When is it too early to cull a plant during a phenohunt or selection?

[africaseeds]

Currently I'm popping through a bunch of seeds that I had saved up. Right now it is winter in South Africa where I'm at and I grow outside. I'm trying to find plants that are very resilient.


I'm losing quite a few seedlings as it is quite tough outside. While other seedlings seem to be going strong.



Is it a good idea to get rid of weak seedlings that seem to be having a hard time outside in the cold, or is it too early to call a plant at seedlings stage? So far I've had two seedlings for example that I pulled out as they were super sensitive to the PH of the soil, and another seedling wasn't handling the cold or wind very well so I pulled it out.


Is it too early to cull a plant at seedling stage and am I just wasting seeds or is this a legitimate way to remove undesrable plants?

 

[Mustafunk]

Sure man, the more you cull (and the earlier) the better and more thoroughly the selection will be... at least if you have enough seeds to waste!!

Tossing weak seedlings is a good idea to favor a strong and vigorous selection. You will have time to hunt for keepers and look for other traits later on the selected seedlings, that's for sure.

Plant express their phenotype depending on the environment and current circumstances but weak plants will be never interesting.

Best.

 

[Drewsif]

Is there a correlation between early growth traits and end product quality?

 

[Gauss]

.

 

[bigtacofarmer]

If you are not familiar with the traits of the strain so you know what you are choosing for or against I wait until I have been smoking the cured finished product.

 

[Headbandf1]

Pheno hunts take all females to completion....the way we used to due it was to pass around the finished flower among our group and have blind independent voting.



But if you're hybridizing to shrink you favorite monster plant like UK cheese lets say, and you start crossing to GDP or the purps, or romulan (Plants under 48" when mature.) Then one easy way in this example is to toss any males and phenos that grow beyond 12" in the say first 6 weeks (youll see the sprinters vs the joggers) because they will be way bigger than 48" when full grown.


Hope this helps

 

[J-Icky]

I think people need to pay more mind to the so called “mutants”. Sure some mutations will be useless but some of those mutations could be the change in genetics that create the next generation of super plants.

I personally grow everything I can to completion and judge from there. The key is to take cuttings of every plant so that you will still have that plant once you’ve gone through the finished product. Also take at least a couple cuttings early, some plants are very hard to get to root and I’ve lost one plant I really really wish I still had because I took cuttings right before flipping and by the time I realized they weren’t gonna root the plants were deep into flower and do to filter failure, revegging wasn’t an option.

 

[RandyCalifornia]

I'm no breeder, but I've made a few seeds in my time growing. If I have ziplocks full of seeds my selections will be wayyy different then if I'm working with a pack. Time and Space/#'s, It's all good, just different.

 

[PDX Dopesmoker]

Currently I'm popping through a bunch of seeds that I had saved up. Right now it is winter in South Africa where I'm at and I grow outside. I'm trying to find plants that are very resilient.


I'm losing quite a few seedlings as it is quite tough outside. While other seedlings seem to be going strong.



Is it a good idea to get rid of weak seedlings that seem to be having a hard time outside in the cold, or is it too early to call a plant at seedlings stage? So far I've had two seedlings for example that I pulled out as they were super sensitive to the PH of the soil, and another seedling wasn't handling the cold or wind very well so I pulled it out.


Is it too early to cull a plant at seedling stage and am I just wasting seeds or is this a legitimate way to remove undesrable plants?

Don't listen to the indoor growers, they're so far disconnected from the natural world that they think dirt and light are things you order off the internet. If you want seeds that will survive and prosper outdoors without being babied like a precious endangered orchid then just let the bodies hit the floor, the more the merrier as long as you have enough seeds. Starve your plants, drown them, try and kill them with thirst, heat, cold, physical abuse, pestilence and neglect. Make them compete with each other above ground and below. Force them to earn your respect and trust. Do all that when they're in veg and keep only the seeds from the ones that make nice flowers for next year.
Plants are bitches, they're like farm animals, you gotta whup 'em to get them to give their all for you. Treating them like some princesses's precious pony only risks you ending up with poorly behaved plants.

