Xlr8's Quest For The Best - 2012

[Xlr8]

in my last pollination, I got 155 seeds out of 3 buds measuring 4" long, and 2" across. so in 48 cubic inches (roughly) I got 155 seeds. The average SMALL warehouse has just over a hundred thousand cubic inches. hmmm....

155/48=3.2 seeds per cubic inch. And that was a LIGHT yield.

assuming 12'hx100'wx100'l
3.2*120,000=384,000 seeds.

But that doesn't allow for overhead lighting, or environmental controls, but still it gives you an idea of how many seeds can be had.

Zoinks! Yeah, that's just a bit more than a shitload. A bit shy of crazy shitloads. Way, way more than a whole bunch!

 

[Xlr8]

looking top shape X

Chronic!

 

[fish cake]

I know its not near crhistmas yet but I thought maybe I could tell a short little story about a little mexican gardner and his girl freind.
things were going slow for him so he took a job at this big shopping complex as a grounds keeper for the mall.
one of his jobs was to build this giant christmas tree in the center of this outdoor mall. it could be seen from everydirection as you drove in.
the mall had planed a big tree lighting ceromony on the day after thanksgiving at dark.
so the little guy got his girlfreind and drove up on top of the parking deck there and parked right at the best spot to see the tree light up.
there was no one around just the little mexican guy and his girl freind with the best view of the whole place.
as they waited they got a little frisky in the car and the mexican boy said"Cmon mamasita can we do the weeweechoo?" of course she said " now pedro I dont want to do that now."
A few minutes went by and pedro asks again"cmon how about now, lets do the weeweechooo!
again she said "no not yet wait for the tree to light up and ask me then"
he waited and waited "cmon baby pleeeeaasee, lets do the weeweechoo!"
again she said "NO wait , just wait!"
Finaly the time had come for the lighting of the tree. Pedro looked around and saw that no one was there and said"cmon baby can we please do the weeweechoo now please?" she finaly said "OK!"
Just as the tree lit up they began to sing weeweechoo a merry christmas weeweechoo a merry christmas and a happy new year

 

[Xlr8]

Seems in order to get ahead you must breed. It proves to save alot of money in the long run and also pays for it self when 98% of it is free. 2% of that is what pays for it self

No need to breed really, just need to be able to clone reliably. Seeds are a small up front investment in the larger scheme. It sucks that they are as expensive as they are, but if you can turn one $20 seed into dozens of plants over and over again for years on end - and you now own the strain indefinitely... Well, the $20 seed that started it all doesn't seem like such an expense anymore. Quite a value in that sense.

If you can clone reliably and keep plants happy (well, and have the space for it), the up front investment gives you the genetics for life, not such a bad deal when looked at that way.

 

[Billy420]

Hi Billy -

Sorry, but I don't recall that. I don't currently run a chiller (though I might go that way in the future).

I have seen solutions for running multiple reservoirs with one chiller. I think typically it involves running a coil into one of (maybe both?) the reservoirs that chilled water runs through. Check out hydroinnov@tions.com perhaps (replace the @ with an "a"). If I remember correctly, they have some solutions for this problem. Though, you may be able to DIY something too...

While you are at that website (if you go there) check out the FAQ section and the rest of the website too, if you have a moment. There are some pretty cool ways you can use chilled water for cooling purposes, etc. I really don't know much about the company, but the website was helpful and they seem to carry a lot of products/solutions for using chilled water.

Don't ever worry about highjacking the thread here - it's all good brother!

Yes , you r right x !!! Thank you for the idea !! Indeed Hydroinnov. have some really good stuff, except for the minigen , I d like to buy ..
Stainless steel coil !!
The -chilled water from a separate res,-runs through coil, which chills nute res !!! Seems very effective way ! You link two of them, in two diffrent reservoirs.-

Hydro innovations have some great solutions, despite they have been accused for selling a water heater, as a water cooled generator. You can hear diffrent opinions on this..

Another useful thinky is their watergate solenoid valve, man this is great for an auto top off for ebb & flow systems !

Don't ever worry about highjacking the thread here - it's all good brother!

Haha , thank you brother !! Thank you

 

[Xlr8]

Sounds like a business plan with assured obscene profits. Wait till Monsanto owns every cultivar, and see.
Patent law run amok

I try and grok their nerve, these profiteering seed banks. Boggles the mind!
If intrinsic value ruled supreme, what can be made of fiction authors? ebook downloads must be paid for?
What a world!
My home team's closing pitcher gets about $50,000 per pitch, the loser!

