Finding a lost strain

Hello all,

This is my first grow diary, I guess in this case a breeding diary.

In the past I found a bag seed from some "Afghan" which was an excellent clone for many years. The plant has sadly gone and I and my patients are very interested in reviving this old strain we had.

The only seeds available are a cross I made with an MK-Ultra male. From other progeny tests of this male it seemed to have been from the sativa side of the MK genetics.

The plan is to drop many of these babies in search of some momma's which are very similar to what my patients and I remember as our Afghan. These will be crossed with the hardiest and strongest males.

Also I may grab some clones if anything looks interesting along the lines of an MK/Afghan mix, but the main goal is to find and isolate in a few generations the Afghan I remember.

Peace all

Pics

Pics

Here is some eye candy for ya.

Some of the children - day 3

Tricots

Tricots

So if your good at where's waldo then you noticed these babies, here they are again at day 14.



Not sure how long they will make it as a tricot.



The one on the left is mutated, I think I will keep it and see if it develops.

Here are some others...

Hope you find what you're looking for and maybe something even better mk is some fire! Good luck to you sir!

I was thinking today, if I plan on saving males and selecting heavily on the ladies, I should probably have things 1 seedling/cup...

So I transplanted about half the seedlings so that they are all in 16oz plastic cups. The roots seemed well, most had decent structure, and some were already swirling around the bottom of the cup. I guess it was a good time to transplant.

I didn't take any pics, things will be more interesting in 2-3 days when they are ready for another watering.

Sadly I culled some of the weaker plants as I know they will not produce the buds I am looking for. It always hurts me to kill plants, even if I know they are inferior to their siblings...

Anyways, that is the update...

Peace all.

Did some more work on the seedlings today. I separated and transplanted all but 12 of the cups with multiple plants per cup. I think I will leave the remaining cups alone as the roots on some of these later transplants were more involved than the earlier ones and I am a little scared breaking them apart to separate.

Even without being able to pick males from the cups with multiple plants, I still have a good number of single plant cups which should yield adequate males for selection purposes.

I also built a nice 4' x 2.5' grow table for all the cups. I just used some 1/4" plywood I had, 2"x2" pieces for the corners, and lined things in 3.5mil black plastic. My other one was a borrowed ebb/flow table only 3.5' x 1.75', I have a hydro batch that needs it in a few days... The seedlings have plenty of space now and I think this will be nice when I need to start large numbers of plants to be ensured a good selection of genetics.

An interesting note is the number of mutated plants I have in this batch. I think there are something like 5% out of the whole population.

I will post picks up later, now it is time to relax and medicate.

Peace all.

I guess there were 5 mutated plants, but one of them is from a different strain, so 4% mutated seedlings, that still seems high.

Here are the 4 Afghan x MK-Ultra mutants:

#1 - most mutated leaves,



#2 - Second set of true leaves are joined, one is missing a leaflet, the top is no longer there.



#3 - Born a tricot, but now it is trying to revert back, this is what always happens to them...



#4 - More sativa phenotype tricot, I have good hope for this one, I think it will remain tricot!




I am working on a smaller project at the same time as this. The other project involves some heirloom plants I received a bit back and now I only have crosses of them to grow.

Here is the other mutant, this one did not develop leaves past the first set, then out of nowhere developed the two branches above the first set of true leaves...

#5 - Ninja Turtle



I would show the other seedlings, but seedlings are seedlings. They are a first generation cross so there is much variability. Well not so much now, it looks as though the Afghan mother has spread her side of the genetics in the leaf expressions. The Sativa papa did not show up so much. There are only ~25% with normal to thin leaves, the rest are large, fat leavs which sometimes overlap due to their width.

Not much variation in the height, they all seem to be developing roughly the same speed. Some of them are developing the first set of branches faster than others I am noticing. I imagine these are going to be the more bushy plants in the end.

Probably not much for updates in the near future, just veg, veg, veg, until it is time to flower. I will try to obtain clones of each seedling before I send them to the flowering room so that I can avoid trying to revert a clone or regenerate a plant to save the genetics. I have not had luck in the past with those methods and I know the Ninja Turtle will not tolerate such things, I am not sure about the Afghan x MK-Ultra.

