Have a great vacation.
Be very interesting to see what 14 (or more) weeks brings 
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Ebullience!
I’m pretty sure that’s the right word to describe the feeling when I arrived home after a couple weeks of RV travel to find that every single one of my ad hoc cannabis experiments had not only survived, but thrived in the hands-off autopilot environment.
I’ll admit to pushing the speed limits on our final 300 mile sprint back to Cape Cod. I’m a careful and conscientious driver, but my mind was already reaching out to the basement CannaLab as we crossed from Pennsylvania, spent a hot second in New Jersey before entering New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and, finally, Massachusetts.
I made a deal with my Saintly Spouse that I’d get us home safely, but once there I was “Off Duty.” She’s a good sport and once I’d parked our Little House I dashed downstairs hoping for the best.
And that’s what I found. All the sketchy, fingers-crossed, Hail Mary setups I’d left worked as intended and I had a pile of healthy Frankenstein’s Daughters awaiting my return.
We’re still putting things to rights here, but I’ll post some individual updates in the next day or so. In the meantime, I invite you to review the posts above to remember how I left things and imagine what they look like now.
Best to all,
-Grouchy
PS, Here’s a teaser…
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Who would have thought it… Grouchy, the ‘poster boy’ for LIFTA… 
I figured this out a while back, throw one of those indoor tilt/turn cameras into your tent.
They are “cheap as chips” as the Brits like to say… and can be a great ‘stress reliever’ as you can tune into your favorite local cannabis channel and check on the condition of your ‘wee darlings’ remotely…
We need to get together and compare ‘disreputable green hats’ I think mine might edge yours out… 
maybe…
Cheers
G
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As much as I love that idea, I would never do it. I mean, what if you are in the middle of your holiday and things turn south? Do you end your holiday and rush home or suffer through watching them? Oh, that sounds like torture. I can’t check them while I am at work either because they are sleeping, lol. I do love that we are able to do such things these days though, technology has some great benefits. 
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Before & After: IBL Bonsai Mother
One of my most immediate goals for Frankenstein’s Daughters was to have two bonsai mother plants representing the 6th generation backcrossing (BX6) and the 1st inbreeding seeds (IBL).
The BX mother plant was pretty well established but on the IBL side, all I had was a single scrawny IBL cut that had just shown a few tentative roots. Even that was a problem because I was scavenging it from the “Threesome” seed run, so a rough transplant was necessary.
And I was leaving for a few weeks!
Here’s where I left it: (IBL left, BX6 right)
And here is the happy result after a couple weeks in the Mom Locker suspended animation.
Happy Dance!
These two plants will provide a whole bunch of cuts to experiment with. I want to know and grow both the BX6 and the IBL lines indoors and outdoors, under different conditions for food, light etc.
PS, Big Hat Tip to my old pal @gpaw for his pioneering work in the field of putting pot plants into suspended animation!!! Low Lumens, starvation nutes and normal watering…
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Perfecto? Or past the Use By date?
I abandoned a small but beautiful FD IBL behind as our Little House headed out, understanding that this was pushing the harvest date later than late! Most people decide to harvest Frankenstein’s Daughter week 8 to 10 of flower, my orphaned IBL Bud would be a little over 14 weeks of solid 12/12 LED flowering. WayWay Late!
For a variety of reasons, that was the best option available and I consoled myself that I would certainly learn something about my plant, and late harvesting in general. That was some consolation, and I also chopped an oz of the ripest buds before leaving for a quick dry and a curated cure under my keen attention. Most of those buds were showing the first blush of amber trichomes, but there were a handful that were crystal clear also.
So, when all is done, I should have a representative sample of early, mid and late harvest times from the same FD IBL plant! That should be fun. I make tincture out of everything so some side-by-side comparisons should be possible.
