Orient Express & more from the Buddhist Arc

Albanian brick? Hang on a sec...I know there was a post around here somewhere that said Albanian was the best. It's all the same, right??

Just kidding. I bet it is like anywhere else. Keep the good stuff close to home, and roll out quantities of lower end for cash.

Yeah the Orient Express is pretty much breaking my expectations for small, end-of-season plants. I just expected a little sample of it, and there it goes turning into something like corn stalks.

I can confidently say a 15 mph wind is not too severe--like that's big news. If it does get rougher than it has been, the easy thing is to bring the plants into a barn. Just trying to find a way to decide, before anything happens.

According to my test subject, Kiss Dragon is finished and ready to chop. Ironically, it's better than itself, or at least one bowl of it was better than another. Well, it really makes sense, they don't ripen evenly, so a bowl of sticky stuff should be better than a less-developed piece of the same plant. I'd agree that it's good, but I believe it can get more intense.

Ok, I got a little greedy.

This is the Himalayan Gold talking, and it says "nice".

So it's a pretty irregular plant. Its lowest branch is like another main stem. Its second branch was only a toothpick with a little sprig on the end, and I removed it. Overall, the plant looks like it's growing a fairly generous amount of flower, although it's both slower to grow it, and visually slower to pop trichomes/ripen than most other kinds.

I found a little surprise, and it was five seeds. So I took this unripe, seedy, toothpick sprig and ran it through my lungs. Now I have an idea why this line has been kept around for twenty years or something like that. And it may have sold me on the idea of indica-sativa hybrid. I'd say it rolled in with a nice, warm, full, center body feeling, which elevates its way to the head with a smile. I'm not a statue, or light headed and silly, it's just nice.

I'd have to guess the seeds were from the Orient Express male; maybe that has something to do with why it's not visually progressing as fast. Anyway, for whatever reason, this sprig leaves no doubt in my mind that "we want more of this", instead of "it needs more time to get better".

Rainy day digression incoming.

There have been showers, but so far, everything has fallen beneath the power in the forecasts. The ones to watch are probably where you find an hours' advance notice of 35 mph+ winds, heavy rain, quarter sized hail...something like that would definitely trigger protection mode.

From reading older threads, it looks like (~10 years ago) you were mostly stuck pouring significant cash into a single pack of seeds, and then it was kind of hit-or-miss on the whole crop, as to whether any of it was worth the time. The newer business model of being able to get as little as a single seed, offers a lot of advantages to someone like me, having missed out on the whole "strain development" process in more tolerant places.

We almost did that. Almost just got a bunch of White Skunk (White Widow x Skunk), because those were the only things we could really tie names to, and that we knew we liked. Skunk is old and reliable, but I remember the onset of White Widow as being the thing that upped the trichome density, and got the good word of someone I knew, who never messed with average brick or raggy outdoor smoke, so I took that as a good tip.

I made it to Amsterdam in 2001. Can't remember the name of the place I stayed, but it was right behind the Concertgebouw, which is itself across the field from the Rijksmuseum. I can't remember the coffee shop either, but it was through the gate of the museum, and then maybe a mile or so up the road, somewhat to the left past the Queen's palace.

Being American, when they offered me bags of around 1,8 grams, I expected a few crumbs and dust, because that's all we ever get from something that small. So it was already an eye-opener to receive something fat and pine-conish. I snatched a handful of the larger papers common in Europe and headed to a table. It was around 11 a. m. and so the place wasn't very busy. No distractions from whatever it was going to do.

Firstly it was nice that the bag was more than enough to fill a large paper. When I fired it up, there was American classic rock coming out of the speakers, and the coffee house construction was approximately 1940s wooden build, which was similar to a house I once lived in. And, at first, it felt like, I've traveled halfway around the world, to feel like I'm right at home.

Well, I don't have a great linear memory--can't say the names of the places I was--but I have a pretty good geometric memory, and could probably follow the same path today. Plus, going through foreign lands, I was hyper aware of the surroundings, and knew where I was and where I was going at all times.

In that case, I'd figure it's not too hard to remember how you got in a door twenty minutes ago, and, if not, there's a 50% chance of randomly guessing it. But noooo...the widow sent me out the door the wrong way. And I kept going the wrong way, cause I just couldn't tell the difference, from having come in a few minutes ago.

"He who steps in dog sh!t buys the next round".

What about the guy who surfs it for three feet? That was me. Even having been there for a day, and picked up the habit of dodging the stuff, a little bit of the widow shut down that ability fast. I didn't stumble, so I guess it wasn't all that physically intoxicating, but it had me pretty mentally bewildered. Immediately lost, when I basically knew where I was, and then doing a feat of agility, which I was being very observant to avoid. That does count as being "slightly out of it".

