Do you think possibly that the makeup of the rollie pollie husk is chitin?
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Something along those lines… don’t quote me on that. 
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Yes, being an isopod which is a type of crustacean, their exoskeletons are made of chitin.
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That’s cool as the chitin breaks down into chitinase or however you spell it lol boost terps and all kinds of other fun and beneficial goodies 
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I’ve never tried it @zephyr but I grew up with them everywhere in the southeast. I have read about their awesome skills breaking down compost. As kids we all played with them until we grew older and forgot about them. 
We have them here but not like back there. I was surprised to see them here and at this elevation. I love insects. 
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Rolly pollies are about the cutest little bugs there is ya! Great idea to use them for castings really can’t wait to hear how it works
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doing some shucking.
(ethiopian banana x old mother afghani) x throwback (original PNW northern lights clone x dank sinatra f2)
Thanks again to bodhi for giving me the go ahead to make hybrids with the ethiopian banana x omg.
I’m going to call this hybrid Ethiopian Throwback.
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I’m trying to get back in the habit of posting regular updates. Might make a dedicated thread for my ethiopian afghani breeding project.
So far I have completed two rounds of pure open pollination breeding with all 5 ethiopian paintbrush OMG, and my selected ethiopian banana OMG female.
The first round of breeding from seed had an additional male that popped some pistils before it opened its balls and was culled early on. I don’t think it could have released any pollen, but in order to be completely certain I ran the open pollination again from clone.
I did a second round of open pollination breeding to eliminate the variable entirely. there is no chance of any herm genetic material in the second round of open pollination.
Now the line is preserved and diversified.
Next, I am moving on to selective breeding.
Sticking with bodhi’s naming convention, I named all the mothers based on their smell. I had to simplify to shorter and less similar names to make things easier for labeling and note taking. I love these cuts so I’m going to keep them around for a while.
ethiopian banana x omg #6 = nectarine
ethiopian paintbrush x omg female 1 = cherry
ethiopian paintbrush x omg female 2 = strawberry
For my selective breeding, I will start by crossing all the females to each male individually, so I will have isolated seed stock representing the traits of each male plant.
I have started with ethiopian paintbrush omg #3 male crossed to all the ethiopian females. The #3 is probably the male with the most wild sativa traits. Grown from seed it has no apical dominance, producing many stalks branching out from the soil line.
Like many of the ethiopian banana males and females, it is sensitive to maturity and root space, and will begin to preflower under 18/6 when it is old enough. (several of the ethiopian banana omg females would flower slowly under 18/6 when mature).
I gave the females a 2 week head start in the flowering tent before moving the preflowered male in, so I could make sure their flower cycles would line up properly. The pollination is going well.
And my Ken Estes berry larry #4 is along for the ride with this whole breeding process. It’s a recessive larry leaning pheno of [goji og x (larry og x grandaddy purple)].
It’s a great representation of an og in seed form, with classic rock hard berry nugs all over the branches, lanky structure, and nostalgic high. It also retains a pretty classic OG smell, mild dankness, gasoline, herbal fennel, black pepper, with just a hint of fruityness from the gdp and goji.
Being a recessive pheno with a nuanced and complex high, I think it is a great choice to cross with the ethiopian OMG to let the landrace influence shine. I have grown it for 2 (or 3?) years now, so I am very familiar with it and should be able to read the resulting hybrids pretty well to identify the influences of the specific ethiopian omg males.
It also supplies my indica meds while I work with all these sativas.
I’ll follow up with a photo of flowering canopy added to this post.
Next I’ll be working on a big photo dump from the open pollination breeding process, and some documentation of the other hybrids I am making with the ethiopian omg.
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This is the first ethiopian hybrid to be grown out:
ethiopian banana omg #6 Nectarine x (portland durban hybrid)
this hybrid is my remix of the scarce “mount hood magic sativa”
A friend named the hybrid PDX Lion.
He gave a couple females away to a few inexperienced growers so we should get some feedback on the line at the end of the outdoor season. He’s growing one as well.