Anyways, back to the garden it is. Seems like with a perpetual grow there are always things to be done.

Peace.

make some f2's of your mk/afghan cross and strat selecting the ones that most represent the lost clone or like hughmorrislee said something better

Hi cave, thanks for stopping by and the advice.

If you don't mind me asking how should I go about getting to f2?

Right now these are the first generation of the cross so I have a spattering of plants with some Afghan genetics and some MK-Ultra genetics.

This is the game plan:

1) I will select from these plants and I plan on making about 4-8 F1 lines with 2-3 males and 2-3 females. The females are being chosen by their similarity to the original Afghan clone I remember. The males will be isolated and flowered until mature to test flavor, taste, and growth characteristics( structure, height, flowering time, general vigor ). I will select probably two males, maybe three if I have many good choices, this is simply to ensure I have the genetics I wish in the next generation. I do not plan on doing progeny tests before making the first cross.

2) This part pretty mush is a progeny test, I will grow test runs of the F1 lines. If one is much better than the others that will be the generation I use to make the F2 seeds. If there are two which are equally good by my criterion above, I may run 2 F2 lines and try to mix them later on.

Let me know if this is a sane plan. In the past I have just kinda went with the flow and didn't do so much selecting. This is a more serious run and I would like to get as much as possible from this first generation so that the next generation has even better offspring and more similarity amongst the population.

Thanks again for the advice,

Peace.

subscribed. this shouyld be fun to watch. good luck in your quest

Transplanting

Transplanting

I bought some Happy Frog soil yesterday to transplant some old mothers to 7 gal pots. Needless to say, buying large amounts of soil, I had some extra which I decided to transplant the rest of the Afghan x MK babies.

Things were even harder with the root balls growing together, but I think I safely separated the seedlings into their own 16 or 18 oz Dixie cup. This way I can have full selection from the males and females in this line.

I can post some pics later when I do some more watering and such this afternoon. One can definitely see the afghan influence on most of the leaves now as they are really fat. Also, I am noticing faster development of branches on these seedlings compared to the Blueberry Punch x MK-Ultra seedlings I grew out recently.

Peace all.

Pictures

Pictures

Well, I did some watering today and got some shots of the children. The first shot is a spattering of the pheno's as I see at the moment. I just tried to grab like one of each seedling type.



Next we have the tricot which is still showing all three branches and leaves per internode.



Next is a branchy little baby. These ones excite me because I will be able to clone and flower them for testing earlier than the others. There appear to be about 25% of the seedlings that have significant branch development for being only 4 nodes high.



Finally, I have some comparisons of the height differences of the plants. Most are the height of a swisher sweet cigarillo( Most people compare plants to lighters, but I smoke blunts and light them with matches, so this is what I have... ).



Some are this high though, but I think they might just be the boys...



On another note, the MK-Ultra had really large internodes and golfball style nuggets on them. In the past when I have grown these crosses out, some of them that have larger internodes and seem taller are those with the influence from the MK father. The only thing that sucks is those do not harvest that much, like the MK.

Anyways, this is what is going on with the breeding project. I am getting excited. It should only be a matter of waiting for the plants to veg until I can start flowering them and taking notes of the different traits and such.

I have made the decision that I will not do any breeding with these plants initially. I think to determine the full potential of the female phenotypes I will not introduce any pollen to the original seedlings. I plan on keeping clones of every plant male and female. The male plants will be flowered in a separate chamber to determine flowering and growth characteristics. The females will be flowered sensi to get accurate harvest estimates and determine their overall appeal as a future clone and breeding mother.

Then I will start batches of the select females and select males to do the F1 breeding. Supposing I have to veg these plants at most 2 more months, then 2 months of flowering. I should have samples in the 3 to 4 month range. This puts us in the March - April timeline which is perfect as I am moving in May.

As for the rest of the breeding project, I have never done this serious of a selection so I think I should take this as far as possible, or reasonable. In my opinion the herb expresses it's best potential or something near that after about 1 month of curing. So I guess I could start the breeding batch to produce Afghan x MK-Ultra - F1 in April - May. That will probably be the outcome as I will only take clones of the select females and males when I move.

