Diary 2024 by the Danube: Zamaldelica x Kullu, Kullu x Zacateca Tribute, Purple Mexican x PCK, Kerala Chellakutti, Chiang Mai Thai

[yoss33]

Hello there!
The 2024 season has started! As usual I'm making a thread to use as a diary for my outdoor adventures. My place is at 44 degrees north, in the north Balkans, some 30 km south from the southernmost point of the river Danube. Fertile soil called Chernozem ("black land"). Dry summer and autumn. I grow a few plants in a deserted neighboring property in a village in a small valley in the plain.
This year the plan is to grow 2 big plants - a Kullu x Zacateca Tribute (sativa) and a Purple Mexican x Pakistan Chitral Kush (indica). I'm a sativa fan and I grow the indica mostly to make medical hash for a family member.
Starting them indoors and transplant outdoors sometime in April.
I'll also be growing a dozen small plants for fun breeding experiments, starting to flower and pollinating them indoors before moving them outdoors to finish producing the seeds in the early summer. After evaluating the seeded buds, some of them will be left to reveg and produce some sinsemilla bud in the autumn for proper evaluation of the high. Some seeds of the freshly produced will also be started in the summer.

Started seeds:
8 x Kullu x Zacateca Tribute (own cross of Khalifa Genetics' Kullu and Green Mountain Seeds' Zacateca Tribute)
5 x Purple Mexican x PCK (own cross of Cannabiogen's Purple Mexican and Ace Seeds' PCK)

5 x Zacateca Tribute F2 (own F2)
4 x Kerala Chellakutti (Khalifa Genetics)
3 x Chiang Mai Thai (Ace Seeds)

12 x Zamaldelica x Kullu (or ZamKullu, own cross, Ace Seeds' Zamaldelica)
12 x Zamaldelica x (Zamaldelica x Kullu) (or ZamZamKullu, own backcross)
4 x Kullu x (Zamaldelica x Kullu) (or KulluZamKullu, own backcross)

I hope to find good parental plants among the Zam x Kullu crosses to make the first breeding step of my "ZamKullu" line (just been making and testing the base crosses up to now). It has to produce plants at least as good as the ZamKullu cross in order to call that step a success. If not, stepping back and trying again in the following years.
I also want to try the Chellakutti and Chiang Mai Thai, but since they are supposed to be too long-flowering for our climate, I'll cross them to ZamKullu and check out the results.
Last year I was very impressed by the high of a Zacateca Tribute plant grown by a friend. Early picked, but very very nice. That's why this year I'll grow Kullu x Zacateca Tribute, hoping for a similar but maybe more intense high and later flowering. I hope for later flowering because Zacateca Tribute starts to flower too early and gets pollinated by the local feral hemp.
I also started the Zacateca Tribute F2 to compare to the Kullu cross and eventually to cross to Chellakutti and Thai.

I had some germination problems with the Kullu crosses and mutant problems with the Zacateca Tribute. The Kullu x Zacateca Tribute suffered from both, so I've got only 2 healthy plants out of 8 seeds...
Germination: 2 / 4 for KulluZamKullu, 8 / 12 for ZamKullu and 10 / 12 for ZamZamKullu
One ZamKullu was runt and removed, all Zacateca Tribute F2's are mutants (still kept out of curiosity), one mutant of the Kullu x ZacTrib is also kept.

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[yoss33]

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[yoss33]

2 weeks later the progress is not as good as expected. The plants grow slow, small and as if hungry, some of them overwatered, especially the Thai and Kerala. I blame the soil, sold as "soil for seedlings". It had fungus gnats flying a few days after it was watered for the first time and the plants grew slow and small, like bonsai, don't know if from the gnats or from lack of nutrients, or from the insecticide I sprayed with against the gnats. So I removed the bottom half of the soil in the cups and substituted it with another soil (own mix of peat and compost), which made the plants happy and they started growing. But after 2 weeks that new soil wasn't enough (it's only 150-200ml per plant), the plants started to pale at the bottom, so I fed with some general purpose fertilizer with NPK of 10-9-8, twice as diluted as per the instructions on the bottle. That somewhat helped but not as much as I expected, so I watered with more of the same fertilizer and all I got was burned leaf tips and overwatering symptoms, plants are still pale.
The only plant in perfect condition is PurpleMexPCK #4, which I've transplanted into a bigger pot with more of the "good" soil. Its top reeks of hash! If female, it will be the chosen one for the "indica" slot in the garden
I didn't have compost available at the time I started the seeds and that was a mistake, because the plan is for the plants to stay in these 400ml cups till they are pollinated. I've easily done that but with soil rich in compost / warm castings. Just water for the few months, adding a little NPK a couple of times when plants start to pale.
A few days ago the Thai, Kerala and Kullu x ZacT had their cups top dressed with some worm castings. Will do the same with all other cups tomorrow. I also have tomato fertilizer made from brown algae, that I've used on tomatoes with good results, but I'm not sure how good (and how rich in N) it is for cannabis, might try it at some of the plants.

