This is great stuff. Thanks, @lefthandseeds.
Your info about what to maybe expect when crossing them to indica/sativa now has me thinking… I should use the pollen you sent me, to cross with the Original Haze I plant to run in the fall.
That might make some really fun offspring.
I’ll be following this thread closely. Pulling up a chair next to the rest of the crew.
This appears to be worth the airfare and the long as flight. Finally made it to the show, pencil and paper on deck. The pencil is to look kool and dammit, the paper ain’t for writing!
I am also gonna be watching!
You outlined the various genetics that are going into the “melting pot”, can you explain a little bit about what the end goal you are selecting for is?
How many generations are you planning on open pollinating in the melting pot before you move on to selecting individual parents to cross?
What traits are you hoping to capture versus what traits are you hoping to eliminate?
What are your selection criteria when deciding which plants move on the the next generation?
I am excited to follow along with your progress,
-Dirtron
Hope you enjoy my lebanese selection, they are incredibly low maintenance and easy to grow, and pretty quick.
I am really looking forward to trying the blue hemp switzerland leb, thanks again. It will be cool to see those grown again in the Lebathon.
How will this differ from your Acapulco gold strain??
Great questions @Dirtron. Here’s a wish list I put together a bit earlier:
Mild/Medium potency, high resin, vigorous growth, nutrient tolerance, sexual stability, uplifting non-drowsy effect, branchy phenos, short plants, narrow leaves, fairly neutral piney, hashy or even slightly gassy flavors and very short flowering.
I’m not certain I’ll be able to capture all of these things, but it’s something to work toward.
The main purpose of starting with a “melting pot” of Lebanese lines is primarily to really open things up and add vigor. Many of these lines don’t have a lot of genetic variation left in them, due to years of inbreeding. Yet they also all originate from a fairly narrow region.
I tend to think that preservation as a concept can be viewed in different ways. Keeping pure heirloom lines has value in that they can produce predictable outcrosses. However, a downside to is that they are often too inbred to be adaptable to new environments.
The Syrian line I’m using is incredibly difficult to grow in a hydroponic environment. It doesn’t tolerate synthetic nutrients well, it lacks vigor and yields poorly. I can’t select improvements for these traits into the line, because my seed population has already stabilized on traits that are not ideal for my environment, and possibly on numerous recessives that cause mutations, lack of vigor and sterile males.
So that brings me to a different kind of preservation – and that’s what I would phrase as preserving regionally representative plants that are adapted to an environment which is not their native environment. Logistically, none of us can accurately reproduce the native environments of all these plants. And in my opinion, the best way to ensure their proliferation and longevity is to recreate them in ways that will make people want to grow them. I may occasionally still grow Syrian as-pure, but I’m much more likely to grow something that has the traits from it that I like, and can be adapted toward a more friendly indoor growing experience. When people like the things they grow, they tend to use them in hybrids, proliferating new genetics into the pool that way – or reproducing them and bottlenecking them in their own preservations after that.
So there’s many goals to my project, but the main reason for the melting pot approach is to create the genetic space for adapting plants to a specific environment of growing. Mainly during that phase, I’ll either be hybridizing or just selecting the plants that grow well – but keeping a mind toward the traits that I have as my end goal.
Once I feel like I’m getting enough plants every cycle that meet that goal and have sufficient vigor, then I’ll start to worry about trying to lock in specific traits. Or I guess said another way, I’m going to first work on eliminating negative traits before trying to select specific traits. There’s no shortage of negatives – from mutations to sterile plants to sexual instability to intolerance to synthetic nutrients to lack of vigor. Just getting a set of genetics that is free from those things is enough to keep me busy for at least a few more grow cycles.
Hey @corey, I wouldn’t say I have an Acapulco Gold that’s “mine”. I’ve only helped to distribute some that were reproduced from the Bodhi Nierika release. But Acapulco Gold is from Mexico, and it’s definitely more of a long flowering sativa (like 14-16 weeks in flower). The Bodhi line is a nice mild strain, and not a lot of resin, but I really enjoy the effects. I’d describe it as having a mango/carrot smell and a bit of a burnt popcorn taste when smoked.
The Lebanese can flower in less than half the time (I’ve seen as low as just over 6 weeks, up to about 8.5 weeks). One thing about Lebanese that could be beneficial in a hybrid with Acapulco Gold, or any long flowering sativa is that it can often have a “semi-autoflowering” trait. That really just means that it can flower sometimes above a 12/12 schedule, such as a 14/10 schedule.
