Zenith feminized limited edition

[Ras Kali Rasta]

Happy new year, everyone,
the Zen girls are ready to pot up. Any idea of how big to go with the pots? They are in 20L buckets and are 80- 130cm tall, albeit, with 35-50cm to the first nodes (due to defoliation for leaf septoria). I guess they will start entering flower in a month.
One of them looks like she might be trying to go into flower now. I'm not sure. Let me know what you think?

 

[dubi]

Happy New year @Ras Kali Rasta Did you consider to plant them directly in the ground ?
Or do you prefer them in pots to move them ?

 

[Ras Kali Rasta]

Happy New year @Ras Kali Rasta Did you consider to plant them directly in the ground ?
Or do you prefer them in pots to move them ?

They have got to be in pots. Not because I need to be able to move them, but because root penetration is a major issue in this soil. Plus, my arthritic joints can't take the digging.

 

[Maria Sanchez]

Looking amazing!
That girl is def in flower already -- you have a lucky early-girl it seems.
I'd say the bigger the better for pot size.
They're going to be 3m + by the time they finish, right?
Can you do a few hundred liter pots each?
Or make a giant raised bed for them all?
How easy is it to get soil to the site? Looks like you are out in the bush.

 

[Ras Kali Rasta]

Looking amazing!
That girl is def in flower already -- you have a lucky early-girl it seems.
I'd say the bigger the better for pot size.
They're going to be 3m + by the time they finish, right?
Can you do a few hundred liter pots each?
Or make a giant raised bed for them all?
How easy is it to get soil to the site? Looks like you are out in the bush.

I ended up going with 150L bags. I don't think they will grow to anything close to 3m, given that some are likely half way through stretch already. The potential for tall, high yielding plants is definitely there in the genetics, but suboptimal nutrition, overwatering, leaf septoria, excessive defoliation and late potting-up will take their toll. I'm chalking it all up to a good learning experience for fine tuning future seasons. The new growth is looking very healthy, so I'm still hopeful that I can get close to fulfilling the potential of the genetics in terms of quality, if not in yield.

@Taima-da
I got a hold of some of that wood vinegar that you mentioned (see photo below). If the claims I see made about it are true, it seems like an incredible product. Hopefully it can keep the septoria in check. I've given up removing affected leaves. I've been spraying all the plants with copper oxychloride and this has been helping, but plants that were defoliated didn't fare any better than those that weren't. Now that flowering has begun, I'll switch to the wood vinegar.

@dubi
A couple of plants started flowering by New Year's Day. That's crazy early! See the photo of the most advanced one below. Could it be the semi-auto flowering gene from the Zamal side rearing their head, or is flowering this early normal at my latitude (around 25S)?

 

[Maria Sanchez]

I ended up going with 150L bags. I don't think they will grow to anything close to 3m, given that some are likely half way through stretch already. The potential for tall, high yielding plants is definitely there in the genetics, but suboptimal nutrition, overwatering, leaf septoria, excessive defoliation and late potting-up will take their toll. I'm chalking it all up to a good learning experience for fine tuning future seasons. The new growth is looking very healthy, so I'm still hopeful that I can get close to fulfilling the potential of the genetics in terms of quality, if not in yield.

View attachment 18943571

Very nice, 150 L should set them up very nicely.
I think I need to go bigger for my spring start in late Feb / early March, though not this big!!
Actually, I have a 200 L cloth pot at home, hhmmm.....
Thinking about wind ... how dry to the pots get? and how strong is the wind?
Any need to put something to stop the wind blowing the whole thing over?
Most big bags are kind of wider and lower, less of a problem in that regard.
Think I need to follow your grow here!

 

[Taima-da]

I ended up going with 150L bags. I don't think they will grow to anything close to 3m, given that some are likely half way through stretch already. The potential for tall, high yielding plants is definitely there in the genetics, but suboptimal nutrition, overwatering, leaf septoria, excessive defoliation and late potting-up will take their toll. I'm chalking it all up to a good learning experience for fine tuning future seasons. The new growth is looking very healthy, so I'm still hopeful that I can get close to fulfilling the potential of the genetics in terms of quality, if not in yield.

