AKGramma's Perpetual Grow

[AKgramma]

The AK47 X DP lady in seed is gradually using up her buds to feed the growing seeds. I decided that, rather than accidentally cutting any immature seeds, I would leave the rest of the buds on the plant to nourish her.

I can always grow more from the seeds I'm producing.

Nothing worth posting about the seedlings and mothers in veg. I maintain the weekly feeding schedule and water as needed. A couple of the seedlings in solo cups are almost ready to be up-potted.

I've made taking some cannabis tincture at night a part of my routine now, so I don't forget my "medicine" anymore. Usually, it's a half dropper-ful of tincture under the tongue, followed by diet coke. Occasionally I'll use wine instead. Anything to cover the taste! ;-)

After failing at making oil or other derivatives, I settled on the tinctures, brewed Old School, and taken straight. [BLEH!] Very easy, very safe, easy to dose.

 

[NorCaliwood]

So many strains nowadays... But to me is only three kinds... Bad,,, Better,,, and Best............


But can't them seed companies tease the potheads in us all.

 

[AKgramma]

A good bit of advice to mull over, Nor!

I'm beginning to get the impression that all these hybrid names don't mean a whole lot once you get past the first or second generation of cross-breeding. Most of my strains (sativa-heavy hybrids) have the same basic ancestors, just mixed differently.

I suppose I should not stress over the mystery seeds or accidental crosses. I know they are mostly sativas, and that is good enough for me.

For example:
AK47 x Durban Poison is one unnamed cross.
Now add in the accidental pollination with White Castle, itself a hybrid of White Widow. Other than slightly wider leaves, what does the White castle add to the original cross that would be noticed by the average user?

 

[AKgramma]

Thinking of calling my AK 47 x Durban Poison (x White Castle) cross - AK Durban Castle 47, Can,t think of anything else that describes it's lineage.

The AK 47 x Durban Poison seeds are turning brown, and I was able to harvest a number of them. I also removed the dried-up mini buds to clean her up a little bit. Everything is going in one catch bin to go through for seeds later, when she is done. I can call this breeding a success!

More seedlings were up-potted, three to go. The Afghani were more than ready to spreads their roots. One is a runt and needs more time. The two ATF's still need more time, as well.

I will be able to squeeze 3 more bins into the veg unit, then I'll be FULL again!

 

[AKgramma]

The numbers are in! I harvested over 100 seeds from the AK 47 x DP mother. There was little left for grinding into herb, as I let her use up the flowers to nourish the seeds.

After hulling and tossing the soft and damaged seeds, I ended up with 75 brown seeds and 44 pale.

From experience and from reading about the ancestry, the true Durban Poison is a pure sativa, with lanky growth, widely spaced nodes, and larfy buds. It is best crossed with a strain that is stocky and a high-yielder. The DP side of this hybrid is the true Durban Poison that SweetSue picked up on her travels. (Thank you, Sue!)

 

[Oldbear]

Hi AK is there any difference in viability or potency or ??? between brown and pale?

 

[AKgramma]

Hi AK is there any difference in viability or potency or ??? between brown and pale?

I really don't know, OB. This time I can try to sprout both and see. From what I have read here and there is that the mature seeds are brown (some strains with spots) and the pale seeds are immature. However the largest of my pale seeds are nice and solid. So I will give them a try.

 

[Oldbear]

Looking fwd to your outcomes

 

[AKgramma]

Today I started the sprout test on a pale seed from the AK 47 x Durban Poison breeding project, to see if an otherwise fat seed needs the brown coat to sprout.

I may have to up-pot the rest of the seedlings without the layer of pure Perlite at the bottom of the bins. I am completely out, and the place where I usually buy the 2 cubic foot bag is out of stock, and only has the 4 cubic foot bags in stock. I don't need that much coarse Perlite for my small grow. My soil mix is 1/3 Perlite, so I don't anticipate problems with too much moisture retention.

 

[AKgramma]

WC: I have a tab on my browser that points to New Posts, and IO check it every couple days. Tose forums I have on my watch list have my avatar attached, so I can quickly scroll to those I'm interested in. This eliminates the need to visit every forum you want to come into your email's inbox. I don't think we'll ever get back all the functionality we got used to in the previous version of the website. So we have to work around it, anyway that is most convenient.

UPDATE:

The pale seed I put in a wet paper towel two days ago has not sprouted yet, but it HAS developed a brown coat and is still firm. It looks like a viable seed now. So I'm going to continue the experiment until it either sprouts or the fungi take it over.

If the pale seed DOES sprout, then we don't have to toss them at harvest, just give them a little bit more time to sprout.

The vegging plants have not changed much, but I MUST make a trip to buy some perlite for the bottom 1/4 of the bins I need to up-pot the rest of the seedlings. I can probably get away with not adding that layer, as there is a lot of perlite in the soil. But I prefer adding a drainage layer at the bottom.

