Living organic soil from start through recycling

[heady blunts]

(not all the smelly ones are the dankest of the lot!)...

i'm sure you're right DM.

if i had more space...

actually my outdoor is a good example. i'm growing out all the female plants.

my ideal would be to grow out big seed lots so i could understand the lines better as you were mentioning.

but a noob's gotta start somewhere!

 

[Toes.]

My wife has to tell me to quit rubbing them stems so fast and for too long. She says I'll go blind if i don't stop.

How about stem rubs for male selection?

 

[ixnay007]

Pointless, stem rubs just mean they have nice smelling stems.

The proper way to do it is to take proven females, and cross them with a few males (probably selected for vigor, flowering time, stature, and of course what sort of smells the male flowers have.. and hopefully resin) and evaluate the crosses to find out which male passes the most desirable traits. That's how proper breeders do it. You then use the male clones you've kept to do future breeding.. see DJ short for a prime example of this.

Sam recommended reversing the males to have it produce female flowers to test smoke, but the substances you use are not organic by any stretch of the imagination.. you will get a better idea of what traits in terms of flavor, high, etc the male should be passing.

You can pick a male for his size, growth, flowers, etc, but as most people have seen here, beautiful plants don't always equal stellar bud. It's kind of a gamble, but it's one most closet growers like me take.

Or you could do what Tom Hill says, reversing quality females to make crosses is not abnormal, in fact it's the standard breeding method in normal agriculture, and the most secure route to quick quality hybrids.. plus colloidal silver isn't toxic.

 

[ericcopainting]

Great thread. This is the stuff my brother told me about. you all must be his friends he talked about. Kul!!! i have been reading and his soil mix is alot like yours that i am using now that he gave me. i even got him to give me the stuff to put into the dirt. he is not around any more cuz i had to knock out the comp to make all the cash in my town. i got his plants from him also. lmao

ericco

 

[Toes.]

Cash rules everything around me!

CREAM!

Get the money!

Dollar Dollar bills yo!

 

[VerdantGreen]

would you guys see pumice as a 'straight swap' for perlite?

i found that when i tried to swap calcined clay for perlite it made my mix a lot more water retentive. (and too heavy to lift the pots in my awkward loft/crawl space
now i use about half and half perlite and c. clay which seems to give me the best of both worlds.
im not scared to say i like perlite as an aeration/texture amendment. but then again im not scared to say i use a pH meter sometimes - its about growing great smoking weed, not ticking boxes.

VG

 

[BlueJayWay]

Since we're talkin' plant traits etc...

I have the largest variety of different strains/phenos going right now than ever (which isn't saying much LOL), several of which are unkown or fairly unkown seedstock, and have distinct qualities/traits that I wish I knew where they originate. Is there a reputable source of knowing that a specific trait being expressed in the plant is from a specific strain/landrace/lineage etc.?

Example - I have one obviously Sativa female, stretched 4x in flower, 30 days into flowering and it's barely showing any signs of bud formation, i'm guessing it'll easily go 15-18 weeks. I know probably not much to tell there other than = equatorial sativa?

I have one plant from a cross that is different than it's sistren in that it's buds are a solid mass of very long white pistils (and showing no signs of slowing down, nice!), I can't post a picture yet they're on a different computer, but this plant in particular is completely different than anything I've grown and I figure it has to be unique to a certain strain etc...

 

[VerdantGreen]

ixnay, i try not to select males - rather i will use all the decent males and keep the genetics in there for future selection. i think this is the best way when line breeding and in situations where you cant easily do progeny testing. Mr.Greengenes - who hasnt been around in a while - said that was one of the best ways.

i think reversing females to make S1s and fem F1 crosses is a great breeding too and only maligned by people who dont really know what they're talking about. not suitable if you want to create an ibl but very useful in its place.

VG

 

[ClackamasCootz]

VG

RE: Calcinated Clay

Is that product you buy made from Montmorillonite clay? (generic term implied, i.e. not necessarily from France)

CC

 

[VerdantGreen]

hey CC, its danish molar clay afaik, and the calcining process is done by heating it up similar to perlite. sold as seramis (hydro medium) turface or sophisticat pink cat litter.
no pumice available in the UK, all our volcanoes are long inactive.

VG

 

[heady blunts]

VG- the lava rock is MUCH heavier than the perlite i replaced with it. i also used a bit of diatomite in this mix.

volume wise---i used the same amount of lava rock/DE as i would have of perlite.

 

[VerdantGreen]

hi heady, but also it holds much more water - pumice, calcined clay etc is porous, whearas perlite only holds water/air on it's surface.
my mix is already pretty water retentive because i use topsoil in it - which helps to stop it drying out and becoming hard to re-wet - thats probably why the perlite works well for me rather than more porous aeration amendments.
as i said half and half is just about right for me.

