor.
Dank
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Oct 20, 2024
Chopped down one of the plants today. This plant is the only one that ive found with bud rot, due to the flat top mutation. I believe it is a form of fasciation or crested growth. She could have gone another week, but the spike in humidity is starting to worry me.
The plant is incredibly frosted. I will continue breeding with her and turn her into an indoor strain. She has a lot of potential.
Rough trim for drying. Manicure afterwards.
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Oct 21, 2024
Chopped Brandywine today. She had maybe 10 grams bud rot, dry weight.
Not too shabby. Im really on top of things this year.
Im chopping the MTF next. The nugs on this plant are rock hard. Super dense structure! Its unusual because most of the MTF that ive grown are a little more fluffy, similar to the purple sativa.
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