Here how she looked before I left:
Here’s the 14 week bud. Looks kinda wrecked, some trichs leaked or maybe just broken. Intact trichs have some dark amber, Jack Daniel’s brown. It’s also interesting that this IBL plant is the only version of Frankenstein that actually stopped throwing white pistils! Frankie aficionados take note!
That plant is hanging upside down in a 60F, 70% RH basement drying very slowly. I can’t justify a Cannatrol machine, but I enjoy the process of properly drying and curing good weed. I’m taking the moisture level down to bud-snap, about 9%, before jarring the buds. After a couple of days drying she’s still got a long ways to go.
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Wow amazing plants and work! You have taken this project and just ran with it. Been great to follow along. Beautiful plants and buds. Your attention to detail is phenomenal. One day I might be as skilled and knowledgeable grower as you.
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Frisky Follies in the TwoSome
AND….The biggest surprise of all, the complete stunner, the one that made me gawk, was discovering the orgiastic nuptials transpiring in the Grouchy Grow Room.
It might be fun to resort to earthy and salacious metaphor in describing the intense sex act I burst onto when I stumbled onto Cannabis Coitus in the TwoSome octo. But I’ll try to stick with the facts, like an honest journo should. Lol
The two BX6 rooted-cut left overs from the former ThreeSome octopot arranged a hookup date in my absence, and were having a literal “Fans Only” lovefest in the Honeymoon Suite. The STS-reversed male plant had developed some big big balls while I was gone, and the blushing bride had sprouted a promising head of pistil hairs. Match made in heaven!
When we departed, my Grow Room “HomeAlone” provisioning included a sensuous environment, VPD lock @1.4, an enervating and potent spew of spectrum-appropriate photons, a tasty late-harvest nutrient feast and open bar engorging their flowering circulatory systems with tailored baby making chems , delivered by room service on demand to our coital couple. Inevitably, dioecious CannaPorn ensued!
Boudoir photography
Getting It On, CannaStyle:
The voluptuous Lady on the right is our fecund female, short and plump with a come hither sexual display. Her flaxen hair is wafting in the faintest of electric fan breezes. Beckoning. Her nether pistils are twitching, her bracts are swelling, hidden ovules are pulsing with anticipation. She has unconsciously summoned powerful auxins causing her to lean gently towards her lover, yearning for his zygotes.
And HIM!!!
I’m humbled by the grandiose display of this healthy male efflorescence! This is one studly Dood, impressively endowed and apparently eager to spread his genetic dust cloud around the neighborhood.
The sexual energy is palpable and I feel a little pervy butting in every morning when I greedily collect some of his fresh and abundant pollen for future use.
Ahem… So this outcome was the star of the the show when I returned and I was all smiles. Barring unforseen events this should result in a nice pile of FD IBL seeds in a month or so.
-Grouchy 
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Footnote
There’s one more item to share before we put this chapter to rest: The Tale of the Abandoned Child. This is the story of a brave little lady pot plant that refused to succumb to the tawdry demise that fate had in store for her.
There was one problem I just didn’t have a solution for when we drove away on our journey. In the week prior I started to root a BX clone, don’t even remember why. I spied a promising cut when I pruned the BX mother plant and tossed it into the humidity dome wrapped in a rapid rooter as an afterthought.
There’s a routine I follow for cloning, just a set of conditions and a schedule for misting and drying to motivate the roots and draw them downward to water. Standard stuff. And I had a full week of tender attentions invested in this cut as our departure approached. Fruitless effort as it turned out, no promising signs of roots, mortality likely, many other tasks demanding my attention…
Literally on my way out the door, I hosed the poor girl down with SuperThrive in the mister, doused the rooter cube with RhizoTonic, and added a centimeter of water to the bottom of the rooting tray. I sprayed the dome above the tray one last time, set the vents 1/8 open and set the lighting timer to 18/6 under weak ass fluorescence.
