Pheno Hunting strategies

[stihgnobevoli]

you'll wanna stress any plants you use for breeding even if it's just for you. you don't want to introduce hermie genes and weakness into your strain.

when you cross 2 strains you're combining all the genes but also sorta watering em down since we don't know what genes were there to begin with. so for example you take 2 plants cross em, one of the offspring shows the traits you want and you don't stress test then it's possible the trait was recessive and another undesirable trait was actually dominant. so the next generation and subsequent generations would have this weakness bred in unless you select em out.

i run my plants through hell, only the strong survive. i had a funky beast that got huge lot's of vigour. looked like a winner, i was neglecting the shit out of it and it was still overgrowing my cab. but i let it get dry a couple times and bam! nanners.

 

[stoney917]

Hey meds what strains u planning to hunt thrue

 

[Miraculous Meds]

Good example stihg thnks.

stoney,
Im running bb, flo, cocoa, vanilluna, witaker blues, and azure haze, got 5 . That's my main hunt, then I got some personal crosses, and another 10 or so packs of random strains I will get to eventually. What I got going now is 10 each of the flo, cocoa, vani, whit, azure, and 20 bb, and crosses. These are already topped, cloned, and getting ready to go to flower. So this will be a variety run.

 

[Chunkypigs]

Chunkypigs, what strain u hunting bro?

my 1st grow/ pheno hunt gave me a nice keeper. it was Chem D x sensi Jack Herer
from a small time op in CA. $40 for 10 seeds

so I was stoked because this plant had taste, smell, yield and great stone with lots of energy and appetite suppression.
my perfect daytime meds. the next time I got seeds I fired off 9 packs and I kept all the males in 2 separate tents.

I had a hunch about the 2 strongest strains and crossed them to themselves and each other.
then I took one of each of the best female clones I had and rubbed them up against everything in the tent.
I was trying to make diverse seed stock to have on hand in case of the zombie apocalypse….

so I'm searching amongst seed from the girl above which I lost forever when that garden closed.
my local connections were slim and I was just able to get back one cut from that garden which hopefully will reunite me with another missing love.

tonight I was defoliating and looking for familiar smells. found some that were close. 5 more weeks.
I will pull a couple nugs from my favorites at 6-1/2 weeks to test, a few more at 8 and take them down at 70 days.

I had good luck with cloning on this seed run and got 2 or more clones from each girl.
I threw out the extras tonite from a bunch of them and up potted the extras from the ones that I'm liking.
I think I could ditch half of them based on smells or lack of smells
but I'm going to keep the moms bonsai in beer cups for those phenos just in case.

the thing I'm most excited about are the 5 bag seeds I have going
from OGKB cookies. 3 of them look and smell so close to each other.

one was a boy and it might/should only spew females.
I hit all the lower branches on these three with their brother this round. saved that male.
more will be revealed in time. they all smell like they will resemble mom.

 

[BadRabbit]

I get what ur saying here but my minds stuck on running the same cut a few times and dialing her in to a good indoor environment and then breed her, cause pretty much all I do is indoor. And I don't want to know necessarily what will do good in a poor condition but what does best in a great condition.

I think what ur saying might be a good idea if I was gonna sell these to the public, so they would get a more stable product that performs in many environments. But these are just for me and friends, maybe the server down the road if I feel they are worth it.

I agree with the idea of being very slow to toss any plants that show some promise .... but 2 years? They're all going to be grown in my basement under MH and HPS using GH nutes, period. The 6th plant won't be much different from the second.

I retain clones of any pheno that shows the tiniest bit of promise and run it again ... during that time, I really take some time to smoke, sample, compare, ask opinions of others. Sometimes, the one you didn't think was worth much does turn out to be the keeper.

But to rep Moses on his point .... the tastiest bud often/usually comes from the smaller yeilders in the group. Keep an eye on those runts. I've found several that were silly small, but if the smoke is awesome ... yeh, find ways to double and triple veg it, top it, whatever it takes. Sour bubble is a good example ... I have a super lemon haze pheno that takes forever to root cuts, takes 16 weeks to veg to enough size to yield much .... but when you get through it all, you get magic.

You touched a nerve on this topic because it's the process that many/most of indoor growers are going through for years

 

[Miraculous Meds]

Chunkypigs,
Thanks for sharing bro. That first girl is just ridiculous. And the 3 ogkb's its interesting to see the uniformity. I hope u find that first girl again. Love seeing thick structure like that.

Bad rabbit,
I will give each plant a chance to prove its worth on effect.