I am growing the PDX Lion for an in-cross to the ethiopian paintbrush x omg males.
taking the [ethiopian banana omg #6 Nectarine x (portland durban hybrid)] and mixing the (ethiopian paintbrush x omg) back into the genetics,
sort of like a back cross that reinforces the ethiopian omg side of the genetics while diversifying it by combining the genetic material of the banana and paintbrush sisters. Mine will be open pollinated by all the ethiopian omg males. My friend might use his for a selective pollination with the selected ethiopian paintbrush omg #10 resinous male.
This is my female PDX lion seedling.
this is my first time using sex testing, and I found it very useful. I didn’t have to sex it under 12/12 and reveg it, just tested and planted outdoors.
My friend sexed his plants using the photoperiod method, and it was interesting to note the reveg completely changed the structure compared to mine. Much leafier with extra branching after the reveg.
Here’s a photo of the female before being transplanted outdoor
It has already doubled in size since saturday. I am excited about this one, out of 4 phenos, this one has a noticeable skunky smell even as a small plant. Especially at the apical growth.
It was also a very hardy seedling. After it sprouted its tap root, it was overhandled during planting, dug up, and planted again. It didn’t mind at all. It’s nice to find a plant that is forgiving of grower fuck-ups.
I also started my seeds in a soil that was too rich, and these thrived anyway. So they can tolerate a lot of nutrients without burning.
I had switched to EB stone recipe 420 for my potting soil and clone cuttings, so I gave it a try for starting seedlings. It fried all my lebanese seedlings, and the other homemade hybrid had some odd growth and slight burning.
for comparison, here are the tested PDX lion males.
I notice these don’t have the skunk smell, and the stem rub is very very similar to something I used to grow in the bay area. I can’t quite place it, but it’s probably the durban influence.
They are currently chilling on a windowsill providing some extra o2 for me.
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After reading all that, my brain hurts… haha.
This all sounds super-interesting and very good, particularly this:
I know I always say,”Nahhhh, don’t worry about it, I don’t want any seeds…” but, uh… haha. Looking forward to this grow for sure. I’m unclear, though, on what exactly the Portland Durban Hybrid is.
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It’s a local strain called mount hood magic sativa.
it’s pretty much a classic old school nl5 durban, which may have been more recently crossed to a durban. It’s either durban x (nl5 durban), or a very sativa leaning selection of an old NL5 durban.
You can also find some info about it on leafly. This is the sativa version mentioned on leafly, which doesn’t show up in dispensaries any more. (that’s why I called it the the short lived mount hood magic sativa, as far as I know this version wasn’t used after 2018.)
It was really good bud. I’m excited to have access to it as an outcross in seed form with this PDX Lion hybrid.
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Okay, thanks. That actually sounds like a really, really good and interesting cross. I love Durban. I love NL5. Haha. I’m not sure I’ve heard of that one, except from those old seed bank catalogs that I’ve read. It isn’t from that old 80’s stock, right? Just a cross that somebody in PDX made?
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It’s from an old seed line. There’s not a whole lot of information online, but it’s accurate even the leafly stuff.
Here’s what I know from conversations.
it’s a selection of old nl5 durban that was developed to be a signature line and given a name. They said the line was old, and had been grown around here for long time. They selected it to make their own version for their grow.
it sounded like there was a few generations of selection to get something distinctive that would look good compared to other popular lines.
One pheno is still being sold.
That’s all I really know about it, other than it’s good weed.
I think they also had an old local durban, I’m not sure whether that factored into their selections or not.
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Here’s a photo of the ethiopian afghani selective breeding taken on saturday.
This is male #3, the male with the most wild sativa type traits. It has no apical dominance at all, with many stalks growing out of the soil line, and long loose floral clusters. Really interesting stem rub smell… something like cedar / lime peels.
Referring back to my ethiopian banana omg tester notes and photos, this is like some of the vine or spider structure phenos, but with a more vertical growth pattern.