I'll trade two zips of commersh for ten Propa medicine beans, and save my tears for the Opera.

X-actly --

 

[Xlr8]

Yes , you r right x !!! Thank you for the idea !! Indeed Hydroinnov. have some really good stuff, except for the minigen , I d like to buy ..
Stainless steel coil !!
The -chilled water from a separate res,-runs through coil, which chills nute res !!! Seems very effective way ! You link two of them, in two diffrent reservoirs.-

Hydro innovations have some great solutions, despite they have been accused for selling a water heater, as a water cooled generator. You can hear diffrent opinions on this..

Another useful thinky is their watergate solenoid valve, man this is great for an auto top off for ebb & flow systems !



Haha , thank you brother !! Thank you

Hi Billy -

I don't know anything about the company, so I'm glad you brought up looking into them more. Just found helpful info on the website and what looked like some interesting products. The stainless coil did look interesting for doing the chiller in multiple reservoirs....

 

[Xlr8]

jandre is spot on, when i crossed a sour kush female with a unknown kiwi male all i did was put pollen on 2 bud sites at the end of 2 branches, now when i harvested the plant and let it dry the seeds just kept falling out, seeds all touching other seeds, i have easily got over 300 seeds from this cross, i am growing some of these seeds at the moment, the only problem i have is low germination rate, i had no green seeds, but when i harvested the seeds i let them dry and stored them, then i gave each seed a gentle squeeze, now some of them cracked and was hollow inside, so i went through and did this to all of the seeds, now all the seeds that cracked open had nothing inside, so not sure what happened thier.

but i soaked 10 seeds to check germination rate, out of 10 only 2 sprouted within 24 hours, the rest didnt sprout up to 7 days later, so i threw all the seeds in some soil and left them their, 1 of the seeds decided to grow, so now ive got 3 plants growing from them seeds, their growing fast as well so im hoping it will be a nice plant when finished, but im not sure why the viability is so low, i usually plant my seeds direct in soil but i did use paper towel method in the past, so i used that method to check viability and it seems 3 out of 10 sprouted and the rest did nothing, how ever i did not winter the seeds before soaking, so would doing this make more of them viable.

i dont know enough about breeding to answer this question myself, i have also crossed a male and female of ak47 cross uk cherry cheese, i loved this strain and planted my last 2 seeds and i got one of each sex, so i got around 40 seeds from just one pollenated bud, all of these seeds where solid and not cracked when given a gentle squeeze.

now the other problem or not is that when i harvested my auto blueberry i found 2 seeds in the middle of the main bud, this plant had not been anywhere near pollen, but i still ended up with 2 seeds right in the middle of the bud, so it either got pollen early on which i doubt as that bud would of developed before the other buds, but it did not do this, then i read about a plant producing seeds with no pollen, i let the auto go longer than needed, so i was told these 2 seeds are basically the same as taking clones from the plant, so as it was an auto this is a huge bonus, i planted both and 1 sprouted and is about 4 inches tall now, so ill find out if its an auto pretty soon, didnt know if anyone else had come across this before

If you are careful, you can get a high percentage of viable seeds with selective pollination. Nearly all the seeds I made appear viable and all 6/6 from the first sprouting were viable of mine.

Late harvest "selfed" seeds are supposed to be very similar genetically to the plant they came from, and yes feminized... but not quite clone. I've read they can be close to clone though, too. Soma from Soma seeds/genetics makes his fem seeds this way - it's called the rodelization method. Go0gle that for some interesting reading when you have a moment (rodelization method).

 

[Xlr8]

I know its not near crhistmas yet but I thought maybe I could tell a short little story about a little mexican gardner and his girl freind.
things were going slow for him so he took a job at this big shopping complex as a grounds keeper for the mall.
one of his jobs was to build this giant christmas tree in the center of this outdoor mall. it could be seen from everydirection as you drove in.
the mall had planed a big tree lighting ceromony on the day after thanksgiving at dark.
so the little guy got his girlfreind and drove up on top of the parking deck there and parked right at the best spot to see the tree light up.
there was no one around just the little mexican guy and his girl freind with the best view of the whole place.
as they waited they got a little frisky in the car and the mexican boy said"Cmon mamasita can we do the weeweechoo?" of course she said " now pedro I dont want to do that now."
A few minutes went by and pedro asks again"cmon how about now, lets do the weeweechooo!
again she said "no not yet wait for the tree to light up and ask me then"
he waited and waited "cmon baby pleeeeaasee, lets do the weeweechoo!"
again she said "NO wait , just wait!"
Finaly the time had come for the lighting of the tree. Pedro looked around and saw that no one was there and said"cmon baby can we please do the weeweechoo now please?" she finaly said "OK!"
Just as the tree lit up they began to sing weeweechoo a merry christmas weeweechoo a merry christmas and a happy new year

