Instead of cluttering up the chat thread, I thought I would condense all the information about my winter seed project into one thread. I am doing some Mephisto repros/crosses this winter using Strawberry Nuggets and Skywalker pollen with a number of recipient strains.
Their light cycle is split between supplemental lighting in a tent in a greenhouse and sun outdoors. I take them outside early in the morning and put them into the tent before dusk. The result is that they’re on about 23 hours of light and 1 hour of darkness most days.
To get up to speed on where the project is:
The first two Strawberry Nuggets intended for pollen emerged from their seed casing and were planted on the 12th of September:
I had originally mishandled the germination of the skywalker I planned to run with these, and so I have a skywalker I intended to use for pollen. It’s about 10 days behind the others. Here it is, pictured on the left next to the strawberry nuggets on the 30th of september:
The recipient strains I am germinating alongside these include: Skywalker, Double Grape, and (Mango Smile x Skywalker F1) “Mango Sky”. Here they are emerging from a direct-to-media sow on October 4th:
Here are the two strawberry nuggets and the Skywalker today, the 10th of October. I am concerned that they’ve gone too long without being treated with STS, but I’m going to try it anyways. My solution is prepared and I’m waiting for my spray bottles to arrive, which are scheduled to arrive today.
(Strawberry Nuggets x Strawberry Nuggets) F2
(Strawberry Nuggets x Double Grape) F1
(Skywalker x Skywalker) F2
(Skywalker x (Skywalker x Mango Smile)) (F1? Bx1?)
If there do end up being issues with pollen generation, I will eschew the two strawberry nuggets crosses entirely and hit everything with skywalker pollen, meaning:
(Skywalker x Strawberry Nuggets) F1
(Skywalker x Double Grape) F1
This will be my first time reversing female plants to produce pollen, so I will put it to the crowd; are the above strawberry nuggets plants too far into their flowering phase to reasonably reverse for fem pollen?
I should be able to start treating them today as mentioned, but I don’t mind starting over with another couple of strawberry nuggets from seed. I also have super orange haze, and some freebies (3 Bears OG x Mango Smile) F1 and (Skywalker x Forum Stomper) F1, and it would give me a chance to incorporate those.
I prepared my STS according to Sebring’s tech, but modified it to incorporate a silver nitrate stock solution so that I don’t have to weigh sub-gram quantities, and to allow me to prepare less than 1 Liter of STS stock solution at a time. The steps are below, with each solution boxed and numbered to identify it, and each mass/volume involved underlined.
Here are my three little recipient sprouts. The double grape had the end of its leaves damaged early on (I imagine there was moisture on the ends of the leaves and they got fried by the lights), but it has seemed to rebound.
I have decided not to reverse the two initial strawberry nuggets, because they’re too far along in their cycle and I’m concerned that I may not generate much pollen. The Skywalker I’m reversing has been sprayed twice, and after doing some reading on the autoflower network, I’m going to try spraying it once a day for ten days.
In the interest of doing things right, I’ve started additional seeds to be added to the grow. I’ll be reversing the strawberry nuggets, but haven’t decided if I’ll reverse any of the others or just hit them with Skywalker pollen/Strawberry Nuggets pollen.
The seeds I’ve started are another Strawberry Nuggets, a Super Orange Haze, a Forum stomper x Skywalker F1, and a mango smile x 3 Bears OG F1. Here they are at what I’ll call day 1:
In the interest of not having to move the containers in and out of the tent any more, I’ll be starting a timer on the light. They’ll be getting 18 hours of light, from 12:30 AM to 6:30 PM. As a side benefit, It’ll allow me to veg photos for a winter pheno hunt on the side, which I’ll keep out of this thread unless people are interested.
All these crossesd sound amazing. I tried twice to get my hands on the Strawberry Nuggets. Both times they sold out within SECONDS!! I was so pissed lol… Anyway I will definitely be looking forward to this project as I am sure I will learn a lot.