Adios little one, que se vaya bien…
And when I returned and pealed off the humidity dome, my first impression was DOOM. The dome was dry and hot from summer sneaking through the blinds, the extra water I left in the tray was long gone, the rooter cube was completely dry at the top, green mold covered the surface, and the patient looked like she was on her last legs.
Like I said, DOOM. But to my surprise, that was flat out wrong.
I said a sad goodbye and yanked the Rooter Cube from the tray heading to the trashcan, only to find live, healthy roots! Whole bunches of them, popping out the sides of the rooter in all directions. Aggressively seeking moisture. And food, and sunlight. Life had found a way!
I don’t have a picture of that moment, alas. I was flummoxed for a bit, then I sprung into immediate Code Blue-STAT mode and transferred the survivor to ICU, SpeedCup edition.
I don’t have any pics of that resuscitation stage either, which is a shame because it involved very slow adjustments in the “hardening” process. Daily increases in the total DLI and PPFD up to 750 @ 18/6. No organic salts, for food. Softer stuff, worm castings, a shot of 50% Texas Tomato Food rather than Jacks. SuperThrive and Rhizo. And in the last few days our heroine finally saw some Sun.
The sun on Cape Cod this time of year is weirdly intense. It burns through our thin morning fogs, flays the skin and can cook a tender young plant in a couple hours at mid day. So our patient is taking it in small doses, behind a lattice on my deck. We call this dappled shade and plants seem to love it.
There was some leaf damage and general malaise, but now she is filling her cup with roots and new growth is appearing. Best of all, she weathered the hardening off step and is nearly ready to go into the outdoor Frankie “Test Bed.”
Here’s the best picture I have of Frankenstein’s Daughter BX6 p1 clone dubbed “AudreyTwo”:
Happy Ending
So, of all the pleasant surprises, this one little plant was a veritable profile in plantish courage! In the course of this project I’ve probably grown a hundred plants, but only felt any real attachment to to a very few. Oddly enough, this is one of them!
-Grouchy
PS, her roommate plant below, is a Spanish strain of purple Tomato that delivers fruit the size of a softball. In Barcelona, they cut off a slice then scrape the fresh tomato flesh onto bread as a vegetal jelly. Muy Sabroso!
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very bice. I enjoy the dedication on doing this. such an amazing journey my friend!!
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Hi folks…sorry for the lack of activity, life has taken precedence. so a coupe of month ago I cut my Frankie’s Daughter plant and stuck it in the canatrol to cure…then things happen.
After a 9 week cure this is what I got.
241gr of tops and an unknown ammount in ziplock of lowers. images below are the tops that were in in the canatrol.
not bad.
I tried it and it is a clear headed, energetic smoke. I am very happy with it.
Thank you @GrouchyOldMan for the opportunity to grow it. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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Well, it has been awhile so let’s do an update.
Through luck along with a little help from pluck, I have an interesting lineup and it’s Game On here working up the next chapter in Frankenstein’s Daughter biography.
I’m maxed out busy at the moment, so I’ll deliver this in pieces rather than wait till things settle down around here.
Milestone
First up, the “Twosome” octopot seed run was successful and the first mature Frankenstein’s Daughter IBL seeds are being collected.
After a week of rapid drying I did a germination test. Overnight soak in a shot glass, day in a wet paper towel and we have a newborn FD IBL seedling.
There’s sumthin special about the first seed from a new batch that pops. This Minor Miracle might be my favorite part of growing!
Outdoor Grows
The outdoor environment in New England is notoriously tough due to pests, mold and fungus in our foggy Fall weather. As harvest time approaches every enemy attacks your ripening buds. Some earlier tests show promising resistance to these threats so it’s time to see if that wholesome trait has survived into the sixth generation of Frankenstein’s Daughters.
Remember the “Abandoned Child,” that poor little scraggly cut that I ignored for three weeks in the germination dome? She survived and is now thriving as a test subject for outdoor growing. No special prep here, I just tossed a handful of dehydrated manure in the hole, then transplanted this plant from a speed cup and let er buck! Two weeks later she seems happy enough basking in the summer sunshine. The light variegation in the leaves is fairly common in these 6th generation plants.
