Hashplants

[p59teitel]

This Tirah Valley from Landrace Warden is my biggest plant so far this year. Next to a God's Bud that was slow to start then got it's stem damaged. Lucky it's still alive, I've been babying it. When I feel like my plants are getting stunted by the rain, not growing fast enough, I do this sort of comparison.

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I'm interested in how these turn out. Hardly a hint of color besides green, no matter the cold. Can't wait to see what the flowers are like. This one could become a giant.

The Tirah are very hardy against the cold. I ran TRSC Tirah two years ago and didn’t chop the last plant until Nov 18th, after it had gone through -and easily survived - two hard frosts. And yeah, expect 15 footers!

 

[St. Phatty]

Hashplant implies a small frosty plant.

Does it work to grow Hashplant type strains, REAL BIG in Veg, e.g. 12 feet ?

I hope they don't lose their frostiness if they are grown bigger.

 

[goingrey]

Hashplant implies a small frosty plant.

Does it work to grow Hashplant type strains, REAL BIG in Veg, e.g. 12 feet ?

I hope they don't lose their frostiness if they are grown bigger.

The burqa-clad Afghan lady in my avatar is carrying some hash plants from the field to the barn. Not quite 12 feet maybe but I think at least 8?

 

[Old Piney]

And yeah, expect 15 footers!

Thanks for the heads up ,I'm starting late .to much weed

 

[therevverend]

Hashplant implies a small frosty plant.

Does it work to grow Hashplant type strains, REAL BIG in Veg, e.g. 12 feet ?

I hope they don't lose their frostiness if they are grown bigger.

People tend to think of hashplants as short or at most medium sized plants because the first hashplants to hit the west were mountain plants. From the Hindu Kush range. They were naturally short and squat, fast flowering, and adapted well to indoor growing. Outdoors with the pressure from law enforcement everyone wanted fast finishing discrete plants that didn't look like the typical big lime green sativa. As illustrated here.

All the early hashplant strains were short and squat. Northern lights, Afghan #1, Hashplant, maple leaf, etc. This year I'm growing a mountain hashplant, got seeds from Landrace Warden. Same dude that I got the Tirah Valley from. They have short summers, their growing season runs April-September most years. Hopefully they finish by October 1. Interesting look to them. 1st one is the purple pheno, 2nd is the green.

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These were more difficult to pop then the Tirah Valley. Took longer to pop, a few mutants with deformed growth, a dud or two, compared to the Tirah Valley that were 100% big and vigorous. I talked about it quite a bit with Landrace Warden, he seems like good people and passionate about the plants. (Be careful when you're dealing with some of these guys-most are honest but a few are dipshits. Helps to get to know them a little.). Strain hunting in the high mountains isn't easy, traveling on sketchy high mountain roads into areas that are mostly friendly and welcoming to visitors but...accidents can happen. People disappear or drive off cliffs, their belongings never found. Or turn up with a few stray bullets in them, maybe an avalanche buries them...who knows?

Back to the size thing, after the early 70's it wasn't easy to get access to the region. What with terrorists, wars, politics, etc. During the US era in Afghanistan things changed. In the West cannabis became accepted again, major legalization and decriminalization around the world. Also the isolated people in Afghanistan and Pakistan suddenly had free access to the world at large, through cell phones, the internet, and social media. And the locals were shocked, they had no idea there was cannabis culture in the West. They love it. Cannabis and hashish are their livelihood, their passion, and they think it's incredible that it's so widely popular and accepted in the West.

Suddenly there's been a flow of seeds and information coming out of places that were behind the 'Iron Burka'. Videos, pictures, books, all sorts of media coming from Charas Houses, farms, hashish makers, and hashish carnivals. Turns out there's really two types of cultivated wide leaf plants, of course there's many more types, but you can categorize them into valley types and mountain types. The valley types, especially in the lowlands of southern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, are long season hashplants that get HUGE.