 

[xxxstr8edgexxx]

the thing I'm most excited about are the 5 bag seeds I have going
from OGKB cookies. 3 of them look and smell so close to each other.

one was a boy and it might/should only spew females.
I hit all the lower branches on these three with their brother this round. saved that male.
more will be revealed in time. they all smell like they will resemble mom.

interesting that you found a boy. it would indicate either a very rare occurance of feminized seed producing a male or whoever you got that from was doing a near by seed project. either way it has awesome potential. cant wait to see what progeny that male spits out.

 

[Chunkypigs]

interesting that you found a boy. it would indicate either a very rare occurance of feminized seed producing a male or whoever you got that from was doing a near by seed project. either way it has awesome potential. cant wait to see what progeny that male spits out.

I was hoping to get some pollen from the cookiefam sherbet or gelato project but I suspect these are bag seed and that OGKB was not even part of cookiefam but who knows?

all 4 girls have a very similar turp profile at this point and I picked up a clone that might be the forum cut last week so I hope to have me never ending cookie itch scratched soon.
it's the only strain I've smoked that makes me feel better than OG.

 

[Chunkypigs]

so to get back to the crosses I made when I popped those 9 packs and flowered the males.
I had 2 tents full of males and once they started dropping their load I watered them hard and shut the door on them.
then after a few days I cut the lights and left them alone for a few weeks.

eventually I went in there and removed them and agitated them over a large pane of glass and bundled up the pollen.

the 2 strains from that run that I liked were a TGA chernobyl pheno
with extremely small yield but the very nice effects to my head.
I crossed it with itself on the 1st run. the only pic of it I can find is this.

it's the stickiest thing I've ever touched and it had an amazing loud electric lime smell. the effects when taken at 45 days were like crystal meth.
I like the intense racy saliva buzz during the day.
this plant also gave me extreme euphoria.

the best thing is that yesterday the cut was supposedly returned to me from a friend of a friend that I shared genetics with.
I got back 2 well rooted clones and one will hit 12/12 as soon as it exits quarantine so I can identify her smell.
if this is the same plant I'm going to give that dude a new ballast to say thanks.
for me the golden ticket pheno is the one that eases my symptoms best, it has nothing to do with yield.

the other pack that I loved was a CC lemon larry.

this plant looked just like OG in it's growth but had none of the
OG smell or typical head effects. It had a creamy lemon flavor and was really indica dominant and narcotic. super night time meds for relaxing and pain relief.
I put the pollen from this pack on itself and the chernobyl and the seeds from those crosses are flowering now also in the tent picture in the previous post.

so far what I'm seeing from these homemade crosses looks and smells pretty nice. I'm seeing lots of variability in smells and bud/plant structure but I'm finding some that seem close to the parents.

 

[St. Phatty]

i run my plants through hell, only the strong survive.

me too, Seedling Boot Camp !

Good way to find strains that are heat resistant.

 

[Miraculous Meds]

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[Miraculous Meds]

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[Chunkypigs]

2 gallons. maybe go to vert if that's how you are running. I got to finish resetting my vert as
I'm running out of space. you could probably just use this thread too. then again I'm high. :}

 

[Miraculous Meds]

2 gallons. maybe go to vert if that's how you are running. I got to finish resetting my vert as
I'm running out of space. you could probably just use this thread too. then again I'm high. :}

So basically anywhere? lol

 

[newbie2006]

Chunkypigs, really nice sharing there mate, made me trip balls (pun intended)

My best tip for pheno hunting for everyone is that grow as much as possible per grow to get experience of what is good and what is not.
Many starting growers grow so small numbers that they don't necessarily have any idea what is a good vigorous grower and what is not.
I've seen multiple people wasting time on some runty runts during my years of growing.
Even though you could not push the numbers mentioned in this thread, more is better, don't be afraid.

I am sitting on some beans I hope to pop one day when I am all old and grumpy and settled down.... Then its breeding time..

 

[stihgnobevoli]

don't wait too long. i just lost 5 of my most prized seeds (didn't sprout)...the last 5 actually. they weren't even 7 years old.

 

[Miraculous Meds]

Thanks to everbody that has helped contribute to this thread. I will throw up a couple pics here, but I started a thread in the icmag vendor forum, in dj's forum. link is in my sig. I will be posting updates over there prob. weekly.

 

[BillboScroggins]

Azure Haze DJ Short x Blue Dream HSO = Bluish Dream

Azure Haze DJ Short x Blue Dream HSO = Bluish Dream

I have F-1s and have 10 about to be a few weeks old Indoors and 3 outdoors. I am noticing different phenos is this too early to tell or do these look to be different phenos? This is my first pheno hunt so any thoughts on these plants would be great. I plan on posting pics every week or so. Here is a top and side view of 3 plants that are growing the same. I will post the rest the same way but lets call these three pheno 1.

 

[BillboScroggins]

pheo 2

 

[BillboScroggins]

pheno 3