FDM Cinderella Mix, and a few friends too

Howard.Crane · February 4, 2019, 2:40pm

I recently obtained a pack of Fleur du Mal Cinderella Mix seeds, which according to the breeder’s description appears to contain a mix of the following:

ESB x C99
California Orange x C99
(Durban Thai-High Flyer x C99) x (ESB x Durban)

Sounds good, right? That’s an interesting mix of genetics, and I’m excited to see what comes from these beans.

My pack only contained twenty three seeds and there were a few that were pretty green, but if I get even one great plant I’ll be well pleased. I picked eight of the most mature looking seeds for germination. So far one never sprouted a tail, one didn’t make it above soil (probably my fault), and I’m still waiting on one to pop.

Here’s a pic of the group so far. The two in the back left are A11 x (F13 x A11) that I’ve been saving for about six years. It seemed like a good time to pop those too.

Ignore the octopus in the center, lol. When the seedlings are mature enough I will hook that up for automatic watering, but that’s a ways off. They are currently in a 2’ x 2’ cabinet with a 150w fluorescent, and will be transferred to a larger area under DIY LED lighting when they are ready and space is available.

The plan is to make a whole bunch of seeds to allow me to make a bunch of selections from over time. All females will be pollinated, and pollen will be collected from all decent males. I have not yet decided whether to do an open pollination, or whether to treat the A11 and Cinderella Mix plants separately.

I always like pics of the first stages of a plant’s life, so here are a few I took earlier:

I’m not going to commit to doing a full grow log with regular updates like I used to do in the past on other boards, but I will try to post updates whenever something interesting happens or if things are looking good.

Feel free to ask any questions you might have, and I’ll do my best to answer them.

beacher · February 2, 2019, 5:08pm

Awesome, I’ve been thinking of grabbing this or the Durban mix. I can’t wait to see what comes out of these!

Meesh · February 3, 2019, 1:33am

What kind of medium are you using? It looks nice and fluffy. lol

Howard.Crane · February 3, 2019, 2:07am

It’s just Canna coco bricks. They have the best texture of the brands I’ve tried so far, and I like it for the most part.

cannabissequoia · February 3, 2019, 3:06pm

…and then what?

I’d love to smoke any of those…

Thanks for sharing

Howard.Crane · February 3, 2019, 5:34pm

Not really sure just yet, lol.

I’m not quite sure at this point what I’m looking for with these, I just know that I want to make a whole bunch of seeds so that I can increase the chances of finding it, whatever it is

I think my latest batch of coco may have brought some uninvited guests along for the ride.

I opened up the cabinet this morning and saw a couple of gnats flying around. I didn’t get a good look at them, but the way they were flying reminds me of fungus gnats. I haven’t seen a single gnat in the room for almost a year, so my best guess it’s that they hitched a ride in the coco

I put out some sticky traps and treated all of the plants with OG Biowar Root and Foliar packs, so hopefully the BTi in that will take care of them. I hate that applying any treatment for root pests basically requires me to over water the seedlings in order to apply it, but they should do fine.

I just checked on them again, and it looks like the last two are about to break through the surface. Thank goodness. That will give me six of the C99 mix and two of the A11 mix for this group. Not a lot to start with, but it should be enough to give me a rough idea of what there is to be found

Howard.Crane · February 3, 2019, 7:07pm

So far my tentative plan is to make as many seeds as possible from this seed pack, then over time I’ll periodically sprout fifty seeds or so, grow them out just long enough to select the ten that look hardiest and most interesting, and cull the rest. Then I’ll make seeds from those ten. Repeat ad infinitum while looking for any outstanding sport phenos that I can use for breeding projects, and make crosses that seem interesting to me. I always save pollen from interesting males too, so whenever I encounter an awesome female, I’ve always got some pollen of one strain or another already at hand to hit her up with.

Ghandisflipflop · February 3, 2019, 7:13pm

Hello there,
Do male plants smell like females during flowering or do they have a neutral smell?

Cheers

Howard.Crane · February 3, 2019, 7:29pm

I guess it must be strain dependent. Some strains like Sweet Tooth will have a very citrus scent when rubbing the stem when they are young, while many others just smell like a sort of acrid plant smell that’s hard to describe.

Mature males, on the other hand, often do have interesting scents, and while those scents don’t always show up in the offspring, I do tend to prefer males that have intriguing scents. Casey Jones and CBDB are two examples that come to mind right away as even the males smell great, just not as strong.

In males, I like to look for tight fat flower clusters, robust growth, good vigour, and decent lateral branching. I’ve had several makes that also showed a pretty good amount of trichome coverage. Sometimes the leaf shape will spark my interest as well.

Ghandisflipflop · February 3, 2019, 7:30pm

Thank you mate.
I have some regular seeds I want to cross with each other so I can have loads of seeds of this strain.
What would the seeds created be called?
Like F2 or something?

