ICMag with help from Phlizon, Landrace Warden and The Vault is running a NEW contest for Christmas! You can check it here.
Prizes are: full spectrum led light, seeds & forum premium access. Come join in!
Mustafunk: a little bad new, however I think as ThaiBliss it's important to reproduce them in order to clean the intersex traits in the next generations mate!
Good luck with this genethic!
I have never tasted the Thai, maybe someday...
Hi guys.... I've been quite busy lately so I couldn't keep the post updated as I wish. I've been forced to move my plants indoors due to the excessive rains and cold temperatures this past weeks. I was having already some mold issues with other plants and sun isn't shining a lot lately here. They weren't really happy outdoors keeping in mind that they were barely starting out to flower so I guess they will feel much happier now under a 400W HPS!
Anyway, I took the camera home this afternoon and I'm bringing some fresh pictures from the beauties. From my two females, one seems to be faster than the other...
The buds are filling up slowly but nicely, quite leafy and have an interesting shape. Smell is nice as well, it's starting to come out much strong than before. Still subtle to classify but there are floral hints. They are far from being weak in flavours.
This is the faster female, gotta love the lime green leaves, they are barely serrated. No resin yet...
Here is the second girl... she naturally grew 3 tops on the branch, slightly slower than the other but still quite homogeneous.
Will try to take some pics from the male on the weekend. The fucker doesn't make a lot of polen, flowers are tiny as well. Not the best stud I've seen... definitely not very productive but well, let's see how it goes. I'm still trying to figure out what to do.
I like the way these are turning out phenowise, quite hazy! The male hermie might work well in outcrosses, resulting in lots of stable females. Just something to consider maybe just smoke test the bugger and see what his made of?
Sorry for the delay guys... been pretty busy lately. This weekend I had some time to stop and take some portraits of this exotic beauties.
Seeds are growing inside the buds already, plants were open pollinated by my only firm male. The females are still going on... pretty slowly but non stop. They are for sure the latest flowering plants I had around in this last few years, December and still a few weeks to go I guess!
I would love to do a sinsemilla run with them under potent lights to see how those buds behave! I see a lot of potential: good amount of resin for a landrace in both the calyxes and all over the leves as well, amazing odours, floral, sometimes minty or lemony... very different to other pungent strans I had and the skunky commercial hybrids as well. Vigorous grow, they eat like a bird and I was expecting more stretching. I have them now on 7 litre pots, that and some stem pinching has kept them pretty under control. It's a pity that I didn't have an indoor closet to have done a separate seed run and sinsemilla run at the same time.
Let's start with this slender stallion, he has done his job but still ready for some more party. Shame that at this time, I haven't any other females to pollinate:
Not bad for such a fluffly plant!
No more pistils at the tops:
Now let's continue with the Sagada #1 female, the later flowering one. December and she's still far from the end!! I love the leaves, they barely have any serration which is pretty weird and the vivid lime green is damn beautiful. She's totally like bamboo ganja!:
This one got some red stems, probably because of the low temperatures, but the other female doesn't:
The two headed monster (I haven't pruned her at all):
Now let's start with her faster sister, throughly pollinated already and the calyxes are filling up and tearing, you can see the seeds growing inside!:
Very special looking plants you got there, congrats!
The male doesn't appear that bad either, considering the circumstances I think you can consider yourself quite lucky finding a male at all.
Can you please tell us a little bit more about your custom made soil mix? What ingredients did you use and what are those blue little pellets on some of the pictures? What kind of fertilizer do you use? Cheers.
Hey man! The blue pellets were anti-snail/slug product... besides I try not to worry too much about the bugs and all the tiny things outdoors (where there is a natural balance somehow), lately I had terrible problems with the snails. When they appear after the rains, I've found out they eat many small leaves and sometimes the outer stem peel from small plants, causing many times the death of the delicate seedlings. I've lost a few lately because of this and with my only 4 Philippines survivors I wasn't willing to tolerate such thing! I still remember the hard time I had trying to germinate them so watch out!
As for the soil and fertilizers, I normally try to stay organic and avoid unnecesary products. In this case for me, the less the better. I don't really care about production so I focus on getting the cleanest possible results and flavour. I think if you end with a good soil mix (specially outdoors), you can almost forget about the need of fertilizers and growing supplements. I often use homemade nettle teas for growing (lots of N) and sometimes seaweed organic fertilizer or guano for the hungriest plants at flowering (good amount of P and K). Exotic sativas and stuff like that in the other hand, don't like too many nutrients.
