Pheno Hunt - Original Chocolate Diesel + 3 More Diesels!

[als_weed]

I am reconstructing this thread for the forum. I will notate when it is current.
-al

Original Chocolate Diesel + 3 More Diesels!

Chocolate Diesel(CTSD). Chemdog Sour Diesel(CMDD), Super Silver Sour Diesel Haze(SSDH), and Alderpoint Sour Diesel(APSD) should provide a nice retrospective of Sour Diesel. From the legendary and the infamous, to the current day, these crosses span the breadth of diesel.

If you’re tired of cookies and cake, this hunt is for you!

I’m going to list some extensive information about each cross and the history of the parentage. If this makes your eyes glaze over, feel free to fast forward to the action.

Meanwhile us weed nerds are in for a real treat!

Chocolate Diesel(CTSD) Maphial

Chocolate Trip x Sour Diesel

I decided to reach up to my top shelf unobtainium collection and pluck something interesting to share.

These seeds were on top.

When I got these, they were $100, and 1 of 25 packs. At the time, I didn’t have space and only lightly sampled acquisitions. So I popped one seed, got a fine lady that ran for eight years. She got lost in a move and I never had the opportunity to circle back.

So this strain came about because Katsu(still a member here) bought seeds of Chocolate Trip from the legendary Dutch Flowers and grew them out.

Dutch Flowers would put out single packs of crazy genes with awesome descriptions, that would draw equally crazy prices.

Chocolate Trip is probably the most well known. This is their original description:

CHOCOLATE TRIP - bred by Dutch Flowers
Chocolate Trip will please indoor growers looking for exotic sativa quality in a highly manageable hybrid exhibiting the curiously strong chocolaty sweetness and brain-wiring psychoactivity of fabled Chocolate Thai pure landrace. Chocolate Trip’s stocky, tight-noded phenotype thrives under indoor lighting, and will reward with an abundant yield of dense buds of top notch headstash quality.

We obtained Chocolate Thai from growers in Hawaii (who also sourced our Lemon Thai, already offered here). The Chocolate Thai had a classically thunderous, soaring high that immediately won everyone’s preference. Unfortunately, the superb quality came with a 14 week flowering period price tag. The buds were incredibly aromatic and resin coated, but very spindly, with strings venturing on their own out of the thin main floral cluster, giving it an overall skimpy braided look. Curious structure, definitely landrace looking, but hardly productive even outdoors. Our Chocolate Thai source had warned that to obtain a reasonable yield outdoors, his method was to crowd many plants in a limited space outdoors, in a style reminiscent of hemp grown for fiber.

While the Lemon Thai only needed heavy parent selection, the Chocolate Thai demanded a lot of work to make it worth growing for the indoor grower. We used an Indigo Diamond female crossed to a male Chocolate Thai and selected the best female out of over a hundred seedlings. This female was then pollinized with a pollen pool composed of the three best males of a twin cross where the roles were reversed, i.e. a Chocolate Thai mother crossed with an Indigo Diamond male.

The resulting Chocolate Trip passes with flying colours the flowering time and yield breeding goals: it takes around 50 days or less to flower, and is an extremely generous producer of hefty, thick buds that carry the trademark spicy sweetness of the Chocolate Thai. As a result of heavy selection, the Chocolate Trip exhibits an amazingly short and bushy phenotype: will finish under a meter (40 inches) tall if flowering is induced at 16 inches. This plant will yield an average of 4.5 ounces of exceptionally aromatic buds that retain the vanilla candy taste and trippy psychoactivity of the Chocolate Thai.

The Chocolate Thai has passed all its extreme sweetness and spicy exotic taste on to our Chocolate Trip. The taste is exceedingly sweet, and flavor is highly appealing with a very strong vanilla note over a peanut butter background. It is this extreme vanilla sweetness over a peanutty base that brings the smell so close to chocolate, although we are sure that the uncanny chocolate smell in some imported Thai is the result of a peculiar curing procedure that may include substances unrelated to cannabis.

Chocolate Trip’s Indica base hits very hard, but still gives an extremely energetic, lucid, visual high. It has both a lot of “bass” and “treble”, yet the overall tune is definitely speedy, like a dance track. The Chocolate Trip prowess is to satisfy the Indica and Sativa lovers equally, even when it is clearly sativa dominant in both high and taste. This allows for a powerhouse high, but there is no “dumb” or “lock” effect: remarkably cerebral and active, with a knack for inducing visuals (as some smokers report colours).Stocky, tight noded phenotype, great yield, quick flowerer, Chocolate Thai high and taste with a hard punching Indica base make the Chocolate Trip an excellent all-around strain for growers looking for landrace qualities in an easy to manage plant.

