Original source seeds from the 70's: Yes I have some

Oh, by the way, my biopsy came back positive for Basil Cell Carcinoma. Which is sort of good news? So I am scheduled to have it removed this Wednesday. They tell me that I will be cancer-free again after a half hour or so. I am starting to crank up on making skin salves and lotions. THC and CBD and CBG are all shown to be cancer fighting cannabinoids. I ordered up some one pound blocks of beeswax, shae butter, and cocoa butter. I already have several pounds of coconut oil as a base. I took an oz of old OG Kush that I had, and soaked that in 91% rubbing alcohol. Then I boiled off the alcohol in a water bath (well ventilated) leaving hash oil. I then added 6 parts coconut oil and dissolved the hash oil in that over low heat, and added 2 parts each shae and cocoa butter, and melted them into the pan. Then I added 1 part bees wax, and as that melted, I added a half teaspoon of pure CBD crystals. I poured them into small plastic one ounce jars that I got at the dollar store. I use that stuff for aches and pains, and for muscle cramps, and even for my back and neck pain. It works... I am also using it on my pre-cancer skin areas now, and my scabbed over cancer blob. It also works to dissolve the sticky hash fingers that I get handling my harvest and trimming buds. I rub that mix on my skin, as fresh THCa is supposed to be a real cancer killer.

I am going to blend up another batch of 'non-decarboxilated' fresh harvested weed and keep the temps below 200 deg F to keep the THCa and CBDa from turning into THC and CBD. Also preserving the CBGa. The acidic forms of these cannabinoids have also been known for some time for their anti-inflammatory effects, and they counteract COX-A, a precursor to various types of cancers including breast and colon.

Oh wait, the DEA said that Cannabis has NO KNOWN MEDICAL VALUE. Ba ha ha ha ha! What a load of crap that statement is.
 
Here's what the wife's looked like 3 weeks later. This incision was almost 5 inches long - most are much smaller - inch or two.

It's amazing how simple and easy it is. :thumb:

... hurts for awhile ... :confused:

3 weeks later

3 weeks later

  • Media owner Graytail
  • Date added

She used Cannabis oil on it as soon as the bandage could come off - couple days. Next time, use grape seed oil instead of coconut - much better absorption. (Weird spelling on that one, eh?)
 
Good news on the cancer. Thanks for posting that.
So i have done everything wrong on my compost. I have piled old manure topped it with cardboard, new manure, compost stster and leaves. My oldest horse manure is 2 years old and scattered on top of some of the best loamy soil in Oklahoma. I ld do just as well by piling my old manure and mixing sand from the nearby river bed. ???maybe add a few red wigglers? I dont have sawdust but can get shredded paper.
 
I'mOne said:
Good news on the cancer. Thanks for posting that.
So i have done everything wrong on my compost. I have piled old manure topped it with cardboard, new manure, compost stster and leaves. My oldest horse manure is 2 years old and scattered on top of some of the best loamy soil in Oklahoma. I ld do just as well by piling my old manure and mixing sand from the nearby river bed. ???maybe add a few red wigglers? I dont have sawdust but can get shredded paper.
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My methods of composting and making soil mixes are only some ways to do them, not the only ways. I would mix your old manures with the leaves and try to lighten it up. You can also add your shredded paper to it and mix it in with a pitchfork. You do not need compost starter. Do add worms, especially red worms, as they love manures and compost. The horse manure I would just pile up and leave it be for a few years. Once it is dry, you can run it through a leaf shredder as an option and mix that with leaves and/or soil mix. Also when using grass in a compost pile (if you use cut grass) make sure that it is dry before adding to the compost pile, or it will wad up into a solid woven mat layer.

My soil mixes have varied over the years with what is available, and what base soils are around to use. This is just what I do here and now. With clay soils I would add more gypsum and more sifted leaf material and some sand. Some say not to mix sand and clay, as that is what is used in fire brick. But I am not firing my soil. The sand and gypsum keep the clay from clotting up. The silt soil I use here I steal from the mole hills. My cat hunts the moles out and they always tunnel in with new underground condo developments from the neighbor's cow pastures and tree farms. So I collect the mole hill soil in buckets and store it in 15 gallon tubs for making my soil mixes with here. My bamboo nursery requires a lot of soil for potting up the boos with. The soil here is silty loam, a mix dropped with rocks by the glaciers that covered this area during the last ice age and fine silica ash blown out of the local Cascade volcanoes around here over the ages.
 