Howard.Crane · February 3, 2019, 7:38pm

F2 if you’re making seeds from parents of the same strain, yes. I’m too lazy to verify the scientific accuracy of this right now, but I believe the F stands for “Filial”, and the number is the generation. So the seeds from those siblings would be the second generation, and the seeds of any siblings of the second generation would be F3, etc.

Ghandisflipflop · February 3, 2019, 7:43pm

The seeds are from the parent plants I think.
sorry this is confusing asf.

Howard.Crane · February 3, 2019, 8:02pm

Somewhere on this site there’s a link to a free PDF file of The Cannabis Breeder’s Bible by Greg Greene, which has more great information on the subject than most people would ever care to know

So yeah, that would be F2 generation. Those are fun to pick through, in my opinion

Howard.Crane · February 4, 2019, 2:34pm

Finally ran out of patience and dug up the last FDM Cinderella Mix seed that hasn’t shown, and discovered that it never germinated, so currently sitting at 6/8 for germination. That’s the worst ratio I’ve seen in years, and kinda bums me out.

Not going to keep throwing beans from that pack at the problem, so I’m going to throw a Gorilla Glue S1 in and hope it does better. I’ll just let that get pollinated along with the rest, should be interesting to see what comes out of that cross

8k_feet · February 5, 2019, 11:19pm

It looks like you’re running some floraflex gear (I also do!), but what kind of watering head is that black one in your pics?

I run coco also so I’d love to hear about your GPH setting on your head, and your feeding schedule in coco with this setup if you don’t mind detailing it!

Howard.Crane · February 6, 2019, 3:15am

You might be able to see it better in this crappy pic:

It’s a Jain/Pepco Octa Bubbler, which is supposed to distribute water to each line at the same flow rate, in this case 10gph. I will put some RainBird emitters on the lines to restrict that even further, probably the 0.5gph ones. It’s not hooked up at the moment, btw. It will probably be a couple of weeks before I need it.

That’s attached to a 400 gph pump, because I use the same pump in the main tent when I’m doing auto watering there, and I just use different emitters.

As to the schedule, that always changes depending on what I’m growing at the time. I like to get three feeds a day in coco once the plants have well established root systems. I like to try to adjust it such that I get three waterings a day when the plants are drinking enough that the pots are still light again by lights on the next morning, so I adjust the times and flow rates to match the plants.

I’m on mobile at the moment, but when I get the chance I’ll look at the logs for my last run and see if I can post what a representative schedule would look like for veg and flower, etc.

8k_feet · February 6, 2019, 8:25pm

Thank you! that makes total sense. I think I’ve experienced problems with overwatering in the past, before there was a really good root presence in the coco.

Howard.Crane · February 9, 2019, 10:38pm

It’s been just over a week since the first of the seeds broke the surface. Three of the FDM Cinderella Mix didn’t make it; two failed to germinate at all, and one failed to thrive. Because of this there are two much younger replacement seedlings in the cab, which are several days behind the others. One is another FDM Cinderella Mix, and the other is a Glue S1.

They are a little on the pale side, and I’d like it if they looked healthier. One potential factor is that I’m using the Megacrop V2 formula for the first time (free sample) and it seems to mix a bit differently than what I’m used to.

Whereas the V1 formula would give me roughly 1.2 EC at 5.8 pH when I used 1 tsp per gallon, the new V2 formula gives me roughly 1.0 EC at the same measurements, and I have not tested the pH at all. Guess I’ll have to change things a little bit.

Another likely factor is that they are a bit overwatered. I had them watered perfectly before I saw signs of fungus gnats and decided to treat them with OG Biowar, and after applying that the coco was fully saturated, which is too much and for too long for such young plants.

In any case they’ll pull out of it just fine, I’m sure. Not stressing in the least, just taking notes for myself essentially.

Here’s what they look like this morning:

When they are old enough and have a substantial root system in place, they will all be transplanted into pots and placed into a tent for flowering out under my DIY LED fixtures:

NOTE: The plants marked “HL” are from seeds by a dude that goes by Highlighter, and were approximately six years old. I decided that this was the right time to pop the last two

Howard.Crane · February 10, 2019, 1:03am

Speaking of those A11 x (F13 x A11) beans…

I know it’s early days and you really can’t tell much at this stage about how the plant will eventually look, but even so this seedling looks to me like it may have more F13 influence than the ones I’ve run previously. I guess we’ll see, but it definitely looks different than what I’m used to. Could be interesting…

Howard.Crane · February 11, 2019, 6:26pm

This is surely not helping

With the main tent currently being shut down for cleaning and upgrades, it’s not contributing any heat or humidity to the room, and the area I live in is currently experiencing heavy snow.

The temp and humidity here are both very low these last few days, so it looks like addressing this is the first order of business today.