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[yoss33]

The stem smell of Kerala Chellakutti is similar to the stem smell of Kullu, very different from all other popular strains. Anise, metalic, herbs/spices, mushrooms. Kerala #4, the most wide-leaf one, has some citric fruitiness added to this "indian" smell. I also had one Kullu plant that had some citric notes added, but it seems that in both strains it's mosty the metalic herb smell.
Kerala #3 was very quick to start alternating branching but it still hasn't shown sex.

 

[RizlaMan]

Yoss33,

It is unfortunate you're experiencing problems from falsely advertised soil.

However, I have confidence in your ability modify and adapt to yield a successful season.

I have been following your yearly grows since 2012 and you always impress.

This year could you please share with us again how to determine sex, with >95% accuracy, of seedlings before putting them into flower.

May this year's grow accomplish all your goals!

 

[yoss33]

Thanks, man! May this year be good for everybody.. hmm.. but the bad people
I'm not sure I understand your question completely, especially with the cited precision of 5% ... All I do is wait for the preflowers, which takes longer to some strains and individuals, and never really happens to others (to have fully-developed preflowers), but to most strains it happens on the 6th-8th node of a well developed seedling, sometimes even earlier. I really like the "semi-autoflowering" trait of Zamaldelica because it causes the plant to start early and produce a lot of preflowers, especially when in a small container. I haven't had a Zamaldelica that has produced many well-developed female preflowers and then turned male at flowering. Plants that can't produce (developed) preflowers are suspicios, as if they still haven't determined their sex.
Hope that helps, I think it's common knowledge and experience.

 

[buteo]

Youve got quite a lot of work going on there. I want to follow this one.

There is always some drawbacks every year but i think you have it handled.

 

[Old Uncle Ben]

Nice job and lots of challenges with all the interesting varieties. Because you're using clear pots which promote algae, which robs your faves of N, watch out for that issue which results in stunting, yellowing and in some cases chlorosis. Case in point. I usually go all black pots, but.....

 

[yoss33]

I use clear plastic pots exactly to see what's going on in the cups, and no, there's no algae in there. I neither water so much, nor fertilise with nitrogen salts so much.
I've seen some algae, especially in the cups with big hungry tomato seedlings that I watered and fertilised too much. When my cups with seedlings are too close to each other and I have a lot of them, it becomes difficult to pick up and weight the cups one by one, so many times I just water all of them with the same amount of water, which inevitably leads to overwatering some of the plants. I always weight by hand each of the cups with weed seedlings before watering them, so no water clogging and no algae in them.
If your plants are not healthy and you have algae, most probably both have the same cause (overwatering) and not that one of them is the cause for the other. Yes, algae can eat some of the nitrogen salts, but that's only on the soil surface, there are no algae inside the soil where it's dark.
Anyways, I'm keeping an eye for algae too, thanks for the heads-up!
I'm happy that adding a top layer of warm castings "fixed" the soil, whatever its issue was. Plants now grow much faster and happier.

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[yoss33]

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[Old Uncle Ben]

I use clear plastic pots exactly to see what's going on in the cups, and no, there's no algae in there. I neither water so much, nor fertilise with nitrogen salts so much.
I've seen some algae, especially in the cups with big hungry tomato seedlings that I watered and fertilised too much. When my cups with seedlings are too close to each other and I have a lot of them, it becomes difficult to pick up and weight the cups one by one, so many times I just water all of them with the same amount of water, which inevitably leads to overwatering some of the plants. I always weight by hand each of the cups with weed seedlings before watering them, so no water clogging and no algae in them.
If your plants are not healthy and you have algae, most probably both have the same cause (overwatering) and not that one of them is the cause for the other. Yes, algae can eat some of the nitrogen salts, but that's only on the soil surface, there are no algae inside the soil where it's dark.
Anyways, I'm keeping an eye for algae too, thanks for the heads-up!
I'm happy that adding a top layer of warm castings "fixed" the soil, whatever its issue was. Plants now grow much faster and happier.

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You don't need to see what's going on. Why do you think all commercial nurseries grow in plastic molded black pots?

Maybe your water quality is sanitized. I use mainly rain water which does contain algae spores.

Some of your faves are already showing signs of N deficiency. Check out the yellowing lower leafsets.

Where did you get the pure Thai from? Been shopping for Thai recently.

Good luck