Early C99 selection

[SuperHemp]

I have room to flower six ladies, during my seed popping i have come up with far to many females! I am wondering if there are any early signs of the good C99 phenos in early flowering, i have five and need to narrow it down to maximum two! And they all look very similar, x-mas tree shape with sativa looking leaves of average size.

Three have double serrated leaves.
One showed female preflowers very early
One plant smells more than the others.

Does your favorite C99 pheno have double serrations? Did it show preflowers a week before the others in veg? Did your favorite pheno exhibit any particular or powerful smell in veg/early flower?

Any help is mucho appreciated. I had another grow with C99 before and only got one female pheno, and it was pretty mediocre weed, did not have double serrated leaves and did not smell much in early flower but got some faint tropical fruity smell to it just before harvest. I have decided to give it another go, but need to pick the right plants this time.

 

[Freedom Fighter]

i'd take plenty of cuts of all (and label them well) and grow them all out, then you will know which one's worth keeping.
you really cant tell EXACTLY what it will be like till its grown/dried/cured and of course Smoked...

which C99 is it? every version has different phenos...

 

[SuperHemp]

It's the FLT C99s from seedbay. I hear ya on the clone&tag process, but i still wouldn't be able to flower more than two of them, i have two other strains too that are competing for space. From the pics I've seen the "pineapple" pheno, which I'd like, appears to have some leaves with sporadic double serrations, just like three of mine do.

I will take your advice and clone all of them, but i still need to pick two for flowering. If neither pheno is good, i will try the three others next round, and if it still doesn't do it for me, I'll accept that C99 isn't my kind of strain.


Update:

I found out one was actually male, so that takes some work out. He looked female on the preflowers and i haven't checked him recently, but he was male.
One pheno appears to stretch more than the others and her stems are weak! Slimmer leaves than the others also.
One is more compact and has strong stems. The last two appear to be in between, somewhat stretchy. One of these was a runt and will probably be discarded due to her small size.

After some reading, I'm inclined to believe the stretchier one leans toward the "Princess" mother, the stockiest one leans towards the Shiva Skunk father, and the last two are a typical C99 representation, somewhat lanky, right down in the middle between the others, they all look very similar though.
I will keep the stretchiest one, I'm not decided on the others, but I'm leaning towards the middle road pheno. From some reading in a recent thread it could appear this is a Shiva skunk-leaning pheno, claimed by brothers grimm to have a mellow high, which reminds me of my last C99 run which were also compact with strong stems.

 

[GP2B]

C-99 is a strain that will totally supprise you. An inferior plant pre-flower could easily end up being the best. I remember this from the 1st run I had with the original.

 

[SuperHemp]

I think that applies to any plant GP2B, personally i have found that the plants with unique smells early on have been kickass plants without exception - but sometimes there have been plants that develop unique smells in later flowering and these are also really good. The low-smellers are usually bland smokes even though they can be caked with resin, I've stopped looking at resin as an indicator of potency. High resin + strong smell usually means potent plant though, and if the smell is somewhat unique and not very cannabis-like then it's usually a keeper for me. I've had plants that smell strongly of pot that were potent but the high was nothing special and sometimes anxiety inducing or uncomfortable. I also don't tend to like sweet lemon smelling plants - I've had a few sour lemon and lemon pledge-y plants that were good though.

I have done the final selection today. I couldn't choose which two C99's to keep - so i ended up with three. One more stretchy and lanky, one more compact with closer nodes, and one right in between these two. I had two pheno's that were "in between" - i discarded the smaller one due to her resemblance to her larger sibling. I have also selected two GDPxLarry OGK and one Blueberry-SSH poly-hybrid for flowering (Blueberry/afghan leaning pheno with some haze traits, i have high hopes for this lady). Hopefully at least two plants will be keepers.

 

[Baba Ku]

I completely concur with what you saw, GP2B. I selected the best model for an indoor grow, and put the rest outdoors. I had plans on keeping the indoor if it paned out as well as it promised. Big mistake, as it was the skank of the lot. The others showed some stall with nute or pH issues early on and looked near culls. But they turned out to be stellar specimens that I unfortunately have no clones of.

All was not lost though....

 

[SuperHemp]

It's also possible your indoor plant would have performed better outside, i find outdoor grown herb to often have a more complex high. Personally, i have had good smoke from just as many vigorous plants as the slow ones, so i don't think low vigor is key to good smoke.

I wonder what makes the outdoor buds give a better high - possibly the lighting? OT1 claims he gets more psychoactive effects from MH/HPS combo rather than HPS alone.

 

[Blueshark]

Super, for what its worth, I finished my 1st grow 2 weeks ago with 3 indoor and 6 outdoor.
Outdoor plants had better yield and quality...not to mention much tighter buds. Alas, I cannot chance the outdoor again. Total lumens my friend...that is what counts

 

[SuperHemp]

There has to be something more than lumens. You can use lots of light to gain light levels comparable to outdoor, but outdoor still has something special about it IMO. Biggest differences between outdoor and indoor is (IMHO):

a) Spectrum of light
b) Outdoors, there are lots of bacteria, fungi and insects interacting with your plants. Indoor grows, even organic, does not have the same biodiversity, and insects is a big no-no.
c) Outside air is rich on negative ions, indoor air is not.

One or more of these factors have something to do with the quality of the resin produced.

 

[Indian Culture]

I can't wait to grow outside again, this sounds like a really nice strain.

 

[Pyrosin]

the sun is very intense, and growing with a mh alone will leave you with a more resinous plant than grown with hps but hps will produce better. try growing with a good led light that has 660nm and no 680nm and youll watch your tops turn totally white.

 

[Baba Ku]

I tend to agree that the outdoor buds are usually a bit nicer than indoor of the same, but with the C99 I was talking about, it was no in/out thing...each and every bud from this plant was chopped up and put into a paper sack and put into the freezer for later resin extraction.
It was not worth drying and curing. This was for sure a genetic issue, and not just a better bud if grown outside.
BTW, I am fairly certain this would be the c99 pheno that folks would call the "licorice" or similar. The early fruity aroma turned into a fermented aroma and into something different than most cindy aromas towards the end. I can see where someone might describe the aroma as licorice or anise maybe.

 

[SuperHemp]

I tend to agree that the outdoor buds are usually a bit nicer than indoor of the same, but with the C99 I was talking about, it was no in/out thing...each and every bud from this plant was chopped up and put into a paper sack and put into the freezer for later resin extraction.
It was not worth drying and curing. This was for sure a genetic issue, and not just a better bud if grown outside.
BTW, I am fairly certain this would be the c99 pheno that folks would call the "licorice" or similar. The early fruity aroma turned into a fermented aroma and into something different than most cindy aromas towards the end. I can see where someone might describe the aroma as licorice or anise maybe.

Yes i think i had a similar pheno on my first C99 grow, it started out with a slight lemon smell and in the end it had a slight smell of anise. The taste was awful and the high was nothing special, totally zombie effect, not what i was looking for. My friends loved it though? lol