Making some headway on my first attempt at breeding. I’ve grown on and off for the past 15 years or so as a small-scale at home hobbyist and making some crosses has long been a bucket list item for me. Feel free to tag along!
NOTE: I am not doing any serious selections here, and some of the females I have not grown out yet and simply selected out of a couple plants based on stem rub/vigor. I am however, very happy with the male I ended up with. Best structure/stem rub/vigor out of 7 seeds.
The male (back left in photo) is Charcuterie - A Grape Pie x Cheesy D cross from Cannarado. I believe it is technically Grape Pie x (UK Cheese x Chem Dawg) - Not a Cheesy Dick cross (UK Cheese x Moby Dick)
The females in the running are:
Communion from Romulan Genetics
Tropical Slushee from Cannarado
Island Sweet Skunk from Next Generation
Avalon x Banner from Next Generation (Outdoor project)
Pure Krush from Romulan Genetics
Dirty Unicorn from Dirty Bird Genetics
An amazing Tahoe OG cut from bagseed that my friend has been growing - Taking the lineage with a grain of salt but its very dank and all lady so I’m running it.
This is the communion pheno I selected out of a couple plants at 7 wks. Lanky but stacked, crazy dank, and a trimmers dream. Smell is out of this world.
Gonna run two different cuts of the tropical slushee as I have two phenos that are vastly different but equally special. One is heavy on the papaya terps and is a massive yielder while the other is heavy on the grapes and rotten funk with a lot of purples.
Gonna give these about a week to adjust to the new tent and bounce back from coming out of the cloner. When everything looks good, I’m gonna flip to 12/12 and yank the male out and put him in my mom tent. After 10 or so days I’ll throw him back in there and let him do his thing. I’ll be updating this periodically throughout. Any tips, suggestions, feedback is welcome!
Adding some photos of the “Tahoe OG” bagseed for posterity. One of a few seeds found in a large batch of exceptional outdoor circa 2013/2014 in San Jose, CA. Once again, “unkown” is what I should be labeling this, but at least there’s a little lore. It’s dank and it’s definitely “kushy”.
This was a small tester plant. Currently going on a larger scale now, will update with photos of a real plant eventually.
I’ve grown some OG’s before that were actually pretty big yielders, but I’ve also found the golf ball noding to be common with them. I’d venture to say it’s an expression they are known for but not necessarily a guaranteed trait? I’m sure someone else would know a bit more about this.
Thanks for watching along! I totally get the scare-factor, at least in regards to contaminating your main grow with pollen. I’ve done a few things to mitigate this entirely! As of right now, my flower tent is sitting at 7 weeks. I set up the breeding tent at the other end of my house and it is carbon filtered. I’ll be putting the male into the breeding tent about a week before I harvest my main tent, which gives me a buffer time of about 2-3 weeks. By the time my male has done its thing and chucked its pollen, my flower tent will have had it’s time for the newcomers to get adjusted and veg out a bit. I should be able to have the male run it’s course by the time I flip my main tent back to 12/12. It took some planning to line this all up.
As for what people do with the seeds? Can’t speak for everyone, but I don’t think it’s proper to sell seeds from a simple at home pollen chuck like this. I have an IRL group of friends that grows perpetually, small and large scale, and I’m gonna try to bully them to hunt through these with me. Ideally, I’d like to do this at least one more time with an entirely fresh stock of genetics and then I have two batches of crosses to work through with the end goal being crossing my two favorites of the projects. This is a long term thing, but like I said… Bucket list
And while we’re at it, enjoy an 8wk photo of this killer communion pheno we’re working with. This specific pheno was stretching in Veg, and put on another 3-4x stretch in flower. While I don’t always like stuff that needs a lot of taming, this specific cultivar is just BEGGING for it because it realllly wants to make a fuck ton of flower. I topped once in Veg and did some emergency staking mid flower but I really did not anticipate this plant blowing up my tent. It looks like a mess, with branches laying every which way, but the dank is all there. With proper training and a scrog setup this cut would outyield most of what I’ve grown, The nodes are tight and all bud and I haven’t yanked one leaf that wasnt dying off of this plant. Trimmer’s dream. It should be good for a chop right around 9 weeks.
The guy goes in today. Bright, intoxicating stem rub on him. Has been my favorite plant out of the pack from seedling to now, let’s hope the pollen is packing heat! Chose this pack out of my vault to hunt through as Grape Pie / Cherry Pie are long time faves of mine and Chem Dawg makes outstanding crosses. That, and there’s no GSC in the lineage… Obviously a phenomenal cultivar but I feel the inbreeding has gotten quite insane as of late. I’m okay with crossing something that has GSC in it so long as the end result is one step further away from it. Making sure it’s not in the male seems to be the easiest way for me to do that with the setup I’m running.
Communion is (Grapestomper OG x Durban Poison) x Romulan
Here’s a single branch tester of the Pure Krush which is Pure Kush (Topanga Canyon Cut) x Romulan at 6 weeks, followed by a 6 week photo of a single branch tester of the Communion pictured above
Stretch is on, pre flowers puffballed, and balls inbound
Purple Pheno of my tropical slushee is about ready to come down. More on the snowman side of things. Funky, fruity, poopy terps. This is one of two TS phenos I’ll be seeding.
The other Pheno has about 2x the yield, not much color, and is foxtailing pretty heavy. Lotta papaya terps. I kinda like the terps on this one a bit more, almost like fruity pebbles cereal and creamy cocao, but we shall see how they smoke.
The ladies are just over 3wks and pollen has been flying the past few days. I’ve got a couple 8 weekers, a couple 9 weekers, and a 10 weeker, so I wanted to make sure I had a solid 6 weeks for everything to mature. I could be a tad early on pollinating but I’m going for viability and success on my first run and not quantity.
2011-2014 Tahoe OG bagseed. Top of the plant has pushed past the light the stretch is done so I’m just gonna let it ride.
Avalon x Banner - This is the 8 weeker I’m crossing for outdoor projects. Has a spicy/peppery/skunky slightly fruity nose that I haven’t smelled since the late 90s.
Charcuterie #4 was the female out of the pack I felt was the most promising. Tossed it in here to F2, and I’m glad I did. Fan leaves are packing resin, oily to the touch, and the plant has an overwhelming triple packet grape punch smell. Undeniable.
I plan to let the dude party out for another week or so, giving him a lil shake here and there! At about the 4.5 week mark I’ll take him out, collect and store any pollen I can get from him, and dispose. Then I will wipe and spray down the tent with water and let the ladies finish up. I plan to flip my main grow tent to flower about a week after the male has been culled, I’m assuming this should give me enough time for any airborne pollen to dissipate/die off?
If anyone has any advice or guidance feel free to lay it on me! Just growin with the flow over here.
I feel like things are moving a lot faster than I expected them to. It’s been one week since pollen started dropping and every plant in the tent seems to be responding with pistils turning orange and calyxes are swelling.
I really wanna collect some pollen and get this dude out of here, but I’m still not quite sure if there’s a benefit to letting him go longer. I’ve read stuff where someone went to paintbrush a single bud and pollenated their entire grow, and I’ve seen other breeding journals where the males rock out until the very end. If anyone with experience can chime in that’d be rad. Otherwise, he gets another day or two and then the yank. I’m definitely getting seeds either way
Tropical Slushee (Papaya x Snowman) ready for a final trim. This is one of two phenotypes being crossed, much different than its sibling in appearance and profile. The other one is a better plant IMO, but it’s totally a preferential thing, pics later.