 

[WizHigh]

Always leave it to Fish to bring a good laugh to a post

 

[RickyW]

thanks for the tip about rodelization. im weary of the genetics in fem seeds though. arnt fem seeds more prone to hermie?

 

[donpaul.p]

no, it would only really be hermie is the plant the seeds came from self polinated, most fem seeds dont come from the pollen from a hermie plant, instead they use some colloidal silver or what ever its called, they spray this on the fem parts and it makes it grow male pollen sacs, they then use this pollen on a different fem plant and as the pollen does not come from a male plant this means the seeds from the plant the pollen is put on will be 100% fem, their is always the chance of the odd male from the seeds but its not likely, i have never had any problems with a fem seed going hermie, i tried stressing one to make it go hermie and no matter what i did it would not go hermie, so i gave up in the end

 

[Cultivator]

Ive had many fem seeds hermie. I had major issues with The Church from greenhouse seeds last year. 7 out of 10 were hermying. So i havent grown The church since. Maybe it was a bad batch of seed, i dont know. I also had issues With a few Nirvana Wonder Woman. So to say they dont hermie is wrong. These plants werent stressed either. I bought 60 A.M.S fromm greenhouse seeds couple years ago and i got 8 or 9 males out of those. Femmed seeds arent fail safe and do produce hermies and males from time to time. Thats just my experience.

 

[Xlr8]

thanks for the tip about rodelization. im weary of the genetics in fem seeds though. arnt fem seeds more prone to hermie?

no, it would only really be hermie is the plant the seeds came from self polinated, most fem seeds dont come from the pollen from a hermie plant, instead they use some colloidal silver or what ever its called, they spray this on the fem parts and it makes it grow male pollen sacs, they then use this pollen on a different fem plant and as the pollen does not come from a male plant this means the seeds from the plant the pollen is put on will be 100% fem, their is always the chance of the odd male from the seeds but its not likely, i have never had any problems with a fem seed going hermie, i tried stressing one to make it go hermie and no matter what i did it would not go hermie, so i gave up in the end

Ive had many fem seeds hermie. I had major issues with The Church from greenhouse seeds last year. 7 out of 10 were hermying. So i havent grown The church since. Maybe it was a bad batch of seed, i dont know. I also had issues With a few Nirvana Wonder Woman. So to say they dont hermie is wrong. These plants werent stressed either. I bought 60 A.M.S fromm greenhouse seeds couple years ago and i got 8 or 9 males out of those. Femmed seeds arent fail safe and do produce hermies and males from time to time. Thats just my experience.

This is from Reserva Privada (Colorado) regarding fem seeds and how they're produced. I thought it could provide a bit more depth to the topic:

What Are Feminized Seeds and Why Use Them?
Feminized seeds are produced by reversing the sex of female plant that will become the pollen donor, then pollenating another female with the pollen from the reversed female. This eliminates the possibility of carrying a Y chromosome to the progeny, and thus all seeds resulting from the cross will be female. This ensures that all of your plants will be female, and here in CO where we have limits to the number of plants we can grow, you don’t waste any of your plant numbers on males.

Why do some folks claim that feminized seeds are more likely to produce hermaphrodites?
There are 2 different scenarios that lead to feminized seeds having a higher ratio of hermaphrodites, and our method steers well clear of either of them.