Terpenes part one

Before I get to the impact of soil on plant uptake of fertilizers and nutrients, I will address something brought up about terpenes. Specifically the quality and quantity of terpenes in weed, and what makes them good, bad or otherwise. Many contend that organic growing will result in better terpene profiles. My contention is that better plant health will result in better terpene profiles, given the same genetics, the same growing environment, the same harvest time and methods and the same curing environments. I also contend that the genetics, the growing environment and the curing environment have a much larger impact on the terpene profiles than the contrast between using organic or synthetic fertilizers, if both plants are healthy and not diseased or otherwise stressed. Those factors have a huge impact on terpenes and the flavor of weed, and terpenes (and terpenoids) get lost in the planting, harvesting and curing process. I will try to explain why that is here.

Back in the day when I was getting a lot of weed from the Big Sur area, there was a grower I knew that was growing bag weed from Colombia and Mexico. It was all sativa, and basically landrace stock. The weed he grew always smelled like pine, as it had a lot of pinene, a terpene. He thought that the plants were picking up the pine scent from the Monterey pine trees and the pine needle litter scattered around his property. That was the lore of the day, that plants pick up terpenes from the soil and from surrounding environment. However, this was and is not the case. Cannabis does not pick up terpenes from the soil or from the air or from the fertilizers that you apply to them, organic or otherwise. They make all the terpenes inside them, all by themselves. They are terpene factories. They use a basic building block called isoprene, and from that they chain isoprenes molecules together in various configurations and isomers to build all the different terpenes. There are over 1,000 different known plant terpenes, and last I looked, over 150 different terpenes produced in Cannabis plants. Cannabis plants do not produce all 150 terpenes though. What terpenes they create is dependent on genetics. As it turns out, many Mexican and Colombian landrace strains typically have a lot of pinene and limonine, which together give it a strong pine smell. But other factors were involved in the final terpene profile as well, mainly that Big Sur is a cool area along the coast. Yes, cool is better for terpenes. Well, for monomer terpenes anyway. I will get to why later.
 
Terpenes part two

One thing to note here before I continue is that most terpenes that we smell as humans are the lighter more volatile monomer terpenes like limonine, pinene, linalool and myrcene. We do not smell many of the heavier terpenes (the sesquiterpenes) that are also present in weed, as our noses did not evolve to smell them as food. We primates (including humans) evolved many of our senses based on food foraging. For example, we developed color vision in the electromagnetic spectrum (what we call visible light) so that we can see that fruit is ripe on trees and vines. Red and yellow apples, orange oranges, red berries, etc. We developed a smell and taste spectrum as well to smell and taste fruit and meat and nuts and a lot of other stuff that smells "good". We also avoid things that smell and taste 'bad' to avoid getting sick. But there are other chemicals in the air out there that we do not smell or taste, just like there is a broad electromagnetic spectrum that we do not see. Radio waves for example. We do not see or hear radio waves. But they are out there.

Also something to point out is that not everyone has the same sense of smell and taste. Some of us simply do not smell things that others do, because of genetic differences between us humans. For example, I can smell cat piss. Many people cannot. I can also smell asparagus in my pee after I eat it. Or rather, what asparagus is converted into after I eat it. Humans convert asparagusic acid in asparagus into volatile sulfur containing compounds that stink. The smell is rather vile. But as it turns out, many people cannot smell those converted asparagusic acid sulfur compounds. People smell things differently for genetic reasons. Also people smell things differently depending on their environment. For example, tree cutters here are busy cutting down cedar bows to make Christmas wreaths this time of year. The smell of fresh cedar is pretty strong. But after a few days of working cutting the bows, the workers lose the sense of smell for cedar and they do not smell it any more, or the smell is greatly reduced. As one TV commercial says, you become 'nose blind' to what is in your environment. That is also common with cigarette smokers. When I smoked Winstons, I did not smell cigarette smoke. Or rather, I smelled that first hit when I lighted a cigarette with a match and that was an addiction driven smell that was wonderful. But the second hit? Nothing there. Same with weed. If I go into my curing room here it smells great for a few moments. Then it is gone.

My point here is that smells are highly subjective. What we smell is dependent on the genetics of plants that produce terpenes and is also dependent on our own genetically defined sense of smell to identify terpenes in the air we breathe. What terpenes we smell at any given time also depends on if we are desensitized to particular terpenes or not. Me, I am nose blind to most terpenes as I am curing weed in my house now. I am saturated. I also smoke a lot of weed on a constant basis, so I am saturated with smoke flavors. I noticed some years ago that firewood smoke from the same species of trees smelled differently at different times. Alder, cedar, pine, etc. They all produce and waft off terpenes when burned, but after I burn them for a while they do not smell the same. But if I go a month without burning one type of wood, I smell it again. Also if I go to a weed shop and they shove a half dozen strains under my nose, I basically cannot tell much difference between them. It was the same smoking Salem menthol cigarettes for a while. I did ot taste or smell menthol any more. I was saturated with it.
 
