7 Crosses of Sherb Cream Pie
In our experiment with reversed Sherb Cream Pie, we didn’t get the seed production or all the crosses we wanted. But we got enough to pheno hunt several crosses of interest.
Seeds:
Here we go!
To the cups!
We got 96% germination. Let’s see how they do in the dirt.
-al
A Short Time Later . . .
40 cups and 35 through the dirt. I am perimeter watering with straight RO water. This prevents washing out the tender seedlings and setting them back in their development. I keep an oscillating gently blowing on them at all times. This promotes strong stems and greater air exchange. It’s surprising how much a simple fan can improve your plants, even at the earliest stages.
I had a mysterious death problem with the SBRPs. 4 out of 6 sprouts just rotted, and the ones that lived were feeble looking. Dumping out the cups, it became suddenly obvious why. When preparing our 1 quart cups for this strain, I had forgotten to poke some drainage holes. Doh!!!
Just another lesson in humility to keep my farmer ego humble.
I soaked a few fresh seeds to get our sprout numbers back to where the science needs them.
As always, your questions and comments are welcome.
-al
Good luck on the voyage bro !
Don’t forget them drain holes hahaha
Sherb cream pie what was the reasoning for reversal …what made it a distinguished keeper
Sherb cream pie what was the reasoning for reversal …what made it a distinguished keeper
She’s a medium tall plant with purple sparkly buds that have a sweet menthol perfume and a solid smack the head. Mixing these traits with any of the moms makes for some interesting progeny.
Should be fun!
Thank you for your interest.
-al
An update on the Seedlings
Seedlings:
We have 40 girls through the dirt. I will start their training with a skirt trim soon.
See ya then!
-al
Time for a Skirt Trim
Here’s our girls before:
Before:
After:
Group After:
These got a little big on me. I normally start this process a little earlier.
So a skirt trim is about removing bottom leaves, exposing the bottom branches to more light and air. This also helps with litter and pest prevention.
After all, our goal is to produce great branches to harvest for the cloner. Then we just need to keep the original plants alive while we bloom out the clone.
As always, your comments and questions are welcome.
-al
To the Cloner
Group Before:
Almost everyone has at least 2 branches large enough to be cloned. So here we go!
The first thing we do is assign everyone their ID number. I generally do this by height. This gives me a little help in planning for vigor. This early tell is not perfect, but is right most of the time.
WTCP Lineup:
Before:
After:
I take the top and the 2 largest branches. This gives us the best chance of getting a rooted clone of each individual. Our original plants are now ready to hang out for 4 months while the cuttings get rooted and bloomed.
Cuttings:
To the Cloners:
There were a few plants that were stingy with branches, but we got 3 cuts from most.
Our strain list breakdown:
Our 40 individuals that made it to the cloner.
Mutilated moms:
These girls look pretty bad but it will be a struggle to keep them in cups for the next 4 months.
As always, your questions and comments are welcome.
-al
Cloner Update
We have roots for almost all individuals. I’ll take back up cuttings soon after the dead or alive roundup for anyone still not rooted.
One of the main reasons I take 3 cuttings as opposed to just cloning the top, is getting everyone rooted at once. I want head to head data, and running stragglers is not acceptable. I plan on sending 2 waves of 20, 2 weeks apart to the bloom room.
The center top has different hormones than the side branches. You can see this happening in this pic:
This is very common. The center top normally takes longer to root. This makes them more susceptible to attack, even while running beneficials.
Extra rooted cuttings can be used to replace the original mom if she is too distressed in her cup. I always like options and sending the best possible representative to the bloom room.
As always, your comments and questions are welcome.
-al
There Can Be Only One!
I have gone through all the clones and selected the best individual from the 3 cuttings. I will let them grow out for a bit before separating them into our 2 groups.
Root development ranges from spikes to ready to rock. We had 2 individuals drop into the straggler group when all of their cuttings failed. They will have to wait for a roundup several months from now to get a second chance.
As always, your comments and questions are welcome.
-al
Getting There…
Cloners:
The plants are starting to hit their veg growth stride. We still have about 4 that have very limited root development.
However most look like this:
I’m using al’s Go Go Veg o Matic recipe now after starting with al’s Rootin Tootin Setup Sauce. We no longer need the B1 and extra vitamins and res ppms are now up to around 400.
I’ll get these trimmed and rearranged into our 2 groups headed to the bloom room. Looks like we are just a couple weeks away from flower!
As always, your comments and questions are welcome.
-al
Staging Up to Bloom
I have separated our girls into 2 cloners. The cloner on the right has all of the fastest rooters and will hit the bloom room soon. Our second cloner on the left will happen 2 weeks after the first. Rooting speed is certainly related to overall vigor, but doesn’t tell you if the plant is going to get you high. So don’t get too concerned with a difficult start.
Our Line Up:
We had 3 individuals that did not produce a rooted clone. Unfortunately our only Skunkberry failed and the Strawberry Runtz Pies were feeble from the start. Of course the SBRPs not having drainage for the first week did not help. Meh
Anyone that doesn’t get into this cycle will be added to the next roundup a couple months from now. This is obviously less than ideal, but I really want to see everyone bloom.