Hey, thanks for the interest! Unfortunately I’m not reversing the first two strawberry nuggets I grew, but I’ll reverse the third and in a week or so I’ll start one more strawberry nuggets to run for F2s. For the first batch of seeds it’s going to be limited to Skywalker crosses; specifically:
Skywalker x Skywalker F2
Skywalker x (Skywalker x Mango Smile) (Bx1/F1)
Skywalker x (Skywalker x forum stomper) ((Bx1/F1)
Skywalker x Double Grape F1
Skywalker x Super orange haze F1
Skywalker x (3 Bears OG x Mango Smile) F1
Not quite as grand of a project as I set out to run, but I am confident it’ll be a nice batch of seeds to hand out regardless.
Got some good crosses in there and the garden looks very healthy.
Since I always miss out on getting my hands on Meph genetics I’ll pull up a chair and watch seems to be the closet I’ll get at this stage. Been trying for a long time I always end up missing out, so I’ve just completely given up now.
Watching grows may very well be the closet I’ll ever get to mephs
Welcome to the grow! I don’t want to make any specific promises just because I don’t have the seeds yet, but assuming they get made I’ll be handing them out; it’s more valuable to me to have people willing to test them than it is for me to have a big inventory.
So for a while now, I’ve been concerned that I wasn’t seeing signs of reversal in the Skywalker, but I wasn’t sure. Today is the first time I’ve felt for certain that it is showing signs of pollen sac formation, which is great news! Hopefully it gives me a decent amount of pollen; I will probably try to cut a box or something to fit around the bottom of the main stem and line the inside with butcher paper to aid in collection. Skywalker below (note that it’s not that yellow IRL, I had the flash on for those pictures):
The strawberry nuggets are looking nice! If they’re not too far along and the Skywalker opens up its pollen sacs soon enough, I may even just pollinate them. The squat one has a really nice fruity smell and looks decently frosty for its level of development, and the taller, lankier one has a nice purple color and the smell is coming in as well, though I think it leans more towards the traditional sour, weedy smell than the sweet fruity.
Thanks for checking in on the project! I have to imagine I won’t have the seeds ready until the new year, but we’ll see how long it takes the pollen sacs to open.
If they’re early, I’ll pollinate the strawberry nuggets (probably the purple one) even if it’s a little late because I do like the structure and color.
It took about a month for the Strawberry Nuggets to get to the beginning of flowering, so being conservative, I might start seeing flowering towards the end of November on the Double Grape, the second Skywalker, and the Mango Sky. The others are about 10 days behind them. So if the project comes to fruition, signups for seeds will be some time in January-february.
The Skywalker pollen sacs are coming along nicely! It’s hard for me to tell how long it’s going to be before they open, but they’re definitely moving quickly. It looks like there should be a good amount of pollen, and I’m hopeful that they’ll open in time for me to pollinate the strawberry nuggets and have them go for 4-6 weeks.
I’m conflicted about pollinating the strawberry nuggets; they’re on day 57 or so, and Mephisto lists it as a 65-75 day strain. I really like the purple phenotype, so if the Skywalker opens up in the next couple days I may pollinate it and just run it to like 90 days for seed.
Hello all, it’s been a while, but I have largely good news. First, here’s the state of the autos:
The two on the right are the strawberry nuggets, going strong at 74 days. The reversed skywalker was harvested for pollen two weeks ago, and I gave it a go at the strawberry nuggets then. I have checked the bracts on these for seeds and it seems like some are developing, so they’re going to just hang around for another few weeks and will probably get harvested in early/mid december.
The three in the back are the double grape, mango sky, and skywalker from left to right. They’re somewhere around 52 days or so. The Skywalker is the furthest along, then the mango sky, then the double grape. The Skywalker has been dusted with skywalker pollen for F2s but I’ll do it again to be certain.
The group of four smaller plants on the left are the super orange haze, forum stomper x skywalker, 3BOG x mango smile, and the strawberry nuggets I was planning to reverse for pollen. They’re somewhere around 42 days.