I will have more updates as I notice some more growth. I am not sure if I will cull any more plants at this point. Perhaps I will not flower some if they do not develop quickly enough in the veg room over the next month. In the past growing these MK crosses I have had some that take forever to veg and this is not really a trait that I look for in my plants. I have not noticed that the nicer pheno's veg slow, or that the slow veging plants are that terrible, but they are slow to grow and are not any better than those that grow fast. So I don't think I will miss anything if I pull another 5-10% of them before flowering.

Well I think that is it.

Peace all

Selections

Selections

Hi all,

I did some watering today, it seems these little ones are thirtsy every 2-3 days. I was giving them liquid nutrients, FoxFarm + addiditives: GH BioRoot, GH Floralicious +, SuperThrive, Hygrozyme. Also initially I filled each cup with 1/3 cow manure and topped it with 1-2" of Earthworm castings, now they are starting to uptake this and got burned with the liquid I was giving them...bah!

So I started giving them just the additives and no FoxFarm as the bulk of nutes are coming from the solids for the next two weeks or so. Anyways, things are shooting up and I can see little 1/2-3/4" branches on the largest of them. Not sure how I will clone all of them, either by topping or to wait for axial limbs to grow.

The current plan is to get clones from them all and flower them all under a 1000W HPS. I don't really care that I will be putting twice as many plants(~30 females) under the light as usual, I think this will be enough herb to test each and make decisions on what to keep to breed with.

Here are some of the kids.



There are more to the right and left, about 2/3 really strong and 1/3 not so vigorous. This could either be those which are burned more are now stunted, or they are simply genetically inferior plants. I guess only time will tell.

If half of the kids are ready to clone and flower and the other half not, then I guess I am back to using more than 1 1000W. Otherwise if they are really slow I may just cull them, I am not sure.

Here is a branchy one close up.



You can also see the slight burn on the bottom. The only thing good about a little burn is now I can slow down the nutrients and watch them really grow knowing I have things maxed out.

Anyways, more updates as I see more growth.

Peace

Current state of breeding project

Current state of breeding project

Hi all,

Seems like ages since I have posted, the breeding project is going great. I think the plants are a little crowded under their current lights as they are reaching the 8-14" stage in vegetative growth.

There are many phenotypes apparent, and some of what looked like slower growing seedlings are now amazing looking 8-10 internode plants with 1" branches and such!!! Some of the lankier phenotypes are ridiculous with their node length, but I have to remember the node length on the pheno of MK-Ultra I had, it was also almost a joke, but the quality of the bud surely made up for the lack of quantity.

Here are some of the ladies.



Another great stride in the breeding project is my new Botanicare 25 site aeroponic cloner. I have taken 22 clones from the tops of the tallest plants, they are looking amazing, here are the clones.



They are so tight in there. I do not understand why manufactureres build cloning machines in this way. I don't think that they have cannabis plants in mind. Or perhaps people take smaller clones than I do, I am not sure. Anyways, 22 got cut but #10 died, so I will have to veg that plant longer to retain a clone before it gets put in the flowering room. here are some of the ladies that got their tops taken, most are the lanky tall pheno's, as I needed to even the canopy anyways.



I have some new pots that are like 3/4 gallon or something, a good intermediate between the 16oz cups and 1.5 gallon pots. I plan on transplanting once I get my hands on some soil, then I will probably throw in the first 20 or so when I start to see some roots in the cloning machine. I must be extremely careful with these clones and plants as this is all part of determining the quality of the plant for future generations of this strain.

Here are some of the shorter plants.



Things seem to be rolling along, I am not sure how I will be able to maintain more than a handful of breeding project like this. My hat goes off to those who do. I guess it is back to the garden, more updates as my rechargeable batteries get back on their feet and I transplant some of these teens for their days in the flowering room.



On a side note, my other breeding projects right now in order of appearance of male pollen are:

Female x Male

MK-Ultra-F2 x MK-Ultra-F2 = MK-Ultra-F3

Sharksbreath x Grape Ape = Ape's Breath
Sensi Star x Grape Ape = GrapeStar(???)
Ninja Turtle x Grape Ape = Donatello
White Northern x Grape Ape = (???)