@Taima-da
I got a hold of some of that wood vinegar that you mentioned (see photo below). If the claims I see made about it are true, it seems like an incredible product. Hopefully it can keep the septoria in check. I've given up removing affected leaves. I've been spraying all the plants with copper oxychloride and this has been helping, but plants that were defoliated didn't fare any better than those that weren't. Now that flowering has begun, I'll switch to the wood vinegar.

@dubi
A couple of plants started flowering by New Year's Day. That's crazy early! See the photo of the most advanced one below. Could it be the semi-auto flowering gene from the Zamal side rearing their head, or is flowering this early normal at my latitude (around 25S)?

View attachment 18943569 View attachment 18943570 View attachment 18943571

I don't use the ACC at this point or later because it has a strong acetic smell that sticks. (The bottle I have indicates main component as acetic acid, has me wondering if apple cider vinegar would work nearly as well).
usually i just treat early if I notice any septoria developing, with a follow up or two at five days to a week, or if it rains.
Usually it works fine.
Once when I did not get on to it early the whole plant was affected mid to late flower. I don't think it hurts the final product too much, but due to loss of vigour septoria can affect yield, and the plants can end up looking pretty bad.

Looking good at your end.

 

[yoann]

Re-vegging is a journey

 

[EnjoyingLife]

Re-vegging is a journey
View attachment 18946066 View attachment 18946067

Does one just leave the buds once reveg takes place or remove them?

 

[Cactus Squatter]

Does one just leave the buds once reveg takes place or remove them?

It depends on what you have to work with. If you have enough leaf and branches leftover at the end of flower I trim off the bigger buds and reveg from there, but if all I have is a couple small branches with a bud at the end, I leave the bud and it’ll grow a bunch of branches out from it you can then clone easily from.

 

[Cactus Squatter]

So I’ve been getting into the zenith bags here and there. It’s been a little over 2 months since I harvested.
Out of 6 plants there is a bit of variability in the outcome. I’m curious to see how a longer cure effects some of them.

#1 has a light mint gum and incense smell. This one is my least favorite smoke of the zenith. It makes me feel kind of dull and disinterested in pretty much doing anything. This one was a pheno 2 plant.

#2. Hell yes! Love this one. Incense, lemon, and vanilla cream smells and tastes. Very incensy on the tongue.
This is a pheno 1 plant. It is extremely energetic and uplifting. Very “bright” feeling if that makes any sense. This feels very similar to my favorite Pangi plant that feels like Happy Sunshine in my core. Zero paranoia and zero crash. It just gently fades away with no sleepiness. It’s very clear headed also.
Definitely keeping a mom of this one. It’s pure happy energy! It’s also excellent weight lifting weed.

#3. This was a pheno 1 leaning plant in flowering time. This one has an oily and fruity background that reminds me of Malawi more than anything else. The high also has a kind of dirty feel to it that I find with some Malawi. Some head fog and a hard crash come down. If I smoke this, I’m taking a hard nap 2-3 hours later. I also find I don’t get much done when I smoke this one.

#4 is a pheno 1 plant and probably the densest flower growth of those. Mint gum and spices for scent. Spacey, absent minded, very calming mentally but not fuzzy headed feeling. It’s very up, but not productive feeling or alert. Kind of a lazy up. Tingling on the skin with this one.

#5 was a pheno 1 plant and the only 1 that had a ton of mold. I lost half this plant to bud rot unfortunately and culled the clone due to that. It was also the most herm prone. It feels similar to the #2 plant but nowhere near as strong and has a lazy come down.