That hearty girl above is a BX6 cut, I also have a FD IBL cut going up on the deck.
And, to round out the outdoor crew I just dropped one of the new IBL seedlings into a large pot outdoors.
These may all face heartbreak disaster when the October DeathFog rolls in but the experiment will be interesting.
That’s it for now, more in a day or so…
-Grouchy
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And now, for something completely different…
My ultimate goal from the very beginning of the Frankenstein’s Daughter project was to create an attractive feminized breed mare to cross with some notable strains for F1 seeds. That time has come and my first attempt is a pollination of my second most favorite, Gorilla Grove, with Frankenstein’s Daughter IBL.
Gorilla Grove, was created a few years back by @Floyd, who pollinated an unusual tall phenotype of the Orange Grove strain (@JustSumTomatoes) with freshly made pollen S1 from @Tonygreen’s brilliant Gorilla Glue RIL (GG4 RIL).
I was lucky enough to receive a supply of those seeds and from the very first taste I became a huge fan. We named the F1 strain Gorilla Grove and I grew it repeatedly with great results. Tony’s RIL is the real deal, large robust plants bursting with greasy buds and a chemovar like no other. The high is strong, reliable and smooth. As a tasty bonus it is a legit aphrodisiac! No kidding.
Alas and alack, Floyd’s seed run created the only supply of seeds. I believe @Floyd generously distributed his supply and, despite multiple attempts I’ve been unable to find another tall pheno of Orange Grove to recreate the magic. So the Gorilla Grove seeds in my freezer may be the last ones anywhere.
So, I’m taking this opportunity to also do an S1 seed increase on the Gorilla Grove to ensure the survival of the strain for the future. And, at the same time I’ve decided on Gorilla Grove as the female parent plant for my first F1 cross with Frankenstein’s Daughter IBL!
Two Overgrow original strains combined to make an Overgrow Original!
Here’s the lineup for this project, I’ll explain the details of the plan later. It’s gonna be complicated…
Early Sex Determination
To get the ball rolling, I subjected these young plants to three days of 12/12 flowering light cycles to see if I could get them to show their sex early. I appears to have worked. Five days after switching back to 18/6 veg lights this Gorilla Grove is shouting “FEMALE!”
That’s all Folks!
-Grouchy
Addendum:
With many thanks to @JustSumTomatoes, @Floyd & @Tonygreen
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Beautiful work! Watching with anticipation as always l.
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So, What’s the Plan Stan?
I have a process that I use to plan each phase of this project. It’s probably overkill, and often times things don’t work out as expected, but it provides me with a goal, a starting point, and a path between them. Ponderous, Pragmatic, and slightly Preposterous! But effective.
