Orient Express & more from the Buddhist Arc

[Satyros]

Installed something very ugly that should be good for the season, maybe a few years.


I found all of two additional males. If I tried to tell someone, feminized Nemesis makes female plants from its seeds, they'd laugh me off the block, but so far this seems to be happening.


The biggest plant is in the smallest container, which also seems backwards, and that one is likely male, we'll see.


If I had to guess which is actually the fastest flowering, I might have to lean towards the Bhutanese. It's starting to get small clusters, whereas everything else would still have to be called "a few pistils". Pretty impressive for a plant that's only about two months old from seed. Thin, lanky, probably would not be considered high yielding, but it looks like it will do better that five feet with a lollipop tuft for a top. There is at least some branching and inner bud sites.


Compared to last year around this time, there are daily clouds and rain, which perhaps is making everything grow faster and flower sooner than if they were constantly in the sun's oven.


Development-wise, these are all good selections for outdoor stretchy sativas, and if the occasional scent is any clue to their effect, something in there is a head turner. Maybe some of it is bland, but, considering there's twice as many plants that are twice as big as last year's run, it is impossible to give them much individual treatment. Must be nice to be able to expand without major concerns.

 

[Satyros]

Hrmph. It's probably not common that anyone gets a gripe about their biggest plant; it's now taller than me, its stem is almost as big as mine, and still sitting with the spiky blade things whose name I can't remember, instead of showing sex. It's unreasonably larger than anything around it, height, thickness, branching, all dreadnoughts, and I doubt it's a girl, but I can't prove it.


A few others have yet to show, but they all look about the same, not trying to turn into an umbrella and crowd everyone out. It would be really nice to get some more space, but yeah...twenty some odd regular plants, and five males found. It just can't be right...can it??

 

[Satyros]

The explanation is that it was growing in the ground as if the container were not there.


Was definitely going in tree mode, the stalk itself weighed a few pounds. I went ahead and broke it and redid it and got rained on. Pretty much right at the moment when I disturbed it.


Pretty sure if that's what you're trying to do, this stuff can go there.

 

[Satyros]

Breaking the tree's root knocked the wind out of its sails, but, after shedding some leaves, it will probably be ok. I still hope it is a male because it is still too big. I got rid of one more smaller male, and, it's almost to the point where things might be reasonably distributed, if this tree was removed. One of the worst dangers of overcrowding is that I have broken about three good branches just trying to move stuff around.


It's just over-abundant. I would not expect to get 10/10 germination from the Thai and then have two males to pluck, it would be more like 7/10 and remove four. So then in your hobby garden where you have eight plants that should have been only three, plus the other ratios being skewed, you wind up with what looks like a solid mass of leafage that cannot sway in the breeze.


For whatever reason, although planted last, the Bhutanese is really starting the flower show. It seems to be the definition of sativa appearance, narrowest leaves of anything I've grown so far. Perhaps it is just sensitive to daylight changes; Bhutan definitely isn't tropical, even if it does have tropical micro-climates, that's not the same as the almost steady state of light further south.


In this case, it makes sense to see it start prior to kinds whose ancestry is about ten degrees off equator. This year, there is nothing indica-dominant or that would be expected good from eight weeks of flowering. Twelve to fourteen should work if the rest of them will start now-ish.

 

[Satyros]

Just for general information, if, for some reason, you break a large plant from its taproot, this is how long it takes to look normal again. About five days. I just might not be able to keep it. After straightening out, it is extremely close to waving hello to the world. I would just bend it flat if there was room to do so, but even now, having fed the seventh male to the goats, there still really isn't room for it at all.


There are not many left that could possibly go male and still today, 7 out of 23 from regular seed sounds like pure fantasy...too many females and a tree bigger than me is a complete turnaround from the Sexbud that bolted in one month.


That Bhutanese might be a reasonable option for someone searching for a sativa that comes up a little faster than the tropicals. Even the Nemesis which I planted in March is still barely getting little wispys, but the Bhutanese has bunches of clusters identifiable from a distance. It probably will still need to run into October, but it outgrew all the older stuff and all of them are flowering faster as well. And actually the most flowery one of all, I topped twice, which they say not to do. Nor did that keep it small.


Nothing wrong with the other kinds, but that one really distinguishes itself.