Then there was the thing that confirmed I had gone the wrong way. I saw this big grey building, which definitely didn't belong on my chosen route. And that was the Scientology place. I got a little too close to it, and one of them was out on the street corner for promotional purposes or something.

He shouldn't have asked me anything, because since he did, I was obliged to tell him the truth. See, I have one of your books. I tried to read it, but just couldn't get into it. I wound up taking it with some other stuff to three or four used book stores, and, they bought anything else under the sun, but no one would touch your material. So it rode around on the floorboard of my car, under a pile of trash, until I shucked it in a free donation somewhere.

That's what it took to confirm that I hadn't exited the door properly, and it was time to hunt for the other neighborhood.

I had brought a walkman with cassettes to have some music on the trip. When it was time to roll another joint--and 1/4 to 1/3 of those big ones was enough for one person--I broke up the weed on a cassette case. So the case had a pile of ripped-up shreds on it, for what, only a minute or two. Unlike anything I ever got in the states, the Dutch weed left a pool of oil on the case. It dried into a hard shell that never came off. I don't know if this is what's meant by the term, "greasy resin", but...I suppose most weed trays slowly texturize in a similar manner over a period of time; this was just large and instant, about like squeezing out some plastic cement.

If you can take that level of weed for granted, you're in a special place. I'm still sketchy about a lot of the pro trimmed, hydro, shiny marbles that go around. I think a lot of it is over-priced midgrade. Sort of like some frozen Green Giant vegetables; the corn is so yellow, the carrots so orange, the broccoli so green...it's too synthetically perfect, and when eaten, it's more like you've eaten pictures of food, instead of the real thing.

In the current situation, for a given price, different outlets can provide 1/2 oz. of brick, 1/4 of mids, or 1/8th of supposedly high grade. I'd almost go so far as to say...the mids are actually the cured version of the high grade. Yes, the expensive stuff is a little more green and snappy, but, that's about it. With most of those bags, either the weed deteriorates fast, or one's tolerance rises, or both, so that towards the end, there's nothing special any more. I don't see any added value for double the price. With most of the cheaper stuff, the end is the same as the beginning.

I wouldn't object to higher prices if something is close to the White Widow, or Utah or New York skunk that I've experienced; otherwise, it just comes across as misrepresentation. Of course, I don't know and won't claim that anything I personally grow is on that level, but maybe some of it will be. It's really a form of edu-tainment, whereas I've seen a whole lot of what seem to be attempts to sponge too much money from people, and I don't really like seeing all of someone's disposable income funnelled into one thing that makes you share smoke on an almost per-toke basis, versus the generosity I saw when I was younger.

Welpers, there's a Mr. Death here, about the reaping?

Like most people who aren't too deeply educated in classics (e. g., Virgil), I had that vague notion that Rome was founded by those wolf-raised twins, seemingly out of nothing. But that isn't so, the Latium area was guided by Saturn, a refugee from the Trojan war, about 500 years earlier. Among other things, Saturn was proficient in agriculture, hence, associated with reaping.

None of this rain evolved into storms. This morning was probably the last shower for a while, so, I'm strongly looking at letting the Sexbud dry out a little and probably grab it tomorrow night. Most likely followed by the first/faster indicas around the new moon. I have a tentative arrangement for using a camera to get some mug shots as the ladies come inside individually. Outdoor shots are too much of a jumble. That might be different once a few plants are out of the way, or, at least, it would be nice to be able to get closely into the middle of them, without the additional human threat of me falling bodily on top of them, which has almost happened many times.

Safety is usually a high-level concern, and, there are never any promises; fortunately, the arrangement seems to be resistant to children and meter readers at a range of about forty feet. So we should be headed to a decent finish here; I see that frost & freeze is already affecting places, but there's probably a month-ish before we would face it, which hopefully is enough time to finish the Afghan. It's well into a good start now, plenty of nice little clusters that can be seen from a distance. Everything else has mostly either stopped, or has passed the peak of bud mass production, so that we look at the detailed signs of ripening.

For example, since testing it, Sexbud trichomes are now mostly cloudy, and some of them have started folding in half. I don't believe this is a strain to push for any second wave, or to develop amber, and is probably as good as it gets around the end of seven weeks' flowering.

Hey Satyr!
I've grown Female Seeds C99 ,of which Sexbud is a fast version.It was ready 8 weeks,so you may be spot on about the 7 week mark.

It should be ready. Can always let the second one go longer, but, it's not making much of a comeback.

Most of that first wave of plants is not too far behind, except for the Orient Express, which for some reason keeps making new flowers, and it is still very green. Kiss Dragon and Edelweiss seem to be done producing, and the Mekong nearly so.

