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2022 by the Danube: ZamZamKullu, PCK and China Yunnan

yoss33

yoss33

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dubi

dubi

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Hi @yoss33 hope you had a smooth recovery from covid and starting a good autumn. Glad to hear you are having a dry autumn so far. Summer in Europe was indeed challenging with the anormally high temps and dry weather all over the continent, a true test for outdoor growing, especially for guerrilla growers.

Anyway, all the plants and genetics look very promising in flowering now in October! :) Really nice purple PCK expressions to breed with. The China Yunnan x PCK cross should work a bit like our Snow Moon limited edtion (Orient Express China Yunnan pheno x Purple PCK) did.

Your Chinese female looks indeed more on the sativa side, probably more convenient for your climate since the more indica expressions are more sensitive against botrytis.

The Zam Zam Kullu looks fairly familar, leaning to Zamaldelica F1 regular release you have been playing with latest years. Always a pleausure to follow your outdoor endeavours and the outcome of your own hybrids! ;)

Wish the weather remains sunny for the upcoming weeks!
 
yoss33

yoss33

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Hey, thanks for the wishes, Dubi!
We are now having a cold but sunny week, with morning lows of 1*C, which means morning frosts. The days are sunny and hopefully the plants will have energy to recover and swell. The forecasts for the next week are better.
The China Yunnan looks and smells almost ready, the ZamZamKullu will need at least a few more weeks, though I find the early samples of both plants already great and mature enough. So, even if I have to harvest now, I call the season successfull!
The PCK is low yielder (mostly caused by its low vigor) but of great quality, both the flavor and the effect. It's flavor is not as strong as, say, the Chems, but is more exotic (not as common) - it has flowery notes added to the classic kush flavor. The effect is kind but deep, with initial excitation, and then more relaxing. Very comfortable and joyful/giggly in company. I hope it stays like this with curing. This plant felt the most relaxing out of the 3 PCK females I made seeds with, judging by the seeded buds' effect. And still, it's not dumb head indica at all, nor tiring/sleepy. Maybe I harvested it a bit too early. Anyways, I'm happy with it.
The China Yunnan also has great effect, nice flavor and very smooth smoke. Its effect is more clean, not as relaxing, but still very comfortable, pleasant and happy. I find the effect more dense and pleasant than the 2 Orient Express plants, grown indoors, that I've tried, though comparing indoors and outdoors grown bud is like comparing apples and oranges. With both China Yunnan and Orient Express, I like how the effect can get fairly strong if you smoke more, but still it never overwhelms mentally, it stays gentle and kind.
The ZamZamKullu's latest samples are more clean and surprisingly pleasant. With great after taste, I can taste chocolate and vanilla in there. The experience feels between Haze and Zamaldelica.
It's more fluffy than any Zamaldelica I've seen grown outdoors, also the structure of the branches (all growing upwards, not so branchy) still reminds of the 1/4 Kullu.

ZamZamKullu
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China Yunnan:
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And a photo of the 2 PCK seedlings, I tried to capture (unsuccessfully) the almost black color of one of them:
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yoss33

yoss33

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yoss33

yoss33

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Yesterday I harvested the ZamZamKullu! :greenstars:
It could go more, it's in the middle of flowering and there's only good weather in the forecasts. But the samples I'm trying are getting calmer and I really like the electric high of the early Zamaldelica harvest. So, chop time!
Just before the harvest:
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After the plant was harvested, I performed the usual autopsy, digging out the root ball, which was in perfect help. This is the first Zamaldelica (or descendent) plant where I had difficulty removing the stem from the ground. All the other plants needed just to bend the stem in all directions, which easily teared off the roots from the root ball. This is the major weakness of Zamaldelica, at least of big Zamaldelica plants - roots tearing off when the stem bends during storms. This is a very unusual weakness that I haven't observed in other strains. I'm happy to see that not all descendents of the Zam mother bear this weakness.
While bending the stem, trying to tear the roots off, the stem broke at a node close to the ground and I noticed that it had brown areas and holes/tunnels dug inside. It turned out that most of the big branches are hollow, with a tunnel in the middle. And I realized that the stem borers that we have and that attack sativas (PCK didn't suffer at all) don't just dig into the stem and stay there, but they eat the inside of the branch going all the way down the branch to the main stem, shitting and spreading disease everywhere. Perhaps the moldy rootball and roots that easily tear off are a consequence of the mold that the stem borers spread inside the plant. So, these pests can actually kill a plant, and not just slow down individual branches, as I thought.
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yoss33

yoss33

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And here's the small China Yunnan x PCK plant. It's smell was more like CY, than PCK, with some fuel notes added. I tried it this morning and the effect was clean and pleasant, with nice thick but smooth indica smoke with sweet aftertaste.
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And these are a couple of Zam x PCK, which are still in the ground. Both have a similar very-fruity berry bud smell.
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dubi

dubi

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Congrats on your final harvest @yoss33 :smoke: Glad the indica strains didn't get much mold and that you managed to get a nice taste from your ZamKullu tropical sativa genetics, especially considering your climate and latitude! It's time for the warrior to rest and enjoy the guerrilla harvest these upcoming months through the curing ;)
 
yoss33

yoss33

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Thank you, Dubi! :)
I first had to pass through the tropical-sativa-manicuring experience, before resting on the curing jars :) Fortunately, the ZamZamKullu was easy to manicure by hand (no scissors). Most strains will have small pieces of bud ripping off when you pull the leaves, but not this one. Once it got dry enough, the leaf stalks easily broke. It took me only 3 x 2 hours to manicure 700 gr of bud. The yield is about half the yield of the mother Zamaldelica, but still good, I'll be smoking this at least 2 years :)

To whomever might be interested, here's a very nice article about stem borers: https://webdoc.agsci.colostate.edu/...sian hemp borer September 2018 rewrite(1).pdf
I have troubles with all 3 of them - Eurasian hemp borer (small orange larva) on sativas and hybrids (inc. China Yunnan but not on PCK), European corn borer (larger whitish larva in large stems) on sativas, and Corn earworm (large catterpillers) on indicas and indica-dominant strains (interestingly, they didn't like China Yunnan, but liked a lot the PCK next to it).
I've seen the catters (eating buds and dropping poop) and the small orange worms (mostly eating seeds and boring into top stems) a lot, but this year I realized that I've been having real problems with the corn borer, that stays hidden in the big stems, but that actually makes the most damage and can kill a plant, not only stunt individual branches.
I thought that Zamaldelica and its descendants have weak roots that easily break off the root ball in storms, but now I realize it might have been rot that was killing these roots, making them softer and easier to break off.
I have time till next season to think of how to battle these corn borers, the first thing to do is burn the remaining stalks, that I've been ignorantly leaving close to my growing spots, killing the wintering larvae inside.
 
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