 

[Satyros]

I went ahead and extracted the "tree" from the group and put it at risk to animals. Looks like its flowering hit a reset--existing pre-flowers all withered and a new set is coming in. If it goes female, I believe I will stick it in the woods.


The rest of the plants really needed it out of the way. Due to the lack of individual attention, a lot of them are an elongated "Y", topped once and stretchy--stalky. Finished the pot-ups which is the moment of giving them bone & kelp meal, and I think they will flower fine given their structure, but LST would have really helped. So the overcrowding combined with the abnormally low amount of males definitely reduces yield per plant, but, twice as many plants producing half as much as they otherwise might, amounts to about the same thing anyway. This would not have happened from feminized stuff, but, it remains mostly an attempt to sample the different strains, moreso than maximum yield.


I can't think of a different way to do it in a limited space and no indoor rig to force flower cuttings to determine males.

 

[Satyros]

The eighth and ninth males have been ejected, Himalaya and Krystalica. It's perhaps minorly frustrating as the Krystalica was the motivation behind this year's selection and it had the highest male ratio. However, compared to most kinds whose first male appurtenances are beady little elliptical things, this one immediately throws robust, attractive "bananas", which I take as a sign of its vigor, which it definitely has.


The "tree" is one and still has a few days of recovery to get going with flowers, so we'll see. I believe it is the last potential male. If so, there might be just one girl of these.



Wild Thailand had a high ratio of females, and one of those finally reached higher than the Bhutanese. Very spindly and aerial looking. On the whole, I would take them as sativa, but there is some variation from the really tall one to a few that are shorter and denser with slightly wider leaves. 100% germination and something like 7/10 ladies probably isn't too shabby for regular seed, and I suppose the slight lack of carbon copy identity is a wild trait, or, at least theoretically for them, selective reproduction from within its own group.


Nemesis was originally on the faster and indica style of flowering, but mixing with Orient Express seems to have altered it significantly. The mixing ruined Sexbud, seems to have converted Nemesis into the father, and I'm not sure that it affected Himalaya Gold much at all.


So that still leaves more plants than the anticipated target number; they are thinned out enough to do allright, probably at the expense of lower/inner branch budding, but we'll pretend that the additional tops of more plants is just as good as bushy interior development of fewer.

 

[Satyros]

We get our glasses from a lost and found drawer. It's necessary in order to perform the following feats.


Still not quite sure but the tree could be a girl so it stays. However, a piece of the Thai has found its way to a different phase called gland production. From first noticing it, one would say it extends considerably onto the small leaves.


I don't think it's the worst sign that could be happening, and probably not something I'm going to try to stop like it growing too big.

 

[Satyros]

Tree is a she, and no longer the tallest, but still the bulkiest stem.


I haven't done any liquid goodies like molasses because it keeps raining, which is unusual for here. A lot of these plants are blooming fiends and some are just starting to emerge from the "wispy" look. So at least they have what they need to get started.


If they bulk up at all, they will be massive. Thai and Bhutanese seem to be pretty generously loaded with budding sites--almost silly about it. Those are supposed to be late finishers; they say it takes even longer up north, which I guess owes to the more rapidly diminishing sunshine. Not sure if Nemesis is still fairly fast being mixed with the longer OE; each plant has to be read as an individual in something like this.

 

[Satyros]

Went back to adding liquid; looks hot and dry for the rest of the month.


Compared to last year, nothing much started blooming until now, which I suppose was since those were quite young. With mature plants, there is...nothing that's not well on its way now. For the first time, I am looking up to cannabis; some of these might only be as tall as me without the container, but as they are, they're up above me.


Nemesis is still the densest/least stretchy, so it mostly kept that trait. It will probably have multiple copies of the club-like stalk from last year.


Krystalica is apparently always an F1, so, instead of reproducing it, they seem to keep parent stock (Nepali & Kerala) they don't sell on its own, but use it to make this kind. That may mean it's not good for breeding, so perhaps a semi-defeat to it being regular seeds, but the plant itself is fine.


I may need to go snip some twiggy lower branches. Everything is just so crowded, it's hard to tell what's going on. You want some wiggle room, and I'm not sure how to get it. Really a gorgeous sea of flowery tops; not sure I can show that. I don't really expect to do twenty individual harvest pics, but I think there will be a good representative of each strain, so we'll at least do a few.