 

[TorturedSoul]

WC: I have a tab on my browser that points to New Posts, and IO check it every couple days. Tose forums I have on my watch list have my avatar attached, so I can quickly scroll to those I'm interested in. This eliminates the need to visit every forum you want to come into your email's inbox.

I use this as my forum landing page:
https://www.420magazine.com/community/watched/threads

And visit this one almost as often:
https://www.420magazine.com/community/find-threads/unanswered
...to play the latest round of "The Spambot Game," to check for people that might have posted introduction threads and been ignored (due to periods of high forum activity, I assume ), or just new threads that catch my eye.

There's also the New Posts link:
New posts
...but it's pretty busy for me, these days.

I was initially annoyed by the "scatterbrained" aspect of the above. For example, if I use the "threads with no replies" link (above), I get a list - and also have the option at the top of that list to see "Your threads," "Threads with your posts," and "Watched threads." Okay, fine. Add "New posts" to that list, and I would have typed: Okay, great.

Except... I'm a big fan of cannabis and all, but it's obviously the forum software developer's drug of choice, lol, and he's consuming way too much of it while on the job. The above? Click on the "Your threads" or "Threads with your posts" links, and you get the same kind of list - with the same heading choices. Logical, yes? Sure - but now try that with that last category, "Watched threads." Different list, in that you've now lost the choices at the top of the list and can no longer (simply & easily using the "standard"(???) method used previously) flip back to one of the other lists. That incongruity makes no sense (IMHO) at all.

Things like the above should (again, IMHO) be an "all or none" kind of thing. I'd have trouble teaching someone how to use the forum because of stuff like this. When you add exceptions to logic like that, it makes a thing unintuitive at best.

I don't think we'll ever get back all the functionality we got used to in the previous version of the website.

It's looking less and less likely as time passes, doesn't it? 'Tis a question of priorities, I suppose; the old software was great for usability (and for its users), but has been <POOFED>, which causes me to think that it must have been a RPitA for the admin/etc. to configure/maintain, more expensive than this one, or some other (hidden) behind-the-scenes factor was so significant that the benefit of switching software packages outweighed all the obvious negatives. And one assumes that this wasn't a spur of the moment decision, either. I mean... you don't shoot yourself in the foot on a whim .

Look on the bright side, lol. It's annoying to use, now - but we get to do so for free. There used to be a link at the top of every page on the forum that'd take us directly to the big list of forum sponsors/advertisers. I don't know about everyone else, but I hit that link at least a couple times per week, on average. I'm not financially well-off, so I don't make purchases all that often. But when I do, I like to support our forum's advertisers as and where possible (they're not paying to keep this forum in existence out of a sense of altruism, lmao). More often, I used it when making suggestions to others about where they could purchase equipment/etc.

Now I can't find such a link to the sponsor list so easily. I have to load the main forum page, then scroll down to the "420 Sponsors" section, then open the subforum list (NOTE TO DEVELOPER: sub-menus that have only one choice are, in practice, nonsensical things, lol - just showing the sub-menu's single choice in place of that sub-menu takes up ZERO additional screen real estate, makes it approximately 10,000,000,000,000,000 times more obvious what's in there, et cetera), and then... click on the link to the list of sponsors.

And the sponsors PAY to be here. <SCRATCHES HEAD> I do find myself wondering how many times that web page (sponsors' list) was accessed per month last year - versus how many times it has been accessed per month this year, now that it has been (pretty effectively) hidden from the average forum member's view .

IDK. I could bitch and moan about stuff like this, but I choose not to. I figure our chief is reasonably intelligent and that he would have thought all this crap through before making any decisions, yes? Therefore, there must have been significant reasons for making the switch (and those reasons must have been BIG ones! ) .

The pale seed I put in a wet paper towel two days ago has not sprouted yet

I have, within the past 45 days, tried four different germination methods. ALL of them have worked well for me in the past. No joy now . I'm trying to start some auto-flowering seeds, and I've been going through my stock at a prodigious rate. I had wanted to have started some photoperiodic seeds two or three weeks ago, but really need to start the autos first, so... <BLEEP!>

I have seeds from a variety of sources, going back several years. Not being too picky about specific strains (just, as mentioned, wanting to start the autos first), I initially began with the ones that I'd had the longest. Well... This morning, I realized that I'd tried one (or more) of just about every auto strain I had, and was up to Crop King Seeds' White Widow Auto. I was actually hoping to save those for a rainy day, lol, because they're one of the higher "ranked" autos I have. But, well, you know (lol)... So I dug out the micro-Ziploc baggie that they came in (non-Canadian customer) - only to discover that the inside of that baggie is covered with tiny white spots, WfT?