Posted this in the breeder forum as well, but, here we go. Sexbud wasn't completely yellowed out, probably could have gone further; most of her pistils were hunkered down and the trichomes were mostly cloudy. Grapefruit scent to this one.



It gained a "white" appearance pretty quickly, and it got a little amber on the sugar leaves, but after 7 weeks of flowering, that seemed like enough for this kind.

Beautiful,I think timing was just right.Enjoy!

Cool, thanks.

Kiss Dragon can't be far off; it's in a "high contrast" mode of yellow leaves, green and white bud, and distinctively wine-dark pistils. I don't think the plant could last much longer. Apparently, Black Domina is supposed to be a fast finisher, and that probably continues in this, its offspring. Might make it another week, or maybe just a few days.

After another rain, I think the Kiss Dragon just gets a few days to dry out.

As far as I can tell, yellowing does not track with the absolute solar time frame, but just in accordance with the plant's individual lifecycle. Kiss Dragon #2 is not yellow at all. Although a "lolipop" plant, it's a little more aesthetically pleasing than the taller one with a lot of empty space. Both of them are stretch queens. That's also been said of Mekong High, Himalaya Gold, and even Nemesis, I think those reports were from indoor grows, none of them had more than average stretch outdoors.

There's also an indoor report stating Mekong High took more than nine weeks to flower. This doesn't look applicable outdoors. Mine seems to be following the trend as told by Dutch Passion, who predicts outdoor harvest mid-October, or eight to nine weeks' flowering. It's getting some purple at the edges, as they say. So it may be fast compared to standard sativa, but not quite as fast as 7-8 week speedsters. To keep it as a small plant, here, it could probably be planted at the beginning of July, if there is any more of it to be had.

Orient Express is maybe just now hitting the brakes on flower production and moving into ripening. I'll have to take their word it's mixed with Yunnan to keep it small--it's likely that, over a full season, Mekong might have outdone it, but for the way I am doing this, "small" is not a concept that was realized by OE.

Rolling right along.

The soil was still a bit moist, but, I proceeded with this for a couple reasons. One, the concept of harvest by the (waning) moon, and so this just barely caught the new moon. Secondly, the leaf fade reached the buds. I don't mind pushing plants until the majority of the leaf system is used up, but not the buds, I think this means the plant is "finished" in the full sense of the word, trichomes and all other questions aside.

So, this Kiss Dragon strain, in isolation, has a very pleasing resinous scent. Not in the general hops-ish kind of way; it might be incense-y, or something like that; I can't really describe it; not a serious reeker, but it will get your attention.

I guess the really detailed pics are hotlinks. The camera can see trichomes better than I can with a loupe, but the images are way over the limit, so I let the website resize these to see how that way turns out. This one is stretchy, with upright branches and a lot of empty space, so a likely candidate for a few more weeks of veg with LST. To try for a sense of perspective, I slipped my bic in her crotch.

This is about 5 weeks of veg, 7 1/2 flowering:



It produced eight nice tops/branches, which I don't think they became massively amber, but mostly they seem to have something good on them.

I see the glint of trichomes on the Afghan.

It looks like the ideal growing season around here is about done. After the next rain, it will turn cooler, and the patch started getting some shade in the late afternoon. Most likely I'll take the Mekong before the rain hits. The rest of them still have some green, but are all at some degree of fading.

Coming to Mekong High. Now actually I didn't make these photos, I'm not quite sure it does this thing justice. What I enjoyed about it was that it nicely conformed to the blueprint, it made the right pattern sort of like Sexbud, but a little bigger. To my eye, I would have wanted the six mostly even tops to have lined up in a row, but the angle didn't quite show this. Although, you can tell, the lowest branches are the tallest ones by a smidge.



The closeup was highly overexposed, and I had to try to compensate with pieces of it. I think a little bit of the purple edge showed up.





This one did about 8 1/2 weeks of flowering.

This little bit of Edelweiss. I still have no clue why the first seed that popped, made one of the smallest plants known to man. It looked great, no signs of stress or any problem that would hold it back. The last period of consecutive rains made the leaves cup or "taco shell", but there was nothing like that while it was growing.

Nevertheless, its minor amount of flower is very fine, and one of the most saturated in terms of trichomes. So I don't think its exemplary in terms of the plant normally grows larger, but I have a feeling these buds will be a true taste.





Even the very tiniest one at the bottom of the plant looks like art made from sugar cubes. This one went about 9 weeks of flowering.

On to Nemesis.

This plant taught me an important lesson, as it came up very poorly and looked like it wasn't going to grow. Eventually I realized that it was planted in a flimsy cup, and I looked around and saw ten or twelve species of plants, among which, each one that was in a flimsy container, was doing poorly.