 

[Satyros]

Yellowing


Everything yellows around here. It sunburns.


If I understand correctly, nitrogen makes something green to start with, whereas calcium is more or less the sunscreen once established.


Tomatoes, which like heat and sun quite a bit, do this, and, along with other plants, to my eye, they appear most strongly affected where they get almost horizontal late afternoon and evening sunlight.


It is not a good sign for cannabis to yellow from the top or all over, but it does seem normal for it to eat some of its inner and lower leafage once flowers are set. I suppose it would eat all of it if grown long enough.



Because I don't know what I am growing, I have been unable to decide about a few plants that have been lighter/more of a yellow-green color all along. Theoretically, they got about the same ingredients as everything darker.


However, I see sort of the same "rust band" of yellow on cannabis as tomatoes--it shows up facing that late sun. The lighter plants are in that position. I am unsure whether this means they have simply been N-deficient all along, or if the exposure to late sun is a bit rough, or it's just normal.


For the most part, plants without that exposure shed only a few leaves, which appears reflected in the flowers starting to get plump. So there doesn't seem to be a systemic issue or widespread deficiency.


If one attempts to correct yellowing (flowering) plants by adding nitrogen, it may go back to vegetating, which would be undesirable. So I think we let the three or so of these go their course, which may have been caused by deficiency, but I am not sure. They were simply always lighter, but not in a way that ever looked problematic.


Sometimes, sativas generally are said to be more leaf-lossy than indica, and we certainly would like them not to grow or stretch any more--I think that is done--and snacking on itself is ok.


I'm guessing plants at 45 deg. N would not behave in the same way with sunburn and a visible "yellow rust belt". I guess also with normal leaf loss, the same strains as these would be staying greener longer, but also take longer to ripen. Or at least Mandala estimates it takes about another two weeks compared to here--I think their actual limit says it can be grown up to 43 N.

 

[Satyros]

Wild Thailand continues to be surprising. The stuff is from about ten degrees off equator, and the most southerly strain from any of these. Correspondingly, it should be about the longest flowering/latest harvest.


However, it is noticeably the only thing building trichomes right now, buds starting to look white from a distance. It definitely can do that rather well. Whether the paler, excessively yellowing, possibly deficient ones previously mentioned, or the darker ones that seem more normal or at least look most like everything else. Light or dark, they are loading up ahead of everything else, not even the relatively fast Nemesis is doing it.


I am not sure whether to consider they are bolting; perhaps they don't want to be little container plants or something. And on the other hand, once something reaches this whitening stage, it is hard to conceive of it needing another two months to finish. So far my closest comparison is to last year's OE, which took over a month, six weeks or so, to appear resinous, and I could only let it go another four weeks due to incoming frost, although it made a bit of new flower pretty much to the end. Six more weeks is a comfortable guess for the Thai; the anticipated November finish seems like a longshot right now. I have a feeling that European breeder information is mostly from point of origin, plus from northern latitudes, and that there is not much input from the further south than Europe, but not tropical, zones.



It's quite weird to see a much younger, longer/later flowering strain develop significantly faster than an older, faster/earlier one, but I can only observe what happens, can't control it much. Last year's Nemesis was right at two months from early pistils to harvest, so, maybe these will catch up and blow by the Thai, even though it looks completely backwards right now. Being half OE might be slowing them a bit.

 

[Satyros]

Some of these might offer themselves for a double harvest.


Although I am able to find a bit of resin up close on other things, some of the Thai is already ripening, which continues to strike me as strange but there it is. The overall theme seems to be the dense canopy blocks a lot of inner development. It might be worth a try on some plants to harvest the tops and leave the rest out with some branches and see what happens.


I figured the hitch to something like Thai is that it never ripens, not that it does and just takes a really long time. But along with the resin, some of its pistils are browning, and if the whole top of a plant starts doing this, it may not need six weeks.

 

[Satyros]

Some questions about the Thai are answered by a third thing.


Trying to find any idea about why it is ripening early, I found Rot.


This would not seem to be weather related, it is the same temperature in Thailand except it is cloudy and rainy, so I don't think rain is the culprit, having been mostly dry here. I was able to find a Green Thailand Cannabis Caterpillar, which is the right green to crawl in between some buds and hide itself. Unfortunately, the Rot appeared on multiple plants and as I pursued it, I found aphids. Not a massive amount, so they may be manageable, but I would guess their bites allow the fungus infection to seep in.