Where this might be useful in a sativa hybrid is in making a faster transition into flowering during light cycle changes. Because equatorial plants don’t see much variation in light cycles during the year (for instance between 13/11 and 11/13), I believe that this might play some role in their long transitions to flowering. One thing I might also look for is Lebanese plants that flower at longer day cycles, to see if they might be useful for speeding up sativas in hybrids that way.
Well said! Thank you for that. Next October I plan on doing another seed run but only with sativas. You mentioned up above about doing a cross with Acapulco gold. I have your Everyday Haze, and Acapulco Gold. I’m thinking of crossing those two, or whatever you may think. I’m learning here lol
Thank you @lefthandseeds for the deep insight into your goals/vision in this awesome breeding project you’re working on.
The only semi-autoflowering strain I have going outdoors this year is some purple satellite I was gifted, first time running it. Hopefully I can time the lighting right so it doesn’t herm on me, been dialing it down slowly.
Could help though if I send some Lebanese vibes your way, lol
All are postcards from the late 80’s, might help to bring out some ancient genetic expressions hidden deep inside those lines…
I like it. Beautiful landscapes. Based on these images, I’m going to shoot for a feeling of classic, vibrant and relaxing.
“Midnight at the oasis,
Sing your camel to bed…”
Oh man, I used to think that was the coolest song back in the day. It was the perfect hippy vibe. 
Well this has been a crazy week and shit’s just all over the place. After a thorough inspection of my balls, I found this:
FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU
Meanwhile, in the main tent, I apparently couldn’t hold back the oldest Lebs from flowering at 18/6. So I’m at least week late on pounding in the phosphorous, and they’re showing those crazy ass symptoms – clawing and dark foliage at the top, yellowing at the bottom. So I did a res change and major P bump, fingers crossed they respond.
To top it off, I hadn’t changed my starter res in a while and was fuckin around trying to kill algae and came up with a bad concoction for the littler ones… so I stunted those again lol. Now of got an insane assortment of plants of all sizes, including ones that insist on flowering. So I’m like
This plant has some really beautiful foliage and 11 finger leaves. The one before it is having a lot more issues with the feeds for some reason.
3 of those are Black Leb clones from 2 plants and I have 2 more little ones I just transplanted.
Luckily the black/blue males I had from last run were quite good. Without other options, I’ll be using pollen from those guys here too. This is gonna be rowdy for a bit… 
If all goes to hell, I guess I’m going to have to grow more weed. 
You don’t see that everyday, that’s for sure.
If it makes you feel any better, I just had to chop both purple satellites cause they hermed on me, despite all the care and work I put into them to live as stress free as possible. Even though I gradually lowered the light hours over the past couple months, they still got triggered to herm.
Ah that’s too bad. That one looks so good in pictures. Hopefully you can find one that’s not so finicky. It’s not terribly uncommon when you’re working in generations that are close to landrace. Once I’ve got enough variation worked in here, I think I’ll be looking for something stable and really nice to backcross.
I ordered some hydroponic liner plastic and I made some covers for everything today. I’m determined to beat these fungus gnats that keep giving me grief. This will help keep the algae down, which is apparently their favorite meal.
Man, I thought I was the only one that could have that sort of luck throughout the whole grow! 
I’m not sure I ever saw a nice dedicated male get a pistil. Must be rare. I guess it’s just their way of saying Colorado is not Lebanon. They don’t look too bad. Man, those leaves in the first few pics up there, wow, huge 11 finger leaves.
Best vibes on the recovery. I got a sample (I always ask my grow shop if they have any new samples when I stop in and they’ve hooked me up with some good ones, best being Mammoth P) the other day that is from the Mammoth P people that is a Fungicide and Insecticide, called CannControl. Corn oil and Thyme oil are the active ingredients, with Oleic acid as inert ingredient.
It says it works as foliar and root drench and is good on PM, Botrytis (gray mold), Mites, Aphids, Whiteflies, Thrips and Fungus Gnats.
I’ll be trying it soon. If it’s as pricey as the Mammoth P the sample will be as far as I get with it, lol. They gave me two, two ounce bottles of the Mammoth P a while back, which would be $80 retail. I probably won’t be able to use it again either but it seems to be making some differences. Maybe not that much though, lol.
I wonder if you could make the CannControl yourself? The ingredients are 55% corn oil, 15% thyme oil, and 30% Oleic acid. That’s it. Indoor, outdoor, and good on all food/consumption crops.
Hope you get them little buggers. It’s raining here today, which is more than last year already, so I suppose this will be a banner bug season.
I already see a small spot or two of PM on my two Mother’s Milk. I haven’t had one spot of it all winter and now, just them. They’ve been a pain in the ass so far. I can’t figure them out.