1) Sometimes, a hermaphrodite plant ends up seeding a negligent grower’s garden, and in order to recoup their losses in flower harvest, they try to sell the seeds instead of the flowers. The hermaphroditic trait will be passed along to all progeny, and even if it doesn’t show in the phenotype, they are all still carriers of the hermaphroditic gene.
None of the strains used in our crosses have ever shown signs of hermaphroditism over several hundred rounds of cultivation

2) In order to get a normally stable female to produce pollen, a grower stresses the plant via changes in light cycle or nutrient regimen to the point that its natural survival instincts kick in and it attempts to self-pollinate. This is a natural defense mechanism inherent to the plant. One must understand just how vigorous this plant really is. It has evolved and survived through some of the harshest conditions our Earth can offer with astounding success, growing on every continent, in some of the harshest climates, and by its highly adaptive nature, it has obtained the ability to self-propagate when the plant thinks there is no other chance of keeping its genetic code going in plant form, so it reverts to trying to basically reincarnate via self-pollinated seeds. This is evolution and adaptation at its finest. This reaction to stress shows just how well this plant has adapted to being able to survive and propagate in even the worst of conditions it can encounter. It is a “weed” after all, and has come up with ways to continue on regardless of what nature (or man) throws at it. The pollen then impregnates other plants from a plant stressed out point will have already undergone a change to its genetic code in order to enable this pollen producing response to an otherwise normal female. This will be carried along to the progeny as well, again as a survival method to ensure the genetic code keeps getting passed down, and continued.

We do not reverse our females through stress factors; we apply a special mineral additive that has been proven to create the pollen producing response in a female without affecting the genetic code in any way, or carrying the hermaphroditic trait to its progeny. This is a technique proven many times over by responsible breeders, and in no way does it increase the likelihood of hermaphroditism.

I’ve heard that there can be issues with cloning a feminized strain, is this true?
This can be true, but again under improper breeding methods from which we have steered well clear. Plants that have been stressed to the point of trying to self-pollinate will pass on their mutated hermaphroditic gene, but it often doesn’t surface during the first growing out of the progeny. The hermaphroditic gene may not be activated until the true genetic age of the plant reaches a certain point, and it will show up in subsequent generations of clones. This has led some to believe that all feminized strains are not good for cloning. We have run several strains obtain from feminized seeds done in the same manner we have created them for the Confidential Collection, and literally cloned thousands of plants from over multiple mother generations without issue. When feminization is done properly, there is no problem cloning from a feminized strain.

 

[fish cake]

Reps X good post

 

[Goldengoose7]

Reps X good post

Ditto!

 

[Xlr8]

Reps X good post

Ditto!

Thanks guys - just thought it was a good summarization of issues relating to feminized seeds. Appreciate the reps!

 

[Xlr8]

Ive had many fem seeds hermie. I had major issues with The Church from greenhouse seeds last year. 7 out of 10 were hermying. So i havent grown The church since. Maybe it was a bad batch of seed, i dont know. I also had issues With a few Nirvana Wonder Woman. So to say they dont hermie is wrong. These plants werent stressed either. I bought 60 A.M.S fromm greenhouse seeds couple years ago and i got 8 or 9 males out of those. Femmed seeds arent fail safe and do produce hermies and males from time to time. Thats just my experience.

It could be bad batches, like you say. Also, for reasons I can't quite articulate, I like regular seed females better overall too. They seem more vigorous or something to me overall. True females from regular seeds have never easily hermed on me. I can't say the same for all feminized seeds or clones from feminized seeds. Still, I'm not afraid to grow or opposed to growing feminized seeds. I've had fem seed plants I really liked, too.

I've seen some pretty big named breeders that have had "bad runs" of female seeds by their own admission. Personally, I had a package of 5 Pure Power Plant seeds once from Nirvana that were supposed to be feminized - every one turned out male - not hermie, but straight up male! Bad packaging, mis-labeling and breeding errors all seem to happen from time to time.

If I'm being honest, though, I've had really good luck overall with seeds as of the last year or two - in terms of feminized seeds, regular seeds, packaging... whatever. The sponsors here seem to be reliable and consistent in my experience, also.

 

[Xlr8]

Decided to enter Nug of the Month for November...

Going with my favorite strain - DNA's Chocolope. This nug is one I grew myself and harvested a few months ago. Chocolope is a Sativa with a really great old-school taste and high. Very much "giggle bud", which makes it fun and social. Tastes mostly like "Fruity Pebbles" to me, but does have a tootsie-roll like chocolate flavor on the exhale. Nice, tight nugs for a mostly sativa plant.

Best of all? It's great for my nerve pain. And... hella potent!

Chocolope

Here's a link to the Nug of the Month contest to check out the other beautiful entries as well - don't forget to vote after the 15th!:

420 Magazine's Nug of the Month - November 2012

 

[jandre2k3]

Zoinks! Yeah, that's just a bit more than a shitload. A bit shy of crazy shitloads. Way, way more than a whole bunch!