Terpenes, part three

Ok, so where are we here? Lost in terpinoid land? Yes... anyway, back to terpenes produced in Cannabis. The main factor in the types of terpenes produced and the amounts that are produced in Cannabis is determined by genetics. Generally from 1% to 4% of any final dried and cured weed is pure terpene. 1% is on the low side and they will be mild smelling plants. 4% is on the high side and depending on the terpenes, they may really reek. So you are not going to get super terpene plants from mild strains, no matter how you grow them. Also within the same strain there will be variation in the terpenes produced, even from the same seed lot.

The next riding factor in the terpenes produced in Cannabis is due to growing conditions. Most notably, the temperatures that the plants are grown in. Cases in point: Kevin Jodrey, owner of Wonderland Nursery in Humboldt Co, CA points out that the same exact clones grown on the coast in Mendocino County will have higher terpene profiles than the same clones grown 40 miles inland in the inland coastal valleys that are hotter than the coast. And those clones will have a higher terpene profile that plants grown in Red Bluff in the Sacramento Valley where it is really hot all summer. Reason being? Most terpenes that humans smell are the lighter mono terpenes. For example, limonene, myrcene and pinene. Those lighter terpenes are being smelled because they are being wafted off into the air that we breathe around the Cannabis plants. At higher air temperatures, more of the lighter terpenes are wafted off because they are more volatile. So when grown in hotter climates, the same exact clones will likely have fewer terpenes at harvest time. There is also an impact on when you harvest your plants. Some strains like California Orange will have higher terpene profiles 4-5 weeks into blooming than they do 6-7 weeks into blooming. Some of that is due to a longer time for the limonene to waft off, and some of that is due to the plants converting the limonene into other terpenes and terpenoids later in the bloom cycle. At any rate, that was a noticeable factor in growing Cali-O in California back in the day; the terpenes peaked before the THC peaked.
 
Terpenes, part four

Still with me? Hang in there... we are in for the home stretch here and I am getting tired of typing. Now the terpene profile does not end at harvest time. No. A HUGE factor in the final terpene content of your weed is how you harvest and how you dry and cure your weed after harvest. Again, the higher the temps, the more terpenes will waft off your weed. So if you harvest, transport, dry your plants in the sun and heat, you will lose a lot of terpenes. If you cure your weed in higher heat (generally above 80 deg. F) you will lose a lot of terpenes. If you smell a lot of terpenes, it is because the terpenes are in the air, and being wafted off the plants and the curing buds. So the rule of thumb as it were is to not harvest in the heat, do not pile your fresh harvested weed up in big stacks that will retain heat (or ferment) and do not dry your weed in the sun. Also keep your drying and curing temps below 80 deg. F. and store your weed in cooler conditions (at or below 60 deg. F.) after it is cured. Otherwise more of your terpenes will simply waft off. Me, I dry my weed at 68-72 degrees, and cure it at about 65 degrees. I live in a cooler climate at altitude, so my plants are not exposed to that much heat, especially during flowering and near harvest. Also the nights are almost always cool here and below 60 deg. F.

So in the end, your plant will make terpenes depending on genetics. Most terpenes that we smell are lighter and are more volatile, so growing in, harvesting in, drying in, curing in and storing in higher heat will result in more terpenes being lost. Now, this is just the lighter terpenes, and not the heavier terpenes, terpeniods and cannabinoids, resins or oils. If you are just after high THC, this is not really that much of an issue. Also past curing, if you are making hash oil or other types of extracts or concentrates, the process for making them may also strip more terpenes. BHO extraction processes in particular will strip a lot of terpenes. CO2 and rosin or live resin hash will generally retain the most terpenes. Sifted and pressed hash will retain terpenes and also create another terpene called hashishene. Or so I am told. I have not made either BHO or live resin. I use alcohol to extract hash oil, and I have made a lot of sifted and pressed hash, ice hash, and bubble bag hash. And of course scissor and finger hash. My plants are soooo sticky with resin now. I love smoking finger hash, and I did that today. Maybe there is too much THCv is in that Durban Poison finger hash that I smoked too late in the day today, as I am up typing at 2am here this morning. :oops:
 
Great information as usual brother! I appreciate the sharing of information and have never understood the need to blast others cause they might do something differently then you might. I mean life is all about personal preferences. Doesn't matter if you are talking food and cooking, sex, growing, drinking wine/beer, or most anything else. No one will ever convince me that there is only 'one' way to cook great food or that there is only one right way to have sex. Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?