It’s hard to distinguish which female is which in the photo,
but that’s the epba #11 “cherry” on the front right,
the epba #6 “strawberry” behind the male,
the ethiopian banana omg “nectarine” at the back right,
and there’s also a berry larry #4 on the right between the cherry at the front and the nectarine at the back.
The females are looking pretty thoroughly pollinated, so I am going to give the male about 1 more week, then chop it and let the seeds ripen.
This is the last round of indoor growing for the #3 male. It has completed 2 rounds of open pollination preservation breeding, and now the selective breeding with all the females to isolate the traits of the #3 in the offspring.
Once the male has completed a thorough pollination, we will chop it and clean up all the pollen and put in fresh pollen filters.
I have the #5 male in veg ready to go for the next round of breeding. The next batch of ethiopian female clones will soon be transplanted into my other flowering tent, where they will veg until it’s time to start the next round of selective breeding with the #5 male.
As soon as the current seeded females finish, the next round of breeding will begin. The timing is working out well for the perpetual grow.
My last round of open pollination took a long time because I let the males and females flower and seed until they were totally exhausted. It’s a long flowering line, so after the initial blitz it was a long slow pollination, and then after I finally chopped the males it was more than a month of ripening for the latest pollinated seeds to fully ripen.
It was worth it, this was a great way to really preserve the line in its truest form with maximum diversity. I have two tents worth of heavily seeded bud from all the females.
I’m going to do this round of selective breeding as just one thorough pollination at the beginning, and then the females can ripen those seeds while the buds stack with fresh flowers and foxtail to their hearts content, without adding extra time for ripening seeds pollinated late in flower.
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I have cuts of all of the ethiopian males outdoor for another open pollination with all the ethiopian females outdoor, and to make hybrids with clone onlys and other seed lines.
the ethiopian afghani will be open pollinating:
bodhi neirika seed trust china yunnan dali cangshan mountain
#1 and #2 cuts.
These are my 3 year old original phenos from the bodhi packs.
I’m really excited about this hybrid and what it has to offer medicinally, and performance wise for outdoor growing
the PDX Lion ethiopian afghani 6 “nectarine” x local durban hybrid made last year
bodhi’s pine soul cut of goji og
obama kush
The pinesoul and obama clones are sourced from Archive’s dispensary / plant nursery.
and possibly a few more depending on how things work out.
I was trying to cross the ethiopian with more seed lines, but sadly I got all males from everything except the PDX Lion.
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Cool! I picked up some Mt Hood Magic from the dispensary and it was really good! Definitely reminded me of NL5 Durban… the effects were uplifting, motivating, and creative… tasted really good as well. I think Five Zero Trees found it/made it right? Anyways, it’s good stuff, I’m wishing you success on you repro of it.
Nice jungle in there. Looks like you’ll have plenty of beans to play around with!
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Glad I found this thread watching earnestly! Plants look great
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Same here 
On “watching”
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surprise ethiopian afghani f2 volunteer seedlings
These are being transplanted into cups. They got a little bit stretchy shaded in the undergrowth, but I think they will grow out of it by potting them deeper to bury some of the excess stem.
they will probably get flowered for the first round of sinsemilla after the selective breeding is finished, but we’ll see how the timing works out.
I know it’s the pure ethiopian omg f2 because these pots had ethiopian males in them, and none of the berry larrys or other hybrid lines have ever been in the same tent as the ethiopian males during the open pollinations. Only ethiopian females were in the tent with the males.
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I keep forgetting to ask you about this. What’s the deal with that one? Where’d you source that from? Do you have any idea what the actual genetics are?
I got, like, one eighth of that Obama one time, just outta curiosity; maybe I got a second eighth, can’t remember. I liked it, good smoke, but it showed up right about the same time as that Charlie Sheen OG (which magically appeared right after he did that hilarious “tiger’s blood” interview) and the Michael Phelps OG, right after pics of Phelps hitting a bong showed up online. I figured it was just people renaming stuff to capitalize on the recent “scandals” or whatever haha, kinda like how all of those “planetary” OG’s just showed up one day, hung around for a year or so and then were gone.
So… Yeah haha. What’s the deal with that Obama?
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