Zephyr grows and creates

[minitiger]

Oh, wow! So that Ethiopian Banana x OMG is almost done now? Shit… Time flies haha. She looks good, though, for sure, super-curious to hear how she turns out.

Off-topic, but didn’t you grow some Irene OG a while back and kind of break it down in a post somewhere? Somebody asked me about Irene earlier today and I have zero experience with it, neither growing it nor smoking it (and I never will haha, not interested at all), but I coulda sworn you posted your observations about it somewhere. I searched, but I couldn’t find anything.

[Tejas]

@zephyr

I can write up a more specific recipe if anybody is interested.

Definitely, please do a write up, those look tasty.

[zephyr]

Yeah I did talk about the Irene OG a while ago. It’s one of the southern OG versions. When I first saw it in California around 2012 or 13 they said it was a cut from Atlanta.

It smells like floral perfume and fruit loops. Compared to the OG lines from california the buds are larger and grow in colas, and the structure is more apically dominant with colas. If I were to guess, I think it could be either an outcross of the other southern kush cuts like triangle OG, or possibly just an unrelated line from era when all high grade bud was called “kush” in some states.

It’s pretty different from what I would consider the true OG kush lines from california. The older OG’s were stretchy and branchy with little nugs like berries evenly distributed on the whole plant, and larger buds at the tops.

Here are some quotes from what I wrote previously:

irene OG- perfumey fruit loops. This seems to be the smell that people now associate with the name OG, but to me a real OG like platinum, sfv, or the original should have a loud gas and skunk smell with hints of mild sweetness like the platinum OG clone I grew in the bay area, or the OG buds I was getting from good dealers in oakland and san francisco around 2009.

…

The irene OG comes from atlanta, and it appeared at a time when any really high quality bud or bud from out of state was frequently referred to as ‘kush’ or ‘og’ regardless of the strain. There is really no evidence that it has any shared lineage with the classic OG lines. it may be a relative of the emerald triangle bud that was bought to florida and became known as triangle kush.

[syzygy]

Was thinking about some OG crosses for the winter and Grandma’s Hashplant (Irene x 88g13HP) from Bodhi was one of many I was considering. Very helpful info, thanks for posting that!

[minitiger]

Okay, yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what I remembered you writing about it, but then I wondered if maybe I was thinking of your Rudeboi OG observations. The “not a real OG” thing was what I remembered most about what you wrote, the apical dominance, larger nugs… Yeah, I remember all of that. Thanks for the info.

@ElGalloBlanco: see two posts above haha.

[ElGalloBlanco]

Right on, thanks for that! And thanks @zephyr for sharing your knowledge and thoroughness in your response. Think I am going to be hanging around here as you have some interesting stuff going on, that Ethiopian Banana x OMG sounds like a crazy cross and looks great.

[zephyr]

I’m going to write some background on the old OG lines from California.

OG was definitely the most popular bud in the bay area for a long time, and we probably had the most variety of OG cuts. This is what I always heard about OG from SF dealers and emerald triangle growers.

Basically OG started off as emerald triangle greenbud.

The greenbud was a local polyhybrid formed when people’s crops cross pollinated in the emerald triangle. People were mostly growing the seeds that they got in imported bud, and others were growing their own local black market or family lines.

Dealers would buy imported bud a few times a year when the harvests came in, and they would plant seeds from the import bud to make some extra money with their own small crop.

More experienced growers who had lived in the area for a long time had family lines that they grew and saved seeds from every year. Very few people were growing sinsemila at that point, and if people chopped their males, the plants would still get lightly seeded by other nearby crops.

The combination of selective breeding by farmers saving seeds from their best plants each year, and constant introduction of new diverse genetics from imported bud created a distinct local line which was called greenbud.

Import bud gradually became less common and less desirable, demand was for the high quality locally grown weed. A lot of people were growing the local greenbud. It spread around the area and eventually the microclimates formed distinct lines. This was called OG, meaning ocean grown because it was grown on the coast in humboldt and mendocino.

The OG from the emerald triangle was bought by dealers and sold all over California. This is how OG kush came to LA and southern california. People grew it in southern california too and it developed distinct varieties like the SFV OG, and Larry OG.

In the bay area OG quickly spread as far south as the east bay, inland to sacramento, and as far north as the sierras. Some local versions from that area are tahoe OG and grass valley OG.

Demand continued to increase for this high grade california bud, people bought the california OG and sold it on the streets all over the US. This is how OG got to the south and became lines like triangle OG and Irene OG.

Being a black market line there will never be any real definitive documentation like we have now in the medical and legal era. But this version of the story still makes the most sense to me. I heard this same exact story from old heads who had been growing in humboldt since the 60’s, and east bay hydro growers.

