Lots'n'lots of seeds at 45N, Great Lakes

[lohnjennon]

Hi, I have not posted much in the past but I read the forums all the time. I have been almost exclusively growing Ace Seeds since 2016. I bought and grew some Nepal Jam and Panama plants that were stolen and Dubi was super kind and resent me my order! Since then I buy a few packs every year to make sure they have money to keep doing their good work.
I grow near 45 degrees north, near lake michigan. very wet autumns staring in october here, not much sun sometimes in fall. I do mostly guerilla grows, growing in wild raspberry and blackberry thickets that get enough sun. They blend right in and the berries are a great, fairly shallow-rooted ground-cover that is a pain to walk through for deer or bunnies that might want to eat the baby plants (i don't lose much to animals). I put them out at the last frost date, give them a little compost a little water and hope for the best. I want to make sure they can survive and Ace has a lot of hardy survivors! I water if absolutely necessary (once or twice a year) but try to just mulch well and hope for rain. The berries are a great living mulch and do a lot to reduce evaporation.

So far I have grown out and open pollinated regular seeds of:
Nepal Jam, Orient express, Panama, Lebanese, Malawi x PCK and Congo and purple satellite

I also made my first crosses the last 2 years using what I had and mixing in some seed freebies. Tried to think of disease resistance in the plants i chose to breed together.

The crosses are:
Pamana x purple satellite, Romulan Sativa(ape origin freebie) x Purple Satellite, Panama x (Malawi x PCK) , Nepal Baglung(ape origin freebie) x Orient express.

I don't have a lot of pictures. I lost my phone and was a little paranoid having so many plants so i didn't take a lot , but i am taking a lot of pictures this year and will post more soon (posted some in the panama and lebanese threads.)

most varieties I have many seeds of. I mostly smoke hash so i don't mind it all being seeded (though its a little better quality if not FULLY seeded)

I wonder where to go from here with all the seeds? How should I go about selecting from future generations without a Mother-room or the ability to keep clones (at least for now). Anyone have a recommendation for a good book on genetics for dummies?


Nepal Jam

Lebanese

Panama

 

[goingrey]

Anyone have a recommendation for a good book on genetics for dummies?

I can recommend The Cannabis Breeder's Bible by Greg Green (ISBN 978-1931160278) if you are genuinely looking for a "for dummies" book. Covers the basics in a very easy to understand way.

 

[lohnjennon]

I can recommend The Cannabis Breeder's Bible by Greg Green (ISBN 978-1931160278) if you are genuinely looking for a "for dummies" book. Covers the basics in a very easy to understand way.

Thank you, I will look into it. I definitely need the dummy version first.
I have a book about seed saving in the garden but one specifically about cannabis breeding would be helpful.

 

[dilettante]

Greatings! Great first post!

Fellow wet climate guerilla Ace grower here, although 5 degrees further north than you and in Europe. Same style. Blackberry thickets are great And they have good soil usually.

I would like to suggest two books to you:

Carol Deppe - Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties

and

Joseph Lofthouse - Landrace Gardening

Goingtoseed dot org has an online module based on the second book, so you can do that instead.

You don't need Cannabis specific literature.

 

[lohnjennon]

Greatings! Great first post!

Fellow wet climate guerilla Ace grower here, although 5 degrees further north than you and in Europe. Same style. Blackberry thickets are great And they have good soil usually.

I would like to suggest two books to you:

Carol Deppe - Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties

and

Joseph Lofthouse - Landrace Gardening

Goingtoseed dot org has an online module based on the second book, so you can do that instead.

You don't need Cannabis specific literature.

Thanks for the reply, I will check out those books.

After posting I did some more reading and decided to mostly stick to saving specific varieties and doing some F1's for fun.
This year I tested some of those F1's and the Panama x Purple Satellite was by far the best, actually one of the best varieties i have smoked in recent years.

 

[dilettante]

Good to hear that you are so happy with your Panama x Purple Satellite. I managed to make some (Bangi Congo/Panama) x Purple Satellite seeds last year and am very much looking forward to seeing how they turn out. The mother has my favourite smell of the crop. Same as an outdoor grown sister a friend grew on his balkony two years ago. I suppose it's the Panama lemony smell.

What do you like about your Panama x Purple Satellite? How many did you have? Did you make mixed hash from all of them or keep flowers separate to evaluate?

This year I plan to make more Purple Satellite F2's with the 6 F1's I have left.

