Thank you @Mithridate
Very happy you stopped by.
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I’m humbled and disappointed at the start of this BerryFreak run. The news isn’t so good.
After getting 12 of 14 of the F4s to germinate, it looks like I may only have 5 that make it.
And none of those are opening their cotyledons.
For some stupid reason, I decided to use a layer of EWC at the top of the solo cups. I think it is holding way to much moisture. Several just seem to have rotted.
The version 1 are doing a little better, but not great.
All 12 germinated, and I may get 7 or 8 of those to survive. At least a couple of them have opened up and first true leaves are growing. Virtually all needed assistance removing the seed shell.
Those are terrible numbers.
@crunkyeah trusted me with his seeds, and I feel like I mostly wasted them.
We’ll see what happens over the next few days and it may still work out for the ultimate goal of making seeds. But selection is now very limited.
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That happens brother. I planted 30 of Snowhighs Purple Mexican Thai and none made it. I know what I’m doing but still…nothing.
Sending positive vibes friend.
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Yup, I did that too… EWC is loaded full of goodness but all that Flora will have fungus that will cause damp off.
Cheers
G
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How does the saying go… “Shit happens”. I know it sucks but just keep moving forward! 7 or 8 is better than ZERO.
You should see my current run. I’ve had major success as of the last year or so and right now I can’t seem to make these plants happy to save my life.
This plant has a serious way of humbling your ass overnight sometimes. lol
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Thanks for the kind words @HumblePie420 @Gpaw and @Rhai88
The thing that stings is the embarrassment that someone else trusted me with their seeds and I failed. Can’t do anything about it now except move on, which I will do.
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I had 0/15 freakshow pop two years ago 
I feel your pain. Iirc didn’t I read berry freak seeds were more mature/normal looking?
Freakshow seeds I’ve seen looked like little white immature seeds with papery shell…
I have a cut tho, it’s easier than those seeds, lol
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Hey man it was a great lesson for all of us & will save $/time for others. Everything has a purpose.
I will never add an EWC layer in my solos now. Thanks!
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@middleman - Have no fear. I expected as much honestly! I was really excited to see you got 12 of 14 to split open. These buggers are notorious for being difficult to germinate. They’re a bit more ‘mutant’ than Freakshow or other Freak lines. The seek husk and membrane on these are particularly difficult. Every single seed needs assistance when germinating as you’ve noted. Just give them some time. Getting them to open up the cotyledons is the hardest part. Once they open those up and really start turning green you’re good to go! Just keep it up and they’ll be fine I’m sure of it!
Even if you get 5 of the F4 in my eyes that’s awesome. I believe they gave extra seeds with each pack because they know how difficult they are to germinate. From what I see of the 5 that remain I have hope for each one of them. They look better than my BF girl did when she started and she made it (only one I could get to germinate out of 12 seeds).
As for the V1 those are definitely on their way to being healthy little seedlings! Hopefully in the next couple of days they reveal a few pinnate specimens. A couple of them look promising to me just based on the discarded shell casing and the cotyledon size.
Looking at this the wrong way man!!! You got these above ground when most people would fail just getting them to split open. These are extremely difficult to germinate so the fact that you got 5 above ground… I’m extremely joyous with these results! Sure it’s not as many as we’d hope but honestly think about it. If these are so notoriously difficult to germinate… wouldn’t we want to only select the ‘easy to germinate’ specimens anyways?? Food for thought. 
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@crunkyeah Thanks for the positive response.
Whatever number we end up with is what we’ll work with.
I was actually thinking about that yesterday. What I really want to do now is get as many seeds from this run as possible, and then do like I did with the ABC crosses: start about 100 or more seeds, but just let them do what they’re gonna do. Self select in a way. Only the easy to germinate and vigorous ones make it. Those are the ones that make the next generation.
But I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself. I’ll focus on what’s immediately in front of me.
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That’s the spirit! A smooth growing Freakshell is a self-selecting trait. With time, the bad shell-ers will die off, and inbreeding the regular shell trait will hopefully become dominant.
@middleman I think you mentioned how the crosses generally had better looking seeds, I wonder how closely related the mutant leaf and poor shell formation traits are, and if they can be separated.