#6 is a pheno 2 plant and just kept flowering forever. I think she may have even hit a 4th reflowering period. I took her at just over 13 weeks. Scent is Lemon cream, some slight incense and just the tiniest hint of mint gum. This plant is the one that smelled the absolute strongest of Bubblegum during the grow and overpowered everything else in the tent. When breaking the buds up you catch a whiff of the bubblegum still.
High is very clear and alert but also very smooth. Nice and gentle, calming and relaxing but without any sleepiness or laziness. No crash and lasts a good couple hours. Slight herm initially due to transplant stress but she knocked it off and never threw nanners again after week 4.

Out of all of them, I’m holding onto #2 and #6 at least until they’ve cured 6-8 months and I can really evaluate them, mostly #6. I really enjoy how #2 feels and think #6 has the potential after more curing.
Consistency of all of the flowers was very similar across all 6 plants with just a slight variance in density. The structure really reminded me of the Panama x PCK cross. Slightly open and loose, large calyx but not densely packed together but also not feathery like Honduras and the more tropical types. It kind of surprised me given how dense most of the panamas I have grown have been and especially how rock like the 2 zamaldelica plants I’ve grown have been.

Overall I think this cross has a ton of potential and I’ll definitely be ordering another round of them if they become available.

 

[orangina]

I’m holding onto #2 and #6 at least until they’ve cured 6-8 months and I can really evaluate them, mostly #6. I really enjoy how #2 feels and think #6 has the potential after more curing.

Would have been also my choice. Thanks for the detailed representation of this cross. Your work is highly appreciated here!

 

[EnjoyingLife]

It depends on what you have to work with. If you have enough leaf and branches leftover at the end of flower I trim off the bigger buds and reveg from there, but if all I have is a couple small branches with a bud at the end, I leave the bud and it’ll grow a bunch of branches out from it you can then clone easily from.

I left my Ethiopian plant in its pot as an experiment to see if it makes it through the winter and revegs as the season allows so I have no clue if it'll take.
I harvested the bud except on a few lower branches and a couple upper branches. The upper branches didn't make it. The lower branches are still green and the bud still looks like bud so there's hope.
The plant has what looks to be the starts of either leaves or branches on a few branches or maybe it was the main stalk, it's been a couple days since I looked so idk which nor if they are still there. The season is still very much winter so I'm hoping they grow really slow or make it come spring.
I dropped a few seeds in the pot while trying to remove them from the bud and one popped already. I'm hoping it makes it til spring and more come up.
I have plans to try cloning but idk if I'm ready. I thought if a plant revegs you just grow it out again. It sounds like one takes clones from the branches that comes from the bud. I've never reveged so please forgive my ignorance.
Oh! almost forgot just about all the leaves have fallen off lol.

 

[yoann]

Does one just leave the buds once reveg takes place or remove them?

Hello, currently I observed since long time that re-veg in late flowering goes better if cutting buds in half, it seem easier for the plant to produce those small branches. However it seem to go better when small branches appears from the bottom of the plant. It's rare that I re-veg, in this case with zenith I really messed up my clones. I normally use hormons but for some reasons it's not anymore available in French supermarkets. I only found clonex lately online, and clones I got in october did rooted without any hormons into coco coir. I was kinda so sad having to give up some phenotypes that I give a try to re-veg those, it's 3 plants with similar growing structure, spearhead dense buds, bubblegum scent, sticky AF and pretty powerfull.

This batch of 11 plants gave me almost 400 g dried buds, but it was a bit challenging. Tallest plants reached 2 m, smallest about 1,3 m. So tallest buds matured under around 50 DLI, while others got something like 25 - 30 DLI. Overall I see a lot of resilience in this cross and good capacity to recover from errors. I got one who produced some male flowers, and I like this one's effects so much that I keep its clone

Effects are very healing for me, especially for the 5 individuals I keep as clones. It feels like a mental reboot, like a brain defragmentation. It act well on nerve pain, I've a discopathy and a bernard-roth syndrom (feels like permanent oil burn on hip) and that pain vanish magically with it, for extended period of 24h about, better than any medications I've been given. Most important, I don't feel any sleepy effects, no memory loss, no overthinking or paranoia like I've experienced with other common commercial hybrids (containing NL, skunk and other hazes).

