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Mengsk's 2018 Outdoor Grow Show

Mengsk

Active member
Sour Orange cont'd
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Mengsk

Active member
The aroma profiles are really starting to develop. The blood orange amethyst I thought smelled like blueberries first now it does smell like blood oranges, although it's after I heard the name. The humboldt dream now smells like blueberries. The chocolate orange is solid dense half purple. Not like the plants up north these are much smaller. I wanted the field to be even but it's shaded part of the day where the pineapple train wreck is along with the chocolate orange, and I have a 315w light there. The other end where the mango sherbert is gets more sun and heat. The pineapple train wreck is more leafy and likely less potent than the mango sherbert which is one of the largest plants here. One plant from one of the pro growers is more bud than my entire harvest.

Have to wait for testing to know which are keepers. I want to keep or try all of them again at some time. I want to harvest when they are "best" which is something I have yet to actually do with cannabis as far as I can remember. I bought a Carson 60 - 120x to check trichomes with. The plastic keeps the smell down, no fan needed now about 1hr/day at most. If you notice I went for sweet varieties instead of sour diesel or chem. But I am pretty sure there will still be skunk and fuel.
 

Mengsk

Active member
Raining, they have to start coming in or else mold. Supplemental lighting but no heat in the greenhouse.

I was glad to get the hoop house structure up over the garden beds this season but this last wind storm broke a few more pieces. The 3/4" pvc is way too flimsy even though it lasted a season, 23 foot hoops every 5 feet. Smaller or even with better bracing it would work fine but materials for these are pretty affordable and I don't see any need to reinvent the wheel when there are plenty of good examples online. I can remake it with 1 1/2" pvc or steel tubing. For the cost, even as a one time use it worked out ok. I can still reuse the pieces for more/smaller hoops.

For the future I have to figure out thumbnails for the pictures.
 
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Mengsk

Active member
This may be my final update for this season's outdoor. In the most respectful manner many of the plants I picked up aren't what I'm looking for. My efforts were ok, the plants did well enough, although it was a first year spot with less than full sun. I may try and make concentrate i.e. Rick Simpson Oil with what I can of the harvest and have it lab tested for contaminants. With a choice at the outset I would ask for sativa plants. With an open mind I purchased a fairly wide selection of what was available at the stores. The market here is for outdoor plants that finish before it gets too cold up north in the mountains. So again I have to politely bow out of current popular cannabis, no offence I reject or seek something different from 90%+ of what we see now that's just how it is. An entire market and the associated advertising have been developed around short-fast-flowering resin plants which have been grown under lights as a cash crop, now the light dep greenhouses are marketing more of the same exact thing. Instead of anyone giving an explanation on how the plant has been abused to serve the black market (bred for high resin, short life cycle, heavy production) we have a flood of sham or bogus narrative to somehow spin this into a new, good thing. More total and complete b$ from marketing teams. This season's lesson only taught me to double down on my initial hypothesis if that makes any sense. These plants are nice and I may try and reveg the mothers for another shot indoors. However the fact remains if I look toward sativa genetics I may not have time to pursue any of these plants much further. I would like to go further back than hybrids or what I'll call indica hashplant x everything which is pervasive in the market now for decades. It only takes a glance by the untrained eye to see how much indica influence there is in so many plants grown today they nearly look uniform even though the names are different. For me the content is 100% substance, I absolutely do not care about brand name, however in this case it is a double benefit to remove myself from growing any branded seeds if possible especially buzz word poly hybrids. Because of some of the emotionally charged or political commentary posted earlier I may retire this account, fresh start as it were. Happy holidays to all, best wishes for 2019.
 
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St. Phatty

Active member
Are those pics taken with just a smartphone - or do you have an extra lens on the smartphone ?

Great pics of Great pot.
 

Mengsk

Active member
Pics are with an 8 megapixel digital pocket camera with a super macro setting. The lens size is larger than a smart phone but it isn't a DSLR.

The weed is good and I enjoyed and learned a lot. Not a mistake or failure. Rather than burn myself out physically I thought about my goals. My thoughts going into this were to look for sativa genetics/plants.

This may sound pretty idealistic but as far personally growing cannabis the light bulb that went off in my head was immediate. I already had a preconceived idea of what "sativa" "haze" "fluffly" "leafy" "pine" all meant to me. In other words I had an idea of what I was looking for well before I visited any nursery or dispensary.

I was not looking to buy based on what was for sale or in other words show up and get what they have. I was looking for something specific. The fact is, however likely or unlikely or glad/smug/fortunate/unfortunate, that I did not find a single sativa plant anywhere in my search. The market created by the sellers, and customers, do not seem overly concerned or aware of this fact. Which only logically stands to reason that they are actively promoting one over the other, knowingly willingly on purpose.

Making a crop in a shorter period of time and higher resin are both viewed as advantages. But if the indica resin is more like a downer opioid then the plant is worthless for my purpose. You can look at what people have listed as indications for different strains and indica is usually given more than 50% of the importance. I don't think anyone would reasonably argue against that.

To each their own, we have individual freedoms, some strains probably go better with being lazy sitting on the couch and drinking alcohol. Some drugs make you stupid as in lower IQ and you just sit there until the next time to get high. I don't think weed necessarily makes you dumb but I seem to notice the indica vs sativa effects clearly. Which is the opposite of meditation or activity herb.

