Hashplants

[p59teitel]

Plants are making progress after three weeks in the ground, just need to string together some sunny days to get that rapid growth going.

Mazar-I-Sharif -

Panjshir -

Dakshinkali -

Rasoli -

 

[Azure]

Sour Stomper x Kandahar Black

Bangi Haze x Kandahar Black

 

[therevverend]

Plants are making progress after three weeks in the ground, just need to string together some sunny days to get that rapid growth going.

Always a relief to see they're emerging from the awkward delicate stage right on schedule to get big from the July heat. Already showing the different shapes and growth patterns. That's going to be a fun mix.

Those look great @Azure going to be interesting to see how the Kandahar Black influences the crosses.

My biggest plant so far, likely to be my biggest overall, is my (Nirang X (pot of gold hashplant x apricot helix). Already up to my chin and stacking fast every day. I'm very happy with what I'm seeing. I bred these strains with a goal in mind and it's good to see it playing out early.

I wanted to take advantage of the size, vigor, mold resistance, and indestructibility of the Himalayan sativa hashplant. Combine it with the huge wide leaves and big colas of the POG HP, and add in the high quality terpene fruit aromas of the apricot helix. Here's a look.

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I may have a hell of a strain happening. It's got the strong snake-like stalk of the Nirang with the fat leaves of the POG HP powering the growth. It's going to be a heavy feeder, already giving it all the good stuff it can swallow. Already has a fantastic smell when I rub the stalk, fruity, hashy, and complex.

I've got another, smaller one that takes after the Helix side, and a large near clone of this one still in a container. Not sure if I'm going to get a male. I culled one possible one a while back, now I regret it because I'd like to make backcrosses. Maybe next year.

 

[pipeline]

See don't kill the males until its time! Sounds like an amazing hybrid! Plant looks like a vigorous hybrid plant. Will be neat to see what comes out of this combination. Are there only 2 of them going this year? Would be a good idea to select through a few individuals on that cross! See what turns up this year, maybe that could be a focal point for the future.

Interesting plants guys! Gardens look like they have a great start for fast growth this summer!


My hashplants are doing well, starting to root in and grow, they're a little over knee height and on the move. Leaves have been expanding wider than usual indicating a good root system. Looking forward to seeing them get more momentum and fill in the canopy! Oh yeah flowering should be a good show! Ready for buds as big as your head?

Deep Chunk x Blueberry --fat stems

Sativa Candy Chunk F12 ( My cultivar)

 

[Azure]

Bubba Hash x Kandahar Black
I put this sprout out in the garden during May and it's finally growing. Looks like a possible male. and if male, I'll use some of this pollen for the other garden plants: Bangi Haze x Kandahar Black, CBD #1, and PNG.

 

[harvestreaper]

uzebek x rsc afghan,, outdoor uk 6 month cure ,,,,real nice even head an body high with a fruity taste

 

[therevverend]

Most of my landrace/heirloom hashplants are sexed and in the ground. Their traits and smells are starting to show. This year I went with more varieties from high altitude regions further north, hopefully they'll flower earlier and finish sooner.

The Tirah Valley strain from @Landrace Warden is looking good. High rate of germination. I was warned that some strains from Tirah Valley can get huge, up to 20 feet, with brittle stalks that break easily. There's a huge amount of genetic diversity and a lot of breeding and exchange of seed in the valley, these are the opposite of that. These are more like the mountain hashplants I'm used to, typical Indicas, wide leaves, thick stalks, and sturdy growth. They smell basically like potent hashish with hints of complexity that will develop later.

Here's a look at the growth pattern of one of them. Same plant, first picture was on the 4th of July. 2nd pic was today July 16th. I had to double check it was the same plant. This is the great thing about picture taking. And the long hot days of July.

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And here's my other one.

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Another @Landrace Warden variety I have is the Hopar Valley purple from the region of Gilgit in the far north of Pakistan. Part of greater Kashmir and next to Hunza Valley. The valley is around 2500 meters/8000 feet, surrounded by huge mountains and vast glaciers. This should be an early maturing strain, finishing around October 1st.

I had difficulty with germination, it seemed like the seeds had hard shells. Landrace Warden told me this wasn't normal, his testers had sprouted easily, and promised replacements. Always good to work with someone who is responsive, easy to communicate with and backs their brand There's a lot of sketchballs in the landrace seed marketplace.

I ended up with one good vigorous female. After the slow start and the cool wet spring she didn't look like much, wasn't until mid June when she started to take off. She's caught up to the Tirah Valley in size if not bushiness. I noticed she has a bendy stalk, @Landrace Warden says the strain has a weak structure and requires support if grown big. With a smooth start I think these plants could get huge. The smell is great, smells like hashy Kush, reminds me a bit of Deep Chunk but hard to describe. Here's a look.