It recovered when I transplanted it, but, it was set back a few weeks of growth by the...poisoning, or whatever it is...so it didn't have enough time to get big. It became fairly normal, but very compact, least stretch of anything, and flowered down to the soil line. It did not fade yellow, it purpled, more than anything else. But it was almost bluish when growing, which still shows on the stem.





This had about 8 1/2 weeks of flowering, and, hanging upside down, almost looks still standing up.

More Kiss Dragon. Carried this one further, about 9 1/2 weeks of flowering. It yellowed a bit then purpled, so went out in a kind of mottled way.

Bringing in the Orient Express here. It got floppy from the last rains; I tied it up, but, as you can probably tell, we have a prevailing wind that kept it partly pushed over.

This is at about 10 1/2 weeks flowering, and it had kept pushing new growth until about a week ago. Looks to be the biggest yielder in this batch. This is from a regular seed, which is supposed to be more sativa dominant than the feminized, and I can't say there were any indica traits at any time during its life. So I hope this kicks out something that at least vaguely resembles Vietnam Black.

Hi Satyr!Congrats on the harvested and,my,what a beautiful OE(I'm a little biased )Any early tests?From what I get it shouldn't have more than a week to go.

I need to mark the end of the "safe zone" here. Freezing and frost coming in.

That is really why I brought in the Orient Express. In its stage of maturity, it is getting just a wee bit amber, plus it has some newer growth, so the trichomes are all across the board. So, ideally, it looks like it should have had about 12 weeks.

But oh my, working with it is like taping a bag of orange flavored plastic cement to your face.

Someone else told me "not really" mango tropical. It doesn't really reek, but it definitely has some scent in the direction of fruit. Too fresh to really do anything with it yet.

The Mekong was completely different. Handling it really conveys a sense of examining fine exotic botanicals. Much more earthy, almost towards gutta percha.

I totally over-ripened the Edelweiss. Practically pure amber that dried into something that looks like bricks. It was also the most "wicky" stuff I've ever found, that is, you jar it, then the next time you check, it turned into putty and has to sit out for hours....it did that several times.

The Nemesis looks spot on. "Substantial" amber around 25%, and, structurally and visually, the buds have a very "this is what you were looking for" promise. Very little waste material.

But yeah...I won't be able to imitate Vietnam until next year. It may be time for the Himalayan Gold next. I've been hoping to see it swell/multiply or something, but it still seems kind of popcorn-y, and I guess that's just not going to change at this point. The half-Sexbud and the Afghan probably need to be flogged along a little longer; I can probably shelter two plants somehow.

Smokin' it out...here's what we have found so far from these strains.

Sexbud: this is not what I was looking for, because, it's not like anything in my inventory of cannabis experiences. The buds are indica-dense, but the smoke is fairly light. It did come out with a grapefruit taste, or even Fresca if you want to be swanky. And, it is mostly like having the brain polished with grapefruit seed oil and a silk kerchief, on a long, slow, gentle escalator ride up. Almost entirely a brain effect with nothing to the body, except a calm kind of like vitamin B, and pretty clear and concentrated with a little mood boost like St. John's Wort. As a result, it doesn't cause munchies, so it's a kind of "diet weed".

Kiss Dragon did get me a little stoned. Not an extremely heavy one, but it made me a slow rolling blob. Seems to go mostly to the base of brain/throat/heart region. Nothing electric or speedy; more relaxed and mellow. It had an indistinct spice in some kind of wooden box scent. And that carried over into an occasional spicy burn in the sinuses, which I actually like. It's not a particularly unique buzz, but I would call it a decent improvement on a familiar one.

And the Mekong High reached a smokable condition. On seeing this, I realize that yes, in my upbringing, I have wandered across mountains of piles of bud of this basic structure. We generally called it "joint weed".

At the same time, it's obvious that, what we were getting was almost never any of the full tops, just popcorn and minor stems that were usually picked early, was always seedy, and frequently extremely seedy.

The Mekong doesn't reek, but it's maintaining its earthiness. Walking into a room where it's burning, the air is very rubbery, roasted, and probably uninhabitable by the cannabis intolerant. Compared to some of that other stuff, which you could walk in and not even notice anything.

The actual thing here, is that because the bud is stringy and fluffy, you actually do need to stuff about twice as much in a bowl, or else roll it. I wouldn't pose it as "ultra three toke weed" or anything like that. Smoke a little more.

When you *do*, then it's very good. Slow onset eye buzz that eventually reaches the solar plexus, so I think it is a little more stony than it is soaring. As a thing where you can have a supply of it sitting there going "smoke me", then it's a good companion. On the other hand, if you spent a lot of money on an eighth and tried to get hammered on small tidbits, which some other kinds can do, you would think this is garbage.

So if that makes sense, it's awesome "joint weed", and terrible "fix weed".