(Afghan x MK-Ultra) x (Afghan x MK-Ultra) This thread

Ninja Turtle x Ninja Turtle
P(local heirloom) x Ninja Turtle
Blueberry x Ninja Turtle = Leonardo
Strawberry Cough x Ninja Turtle = Raphael

P x P
Ninja Turtle x P


I guess this means I have 5 main breeding projects, and I will probably do 2-4 lines of this, so 6-8 breeding boxes with males. Sounds like a blast to me.

I am inheriting a Grape Ape male which I am to use to make the Ape's Breath, then I am going to stick three other ladies in there to take advantage of that pollen when it is around. I think I may even keep a clone of that male around just in case it easily passes the grape flavor to the progeny, that could be something worth quite a lot to any breeding project. There needs to be more grape flavored medicine.

I would love if people could fill in the (???) with some comments. I am kinda set on Grapestar, but I am up to suggestion.

Also I am interested in an orange flavored herb that is worthy of making a Michaelangelo herb which would be

Ninja Turtle x Orange flaver male, or
Orange flavored female x Ninja Turtle.

Regardless, I do not have any orange flavored herbs, and I have not really smoked anything except for a few afgthans which had some citrus notes, not really what I would call orange though.

I only have two of the P plants, I am really hoping for a male female pair. If not, I am not sure what I will do, perhaps drop the rest of the seeds in hopes to get a male, or just hold onto the clones for as long as I need if they are good. Then I can drop the rest of the seeds I was gifted later to see if I can find me a boy.

I guess that is all for now.

Peace.

Flowering

Flowering

I currently have 52 or 53 or the Afghan MK-Ultra, 38 of which are transplanted to .75 gallon containers and the rest are smaller, but need to be transplanted soon. Of the transplanted kids, 17 are already taking up some light under HPS, here are ten of them which are already showing sex.

There seems to be 4 males and 4 females, with the last two being stubborn, although I guess the other 8 are just quick, either way you look at it.

This is the first female to show,



here are the others and a mystery.



This was the first male to show sex,



and here are the rest of the first 10 to get flowered.



The other 7 plants all seem to be males, but these 17 are the tallest/lankiest of the batch of seedlings, so one can expect a higher male/female ratio. I can take some shots of them tonight, but the light is not on right now.

Of the mutant plants, there are two which survived to the 14-18" stage. The first is a tricot which has only dicot branches, I have never seen one develop branches which still have three leaves per internode. The second mutant is that which had a conjoined leaf, which stunted the main top making the plant naturally topped. One of the tops took over, so the other will be used as a clone to hold the phenotype if the plant is good enough to make the cut later.

That is all for now, I will try to include more images of these plants and others in my breeding projects.

Peace all.

Breeding Boxes

Breeding Boxes

Well, the males in the basement are isolated. I made two breeding boxes with clear tupperware containers, filtrete hyper allergen furnace filter and some computer fans. I got the idea from some thread on here, props to them, but I forgot the link.

Anyways, I had some later showing females which puts the first ten at 6 females and 3 males. There is a plant which may be herm, I have isolated it with the males, I really hate herm plants and they just recently kicked my groin and knocked up a blueberry plant and others in my main room. But that is the word on those ten.

Again as noted before, the next 7 that went upstairs seem to be 6 male and 1 female, so I will have to construct another breeding box for the upstairs, and probably one more for the males to come.

So far we have 7 female, 9 male, and 1 herm from the first to be put in. After that I took 12 clones and put the next 12 upstairs. I seem to remember from cloning that there were pre-flowers on at least 3 that were female, but I will wait a few more days to scrutinize the plants and their nodes.

Here is some eye candy of the ladies upstairs, there are the 7 put in earlier, and then the 12 later plants.



Next is one of the surviving tricot plants, the clone is funny looking, but as I said before and can be seen in the image, the branches only have two branches at each of their nodes. But I cloned the top of these plants, so perhaps I can maintain tri-cot clones by cuting directly from the main stem of this clone.





Here are some of the males upstairs.







I guess that is all the photos I snapped tonight, I will take some in the near future as things get interesting, I am sure they will.