In fact this season, some leaves got burned tips because I watered them with some bloom tea leftovers and it was definitely too much for the delicate Sagadas and their small pots. Bad idea! I still have much to learn though, experience will come with practice and maybe someday I will be able to use certain fertilizers to my advantage. But meanwhile, sun, good soil and the nature normally work like a charm outdoors.
Anyway my humble soil recipe it's a very simple one, there are tons of amazing and complex recipes on the net and great commercial soil mixes too, in this case I just wanted a good and cheap soil without too much nutrients but there are so many amazing combinations I would love to try. Landraces and oldschool strains don't tolerate nutes as well as the sturdy modern indoor hybrids, so this time I prepared some:
Light soil as the main base. I have used different commercial good quality soils, light mix style (peat moss and other stuff). I've used pure Sphagnum moss and even homemade compost with good results (made off mown grass and tree leaves from the garden, food leftovers and sometimes ash from the fireplace: the soil/water is acid here so it works great). Normally I just care about the texture, as far as it's Ph checked and sterilised. I will add other stuff to improve it so no need to worry.
Worm castings (vermicompost), maybe half of the base soil. Good quality and organic as this will provide the additional nutrients for the plant, at least until flowering.
Good amout of coconut fiber, here I just add more if I don't like the consistency, it depends on the soil and compost qualities as well. I used to buy cheap compressed coco bricks but they have too many tiny pieces of coco shells and I prefer the proper long fibers that will keep the soil very airy and spongy.
Perlite or Vermiculite, at least as much as coco fiber. This is something that I love, it will keep the soil aerated and with a good drainage. Vermiculite is great outdoors to retain more water and perlite, if you don't need such moisture retention. Outdoors I even mix them sometimes. Dolomite is nice too if you need to correct your soil's PH a bit.
Last but not least, a small amount of powder neem, trychoderma or mycorrhiza fungus depending on what's available at home at the moment. Never tested if it's really worthy but theoretically it should!
For flowering mixes, I will add also some powder guano, blood meal or stuff like that if I have some at home. I was told great things about other meals as kelp meal o bone meal. Never tried though.
Notice that I just use reference measures. I love mixing the soil with my hands and working it, so I can really feel the consistency and if the mix lacks some more coco fibers, perlite or anything to correct the texture to my desire. I'm looking for airy and light soil but with a decent water retention and support for the roots.
Hope it helps... normally I recycle the soils too, the veggies and garden plants love it!!
Finally the time to chop down the plants arrived! At the end of the year I decided to cut most sinsemilla buds and leave some of the seeded buds in order to get them to ripe properly.
I took a few pictures this past week. Probably with a potent light, the plants would keep reflowering and going for a few more weeks but in this case, low temperatures and not much light intensity so I don't think the buds will become any better! I don't want to harvest them too late, so the time has come.
There is one female that clearly stands out in terms of flavour and resin. There is an amazing and unexpected smell from such a tropical landrace that has not been bred or carefully selected at all. It reminds me to ripe fruits, mango, pinneaple sometimes... with a touch of pungent or acid smell too. The other is far less fruity but dank too.
The trichomes density is great too so I believe this strain has good potential. I've only seen few landrace sativas with such frosty buds, Angolese or Swazi Red among them. Let's see how's the high in a few weeks but I'm definitely satisfied so far.
I already reap a few seeds, some look nice but others are empty inside. I think the male wasn't the best stud but well, still better than nothing! The important goal was preserving the strain, sending fresh seeds to the guy who shared them first and in the mid term, it would be great to work on it, studying how the plants behave and looking for the best females to have a decent representation of their most interesting traits.
Calyxes starting to open up... some seeds already ripen. This female, got some purple leaves and calyxes with the cold temperatures. Still pretty frosty for seeded buds right??
Sinsemilla top colas from the fruity red stem pheno... they are fluffy and packed of frosty calyxes. I'm pretty sure that with higher intesity lights, there would have been an explosion of foxtails like some of those we can see around here!
The size is pretty decent, seeds are medium sized.
One of the top colas, some re-flowering simptoms, I have seen new tiny dark leafs and calyxes this last few days but I don't think it's worthy to keep them waiting for longer.
Even the lower buds are pretty frosty:
Thanks everyone for the support! I will update more pictures from the harvested buds and seeds in a while. Let's see how this stash is going to look when properly cured!
By now, have a great New Year's Eve and Happy 2014 to everyone, let's keep it green!