They're closer to the equator and at a lower elevation then the other hash making areas. 29 degrees N latitude and 4000 feet or so. (compared to Hopar Valley for instance, which is 36 degrees N and over 8000 feet) It's 90 degrees or higher most days from April-mid November. The plants are late flowering, more like Mexican strains, finishing from late October through late November. The Baloch and Kandahar plants especially can turn into monsters, huge colas, tons of resin, beautiful colors, and all sorts of funky nasty smells. Until a couple years ago I had no idea that Baloch hashish might be the best in the world.

Here's a look at the King's Bud, the Baloch strain I'm growing this year.


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In the last 20 years they've been cleaning their hashish using static. They'll sift their hash like usual then use a couple of steel paddles to manipulate the pile of resin around. This builds up static charge which causes the large mature resin glands to stick to the paddle while the plant matter and immature crystals fall back into the pile. The stuff is incredible, pure silver resin that melts instantly, got to be 70% or more THC. They already know how to grow the good stuff, drying as much as they can indoors and processing the plants more carefully then I've seen in other regions. I'd love to try some.

These are my Kushkak plants. Kushkak is in northern Afghanistan, near Balkh. The plants should be ass-kicking and hopefully earlier then the King's Bud but they should still be in the 8-10 foot range. The color's interesting, I suspect the flower may have a reddish hue to it if it manages to mature completely.

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Sometimes the practices of the growers make hashplants seem smaller then the really are. Many growers wait until after the harvest of winter wheat or poppies to sow their hashplants, in May. Landrace Warden was saying the growers in Tirah Valley don't plant out until late May because they don't want their plants 20 feet tall because the wind breaks the stalks. Smaller plants are easy to deal with. Worries me a bit, broken stalks are what I don't need.

 

[p59teitel]

You’ll probably want to stake your Tirah. I have no choice where I grow, because I’m pretty much guaranteed to get tropical storm force winds at some point.

The year l grew the Tirah they all made it through two 50+ mph storms. During harvest I left the last two 15 and one 13 footer up to withstand a near hurricane with 70 mph winds. Before the storm -

All three should have made it through. But one fifteen footer caught so much wind that she bent over enough to pull the main bamboo pole far enough out of the ground to fail, and her main stalk twisted and broke. Despite looking bedraggled the other two were intact with only a couple of broken branches -

Tough plants.

 

[Icemud]

88G13HP on day 29 flowering...

 

[Wolverine97]

Whose '88/g13hp is that? So many people have made their own seed increases from the ndn guy stock, and further down, from Hazeman stock, or others. That said, it looks right.

 

[Icemud]

Whose '88/g13hp is that? So many people have made their own seed increases from the ndn guy stock, and further down, from Hazeman stock, or others. That said, it looks right.

I picked it up from Hazeman.

 

[therevverend]

I picked it up from Hazeman.

She looks like a clone of my big 88g13hp last year, when she was at a similar stage in her flowering cycle. The colorful one. Dried and cured she's some of my favorite smoke from last year. She's fantastic but not my ideal 88g13hp because of the looser flower structure and stronger botrytis tendencies compared to the 'perfect' one I found 3 years ago. I wonder if that pheno would pop up out of Hazeman's stock. I believe the 88g13hp seeds I was given were F2s made from NDN guy's stock, there was a lot of variation between plants.

Here's a picture from a week ago of a hybrid I made with male pollen from an 88g13hp last year. I dusted one of my dark purple volunteers. I'll post more pictures soon because the weather's been good and they're growing like crazy. I also need to post pictures of my (purple Hindu Kush x M10 Afghan) X 88g13HPs. Very excited to see how those turn out.

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Seeing a lot of progress now, most of the seedlings are maturing out of their delicate baby leaf stage. Long days, warmer weather, sunshine, and fertilizer has meant a growth spurt. This morning they were all perked up and turned towards the rising sun. My pictures I took from a few days ago already look dated compared to how they look now. I'll show them anyway because I like the way the plants are looking.

This might be my most promising Tirah Valley. There's bigger more vigorous ones but this looks like a Hindu Kush. One photo in the direct sun, one in the shade. It's interesting how lighting and distance can change how a plant looks and highlight different features.

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The Aunt of Farouk are also looking good. Showing the stocky growth and wide leaves I look for in a hashplant.