I use a simple spreadsheet to lay it out and it looks like this:
| Summer 2025: IBL & BX6 Outdoor Testers, Gorilla Grove x FD IBL F1 seed & bud runs | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elapsed Weeks: | Total | Flower | ||
| Strain | ||||
| Sown | ||||
| Broke Ground | 7/10/2025 | Three GG seeds (@Floyd) & three FD IBL seeds sprouted and headed for cups | ||
| Transplant 1 | 7/12/25 | 0.3 | Gorilla Grove & FD IBL seeds to cups | |
| Transplant 2 | 7/17/25 | 1.0 | Into octo & promote roots to water development. | |
| Pre-Flower Prune | 8/7/25 | 3.6 | Schwazzy prune pre flower, clone some cuts? | |
| Switch 12/12 Lights | 8/8/25 | 4.0 | 12/12 daylight under 900 ppfd LED. Sex watch start | |
| STS Males | 8/14/25 | 5.0 | 1.0 | STS GG perhaps, If necessary for GG pollen if no Male seedling |
| Male Pollen Ready | 9/11/25 | 9.0 | 5.0 | FD pollen collected 07/07/25 dried and Frozen. For Gorilla Grove pollen via STS?, |
| Pollination 1 | 9/11/25 | 9.0 | 5.0 | Dusting selective Branches manually, physical isolation for the nuptials. |
| Pollination 2 | 9/14/25 | 9.4 | 5.4 | Total segregation between pollen dumps. Floors apart, tent and bedroom. Very tricky sequential pollen collection and pollination routine needed. |
| Seed Harvest | 10/16/25 | 13.0 | 10.0 | Five weeks min to ripen seeds after pollenations. Should be bracts popping open bout now. |
| Seed Harvest | 10/26/25 | 15.4 | 11.4 | |
| Bud Harvest | 10/9/25 | 13.0 | 9.0 | Nine weeks flower is midrange for FD & GG. Just a guess, visual call when the time comes. |
| Germination Test | 10/26/25 | 15.4 | 11.4 | |
| Bud Harvest Sampling | 10/30/25 | 16.0 | 12.0 |
Ahem, OCD… For sure, but it works for me, and you can see that this one is going to be a complicated challenge to pull off.
We are well into The Plan, already off schedule, yesterday I did the pre-flower leaf trim using a combination of a strategy called “Schwazzing” modified using the advice of my friend and mentor @bu2b. I think the timing of the Schwazzing method is more useful than the extreme pruning it suggests.
Bu2b’s approach focuses on opening the canopy to expose good candidate budsites to the light as the flowering phase begins and that makes good sense to me. I also remove the lower story popcorn buds at this time. This is especially useful with the dense foliage produced by strains like Gorilla Grove!
Here’s what it looks like in practice:
Schwazzy Haircuts Before & After
Making Pollen
Today I’ll begin the process of selectively spraying one of the Gorilla Grove plants with STS to create pollen for that seed run. It takes about a month for STS to produce the magic dust, so the females will be in full flower by then. I already have a fresh supply of Frankenstein’s Daughter pollen from the last grow and I plan on using that to selectively pollinate a couple branches on the larger GG plan with an octo to itself.
Whew! Y’all got that? I welcome any questions.
-Grouchy
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Waves to @Floyd!
Thanks for stopping bye brother. Anything I missed on your Gorilla Grove seeds?
If I get seeds out of this I’ll send you a nice package. GG is a fantastic plant!!! 
-Grouchy
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Sounds about right.
Good luck with your project. 
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wow very nice to see, great work my friend!!
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Dragon Cream Topical Cannabis
I have long noted the raves that I’ve heard from friends and family about the pain relief they have found in topical cannabis creams and ointments. These are mostly folks who don’t use recreational cannabis, but they tried the topicals since they don’t ‘get you high.’
I have a few friends with aches and pains and they said they’d be happy to be testers if I made a canna cream, “Anything that helps…” was the common theme. So I made a small batch using two ounces of Frankenstein’s Daughter IBL tincture (HatTip @ReikoX for the step by step instructions!)
I gave a spoonful of that first batch to a friend who is suffering serious chronic pain from non-hodgkins Lymphoma and I received his report via txt message that same evening:
That came as a huge surprise so I passed samples around to other friends and the results were all positive, some more than others. It helped with most pains, but was useless on bone-to-bone knee problems.
I have the beginnings of arthritis in my hands and it knocks that out with alacrity. I’m also using it for the inevitable backaches from pulling weeds in the garden. My Saintly Spouse was very skeptical, but even she has conceded that it helps with her back pains. Tough nut to crack, that girl.
Anyway the whole project was encouraging, so I broke open another few ounces of FD IBL tincture and made a serious batch.
Now anxiously awaiting a phonecall from Big Pharma. Or maybe Elon…
-Grouchy
PS, I’m not making any claims here that these positive results are specific to the Frankenstein’s Daughter chems, it may turn out that cannabis topicals are just plain good meds regardless of the strain!
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