Phenotypes I didn't kept as clone were aswell excellent, I just made choices toward growing structure and didn't kept giants who stretched a lot with longer flowering time.

 

[Prs2xs]

So I’ve been getting into the zenith bags here and there. It’s been a little over 2 months since I harvested.
Out of 6 plants there is a bit of variability in the outcome. I’m curious to see how a longer cure effects some of them.

#1 has a light mint gum and incense smell. This one is my least favorite smoke of the zenith. It makes me feel kind of dull and disinterested in pretty much doing anything. This one was a pheno 2 plant.

#2. Hell yes! Love this one. Incense, lemon, and vanilla cream smells and tastes. Very incensy on the tongue.
This is a pheno 1 plant. It is extremely energetic and uplifting. Very “bright” feeling if that makes any sense. This feels very similar to my favorite Pangi plant that feels like Happy Sunshine in my core. Zero paranoia and zero crash. It just gently fades away with no sleepiness. It’s very clear headed also.
Definitely keeping a mom of this one. It’s pure happy energy! It’s also excellent weight lifting weed.

#3. This was a pheno 1 leaning plant in flowering time. This one has an oily and fruity background that reminds me of Malawi more than anything else. The high also has a kind of dirty feel to it that I find with some Malawi. Some head fog and a hard crash come down. If I smoke this, I’m taking a hard nap 2-3 hours later. I also find I don’t get much done when I smoke this one.

#4 is a pheno 1 plant and probably the densest flower growth of those. Mint gum and spices for scent. Spacey, absent minded, very calming mentally but not fuzzy headed feeling. It’s very up, but not productive feeling or alert. Kind of a lazy up. Tingling on the skin with this one.

#5 was a pheno 1 plant and the only 1 that had a ton of mold. I lost half this plant to bud rot unfortunately and culled the clone due to that. It was also the most herm prone. It feels similar to the #2 plant but nowhere near as strong and has a lazy come down.

#6 is a pheno 2 plant and just kept flowering forever. I think she may have even hit a 4th reflowering period. I took her at just over 13 weeks. Scent is Lemon cream, some slight incense and just the tiniest hint of mint gum. This plant is the one that smelled the absolute strongest of Bubblegum during the grow and overpowered everything else in the tent. When breaking the buds up you catch a whiff of the bubblegum still.
High is very clear and alert but also very smooth. Nice and gentle, calming and relaxing but without any sleepiness or laziness. No crash and lasts a good couple hours. Slight herm initially due to transplant stress but she knocked it off and never threw nanners again after week 4.

Out of all of them, I’m holding onto #2 and #6 at least until they’ve cured 6-8 months and I can really evaluate them, mostly #6. I really enjoy how #2 feels and think #6 has the potential after more curing.
Consistency of all of the flowers was very similar across all 6 plants with just a slight variance in density. The structure really reminded me of the Panama x PCK cross. Slightly open and loose, large calyx but not densely packed together but also not feathery like Honduras and the more tropical types. It kind of surprised me given how dense most of the panamas I have grown have been and especially how rock like the 2 zamaldelica plants I’ve grown have been.

Overall I think this cross has a ton of potential and I’ll definitely be ordering another round of them if they become available.

Thanx for your report Cactus! I do , however find the results a little disheartening- I was hoping that the effects would be more like the breeders description, I was planning on germinating some Zenith in the next month or so, but I might put it on the back burner for a while longer, Not that there wasn't something good about what you describe, but I have limited amount of seed, and there are a couple phones that you describe that are not my cup of tea and I don't wish to use my limited space on something I might not enjoy.

I mean no disrespect to the breeder, by the way!

 

[Cactus Squatter]

Thanx for your report Cactus! I do , however find the results a little disheartening- I was hoping that the effects would be more like the breeders description, I was planning on germinating some Zenith in the next month or so, but I might put it on the back burner for a while longer, Not that there wasn't something good about what you describe, but I have limited amount of seed, and there are a couple phones that you describe that are not my cup of tea and I don't wish to use my limited space on something I might not enjoy.