Then why are we so willing to do that with things like growing and mediums. Who cares how you like to grow other than you, as long as its giving you what are looking for. If you want to grow organic, grow organic (my choice but thats cause its right for me). If you want to grow in soil with bottled nutes, who freaking cares? DWC, give it hell dude! No, aeroponics perhaps? Someone telling someone else "thats not right" simply because its not our choice is comical to me. Seems to me we would all be a bit better off with a bit more open mind and willingness to experiment a bit....be it in the kitchen, our garden, or stepping out of your comfort zone and try a wine or beer you might not normally choose. Find what you like, and then find new things that you like! They can both be great!

If anything, I like to question people why they do some things so I can understand the 'why's' behind it. So many people feel the need to share their "expertise" about things without gaining a basic understanding of the situation others might be dealing with. Thats a recipe for a bad interaction when the need to share their 'expertise' takes the form of the things you describe. Luckily I don't see a lot of that on the threads I follow here. Its one of the reason so many of us love this forum. I still the see the little 'clicks' within this community....you have Doc and his disciples, you have the coco loyalists, the DWC fiends, the organic growers, but thankfully most all of them I have seen on the site seem to at least respect everyone. I just don't understand the ugliness that is so rampant elsewhere (and apparently here to some degree based on your experiences) in today's world.

Anyways, medicated rant is over. Just know some of us enjoy the information, the discussion, the debates, and the history that we might have missed. Cheers brother.
 
lazyfish said:
Great stuff, here Sur!

Can I ask...... how do you pick a male for breeding?
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Well, I breed mostly landraces and stable strains IBL, so they are for the most part the same phenos. Most males and females look and grow the same in stable lines. In which case there is not much to choose from or variables to select from. But in general I choose the largest and fastest growing males, and any that have pheno traits that I am looking for. I may select for purple stems or a more pleasing terpene smell. Say in a lot of 4 males, I will cull 2 and keep 2, and then of those 2, I will choose the better one to breed with. In some runs I have bred both, or let all 4 males bloom and cut sprigs from them and mix them up and apply. Some years like this one, I only got on male in the run of Maui germinated seeds. So he was it. I do not allow males to grow full size any more. They take up a lot of room and they are messy producing a LOT of pollen. Not wanted. I also breed one large seed lot from sourced seeds and freeze them, and I do not do long series of seed runs. That will avoid degradation of the line through gene switching and adapting to local growing conditions. It also keeps a wider gene selection open being closer to the non-selected genetic origins. I also freeze pollen so I can pollinate a later grow in the next year or two and not have to grow males if I wan to do more back crossing or odd-ball breeding.

In the end? Male pollen is a crap shoot, and they will pop millions of pollen grains all of which have different genetics. I can only select for pheno traits, and I cannot observe all the recessive traits unless I do long runs of breeding, which I do not do.
 
So, I tried my first bowl of fresh dried Dutch Durban x landrace Durban (now named Durban X-fire) this morning and WHAM!

I nailed it!

Wakie-bakie! More wake than bake, and a good morning high. Still high from it now after several hours. No rushes, no heavy feeling, but an uplifting cerebral buzz that allows me to be crazy! And still in control. I feel good! (James Brown song playing in my head now) I did my first major cut of this stuff yesterday (from 4 plants) and the curing room smells divine. Limonene and a touch of pinene and sandalwood. Not sure which terpene is the sandalwood. It is calling to me... good terpenes do that. The terps affect the buzz factor and attract us to the plants.

I will also be making a second cut of my Maui tomorrow. The greenhouse it is growing in smells divine today. She is ripe and ready. Cherry and pineapple. The weather here has also been perfect this week. Highs in the mid 70s (the other highs), lows overnight about 55. Perfect finishing weather, which we rarely get here in the PNW. Last year I had to finish indoors under lights. This year I will finish outside, and move the plants that I want to clone indoors under lights. I already have the Maui and Durban X-Fires cloned, so that leaves 2 phenos of the 3 Durban Turbans; the pink pistil one and the 3rd one.

I feel good... so good, dat dat dat dat! Uh... like I should...
 
:yahoo: Sandalwood was always one of my favorites, too. Is the limonene on the lime side? Limey sandalwood is nirvana. :love:

What are the calyxes like? Tiny? Fat? What's the bud structure?
 
The calyxes are thin, like most sativas, with tons of long pistils. Bud structure is typical. Some are denser, and some less dense and more open, like sativas. Here is a photo, just before harvest. Sparkling in the sun. The sparkle did not come out in the photo. These colas are slick with oil. For terpenes, I would say lemon and lime, leaning toward lime.


Durban XF harvest time.JPG

Durban XF at harvest 2018
 
Looks very well behaved. :thumb:
 
Graytail said:
Looks very well behaved. :thumb:
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The girls were pampered this summer. Most of the time they were out of the GH with the heat we had this year. They had some spider mites early in June, but I nuked those fast and hard. These got a final dose of Orchid Food a few weeks ago, 5-15-15. Water soluble fertilizer to help them fatten up.
 
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