I don’t think it could ever be plausible for someone to show up and take credit for breeding it because of the black market era it came from and the fact that it’s basically just a local line that showed up in peoples gardens through cross pollination.

[zephyr]

I decided it was time to grow something really special:

Bodhi’s ethiopian paintbrush x omg. aka god’s paintbrush.

I soaked 5 seeds, and got 5/5 sprouts within 48 hours. If anybody else has a pack of this god’s paintbrush, grow it now while the germ rates are still strong.

Unfortunately I lost 3 seedlings. I get help with my garden from a medical cannabis caregiver, and they let the soil dry out completely.

Moral of the story- if you grow with assistance from an MMJ caregiver always check their work.

The other 2 are looking great, and it looks like one that dried out might survive but that would be unlikely. I still have 5 seeds and one immature seed in the pack, but my plant count has been reduced to at most 7.

[Tejas]

Are you planning to drop anymore to get your count up?

[zephyr]

yeah I’ll start the whole pack and keep a really close eye on my seedlings this time.

[Tejas]

And no more help from that CCG!

[zephyr]

I popped 3 dank zappa f2 seeds by @Torontoke courtesy of @nube a while ago to get some more variety in my meds. I had 2 males, wish I could have used them at the time because one was incredibly skunky and dank.

because @nube 's grow seems to thrive with small pots, I decided to see how it would turn out in a one gallon pot. Mine isn’t quite as happy as nube’s plants, but the resin production on the buds is excellent, and it has a nice sweet basil smell.

I was originally planning to use this female with a special male I have going, but the timing didn’t work out. It would have gotten too root bound by the time the other females were ready to get pollinated. This is good though, because I can definitely use some indica sinsemilla meds.

[zephyr]

This is the special male plant. I’m calling it throwback indica- PNW northern lights x dank sinatra f2.

It’s a little overgrown and I had to train it pretty aggressively to keep the size in check, but it’s a beast. very vigorous and tolerant of stress. Nice large broad leaf fan leaves, and smaller more afghani looking leaves on the branches. I sexed it and then put it back in veg, it reverted back to veg growth quickly and seems pretty stable so far.

This was the only seed I got from a PNW northern lights cut from a production grow which has been in operation since the mid 80s. That’s the original pure indica northern lights, not the numbered outcrosses.

The clone came to me from the production grow with some spider mites, so I isolated it at a friend’s garden and gave him a branch from a flowering dank sinatra f2 male (f2 by @nube). Something must have gone wrong with his pollination attempt, because we only found one mature seed in the bud from that plant.

Fortunately it turned out to be a pretty nice male plant with a branchy column structure.
The male will be pollinating my two favorite cuts of the Ken Estes berry larry hybrid.

I took a few cuttings from the male so I can keep it around as a bonsai. I’m hoping to pair it up with some other indica hybrid heirlooms later this year. Possibly Pawsfodocaws washington state heirloom, purple paonia paralyzer from lefthandseeds, or ken estes 2012 grandaddy purple.

[minitiger]

Yeah, that seems plausible. It does seem to me that there must’ve been some sort of actual line-breeding involved, just because every legit OG I’ve ever come across ALWAYS has those tell-tale tear-drop-shaped calyxes that kind of just “fall apart” off of the stem or whatever, for lack of a better description. It’s not great “joint weed” haha, even though I love smoking joints of it. I recall one night in particular, in San Diego, laying in bed with one of my favorite people, and I was rolling a joint of Diablo and trying to get one of those tear-drop-shaped calyxes tamped down perfectly into the joint for what seemed like minutes before I rolled it (I’m very anal about my joints haha) and she finally looked over and saw what I was doing and laughed her ass off. She was like,”Dude, that’s what you’ve been doing?!? Roll that joint!”

And the fact that you’ve mentioned multiple times that all OG’s always just have those sorta “tiny” little “berry” nugs… I think the biggest OG nug I’ve ever seen weighed maybe four grams.

But yeah, that sorta “chunky, clunky” calyx formation that doesn’t really wanna break up seems to me to be an indicator that somebody (or multiple growers) selected for something specific.

Who knows? We never will. I wish we would, it’s super-fucking-fascinating to me. One of the greatest strains of all time and it’s shrouded in mystery… haha.

@zephyr

Bodhi’s ethiopian paintbrush x omg. aka god’s paintbrush.

Sweet! Looking forward to that one. I always liked that “Ethiopian Paintbrush” name. Good name haha. I’m assuming there’ll be a turpentine element involved. But that’s just me…

[zephyr]

@minitiger

it does seem to me that there must’ve been some sort of actual line-breeding involved

yeah I definitely think there was selective breeding involved. Between mixing with established and distinct family specific lines held by people who had lived in the area for a long time, and those farmers continuing to make selections as new genetics were introduced through cross pollination, there was definitely deliberate selection.