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I ended up with two female Kushkaks, from Afghan Selection. The one with the best smell, rose incense, is still undetermined. Probably male. If it is at least I can make an IBL. I've got one small one, one big one. The small one smells the best, a sandalwood, bordering on rose, incense. The big one is head high, growing out bushy. Looks lovely but hasn't developed a real distinct smell. It'll be interesting to see how she develops once she starts to flower.

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Last year I crossed my giant Nirang Himalayan hand rubbed hashplant with Pot of gold hashplant x apricot helix. The progeny this year have taken after the POGHP and Nirang side, big plants with wide leaves. One has been much shorter (still head high), thinner leaves, and an amazing sweet incense smell. Very excited to see how she turns out. My first plant to sex this year.

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[p59teitel]

Looking good, Rev. As we’ve discussed the TRSC Tirah I grew in 2021 were massive, with five girls over 15 feet and the other three all over 10’. I wouldn’t say they were weak but staking here is absolutely mandatory due to the likelihood of seeing at least one tropical storm and a few strong thunderstorms. That year we had three tropical storms with the last one blasting us with 70+ mph winds for several hours.

One of the big ol’ bitches literally had a 10 foot branch, and the fulcrum effect on such long branches meant using multiple stakes on each plant and not just supporting the main stalk. I don’t know if you ever face winds like that where you are, so maybe your staking will not need to be as intensive as mine.

I’m also interested in how your Kushkaks progress.

 

[p59teitel]

Here in the Armpit of Cape Cod, summer finally arrived this month and the garden is stretching away. Especially the Himalayas, I now have 2 Rasoli and 1 Dakshinkali over 10 feet and growing 2 feet per week. The Afghans aren’t going to be anywhere near that tall but are getting thick. Sexing is slow, maybe due to the cloudy cold spring start, and so far I’ve only identified 2 Rasoli females and 2 Mazar-I-Sharif females with no balls seen anywhere yet.

Here are the four TRSC Rasoli, the 2 females are on the right. The locals make hand-rubbed hash with it, and I want to recreate the Temple Balls we used to get in the 70s that made you feel like you were One With The Universe while holding the Buddha’s hand. Both of the girls had some temporary weird albino bullshit that stalled their growth in the first month of life, one even split into two main stems after the albinism croaked the apical meristem. Otherwise I’d guess they’d be as tall as the 2 10 footers, but both are still over 8 feet. The night shot is a bit fuzzy but the plants stand out much more from the background -

The 3 TRSC Dakshinkali are tall too, but sparser than the Rasoli. The one to the right was a late starter replacement, as I found these tiny seeds a total bitch to germinate and get past infancy. This strain is used for both flower and dry sift hash -

 

[p59teitel]

As for the Afghans, they are gaining height and size too, although not at the 2 feet per week rate of the Himalayas. Both strains suffered a bit from earwigs before I got fed up enough to bag most of them with a soy sauce and canola oil trap. I grow organic and won’t use pesticides. And I also think the final trichome production benefits when the plants’ defenses are challenged.

The 4 Mazari from Baaba Qo Selections are all pretty solid plants. One was started a month or so after the other 3. The variegated girl is interesting, as I think that’s a “her” thing as the others certainly aren’t showing any lack of nutrition (I prep before planting with cow manure, fertilize with top-dress worm castings every few weeks and add CalMag and aged urine to water during veg). The other girl is in the last pic. These are about 5 1/2 feet tall on average, no way will they go over ten feet but there’s enough time left in veg to maybe get 2 or 3 feet taller -

And also the TRSC Panjshir Valley plants, none of which have sexed. They were started three weeks after the others. The earwigs loved the two on the left, but since zapping most of them two weeks ago the plants have bounced back nicely and they average a couple inches taller than the Mazari.

I got these because the UN Office of Drugs and Crime reports said this variety was fetching the highest price for hash in the whole country, I’m excited to compare to the former price leader Mazari when it’s hash-making time next winter -

 

[Azure]

I pollinated at least 5 different strains last year with a rotten meat skunky Kandahar Black male.

Here's a Bangi Haze x Kandahar Black

Bubba Hash x Kandahar Black

 

[therevverend]

The variegated girl is interesting, as I think that’s a “her” thing as the others certainly aren’t showing any lack of nutrition

Seems to be a burn or lockout caused by overabundance of something rather than a deficiency. I'm suspicious because it's showing more on the lower part of the plant than the upper part of the plant which is a symptom of mobile nutrients. Variegation is usually evenly distributed. I'd look carefully at the other plants for a very mild version of the pattern on the lowest leaves. It's bothering me a bit because I've seen this before but can't remember what caused it.

Both strains suffered a bit from earwigs

You aren't the only one who finds damage caused by earwigs, other growers report it as well. I have them in my garden too, they like to nest in the base of the plant and in the knots I make in the green stretchy tape, but I've never found them to cause damage. They can cut down seedlings but they're also voracious predators of aphids and the like so I don't mind having them around as long as they aren't causing harm.