I mean no disrespect to the breeder, by the way!

So, I just talked to a friend that I gave samples to and he absolutely loves the #3&4 plants. He described them very similarly to how dubi describes the pheno 2 feel. He also said #6 was fantastic but he really disliked #2 which is my favorite. He said that one made him cranky and agitated, his wife made him go clean out the horse stalls so she could get him out of the house.

Zenith wasn’t what I expected after having grown a lot of Panama and zamaldelica as well as crosses of them. The bud structure came out a little looser and none of them have the extreme smells possible with Zamaldelica that I was expecting, but they were all still decent plants. I really think this line could become something incredible if it was worked beyond an F1. I’ll definitely be growing them again if they restock.

 

[Ras Kali Rasta]

My Zen girls are coming along well. They seem to be largely outgrowing the seproria. The second from the left is flowering like mad (see close-up). I think she'll be done by end of February. How crazy is that? Perhaps the semi-auto Zamal genes are responsible? The first on the left is also flowering, but will likely finish a couple weeks behind the first. One of the others (the middle one, if I recall correctly) looks like she might be starting to bloom, too.
@Taima-da
There is definitely a lot more going on in the ACC than ascetic acid. I'll shoot you a link to an interesting blog post about it. It definitely does stink, although mine smells like they condensed an Australian bushfire into liquid and stuck it in a bottle. I'm not game to use it as a foliar in flower, but it seems like it will be effective as a root drench. I just soaked some Zamaldelica × New Caledonia seeds in a 1:200 solution and they sprouted super fast.
@Cactus Squatter
Thanks for the great smoke report. #2 and #6 do indeed sound fantastic! Perfect expressions of the A and B phenotypes. It seems like the Panama terps are quite dominant. I suppose that shouldn't be a surprise when crossing an F10 to an F1.
@Maria Sanchez
The 150L bags have a diameter of 600mm and are 530mm tall. I'm not sure if that is a wide base, but I don't think they will blow over. I potted-up a bit late for them to get super tall. Next time I'll start in smaller initial pots and get them into their final pots much earlier.




.

 

[Maria Sanchez]

@Maria Sanchez
The 150L bags have a diameter of 600mm and are 530mm tall. I'm not sure if that is a wide base, but I don't think they will blow over. I potted-up a bit late for them to get super tall. Next time I'll start in smaller initial pots and get them into their final pots much earlier.
Edit: photos are not uploading for some reason.

That should be great, as long as they don't get super dry.
I have some 60cm dia cloth pots on my balcony for green veges, but I fold the sides down to make them only about 25cm high. When wet they are really heavy, and they take ages to dry out (they don't even get direct rain unless it's windy).
Yours will be .... 140 L if full, maybe 50+ kg when nicely moist --- yeah, should be no problem!

Hoping to see your photo updates!!
The last shots looked so beautiful in the forest there.

 

[Nextgeneration73]

Welcome @yoann to ICMag and thanks for choosing Zenith for your current grow!

I would not select-discard Zenith plants based on growing traits, every Zenith plants has the potential to produce different outstanding smoke, the complexity of some at the end cannot be appreciated by evaluating growing traits or how the phenotypes react to your enviroment. So for anyone interested in doing a serious Zenith selection: clone every plant and don't discard anything until you have tried them all, you never know where the magic is.

The problems you are experiencing are because you increased the photoperiod in early flowering from 12/12 to 14/10 and plants tried to reveg (go back to growth stage) You never have to do this with sativas (or even indicas), perhaps only with autoflowering genetics. To increase photoperiod in flowering with photoperiod genetics is a terrible idea. I would recommend to set back the lights to 12/12.

Is there a way to induce earlier flowering?

 

[Ras Kali Rasta]

I finally managed to get the photos attached to my last post. No new photos today. Plants are going well, but they were wilting with thirst. I'm glad I went with the 150L bags. The second girl to flower is getting the Panama pink pistles. Pretty cool!
The fastest girl is flowering like a machine-gun!