I just love it. In any event, Maphial crossed Katsu’s cut with Sour Diesel and this legendary strain was born.

Many strains have it as their secret ingredient in special crosses. GG4 is a daughter, as well as several other branches of the weed ancestry tree.

These seeds are getting a light peroxide pre-soak, with a slight emery board scratch. At around 20 years old, these are the oldest seeds in this run. My experience is that viability really falls off at this age, so if we want to look, now is the time!

Chemdog Sour Diesel(CMDD) Reservoir Seeds

Chemdog x Sour Diesel

Resdog was a hell of a character, no matter what you think of him. He brought Sour Diesel and Chemdog to the masses and this is his cross of the two.

Super Sour Silver Diesel Haze(SSDH) Connoisseur Preservation

SSSDH x SSSDH

These seeds are Connoisseur’s preservation project of the original by Reservoir Seeds. I was in the middle of doing an extensive look with all of my original SSSDH seeds, when disaster struck, and I never got a chance to finish the study.

Another Res project that I think he was most proud of. The guys at Connoisseur thought well enough of it to preserve the genes and pass them out.

Alderpoint Sour Diesel(APSD) Aficionado

Leggett Sour Diesel x (Sour Diesel IBL #72 x Original Diesel BX)

These folks have been winning awards with their outdoor strains. I have to be cautious with large plants, but the chance to look at these is worth the extra effort they will require.

Here is their description of this strain:

LONG AWAITED RELEASE!

Leggett Sour Diesel “clone-only” x (Sour Diesel IBL #72 x Original Diesel BX)

The leggett sour has by far been my favorite cutting of the Sour Diesel. As a farmer who specialized for years in selecting and cultivating sours for buyers the alderpoint sour can best be described as a “frostier sour” with a nose that’s reminiscent of old-school Headband (Sour x OG Kush) but with alot more bass on the gas. The resin grows TALL and falls off the stalk easily, so handle with care after drying and curing. CURING NOTE: It is in my experience that classic sours and headband’s tend to not fully develop their nose and bouquet until after several weeks of curing. 3-4 weeks of cold curing has produced the best possible sours and was the current technique I used when I Won at The Golden Tarps awards for best in category for our Spyrock Sour. Cold Cure sours at 50 Degrees F and 50% humidity in darkness.

These plants grow LARGE - select for dark leathery green leafs with a sheen that is often indiciative of sour diesel of OG foliage.

This creation was bred in the Alderpoint Area of the Souther Humboldt mountains and is aclimated to similar arid-temperate climates.

This is a TRUE 9-10 WEEK SOUR!! Outdoor growers beware! As a winner of multiple full-sun Emerald Cup awards…I highly highly recommend a greenhouse or a cold frame cover as a minimum to get the best-possible expression from later blooming sours. Does epic indoors and in summer deps.

Here We Go!

All seeds got a light peroxide presoak. Rinsed in distilled water, before put in pre-bleached napkins.

This feels like cracking open some 200 year old whiskey to do a round for the house. Cheers!

I’m so excited!

As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

-al

[als_weed]

48 hour Germination Update

CTSD: 6/9

We got 6 with tails! With seeds this old, it can take up to another week to germinate. I added a couple drops of 3% peroxide, mumbled something, and gave the hand gesture of growth and hope. My experience is that late poppers are super weak and rarely recover without extreme intervention. We shall see.

CMDD: 6/10

Doing the same as above.

SSDH: 6/7

Same procedure

APSD: 11/11

None to send back! As expected, the youngest seeds faired the best in germination.

Next we go to the dirt and see who makes it through the next hoop. I have opted to go with my standard soil mix to start these sprouts. I was considering petri dish starts, but these look pretty healthy, with no obvious fungal attacks.

As always, your questions and comments are welcome.

-al

[als_weed]

Seed fun while we wait.

I’ll have a sprout round up soon, but while we wait, let’s have some seed fun.

I had considered putting these in this experiment. But 2 packs of 20 year old seeds at once seemed like trouble.

Jojo Rizzo was quite the prolific breeder. Probably most remembered for developing Crystal Locomotive. It’s Arcadia Trainwreck x Aloha White Widow.

ATW was super potent pure Lysol on an 8 foot tall bean pole frame, quite famous for just falling over for the last few weeks of bloom. Some of the earliest serious pruning techniques were developed by Pistol Pete, getting this plant to produce buds, rather than frond like foxtails. Anyone remember the Pistol Whipped tech?

Most White Widow of the day tasted like burnt plastic. No body really cared much since this was one of the few power plants for indoors other than Northern Lights. AWW brought a fruity sweet flavor and a little color to the mix.