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Damn bro wth are you doing to those poor things …
Totally kidding …I’m sure alot of us have experienced this even when we thought that we had the germinating process down …I remember one time 26 seeds seeds down the drain because my soil was to hot …I just kept popping them thought I was something to do with my watering…
If you really wanna try to save them… dump the cup find the seedling… transplant to a better environment ! I’ve done it multiple times .
Good luck bro …
We are not the type of people to realize one wrong thing you have done we focus on the many great things you have accomplished
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Sounds good to me! I like plans that involve creating more mutants. 
That’s a rabbit hole that definitely needs more people working with mutants to explore. I have some reservations on the mutant seed problem and how to fix it but reality is we need a lot more people working mutants into all kinds of different plants to see the effects.
From what I’ve seen, the only crosses being made to mutants are hyper potent modern strains, or other mutants. The problem I see here is none of them have any real vigor compared to a landrace strain. The mutants don’t need benefits in the potency department at this time if you ask me. What they need is the reintroduction of highly vigorous genetics. Maybe it’s a situation where if we get enough people breeding it, the variations of Freaks that can breed with each other down the road… I think that’s where it gets exciting.
If anyone is familiar with Tony Green’s work on GG#4 RIL and doing the recombinant inbred lines… personally I think that’s one of the solutions to mutant problems.
Another tunnel down the rabbit hole… what if we used mutant males to breed with instead of the females? From what I’ve read it’s possible to reintroduce mutants from the male side it just takes much larger plant counts and seeds germinated in order to find the mutants. In theory all of those should produce mutants with regular seeds but no one has done it yet and posted the results online, as far as I know. It’s also possible that as soon as you do find pinnate specimens that they create Freaky seeds right away; that we don’t know.
Another tunnel… Supafreak F9 seem to have decent germination and don’t seem to have as many problems with the Freak-iness of seeds. Maybe taking BerryFreak to F7 and beyond might do the same thing with proper selections??
I will run some germ tests on some F1 seeds I’ve made with BerryFreak as the mom and I’ll let you guys know my findings. These are probably as Freaky as the F4/BX1 seeds you germinated so it should be interesting to see how it affects the F1s!
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My Purple Auto Bastards had terrible seeds. Some were as small as tomato seeds and extremely difficult to germinate. @middleman ran some PABs for a couple of generations and the seeds look better. I plan on doing a germination test in the next few weeks and see if germination has improved as well.
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I’ve spent the past 3-4 years cubing an abc line with PTK, which is an old school Pakistani IBL. 
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Wow!! I was following your old mutant thread @middleman but missed the start of this one. Just got caught up. A bit of a seed starting roller coaster ride! I’m gonna sub in and enjoy the ride!
Best of luck with your selections!! 
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I was going to wait a day to do any updates, but I’m home and I’m bored.
First the BF v1:
6 open and over the hump. The 7th (top) not open yet, but I’m confident it will. The 8th (bottom right) isn’t dead, but it won’t make it.
The F4:
4 look like they’re going to make it, though stretching quite a bit. I may address that later today by filling the solo cups, but NOT with worm castings!
The 5th one (on the right) doesn’t seem to want to do anything. Not getting worse, but definitely not advancing. Sadly I don’t have hope for it.
The 24 (TW x GG4) x ABC:
Looks like they finally settled in are starting to grow. Such slow starters.
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And the other stuff-
The 1 Bubba Kush (Left) and 3 Sour Diesel (right):
The clones. Kush Mints in front and the 2 GTTC in back:
The GTTC with S1 seeds:
I’m trying a different way to take clones. Using 50/50 seed starting mix/my Octopot mix (screened). In seed trays with domes. Also taking smaller cuts. I took twelve each of the KM and GTTC:
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Can’t wait to see if the GG4 plumps up the bud structure. A couple more generations… 
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I hope so. I’m not going to do any further selection on this generation, other than culling any herms. I don’t want to inadvertently remove something that may be hidden. I’ll leave further selection to others.
My main goal was just to get to stable ABC leaf type with as many possible traits included so they would be present for later selections.
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