I received these seeds directly from the supplier late last year, so they're relatively fresh. I did open the baggie, but make sure to use good "hygiene" practices when doing so. I never touched any of the seeds while they were in the baggie, never stuck my finger - or anything else - into it, et cetera. I maneuvered one seed to the top, folded the baggie over so that it was separated, opened the top, and allowed the single seed to roll out on its own (and then immediately reclosed the package). That one seed was basically used in a germination test, lol, and it germinated. Hmm... Could I - somehow - have introduced a pathogen into my seeds?!? I was on the verge of panicking when I thought, "Wait a second! I also received a pack of Blueberry seeds at the same time, and I haven't even opened that one." So I pulled out that tiny Ziploc baggie, held it up, and looked at it... And the inside of THAT baggie is covered with little whitish dots as well!!! A quick look at 20 or 25 other seed packages (opened and non-) showed me that this white stuff, whatever it is(???!), is ONLY in the two seed packages from CKS, so at least that particular worry was unfounded.

But, still... I'm a little upset at discovering evidence that there's more life in the two CKS seed packets than just... cannabis seeds.

And I still can't figure out what I'm doing wrong this year, in general, in terms of germinating/sprouting cannabis seeds. I've effectively missed out on my region's (rather short) window of "just warm enough at night that I won't need a heater, but just cool enough in the daytime that I won't need an air conditioner." I also promised a buddy, who is falling apart (disabled, cancer incident last year, no money, no job, depressed, has less use of his hands every day) - and who happens to be someone I've known for well over 30 years and my best friend - two or three auto-flowering plants and a photoperiodic clone (, female) or three. Now I don't know for sure, but I strongly suspect that he's starting to think I've just been blowing him off.

It's all a bit... irksome.

Karmic re-balancing in progress, possibly?

 

[AKgramma]

The pale seed I'm testing was harvested last week, so age isn't a factor. The project is to test and disprove the theory that pale seeds, no matter how fat and firm are immature and will not sprout. This is only one seed, but I chose the best of the lot, just in case these pale seeds DO sprout. I dont have the room to grow out more than 20 plants.

As for your battles with Karma...... it has to balance out eventually. I keep telling myself this, if I ever am stupid enough to go back to taking clones. I have enough seeds to start a farm, or keep me and 3 generations of my kin in cannabis!

I hope you share the fungus in the seed packet problem with CKS. Obviously they are not using clean and dry enough packaging methods to allow someone to keep the seeds for any length of time. Maybe you need a drier environment to store them in, like a small clear container big enough for the seeds and a dessicant packet, like you get in some OTC pill bottles. Fungus means you have too much ambient moisture, and plastic envelopes encourage moisture, but the moisture has nowhere to go.

Thanks for the warning, however. I'll be sure and get my stored seeds out of their original packets and into the small clear containers used for sorting glass beads. I DO keep my seeds refrigerated, and so far, no fungus, even those that are coming up on 3 years.

 

[AKgramma]

5th day since I put the pale seed into a wet paper towel. Coat turned brown, as I said before. Today the seam was soft enough for me to gently scrape away a little of the skin to allow more moisture to the embryo.

Since I'm running out of room in the veg unit, and I REALLY don't want to move the Purple Kush to another unit (more electricity), I'm going to double pot the two ATF's. They seem to be small and slow-growing, so they will share a deep rectangular 3 gallon trash bin. When I double pot, I put them as far apart as possible, so that I can train them to grow away from each other.

I still will have to move out the Purple Kush as all the plants fill out, but I'm not in the mood to do that yet.

 

[Pennywise]

Space comes at a premium sometimes, it’s slowing me down right now.

 

[AKgramma]

Pale seed rotted. Theory that pale seeds are immature and won't sprout is still sound. LOL!

I gotta make some time to up pot the seedlings!

 

[Pennywise]

Always try the pale seeds just in case.

 

[AKgramma]

Always try the pale seeds just in case.

You ever have any sprout for you?

 

[AKgramma]

Nothing much to write home about. My veg unit on the last day of May.

Veggin 2018-05-31.JPG

• AKgramma
• May 31, 2018

 

[Weaselcracker]

The first batch of Chocolate Mint OG seeds I bought- all three of them were tiny and pale. I couldn’t believe that they would sell me those -but all three did sprout. One of them died soon after but I don’t think I can blame the company for that.
So it is possible.
I’d always looked at the pale ones as being garbage before that.

 

[AKgramma]

The first batch of Chocolate Mint OG seeds I bought- all three of them were tiny and pale. I couldn’t believe that they would sell me those -but all three did sprout. One of them died soon after but I don’t think I can blame the company for that.
So it is possible.
I’d always looked at the pale ones as being garbage before that.

Thank you for that, WC! I don't have to toss 1/3 of my seeds!