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[Icemud]

The one in the previous picture is actually the one I am flowering out and not cloning so its the last run for this pheno. The growth structure was really nice, good branching, but the airy bud structure and subpar terps really made me not want to keep this pheno. I did a small scale open pollination on my last cycle but had a hell of a time getting the seeds to sprout. I had too hot of soil and it was roasting the tap roots.

My pollen chucking project had 3 88G13HP males, and 2 females. I actually re-vegged the other female which is in my veg tent now for future use as it had almost greasy trichomes on it and had the new tennis ball/new shoes asphalt terps which I love, so I chose to use that in future upcoming projects and decided to run this pheno out for flowering. (the one in the pic).

I also hit a handful of other strains with the pollen so have a lot of beans to pop in the future and see what comes out of them. I crossed the 88g13hp with: ogiesel, chocolate thai #5 (pheno I selected), dj short blueberry F4 pheno A-3, alien antifreeze, harlequin, birthday cake S1, black cherry soda, gorilla glue #4, roasted garlic margy, trainwreck, GDP and private reserve og.

Here is the asphalt/tennis ball pheno of the 88g13HP from the pollen project. It was just a tiny sprout when I flipped it to flowering so it really didn't yield many seeds, maybe like 40 total but should be enough to hunt for something special in the future.

I also got a ton of seeds of the pheno in the other picture, and since I used 3 males I am hoping for a bit of variety in the progeny to play with in the future. I really would like to spend some good time finding a proper female to include on future "chucking" projects.

And here are the 3 male 88G13HP's used in the pollen project.

 

[therevverend]

We've had a May heat wave, everyone's going through a growth spurt. Here's a Baloch King Bud.

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Aunt of Farouk

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Dusted 88g13hp pollen on one of my It's-so-purple-it's-black volunteers last year. I'm liking what I'm seeing.

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So much that it got a premium spot in the ground. Hopefully she gets her roots down and goes for it.

 

[p59teitel]

Finally got everything transplanted from Solo cups into the ground last weekend. I usually plant around May 15, but I didn’t want them going through a bunch of nights in the low 40s and it has been a cool spring up until now.

First up is Baaba Qo Selections Mazar-I-Sharif. The first three were started April 1 and the last a month later to replace one that dampened off. Solid healthy plants, a little pest damage but not enough to freak out over -

 

[p59teitel]

Next up is The Real Seed Co.’s Panjshir Valley, Afghanistan. These weren’t started until three weeks into April, as a replacement for the planned Rabat, Afghans that never developed root tails. Again, the small last one is a late replacement for one that dampened off, I kind of struggled out of the gate this year.

I obtained these upon the likely unintentional recommendation of the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, which reports that Panjshir hashish currently fetches the highest price in all the land. Looking forward to a hash competition with the longtime champion Mazari -

 

[p59teitel]

Moving on to the Himalaya strains. This is TRSC Dakshinkali from Nepal. Seeds were challenging to get going and again there is a late replacement. The plants seem quite healthy and looking forward to hand rubbing some Temple Balls as well as dry sift and flower -

 

[p59teitel]

This is TRSC Rasoli. They were in my freezer for a couple years and actually popped the best of all. Two plants grew normally and two had weird albinism spots develop. One stopped developing the main stem and tossed out two stems, while the other grew past the weirdness. The two normal ones seem destined to grow the tallest of everything. These too may see some fresh hand rubbing -

 

[Tynehead Tom]

@p59teitel .... those are some awesome sounding hashplants. Looking forward to seeing your near harvest pics!!!
May the canna gods bless your garden this season

 

[p59teitel]

Will do. In the meantime I did take down my annual winter windowsill plant abuse project yesterday; details here -

Afghan Mix (TRSC)

Thanks man. "I think a lot of the commercial afghani types could do well with some new blood from that side of the family." Not sure if this is the kind of thing you have in mind, but... for a couple years now I have been wanting to do an all fem grow. At first I was going to use only...

www.icmag.com

 

[goingrey]

They were in my freezer for a couple years and actually popped the best of all.

Cold stratified hehe.

 

[p59teitel]

Cold stratified hehe.

Yep non-tropical landraces love them some cold winter!