Peace all.

Info on the project

Info on the project

Well, seems like the project is really jumping off.

I have something like 35 plants in, 15 males isolated, 16 females marked, clones taken of everything!

The only plants killed so far was 1 herm in the basement, and one really weak male compared to thers, #3, #8.

Here is a sample of my breeding boxes with some MK-Ultra-F2 kids in their. I am working on a F3 line which has been selected for sativa pheno's at each step.



The box is a clear tupperware on it's side, the two hydro plants are in saucer's for soil pots with a drain hole and drippers to water them. The box has passive air intakes on the bottom all around and a 80mm computer fan mounted on the top to remove excess moisture and keep good airflow for the breeding plants. The air exhaust is worked with two layers of filtrete hyper-allergen furnace filters. I am really trusting the people on here who said the purple one works, but it seems to be so far!

Here is the box with three Afghan MK-Ultra kids #1,6,#13.



Here are the females from the basement.



4 of them are really stretchy and are showing me again that the random MK-Ultra male I used was more sativa than the female pheno I had. It has made every first gen cross have more sativa traits and pheno's than the original females displayed.

Anyways, 4 of them are stretchy and the other two, #7,#9 are really looking promising. These plants have barely stretched 50% of their height and they have a more similar leaf pattern to what I remember my Afghan clone having. I am pretty excited to see 1/3 of these initial plants having some of the traits I am looking for.

I am not going to disregard the other 4 plants, I have clones of all of them and I am not killing them till the end. In fact, unless they are terrible I will probably at least grow and harvest the clones I do not wish to breed further with, might as well not throw away a plant just cause it is not the pheno I want. I am sure there will be some interesting crosses in this combo.

Looking at these pics, the stretchy plants are almost comical in how long the nodes are...



Here is a top from one of the promising looking plants.



Here is the bottom, you can really see the leaf pattern on these little leaves.



Well, more as things happen, I need to get some pics like this of the boys and girls upstairs, if I have time I can do that tonight.

That is all for now.

Peace all.

nice thread
subscribed

Flowering plants

Flowering plants

Well,

I am really slacking on the update on the upstairs plants. Two nights ago I traded my 12/12 born in flower plants for a male box and put 12 males under a 150HPS. Then I determined I have 13 females upstairs remaining.

Last night I killed some males and ended up with 11 males in the basement breeding box, pics coming soon. Upstairs I have still the 13 females and one undetermined plant. In veg I have 12 plants which were just transplanted earlier this morning.

All in all we have still alive 6 females, 3+11=14 males in the basement, and 13 females, 1 mystery upstairs, and 12 mystery still in veg. I think the numbers are fairly even, there were a few males I killed, and 2 hermaphrodite plants which I am intolerant to.

Here are the 3 males in the breeding box, I think one of them is promising, but I am unsure until I see them full of balls and such.




I haven't really found a good way to get pics without opening them, which can be dangerous when there is pollen present.

Here are 4/6 of the females in the basement, the two not pictured are comical in their internode length. These will more than likely not be what I am looking for.

Afghan x MK-Ultra #12



Afghan x MK-Ultra #15

Afghan x MK-Ultra #7


Afghan x MK-Ultra #9



I am really excited about plants 7,9. These plants seems to have a lot of the traits that I am looking for. I think #9 may be a little too indica and is going to be a very short squat plant like Sensi Star is and other indica. Plant #7 has stretched about 25-50% of it's height and has a nice internode space on the stretch with appropriately shaped leaves and petiole length. I really hope I have what I am looking for with that one, and I hope the clones are rooting well so that I can breed with her if need be.

That is all for now, back to medicating before dinner and then some more work this evening.

Peace all.

Forgot a pic

Forgot a pic

Here is a pic of the whole room that I snapped, the Afghan x MK's are on the right and they are the shorter box in the pic, the box in the back is a male/female pair of MK-Ultra-F2 which I am breeding.



Here is a closeup of the MK-Ultra-F2 box.



And here is a scloseup of the female with some fallen pollen on her leaves!



That is all for the breeding in the basement, there are some closeups of the other plants down here on the thread Sensi Star in Flower pix section.

Peace all.