VG

 

[ixnay007]

ixnay, i try not to select males - rather i will use all the decent males and keep the genetics in there for future selection. i think this is the best way when line breeding and in situations where you cant easily do progeny testing. Mr.Greengenes - who hasnt been around in a while - said that was one of the best ways.

Well yeah, open pollination is for sure the best way to maintain variety, but it's more useful in situations where you haven't had a chance to see what a plant has to offer.. if you're looking to sustain a line, or instead do selective breeding. If the strain is a landrace, open pollination might be advantageous, if you look at a lot of the things people like DJ short do, you'll note that there's usually a single male, or two or three selected males, involved in the project.. but that's because he's had a lot of chances to explore what comes out of those crosses.

i think reversing females to make S1s and fem F1 crosses is a great breeding too and only maligned by people who dont really know what they're talking about. not suitable if you want to create an ibl but very useful in its place.

VG

For sure, I prefaced it with hybrid, though it could be the first step in working towards an ibl..

 

[VerdantGreen]

Well yeah, open pollination is for sure the best way to maintain variety, but it's more useful in situations where you haven't had a chance to see what a plant has to offer.. if you're looking to sustain a line, or instead do selective breeding. If the strain is a landrace, open pollination might be advantageous, if you look at a lot of the things people like DJ short do, you'll note that there's usually a single male, or two or three selected males, involved in the project.. but that's because he's had a lot of chances to explore what comes out of those crosses.

good points, , but, although DJ short deserves huge respect, i feel that some of his lines would have benefited from not being so genetically bottle-necked. single male/female pairings have been the general practice in cannabis breeding and had DJ kept a little more diversity in his Blueberry line then it wouldnt be in quite such a mess as it is today.
line breeding from what was originally a single male/female pairing is asking for trouble down the line from all i have read and seen.
i cant do much other than start a line and then hope that others will take the f2's and make selections... so i guess dont select because i cant do it properly. i'll keep as much diversity as possible and then there is variation to select from at a later date and less chance of the line losing it's vigor.

VG

 

[BlueJayWay]

Are dominant/recessive traits in cannabis documented (publicly) to any extent?

 

[heady blunts]

VG you are pretty space-restricted.

how do you select females from a group of seeds you haven't worked with?

 

[VerdantGreen]

hey heady, females are pretty easy to select because i run them first and then i know how well they grow and smoke. males are a bit of a lottery unless (as ixnays says) you progeny test them which takes up too much space for me, but also if you are looking to line breed your crosses, you really dont want to just use 1 male and 1 female, because you will lose too much of the genetic diversity which may useful to select for further down the line...

so if i run 10 seeds (which is a laughable amount of plants in terms of proper breeding but all i have space for) i will flower all the females and keep all the decent looking males, collect and mix their pollen and make seeds on each female (a bud or two). then when i get to smoking them i can reject any girls (and her seeds ) that dont smoke so well and keep all the seeds of the good females. then you have multiple pairings to start your breeding project and you havekept as many genetics as you can.

the other i try to do is use proper stable lines to start my breeding projects rather than crossing strains together that are already crosses - then you have a proper F1 that is fairly uniform and more chances of stabilizing into an ibl.

sorry for the off topic guys, im just a beginner at the breeding game but it's great fun

i recommend Allard - 'principles of plant breeding'. the 2nd edition has a lot about population genetics.

VG

 

[VerdantGreen]

Are dominant/recessive traits in cannabis documented (publicly) to any extent?

not really, there are not many lines that are true breeding nowadays anyway. certain traits such as the 'cheese' terpene in skunk are rare and recessive - which is why the UK cheese skunk cut is so sought after... its said to be an afghani trait, and interestingly i am growing out some bubba S1s atm and one has a strong cheesey smell.
other traits like the leaf purpling pattern in bubba are fairly true breeding...

also whether traits are dominant depends on what you cross to what.
bes thing is to do research on the individual strains you are interested in.

 

[DARC MIND]

best not to put all your eggs in one basket

best not to put all your eggs in one basket

using one female to one male really opens up those specific traits with in (those individuals selected)& helps one see what the dominant/recessive traits are of the parents used.
but pollen can be stored off of each selected male & dusted on selected females cuttings,from P1s.fruiting multiple male and females to line breed & or inline breed,with less guess work.

one should try to start from largest gene pool possible & grow many of the f2's..making hybrids with the selected males & growing them out,will also help one ID what traits pass to begin but proper dedicated linebreeding, with one male and female helps me in the long run,with recording my findings & final selection of each progeny experiment.
"the beginning is selection & the end is selection"
_Luther B.

 

[MrSterling]

VG you've brought up a topic that I've been thinking on lately and wanted some opinions on. This is of course relying on the use of CS. Let's say you have a female plant you really like and you decide to S1. Where can you go from there, breed those S1s with another line for F1s? If you busted out your colloidal silver again, what happens when you breed siblings from S1s together? I wish I had a better grasp of plant genetics and breeding.