His crosses consumed the lion’s share of my seed popping for quite a while as I pursued F1s, F2s, and Bxs trying to find the perfect balance of the parents.

For me, the difference between the parents created extreme variability. I found a lot of promising plants, but ended up running more of his other creations like Blowfish. He was also into preserving Hazes.

I don’t have many packs of his left because I popped so many. I learned a lot about the mechanics of breeding from him, but more importantly, the mentality you have to maintain. You just have to be fearless. Make mistakes, learn, move on and give no fucks. Follow the vision of the cross and use data. Follow your nose, but don’t let it fool you.

He is missed.

Here’s what I have left of his work.

Here’s some of my unobtainium collection that I need to start popping. I plan on doing projects like this along with looking at the strains we create here.

So what sounds good? Original Tom Hill Deep Chunk or Breeder Steve’s favorite Shishkaberry#3?

The blurry one in the middle is Pacific Pow - the sister of sorts to Airborn’s G13.

Suggestions?

Thanks for letting me ramble down memory lane.

-al

[als_weed]

More Seed Fun

First, thanks everyone for your input. I’m interested in any experiences with growing or smoking any of the genes we are looking at.

As for Space Rhino, yes it has Space Queen and White Rhino in it, but also something else I can’t recall. The beans are from 3LB, or 3 Little Birds.

3LB posted here, as well as other boards. Known as organic growing gods, they were mods and have a couple long, rambly missives on molasses and guanos that are still bouncing around the net. I found several useful nuggets in those, but the most important knowledge was in the forums. The use of alfalfa cubes and molasses remains in my tea recipes to this day.

They put out a few seeds but had some mixed reports. They were a little “Organic Nazi” and annoyed some, but their excellent pics and consistent help to everyone won me over.

In addition to Space Rhino, I also have Mistress Midori, the 3LB version of Herijuana. 3LBs were interested in making strains specifically for pain relief and were at the forefront of the medical strain movement.

Sadly, they got famous. They disbanded shortly after that.

A 3LB run might be fun! Keep your ideas coming.

Thank you for your interest.

-al

[als_weed]

Germ Report - another 48 hours

Strain n Germ Sprout Dead
CTSD 9 6 3
APSD 11 11 8
CMDD 10 6
SSDH 7 6

Germ - confirmed tail
Sprout - through the dirt
Dead - confirmed dead

We have some CTSD through the dirt! The APSD is kicking it, being the youngest seeds. Concerned with no sprouts from CMDD and SSDH.

As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

-al

[als_weed]

Final Germ & Sprout Report

Here We Are:

Strain - n , Germ , Sprout
CTSD - 9 , 7 , 6
APSD - 11 , 11 , 10
CMDD - 10 , 6 , 0
SSDH - 7 , 7 , 7

CTSD had a late germer that didn’t make it. Still quite happy with 6 strong sprouts.

APSD was the fastest and strongest. Being the youngest, this was expected.

CMDD surprised me by just all flat dying in the dirt. I really wanted to see these and it made me sad.

SSDH started later, but won the survival game with 100%.

So we ended up with 23 sprouts to grow out. Pretty stoked about everyone, but my eye will certainly be on our 6 precious CTSD babies.

As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

-al

[als_weed]

One Week Later

Everyone has survived. Only a couple appear to have the “wonky stem” attribute that seems to appear in relationship to the age of the seeds popped. This normally straightens out with time, but while the tender stem lies in contact with the soil, fungal attacks can happen that critically injure the plant.

I keep a gentle oscillating breeze on the babies to build strong straight stems. Perimeter watering with plain RO avoids blowing out the roots and knocking them over.

As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

-al

[als_weed]

Another Week Later

Everyone is growing strong and fast. We will be looking for primordia soon!

We have started using al’s Super Feed N Kill Foliar Spray on schedule with the rest of the mom room. They are also eating al’s Dirt Plant Delight Tea at 10% concentration. If you want more information or recipes for these, check the 4 Crosses of Slapz thread for all my tech.

As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

-al

[als_weed]

Time for a Skirt Trim

Group Before:

It’s time for a skirt trim. I trim the bottom sets of leaves to promote the growth of the side branches. Our goal with these plants is to sex them, grow side branches to clone, and keep them alive while we bloom out the clones.

Before:

After:

Showing a Little Leg:

Taking these leaves out prepares the plants to be future mom by increasing light and transpiration to the side branches. The leaves we are removing tend to be the first to die off and normally the first place for trouble with pests.

As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

-al

[als_weed]

First Balls!