I have 3 Kushkaks. One is still undetermined, probably male. One is a dwarf, smells great and looks nice but is only 3 feet tall. The 3rd is the keeper, a wide bush of a plant.

It's still under 7 feet tall but close to 7 feet wide. When it was younger it didn't have much smell, now it's got a great spicy hashy smell that's very different from the southern Afghans. She's a beauty.

I ended up with one Purple Gilgit that's a keeper. It's got great vigor, up over my head now and has a good open bushy form. The smell when I rub the stalk is wonderful, a potent hashy sweetness. Very interested in what the flowers are going to be like and how much bigger she'll get before she starts to flower.

 

[p59teitel]

Your Kushkak and Gilgit both look great. The yellow Mazari is still doing her thing and growing more than an inch per day, here is a pic showing the yellowing of leaves pretty consistently throughout the plant -

Since I last posted I’ve hit the whole garden with another top dress of worm castings as well as some cow manure, and I have continued feeding nitrogen and CalMag with every watering as well. So I’ve done everything to avoid a lack of Mag even though that is exactly what it looks like. Lockout certainly makes sense, so I’ll just give water for a couple of weeks and see how she responds.

The rest of the Mazari are doing well, the top 2 are girls and the last a male. Nice stem rub scents ranging from something like Juicy Fruit on the male to a dark not quite grape sour smell on the squat female -

 

[therevverend]

Since I last posted I’ve hit the whole garden with another top dress of worm castings as well as some cow manure, and I have continued feeding nitrogen and CalMag with every watering as well. So I’ve done everything to avoid a lack of Mag even though that is exactly what it looks like. Lockout certainly makes sense, so I’ll just give water for a couple of weeks and see how she responds.

If it's growing vigorously, the only plant showing it, and it's healthy otherwise it could be a mutation, some sort of variegation. I've always had a couple plants that show variegation every year, big feeding fat leaved Indicas like grape ape, but since I've been using langbeinite I don't see it much. This year it's a Shishkaberry and a grape ape hybrid, showing it lightly.

I couldn't believe it because I'd given them quite a bit of 0-0-22 langbeinite when I planted out and fed them more. But I give them more langbeinite and it goes away. It's crazy how much magnesium and potassium they need. I've been using crab meal this year to supply calcium so things don't get out of balance.

My variegation is very different then yours. I don't think yours is a mag deficiency, but individual plants can be very sensitive to certain nutrients. I've found that when I get variegation and correct for it the other plants that aren't showing symptoms respond favorably to the fertilizer as well. Even though everything was doing great before the feeding. The variegated plant is the canary in the coal mine, alerting me that the entire garden could use it.

Giving a plant water for a week or two is a good idea when you see something odd going on. Your plants look great, healthy and vigorous, I doubt it will suffer for lacking. How's she doing for P and K, that's the only other problem I can think of. Besides PH which I never have problems with. Veg plants use more P and K than you would think, an imbalance of P-K-Cal-Mag can cause weird stuff to happen. I think your right, it's variegation, but doesn't hurt to test and experiment.

My garden is hitting it's August stretch, turning into a jungle. I love August.

Going through a stretch with sprinkles of rain, high overcast sky that burns off through the day. Seems like a bit of maritime influence with a touch of smoke high in the atmosphere. Didn't have to water today, once the sun broke through the haze in the mid afternoon the humidity got heavy. Gin and tonic weather.

Even though the summer climate is Mediterranean growing hashplants a couple miles from the ocean has it's challenges. The wind picked up today, not a bad thing because it cooled things off and gave the plants a mild test to their stability.

Last year one of my best was the Living Dead Girl x Pine Tar Kush, bred by Shapeshifter Farms. This year I'm trying his Purple Indica x Pine Tar Kush. Lovely plant, smells great, the pine tar is coming through strong. Doesn't have the size and branching the LDG x PTK had. Looking forward to seeing the flowers develop.

The Aunt of Farouk is not a big plant but quite bushy. Has a nice hashplant shape. The smell is one of the best in the garden. Has a wonderful spicy sweetness. This plant could be very special.

She's been a shade lighter, more lime green, than everything else. No idea why.

The Purple Volunteer X 88g13HP is a favorite of mine. Has a typical 88g13hp smell, very upright and large leafed grow pattern. She's pushing 8 feet. Another example of how, given the right treatment, hashplants can get taller than you'd expect.

We've hit the dog days, the warm dreamy days of BBQ and baseball on the radio. Beer in hand. Looking up at the ganja. The Himalayan hashplant hybrid, the Nirang asphalt pheno X (apricot helix x POG HP) gets higher everyday. I really like the smell. She has pot of gold hashplant type leaves, the Nirang size and growth pattern. The Nirang had a strong stalk, one feature I preferred over the Kali Ram Hashplants I also grew. It seems as though the progeny has inherited it. The POG HP also had a strong stalk, didn't get knocked down easily and didn't require support. I hope this holds true through flowering and through whatever storms get sent my way off the Pacific in September.