Like you said, it will always remain a mystery.

I wish the old diverse humboldt outdoor bud was still around. I know one family kept their family outdoor line going as late as around 2009, but I lost touch with them years ago. I never got to grow that but it was really good smoke. Frosty little popcorn buds with an herbal dank forest kind of smell. That was some really nice bud and I could see the similarity to the OG cuts.

The mutual friend that introduced me to them is now in the legal cannabis industry with one of the largest high end concentrate companies. I think he mostly grows hype genetics from the legalized market now.

[minitiger]

@zephyr

The mutual friend that introduced me to them is now in the legal cannabis industry with one of the largest high end concentrate companies. I think he mostly grows hype genetics from the legalized market now.

Pssshhhh… They alllll fucking do that now. All of them. It’s depressing haha. The few large-scale growers I used to know just started taking all of their weed and making it into concentrates like seven years ago. And not even strain-specific concentrates, but just making “Indica,” “Sativa,” and “Hybrid” vape cartridges or whatever they’re called. One of them gave me a pen he was marketing to dispensaries and a cartridge of each “oil” or whatever it’s called when he was first getting into that. They were garbage. They all tasted exactly the same and none of them got me high like flowers do.

But I guess that’s what the market demands now, so…

[zephyr]

My medical cannabis caregiver may in fact be the grim reaper in disguise haha.
I’m hella bummed out about those god’s paintbrush seedlings. That is without a doubt the best thing I had in my seed collection. I can work with 7, but it sucks to lose a third of the diversity in the line especially because the seeds started nice and strong.

I’m handling seedling care myself from now on.

[ElGalloBlanco]

That’s too bad, I’m still excited to see what you get out of them. God’s Paintbrush is such an amazing name.

[zephyr]

Here’s a smoke report on the PNW Northern Lights clone, which was used to make my “throwback” male.

The cut was the original pure indica PNW Northern lights, not one of the numbered outcrosses like nl5 etc.

After receiving the PNW northern lights and Oregon blueberry as unhealthy rooted clones infested with spider mites and powdery mildew, I treated the clones, isolated them outdoor, and I used my standard pest control regiment to control the mite infestation.

Using organic methods, I got the plant healthy enough to make it to harvest, did a selective pollination with Dank Sinatra f2 male, and got about two ounces of very special old school pure indica bud.

The high is very unique. Remember when you first started smoking, and every time you used cannabis felt special and memorable? That was what this smoke session was like. It felt like a very special and momentous occasion.

(The high is so memorable, I saved the bud to specifically to smoke on holidays and other special occasions.)

Time seemed to slow down in a pleasant manner. No motivation to do anything, except enjoy the moment as it slowly passes by. Great for meditation, introspection, and appreciating artwork and literature.

I watched an old Doctor Who episode from the early 80’s and felt like I had time traveled to the slow pre-internet world of my youth haha. Computers and smart phones seemed utterly laughable. I was %100 invested in the story with no distractions, blown away by the bizarre imagery and simple special effects. The episode was written by Douglas Adams and it was hilarious.

After that, I found my great grandmother’s middle school history textbook from 1912 and read it for several hours. It was excellent. My great uncle had rubbed liberty dimes and buffalo nickels in the margins. My great grandmother wrote some funny notes to her classmates.

I picked up Ambrose Bierce’s “The Devil’s Dictionary” and was overcome by how sharp witted and hilarious it was, and how the political commentary was still as relevant and damning now as it had been in the 1880’s.

This is exactly what I want from an indica, introspective, enlightening, pleasant, and relaxing. Not the bland and bleary effect of modern polyhybrids.

I’m not sure how this will translate to the offspring of my throwback male, but I used my usual method for assessing male potency and found the effect very nice, almost intimidatingly strong. I made cannabis juice with all the leaves and flowers.

Relaxing, slightly woozy / light headed, with an odd fluttery sensation in my belly, as if I had eaten a small shroom cap or maybe a couple stems.

I’ll post some photos of the male in flowering. It turned out to be a very nice specimen.

It produced a lot of seeds with 2 clones of Ken Estes’ Berry Larry pheno 4 (OG kush leaner), and one pheno of Bodhi’s ethiopian x omg.

(The ethiopian hybrid is for personal use, as the pack was a gift from bodhi, not one of the packs that was put up for sale.
According to bodhi’s tester rules, we are allowed to breed testers that pass stability testing and are officially released by bodhi. )

[ShiskaberrySavior]

Are you allowed to gift any seeds ? Sounds like a great strain to run .