Last year I culled the super early males, took clones from all other plants to pollinate indoors, but my friend let the clones die when I was on holidays. I took new clones, but only from the biggest, latest male and one of the females as well as the Bangi Congo x Panama.

I want to keep all males this time around and also use them on Bangi Haze, Violeta, NepJam x Kalichina and Nepal Mist. Maybe even on a Thai x Panama.

There are many ways one can have fun gardening
There is merit in keeping inbred lines and making F1's.
There is also merit in making a big wild mix and selecting down the years and generations. Especially if the goal is to create the most bulletproof guerilla seedstock for ones environment and for harvesting of mixed batches of hash. You don't have to worry at all about keeping clones and mother rooms in that scenario.

Did you make the NepJam x Purple Satellite cross?

I must say reading the Lebanese thread the other day got me fired up to add it to the stable. How does it cope with the wet autumn?

 

[lohnjennon]

the panama x purple satellite has mostly the smell of panama, lemon/citrus. buds were a little more dense than panama and as disease resistant as the purple satellite. the high is very strong and psychedelic. some are racy and energizing, some will cause visual/auditory hallucinations. i had 7 females and kept them separate to evaluate individually and every one is very good. i plan to make mixed hash from them when i get a chance.
I didn't keep the PxPS males this year, i used the nearby PS males to pollinate this test batch. there are about 115 PxPS F1 seeds left and i think i'll use them to inbreed the line.
it combines the best from both panama and the purple satellite, and it finished mid october, which is about 2 weeks earlier than the panama finishes in a greenhouse here.
the purple satellite male i used was about 2 weeks behind the rest of the other males.

i tested out purple satellite F2's this year and they did very well. there was a range of different pistil colors but the plant stucture looked pretty uniform. there was one that was very strong and i kept those seeds seperate.


i have plans this year to make seed-balls and broadcast large quantities of mixed seeds in a few nearby roadside spots and see what survives until the fall and then select the best of the survivors. i have a lot of varieties so it will be fun to see what comes out of the uncontrolled crosses.


i havent done a nepal jam x PS cross but i bet it woud be nice.

this last year i focused on the lebanse mostly and crossed 8 lebanese females to a mix of nepal jam males. one of these (leb #5) is surprisingly strong, cant wait to see what the offspring of this cross will be like.

2 lebanese were grown in a different location and they got some purple satellite pollen and made a lot of seeds.

the lebanese did okay this year but our autumn was dryer than usual and i harvested them about a week early to avoid a cold wet rain. the first time i grew them outside i lost a few entire plants and had spots of mold on others. i would really like to fill a greenhouse with them one day.

 

[dilettante]

Thanks for elaborating. It all sounds like fun projects. Good luck with the seed balls. It would be nice to be able to grow straight from seed outdoors.

 

[lohnjennon]

 

[dilettante]

Nice selection. Good luck with the grow. What is the seed between the Lebanese and the Lebanese x Nep Jam?

My first round will go to the spot next week. Bangi Congo Panama x Purple Satellite, Purple Satellite f1 and f2, Nap Jam x Kalichina, Nepal Mist and Violeta.

 

[gedLang]

I love your approach to growing! I'm at a similar climate and latitude in Minnesota so I'm interested to see what crosses work best for you. Has any of the Ace stuff you've tried failed to finish so far or had issues? I didn't think I'd be able to grow Panama up here.

Also @dilettante that looks like Mountain Gold to me.

 

[kordo]

Thanks to share your grow

 

[OleReynard]

I love your approach to growing! I'm at a similar climate and latitude in Minnesota so I'm interested to see what crosses work best for you. Has any of the Ace stuff you've tried failed to finish so far or had issues? I didn't think I'd be able to grow Panama up here.

Also @dilettante that looks like Mountain Gold to me.

Ya we only get about 3-4 months of decent growing outside up here.
I'd be going more Canadian and Alaskan gear.
I don't do outside anymore but I'm originally from Northern Illinois and it was a pita finishing down there in time.
After begin of duck season it was pretty iffy ain't so much like that now 25 years later.

 

[lohnjennon]

Nice selection. Good luck with the grow. What is the seed between the Lebanese and the Lebanese x Nep Jam?

My first round will go to the spot next week. Bangi Congo Panama x Purple Satellite, Purple Satellite f1 and f2, Nap Jam x Kalichina, Nepal Mist and Violeta.