Size isn't easy to estimate from pictures. The other plants are around 6-7 feet tall, the Nirang hybrid has to be over 10. You can see her sister to the right, about the same height. As soon as I pick and eat the blackberries I need to hack them back and make more room for the ganja. They've gotten tall enough their tops are getting shaded by the hemlock.

 

[p59teitel]

Well you did point out something that should have been obvious to me from the get-go, which is to check the soil NPK and pH levels. Your garden looks great, is the Purple Gilgit one of Landrace Warden’s?

My Panjshir Valley Afghans got hit with septoria after the earwigs subsided. Wound up pulling quite a few leaves, which is why they look plucked. Wet spring turned into a very wet July and I should have hit them with some copper spray sooner than I did. First one is a male, the second female and the other two haven’t said yet. Some interesting smells -

 

[p59teitel]

The Himalayas OTOH loved the rainy July and a few are even ahead of the pace the huge 15’ Tirah set in 2021 although they aren’t as beefy as those things were. All 7 plants are healthy as hell. Both areas are in the monsoon belt so I’m guessing they are conditioned to handle lots of rain better than Northern Afghan plants from a much drier summer climate - no septoria on these. Hoping that like the Tirah they can handle the wet fall we seem to be forever cursed with. Stem rubbing the Dakshinkali from Nepal gives a really nice minty pine smell, while the Rasoli from India has a fruity floral scent. Here are the Dakshinkali, first one is female and I think the others are too but not certain enough to make the call -

All four Rasoli are female, the two in the second pic that were affected by the weird albinism phase in their first month were slightly slowed but both are well over 10 feet now. The other two are 156” and 149” (as of Friday which means they are already 5” taller lol). Stem rubs are fruity and floral and they are the most advanced into flowering -

 

[p59teitel]

And finally the two volunteers I found in the ground are doing well, second pic is of a female that based on where it was found is probably a Waziri F2 and the first undetermined. Last pic shows the difference in height between the Afghans and the Himalayas -

 

[Thcvhunter]

Glorious

Great genetics, too

 

[Arnold.]

You guys grow is really nice to follow! Thanks a lot for sharing.

I wish you both a terrific end of the season!

 

[therevverend]

I'm reaching the critical point for these Pakistani and Afghan varieties, they need to start flowering within the week to finish in any decent amount of time to not totally mold out. Even if they don't get saturated by moisture the sun gets very low in the sky in late October, dipping below the tree line. To get dense resinous bud they need to finish before Halloween.

It seems like most of them are going to make it. Most of them are either starting to form clusters or close to it. The earliest are the Hoper Valley Gilgits from Landrace Warden. Here's a look at the two purples.

I'm shocked by how well they're doing, how big they got, considering how scraggy they were a month ago. They had a rough going early on but they've done a great job filling in. They still aren't comparable to my filled in big plants but for plants I nearly culled in July they're doing great. The flowers don't look like much, yet, but that's fine for August. They've got the entire month of September to stack and toss resin. Hopefully they'll be ready to go in the first couple weeks of October.

The Tirah Valleys from Landrace Warden are flowering a bit later. They're very short, especially compared from the giant 15 footers @p59teitel has grown. They're from the Afridi clan's part of Tirah, Maidan Valley. Indian Landrace Exchange has been calling this type the 'amalgamated' variety, a fancy way of saying they're hybridized, because there's a legend that the strain was brought by the Afridi when the Mughals invaded 500 years ago. Over 500 years they've been 'naturalized' with the local Tirah Valley strains.

I'm not sure how much stock I want to put in this story, on the one hand it could be true but on the other the hashplant growers of Tirah have been hybridizing their strains and trading seeds at hash carnivals for hundreds of years. It's hard to say what the 'original' of the region would be. The giant strain seems like a hybrid itself, crossed with the tall varieties from the plains and the Himalayas. These plants remind me of the original mountain landrace strain of the region, Cannabis Indica Kafiristanica. Very short and squat and bushy. It's fun to discuss and debate but even with scientific genetic testing it's probably impossible to know the truth.

Both of mine are just over 6 feet tall. They aren't forming clusters but they're right on the verge. The one that I prefer, with the better hash smell and form, is forming beautiful purple stripes and purple highlights on the stem tips and new leaves.

Reminds me a lot of Purple Urkle. And the other 'primordial' looking one. They both have interesting very promising hashy smells. Not forming tufts but at least they're 'tucking', the flowering switch has been thrown. I expect clusters by next week.

Next time we'll look at the Kushkak and Baloch varieties.