An SSSDH decided to show his stuff. There are quite a few indeterminate primordia visible today.

I segregate physically, but don’t mark the cup male until it’s obvious. Females don’t get their cup marked until I see the V for victory. Rarely final sex determination doesn’t happen until after the clones hit the bloom room.

We will start doing the formal roundup of the males shortly. Some consideration will have to be made for any CTSD males. Full sex crosses mean a lot of wasted resources when Femmed are just so much more efficient. Hopefully some pretty CTSD girls will show up and make the argument moot.

As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

-al

[als_weed]

First Male Roundup

Here’s our stats on sex determination so far:

Strain , n , Male , Female , Unknown
CTSD , 6 , 1 , 3 , 2
APSD , 10 , 3 , 2 ,5
SSDH , 7 , 4 , 3 , 0

These are preliminary and based on the smallest of primordia. I’m pretty good, but have certainly been fooled before.

I physically segregate males until they confirm their maleness and get wacked, I mark what I believe to be females with a plus. When they are confirmed, the plus is circled.

The slowest to show sex is the Alder Point, while the SSDH has revealed everyone. Most importantly, we have 3 confirmed CTSD females! And 2 more to go!

Here’s Our Remaining Participants:

We have 8 females and 7 left to figure out.

I’m so excited!

As always, your questions and comments are welcome.

-al

[als_weed]

To the Cloner!

Our Males:

These have all definitely shown their balls and are culled. Since we have found more than 2 CTSD females, I’m comfortable in letting the males go.

Our Remaining Contestants:

Now we will assign identification numbers for each individual. I line them up by height and number accordingly. This gives me a clue for planning the eventual bloom layout.

I know there are males to be found yet. The Alder Points are taking the longest with the most indeterminate primordia.

CTSD:

APSDa:

APSDb:

SSDH:

Now that everyone has a number, it’s off to the cloner!

Cloner Day 0:

I’ve set up the cloner using al’s Rootin Tootin Cloner Setup Sauce. You can get more info and recipes in the 4 Crosses of Slapz thread.

We have three cuts of every individual in the cloner. Our goal here is to get at least one healthy clone of each individual. Any leftovers give us options such as: extras in bloom, or replacing the original mom if needed.

Moms After:

Because of their training, each plant is now pruned and ready to be a potential mom, with plenty of branches to harvest while retaining the best hormones for rooting. Now we just have to keep them alive while we bloom out the clones.

As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

-al

[als_weed]

Cloner Update

We have some slow rooters that prompted me to take some backup cuttings. The SDHs are bit out front and I will probably use the backups to avoid them dominating the grow.

Every prospect has at least one cutting with roots, albeit some are a bit ugly.

We have 4 weeks to get them looking good and ready for the bloom room.

Moms:

We still have some sex determination to do. I figure we will know the rest of the story in a couple weeks.

As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

-al

[als_weed]

Cloner Update

These are about ready to be thinned out after taking a little extra time to root, There are 2 individuals that have not fully revealed their sex.

We are still on track to hit the bloom room in a few weeks.

As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

-al

[als_weed]

Cloner Update. There can be only one!

Cloner:

Moms:

Diesel Corner:

I have moved everyone going to the bloom room to their own cloner. This gives them plenty of space and light to grow out over the next week or two.

I selected individuals to fit together as a group. So relative size and health were the main factors to get picked for the show.

The moms are still doing fine. We have 2 APSD that still refuse to show their stuff.

I’m not tossing anything until we get well into bloom, resulting in Diesel Corner.

As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

-al

[als_weed]

Day 0 Bloom

Unit:

Cover Sheet:

CTSD Row:

Finally made it to the bloom room! I gave them a couple extra days in veg to hit the sweet spot where we planted no runts. Everyone is between 12 and 18 inches tall, with healthy roots and shoots.

I have added a few extras: ANTR, SBRZ, and GSTP. It will be fun to compare some modern strains with some of our living fossils.

I am so happy to see the CTSD looking so lush. They dominate the center of the canopy shot.

Just so excited to see the girls transplanted with a vigorous start.

As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

-al

[als_weed]

Come see day 1 walkthrough of the Diesel Project

(27) Day 1 Bloom for Old Tyme Sour Diesel Crosses - YouTube

[als_weed]

This Thread is now current.

As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

-al

[Zanzibar]

Such awesome documentation. Thanks for letting us see the process. I’ve grown out Choco Diesel F2s from Derg Corra Collective, and also a POW crossed with Mazar done by Foe20. Very nice to see the action here

[Emeraldgreen]

Great write up. Definitely watching this. I’m curious about you not trying to f2 these. They are all rare, or is that another topic?