Thanks, good luck to you also! That is Mountain Gold. I like your choices, too. Most of our plants will be cousins.

I love your approach to growing! I'm at a similar climate and latitude in Minnesota so I'm interested to see what crosses work best for you. Has any of the Ace stuff you've tried failed to finish so far or had issues? I didn't think I'd be able to grow Panama up here.

Also @dilettante that looks like Mountain Gold to me.

Thank you for decoding my handwriting, it is not so good.

I mostly grow this way because I really don't like growing inside and growing outside is so much easier for me and a lot less expensive.

The Panama x Purple satellite did very well last year, the favorite. Next favorite was the Malawi x PCK ( "crazy weed" is what we call it at our house). I lost a couple to bud rot (these were f2) but they were in a bad spot with not enough sun and some still did great. The First year I grew Malawi x PCK they were in a better spot and none had mold and were excellent.

Most everything I have grown from Ace has been great. Bangi Haze did very well, it really is cold resistant. Orient Express has a great high, especially the sativa leaning f2's I have, and finishes fast enough. Nepal Jam is great and performed well in all conditions i have put it in. Lebanese is excellent for hash and finished last year for the most part, but would be best in a greenhouse in my climate.

The Panama and Congo have had mixed results outdoors here. They usually needed another week or two but I have had a few early Panamas that finished in time outdoors. I have also grown the Panama in a hoop house here and it was perfect, it extended the season just long enough and kept the rain off them allowing them to go into November. In '21 I grew A LOT of Panama in a green house and open pollinated the plants with all healthy males, which left me with about 30,000 or so Panama seeds. One day I would love to grow a field of it. Pipe Dreams.

Ya we only get about 3-4 months of decent growing outside up here.
I'd be going more Canadian and Alaskan gear.
I don't do outside anymore but I'm originally from Northern Illinois and it was a pita finishing down there in time.
After begin of duck season it was pretty iffy ain't so much like that now 25 years later.

Yes, not much of a growing season here but I try to make the best of it. I can usually make it to mid october and end of october is sometimes possible. We are not too far from lake Michigan and some inland lakes and that helps.

I have not tried any Canadian or Alaskan seeds. Do you have any suggestions? I am not really a fan of a lot of super potent "Indica" type hybrids which is what drew me to Ace in the first place. I'm wiling to struggle a bit for the type of high I'm looking for, but it is nice to have some early plants that I know will finish.

 

[dubi]

Thanks for your support all these years @lohnjennon You probably know better than me which ACE strains work better at your latitude/climate. Without a mother room and without the possibility to save the best parent plants in clone form, proper breeding becomes difficult.

Choose seed lines that finish well there and that you really like. Try all the crosses you have already made and see how they perform there. Learn about the dominant-recessive traits from them. New ideas and paths will arise from there.

 

[Nannymouse]

Roadside grows? Hahaha, the township road maintenance guys would spot it and go berserk! There would be investigations. It'd be in the local newspapers. Sounds like a plan for a 'planting day', a few days ahead of moving to a new state, harrrrrr!

 

[lohnjennon]

Roadside grows? Hahaha, the township road maintenance guys would spot it and go berserk! There would be investigations. It'd be in the local newspapers. Sounds like a plan for a 'planting day', a few days ahead of moving to a new state, harrrrrr!

I was talking about the possibility of broadcasting seeds and not tending to them at all. It is a very rural area and legal here so i would imagine that if they were found they'd just be cut down. Maybe that's naive?

 

[lohnjennon]

Thanks for your advice @Nannymouse, I will reassess my plans. The roadside idea was a part of a bigger scheme to broadcast large amounts of seed in different locations and see what happens. I don't want to get in trouble for something stupid.

 

[Nannymouse]

I was talking about the possibility of broadcasting seeds and not tending to them at all. It is a very rural area and legal here so i would imagine that if they were found they'd just be cut down. Maybe that's naive?

I dunno. That's just my description of what would happen here.

 

[gedLang]

I don't think it would be a big deal here in Minnesota. It is also legal here and wild hemp grows in roadside ditches and other exposed/transitional areas. I guess I would want to know if anything is being sprayed by the DNR or road crews to keep vegetation in check. But I think it very unlikely that anyone would have legal trouble for this in states like Minnesota or Michigan. There are probably some guerilla growers in legal states on this board that can talk about their experiences.

More likely that some teenager steals it way before it's ripe.