As always, your comments and questions are welcome.
-al
One Week to Go
I have shoot pruned all the clones. This is where all the shoots except the top 3 are removed, but the fan leaves are left in place. This prepares the plants for high performance in the bloom room, while optimizing the plants energy by not wasting it on stuff we are whacking off anyways. Tallest plants get their first stem pinch.
Our plan is to send the first group to bloom next week, selecting the best from both cloners. We will then send the rest 2 weeks later.
As always, your comments and questions are welcome.
-al
you have the best grow logs @als_weed, love the attention to detail. you take quite large clones, those are as large as the momma i keep
Thanks I appreciate your viewership. I really enjoy showing how far from KISS I have wandered.
As far as clone size. I like 8 - 12 nodes dependent on the plant. I shoot prune as they grow. This leaves the fans for more gathered energy, while encouraging vertical growth. Anyone who gets too tall starts getting pinched to slow them down.
Thank you for your interest.
-al
This experiment was rudely interrupted when this happened:
The fire destroyed everything on the first two stories, leaving me my spouse, 1 of 2 cats, the clothes on my back, and the plants/equipment in this experiment.
Theads on all this:
A Pause Because FIRE! - Overgrow.com
The Pheonix Project - Overgrow.com
So thanx to many friends we get to continue the experiment.
Here is the state of our original plants almost 6 months after their rescue:
Our poor girls are still in their original 1 quart cups. I have kept them alive by feeding them weak tea and foliar sprays. It has taken some time to build the infrastructure needed, but I am thrilled to get a chance to look at these survivors, since this lump of charred plastic is all of the seeds I have created in the last couple years:
Of the original 40 plants, 39 have survived:
And here is everyone in the cloners:
I got at least 2 high quality cuts of every girl. My plan is to send one to bloom and use the other to replace the original plant if needed. They will be close to a year old in those little cups when this is done, and I just don’t want to lose a winner at this point.
So everyone got a haircut and I’ll see how slow they can grow, while keeping them from auto flowering.
We have 5 months left in this project. The rainbow chase for the very best new weed is back on!
As always, your comments and questions are welcome.
-al
I’m glad to see that you’re back and were able to save your work! It would have been heartbreaking to lose years of dedication
Jan 2 Update
Here’s our girls:
We have roots!
Almost all our girls have at least root bumps. I plan to let these grow out for a week before bumping the nutes and making decisions.
As always, your comments and questions are welcome.
-al
Jan 11 Update
There Can Be Only One!
Here’s our cuttings:
Now it’s time to pick the best and chuck the rest. Only 2 of the 39 individuals look like they won’t make the show. I will include them in a future round up grow for sure. All of the original moms look like they will survive another 4 months, so we won’t be using the extras to plant backups.
The winners:
Root Porn:
All the girls now have a little more space to grow out. I will move them to the next cloners in line as we figure out who will be in the first wave to go to bloom.
As always, your questions and comments are welcome.
-al
Next Stage
Everyone is now in the 64s, planted a checkerboard pattern. I have cleaned up the bottoms and everyone is lined up under the lights.
Now they veg out for 3 weeks to get ready for the bloom room.
I plan on sending 2 waves of 24 plants to the bloom room. This is crowding 6 more plants per unit, so the less branchy, the better. I will continue to skirt trim and keep the active shoot number down to 3 to help push them.
As always, your comments and questions are welcome.
-al
To the Bloom Room!
Here are the girls in the cloners on plant day:
The 24 largest of all the plants are selected for the first wave. We have a total of 53 survivors from the fire to bloom out, 39 of which are the Sherb Cream Pies in this study.
Here is the top sheet of the data pack, showing the location of each individual:
Here is the first wave freshly planted on day 0:
Notice that each plant has an ID tag. This gives us positive identification and traceability back to the original mom plant. Between the location sheet and tag, we have a double check to make sure there is no confusion. A mistake here can be very costly, so every preventative method is employed.
Here are the girls after 2 days:
Everyone perked and oriented nicely. The canopy is pretty even. I put the hyper vigorous ones in the corners.
Canopy Shot:
One of our big girls:
This is Gran Dawgy Cream Pie #1. ((Gran Daddy Purple x Chem Dog) x (Sherb x Cream Pie)) These genes give us a very nice mix of old school and new. Her number tells us that she was the most vigorous plant among her 7 sisters from seed in veg. As a clone she has far surpassed almost all 53 of the other test subjects.
Looks like a jungle queen and I’m so excited to see what she can do. She has her mother’s leaves and stem coloration. Just can’t wait to see if she develops her mom’s nail salon stank in bloom as well.
Original moms:
Our original seedlings are close to a year old and still in 1 quart cups. They required yet another haircut and just need to hang on for another 3 months as their clones are bloomed out. Organic teas spiked with over 50 stains of beneficial bacteria and fungi let me get away with this cruelty.
As always, your comments and questions are welcome.
-al