 

[africaseeds]

Don't listen to the indoor growers, they're so far disconnected from the natural world that they think dirt and light are things you order off the internet. If you want seeds that will survive and prosper outdoors without being babied like a precious endangered orchid then just let the bodies hit the floor, the more the merrier as long as you have enough seeds. Starve your plants, drown them, try and kill them with thirst, heat, cold, physical abuse, pestilence and neglect. Make them compete with each other above ground and below. Force them to earn your respect and trust. Do all that when they're in veg and keep only the seeds from the ones that make nice flowers for next year.
Plants are bitches, they're like farm animals, you gotta whup 'em to get them to give their all for you. Treating them like some princesses's precious pony only risks you ending up with poorly behaved plants.

Thanks PDX for the info,I found your reply quite helpful. Just to respond to the other people who also responded I'm not just focussed on the end goal of the finished product. My end goal is to have strong and resiliant plants that won't hermi easy or die easily. I'm more concerned about having strong plants than I am concerned about the finished products. There are plenty of plants out there with a very nice finished product, but the plant is a weak plant. Some people say that Zkittles is a good example of such a plant. It might be true, but in my experience the one Zkittles plant I got in my garden is pretty strong, I've revegged it a few times with no problems.

 

[djonkoman]

I agree, just let the weak ones die.
even if one of the runts ends up making great weed, not worth keeping the weakness in the line.

let's say you're selecting for something unrelated to final product. like cold resistance, or drought resistance.

let's say you want to find a 1 in 100 plant(for eventual quality of the harvest), so you'd want to grow 100 plants to finish.
you COULD grow 100 seeds>bud, not culling anything and only doing selection afterwards. but you'd risk that the chosen one based on quality has weak growth-traits.

or, you first cull anything weak at a very early stage. let's say 1 in 10 are strong enough. if you can kill them early enough, you can just resow more seeds(or start with 1000 to begin with). you still harvest 100 plants, and you'll have the same chance finding that 1 in 100 plant quality-wise, but this time you're selecting from a population that already had a selection against weakness, so if you find your 1 in 100 plant now, it will also have decent growth-traits.

 

[beta]

This is a really great point. I have always grown everything out, including weirdo runts. Usually it's because I only have a few seeds and I want the best chances at finding the best.

That said, I've never once kept a runt. Ever. Has anyone else?

Even if it's incredible herb in the end I don't want to hassle with primadonna plants.

I agree, just let the weak ones die.
even if one of the runts ends up making great weed, not worth keeping the weakness in the line.

let's say you're selecting for something unrelated to final product. like cold resistance, or drought resistance.

let's say you want to find a 1 in 100 plant(for eventual quality of the harvest), so you'd want to grow 100 plants to finish.
you COULD grow 100 seeds>bud, not culling anything and only doing selection afterwards. but you'd risk that the chosen one based on quality has weak growth-traits.

or, you first cull anything weak at a very early stage. let's say 1 in 10 are strong enough. if you can kill them early enough, you can just resow more seeds(or start with 1000 to begin with). you still harvest 100 plants, and you'll have the same chance finding that 1 in 100 plant quality-wise, but this time you're selecting from a population that already had a selection against weakness, so if you find your 1 in 100 plant now, it will also have decent growth-traits.

 

[J-Icky]

Well if your looking for tough plants and don’t care about the end product then I can source some feral hemp seeds. Those plants have withstood a lot and they come back every year and keep coming back.

Just kidding, but if your only starting with a few packs of seeds then my advice would be to stay away from one to one breeding the first run. Obviously let the strongest survive but keep at least a handful of both sexes and do an open pollination to get a bunch of seed to work with next run. Keep the seeds separated by which female they came from and do the selecting from there. That will give you genetic diversity within some control and won’t screw yoursef if the one to one cross doesn’t give you what you want.

 

[JohnnyChicago]

Depends of what you are looking for and how well you know the genetics you areworking with.

If you cull all the weak ones now, it could be that you are selecting for cold resistance.

Is this one of your goals? If yes, cull them.

 

[TychoMonolyth]

My NL ricks the cold like a bear. So i know it's frost resistant. This year I put 200 or so out in april. It froze a few times, and I know a lot died, but if only a couple lived, they'll be seeded. Ill check on the this weekend. Crossing my fingers.

If you know the plant, select the ones you liked the year before and go from there.

 

[meizzwang]

If you're starting with genetically diverse seeds, it's recommended to grow everything out the first generation, produce tons of seeds from all the plants, then get savage on the culling and selection the next generation with a very large grow out.