That's kind of the tough call saying none of these plants have the desired effect therefore are of little/no use to me. Sativa plants which take more than twice as long to grow and yield less than half as much are going to be different. This is the opposite of a hybrid where the best of all worlds is the claim. This is simply going for the best of the best and acknowledging the sacrifice it takes.

Some people are missing the point entirely. I said this before about something else but if you are only selling indica and I want sativa then you effectively have zero product which is worth zero money to me. Everything all wrong. You cannot make a 16 week plant into an 8 week plant. Whoever told you that is also trying to sell beach property in Arizona.

That word "sativa" seems to have all but lost it's meaning today. If you look at the list of "sativa" flowers that dispensaries sell, not a single one of the offerings is actually a "sativa" plant. The entire market, 100%, is made up of hybrids. I don't know that people nowadays, of any age, fully understand or appreciate that fact or what it means.

My position, my perception from my own frame of reference, is that I was unable to find a single plant, clone, or finished bud for sale that suits what I'm looking for. The little bit of skunk hybrid that I had earlier in the season from a friend (not from a dispensary) is the closest thing I found.

I could get on the bandwagon I suppose and talk about how great gelato cake is but no my decision is to look for something different. Look at how many breeders run/promote gelato x cake in this present market and what that means you'll be walking away from. Someone has to be the minority even if it is 5% or less than 1%.

Clubs sell $60-65 1/8s of 'sativa' but they are hybrids bred for weight 100% of the time. If the market is 90 or even 100% product which I do not want that means a couple things for me - difficulty finding what I am looking for, and I have to grow what I'm looking for myself likely. Even sourcing any cuttings or seeds that fit this description has been exceedingly difficult at least in the context of the CA legal market.

If there is no sativa in the CA legal market, which is arguably the largest market, what does that say for cannabis in general. I do not want to debate or pick a fight with everyone involved in cannabis everywhere I go. If I walk into a room of 100 growers at a convention or get together and my feeling is that 90+ are growing the same undesirable stuff, that is my own perception. It isn't very likely that I'd make many friends by saying upfront I don't like what any of them are growing.

I am taking a bit of a risk, as I do not yet know what I may find, but I do recall looking for more uplifting energetic sativa genetics. The risk is to say I haven't found that in any of these plants so I should probably start fresh. New seeds, keep these as a novelty or for sleep meds but that's it.

My outdoor climate is also very different from Humboldt or Oregon. While I am not in a tropical environment it makes total sense to grow cultivars more suited to this area. A native equatorial plant may not grow to full potential here but splitting the difference between 7-8 weeks and 16+ weeks is easily doable in my opinion.
 
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PDX Dopesmoker

Active member
I hope you find that good outdoor sativa for your climate eventually, you're right about it being a bigger challenge that finding the dankest cut for indoor. I've talked about this issue with a number of other local outdoor growing enthusiasts, the seed market is really just keyed in on breeding genetics for that perfect 12/12 room because that indoor grow room is the most widespread environment people are growing in. It seems to be a fairly common sentiment among outdoor growers from marginal climates that if you want regular seeds that are going to work well in your environment reliably then you'll probably have to work on the issue yourself for a season or two at least.
I also don't see any reason at all why its impossible to breed a hybrid strain that flowers fast like an indicia, but has the trichome heads and high of a sativa.
 

Mengsk

Active member
Update:

I have no clue what I'm talking about. I spazzed out during my first outdoor grow, for 100% personal reasons completely unrelated to what I may have been commenting on or rambling about. Cannabis is a real medicine and helped me get through a difficult time.

Stress can affect anyone, citing our friend who got banned for calling out _ and the other who called the authorities on themselves after being paranoid and having their mail opened at the local pub..

To be blunt I projected old, emotional trouble outward. For example a sour attitude toward a former acquaintance may have turned into thinking a particular variety or strain isn't the greatest. Locals and people from the scene likely read this forum all the time.

Sensibly speaking each and every line is worth pursuing, having like a million+ cultivars of prime cannabis is amazing. Having respect for a public figure, may take time, to learn to appreciate how reading a troll comment may affect someone.

Mountain kush might grow better in the Pacific Northwest or Alaska than a cannabis plant acclimated to growing in Guyana or Rwanda. Nomenclature aside it's all what you make of it.

The one Chocolate Orange Kush plant reminded me of a "purple kush" that I would've given my proverbial arm and leg for as a teenager. Sticky purple, that would be like $500+ an oz or $5k+/lb, were it to show up. Crème de la crème like that. Seeing it growing, being able to just go and buy it relatively safely and easily is amazing. Really it is enough to kind of give yourself a heart attack.

Picked up the Honey Bear cut again this year along with Trainwreck, Humboldt Sour Diesel, and Amethyst. The seed lines may be stabilized, I'm unsure if this plant is identical to a Trainwreck clone for example. I had so much fun photographing the plants to share, wasn't thinking about advertising.

Finding something just as special in Ace, Seedsman, Sensi, or Real Gorilla genetics is equally exciting. It looks like the online market, and craft breeders, like Gorilla Bubble, and Jaws gear, are at least as good if not better than what's available over the counter. Keepers in every pack no matter which brand I'm sure. Well done :tiphat: :yes:
 
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