The day ended so I am only sure I treated a few emergency spots. It requires further detail by all means. The impressions I got from wasting out a sheaf of the Thai is about as sticky as any, and somewhat earthy scent like Mekong High, gutta percha. It's still true that the majority of the plant is ripening in a normal way, but not to the point of hmmm...oh, that probably would be good to smoke. Of course I tried a couple non molded extra bits and I think it's a perfect foundation or hint of where it should be going. This plus stronger would persuade me that it's a good one to grow.

 

[Satyros]

No, that isn't aphids. The damage seems to be from the caterpillars. Caught a couple more but I missed one. Just have to keep watching and it might lose a little more plant material, but most likely these only have a brief phase while they emerge and go out of season quick and quit coming.


In observation, Nemesis seems to be a pretty good timer and gauge. Partly indica, it should show a faster flowering and ripening than sativas generally. You couldn't say it hasn't stretched, it is taller but without elongated spacing. Being the first thing planted, it would seem to have had more chance to devour what it was supplied with; but has remained normal green all over with no sign of anything that makes you go what's this a sign of. So it's a little bit puffy and now starting to pop resin. Normal feel of timing for the majority of things we have ever done, mostly indicas. This makes it faster than at least some of the sativas I am seeing. Seedsman says ready by end of month which seems reasonable.


One thought towards the apparently bolting plants is the containers, they are in the worst ones which are conical. They're not extreme, but likely enough to make the roots unhappy, so we won't use those again.

 

[Guest]

Hi brother!I would suggest getting some bacillus thuringiensis from your local shop for the caterpillars.It's organic and can be applied even very late in flowering with no side effects.

 

[Satyros]

High Syd,


I'm broke as a joker, unfortunately I cannot buy simple, effective things like that. Fortunately they don't seem to be currently spreading. It caught me off guard because I have never seen caterpillars do this, or seen any rot on a living plant. Sounds important for the future.


The containers were wrong to begin with. First danger of overcrowding is you use containers you normally wouldn't. I think that doomed those three plants, their whole stem is yellowing and they will probably give up the ghost soon. That's mainly where the caterpillars hit. None of the Thai in regular containers is fading away like those. So I can't blame the strain for what happened.

 

[Guest]

I'd say ask anyway mate, in my country there's even a pack at 3 bucks ,if you could get it would be a huge help and trust me,it is heartbreaking to sweep fat molded buds from the floor to the trash...
The girls in different containers sound that they could use some feeding,but can't really tell without pics.Sounds like it though.
Cheers !

 

[Satyros]

You're right about Bt. I see there is some where they get the animal feed; I could conceivably try to weasel some, but now in hindsight should have done so automatically when it would have done some good. I picked about four more of the worms today and dropped one of them into a bucket of barbed wire...couldn't really reach through it to get him, but in only a couple of minutes he was out and trucking back towards the plants!


It sucks to have to destroy the material...just telling myself well, these should have been more males, the plants shouldn't have been there to start with...and so the overabundance results in insect loss, cancelling itself out.


But just because it is my first time seeing it that is no reason to be naive and so the truth really is that it needs prior prevention instead of an after fix.


I've found with all kinds of plants that the wrong container is the first problem. For instance last year's Nemesis I almost killed as a seedling, but that one had time to change it, so I did, but then because it was underdeveloped, it didn't start flowering until about this time and wound up going purple later on. These Nemesis now are way ahead.


I knew these containers were a bad idea and didn't want to use them, but from obtaining too many plants, I did, and it looks like they are proving the theory on the plants that are in them. Consequently, the early resin seems to be attractive to caterpillars, and it didn't stand out at first because I didn't distinguish the dead pistils from the ripe ones.

 

[Satyros]

Got ahold of some Bt, I guess "weasel" isn't really the right word for it...anyway, was told to go an hour before the place opened and then, since today's Sunday, it was another hour, but someone was kind enough to see me and pull the items and so I got them an hour before opening.


Two weeks ago would have been a better plan, there is some spread, but still something to save. I'm not sure how much the actual rot they cause is likely to spread through the plant? Can removing a budlet save a top?