Casual seed grow -- environment impact on quality...?

[Humanrob]

Keep the clone thing in mind in the future, It will save you some bud in the long run. Timing on autos is tricky as you know, my first time reversing an auto I just sprayed a couple branches and let it pollinate itself. She made about 5000 seeds, which I harvested and threw the rest of the plant away. Now I just put the branch I want to reverse in the aeroponic cloner and start spraying until I see sacs. I keep them going in my cloner until the pollen starts to drops and I collect it. Then the next time I grow that strain again or one I will want to cross it with I will pull out the pollen. That way I’m not trying to race the clock with autos. Photos are so much easier to feminize.

I use a 2x2x4ft tent as a breeding and seedling tent. I have one Autocob inside which is more than enough light and keeps the tent nice and warm the way babies like it. I have my cloner in there all the time which leaves room for three 3 gallon fabric pots or I can get as many as 10 one gallon fabric pots inside, depending on my needs.

I'm starting to see the wisdom in this, from a few angles. The timing, and at least in my case the logistics looks like they will be tricky. Possibly because my plants are somewhat environmentally stunted, the Grapey Walter (for instance) is showing sex and therefor would be ready to start spraying, but the lower branches I would spray are about a half inch long, not at all what I was expecting. I guess my years of long veg photos, and my outdoor autos for that matter, filled my head with images of larger plants when they showed sex.

The actual planned spray recipient is the Double Grape. It hasn't shown sex yet, but its structure is an even more compact plant, I imagine it will be a challenge to create a shield so that I can spray just lower branches and not hit more of the plant with CS. Based on how things have gone so far, I'll be crossing that bridge in about a week. I'm on the fence about self-pollinating that one, but I still intend on trying it this one time.

On a funny side note, I did a google search on random light changes impact on autos, and a thread I started in 2017 on another forum showed up that I had completely forgotten about. Here's a link to the relevant post, where I got it in my head that it's possible to grow autos out in the open, and them not being negatively affected by random house lights. I knew I'd seen pictures of it somewhere. I've done searches on this site but have not seen any discussions on that topic.

 

[Humanrob]

Well, they're still alive. The taller one in the back is the Grapey Walter, since it was started earlier it'll have to be kept alive longer than one would for normal bud harvest to give any seeds time to fully mature. Front left is the Double Grape, if you can believe it, it's been 5 weeks since it sprouted. It has been getting sprayed since December 1st, that might have been a little late for the start, it was hard to gauge with how slowly they were growing/maturing. It showed first signs of sex a few days after I started spraying so I may have cut that close.

Front right is the mutant Sour Stomper, I kept it alive because it had such an odd branch formation I wanted to see how it would grow, I'll be pulling that one before the pollen starts flying. Its branch formations are asymmetrical, looks like it was started as a clone not a seed.

So far I consider this experiment a success. The plants are small, which is fine, and are growing very slowly, which I can deal with, but they appear healthy overall. How productive they are remains to be seen. I think male parts should be showing up within a couple of weeks, I'll check back and then -

 

[HemiSync]

Here's a link to the relevant post, where I got it in my head that it's possible to grow autos out in the open, and them not being negatively affected by random house lights.

While I agree, it can be done. His example of six hours a day of sunlight has the problem that with less sunlight you are going to get less weight. I also don’t agree with their comparison of autos to a two stroke engine for how tough they are either. Most autos are finicky, whiney, little pains in the butt. While I have stressed autos almost every way possible, photos can handle a hell of a lot more.

 

[Humanrob]

While I agree, it can be done. His example of six hours a day of sunlight has the problem that with less sunlight you are going to get less weight. I also don’t agree with their comparison of autos to a two stroke engine for how tough they are either. Most autos are finicky, whiney, little pains in the butt. While I have stressed autos almost every way possible, photos can handle a hell of a lot more.

Yeah, RIU is not known for being 'auto friendly', so there's not as much depth of knowledge about them as there is here. As far as ISK getting 6 hours of sunlight, it's not optimal, but it's basically a free grow, it's an outdoor without bugs or mold.

My outdoor grow in my yard gets about 6-7 hours of direct light per day, mostly middle of the day sun. It could be better, but it's enough. Last summer 6 Mephistos totaled 2.3lbs, which will easily last us a year. That's all I need.

I'm still learning how finicky they are. I first noticed outdoors when we'd have a cool spring, some strains would never fully recover. Others would take off as soon as the weather warmed up. The first three weeks of their lives can make or break them.

 

[Humanrob]

The table-top breeding experiment continues. As I've mentioned, I've read that it's best to start the pollen donor a week or two before the recipient, and because of seed sprouting failures mine are now reversed, so I don't know if I've missed the window or if I'll be able to keep the recipient alive long enough to allow the seeds to mature. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I have not actually produced boy parts yet.

I started spraying Dec. 1st, so tomorrow is day 21. No sign of anything yet, but I've read that it can take another week for them to show up. Hopefully it'll work and I'll get enough pollen to freeze some for future use.

Grapey Walter (day 49) on the left, Double Grape (being sprayed) on the right, day 44 for that one. The DG was sprouted 5 days later than the GW, but for some reason looks closer to two weeks behind it. Other than topping and watering/feeding them (and of course spraying one...), I have done nothing to them. I'm considering doing a little trimming, but I'm not sure if it matters.

(Edit) Here's a picture of the full table top setup as of today -

 

[Humanrob]

As experiments go, the mutant Sour Stomper is still alive. I had to move it to another room, so it left sharing about 340w and went under a single 50w cob. I thought at approximately "50w per square foot", that would be sufficient light, but the change seemed to freak it out and it went into full stretch mode. I kept moving the light up slightly, it kept growing, so finally I super-cropped it. It's just another house plant at this point, no expectations for pulling a pound from this one.... :smoking:



Edit: I guess this has nothing to do with breeding, other than perhaps as an example of a plant that should not be bred...
...and I'll need to keep an eye on this one, with all the stress it's been through it conceivably could hermie, that's all I need is more pollen floating around the house.

 

[Humanrob]

Just some side notes... I was reviewing info on my Mephisto seeds and found that Double Grape is an F1, not sure how I overlooked that. So this whole thing has moved even further into to the "just for fun" category. I was hoping to freeze some pollen for future use, but making F1 crosses with F1 crosses is a few shades too random for me. I've gone through my collection of Mephisto seeds more carefully, and I have five strains that are F4 or better, so moving forward I'll be focusing within that group for pollen donors.

Does Dutch Passion share information about their releases in terms of "F" generation? I'm contemplating using them as pollen donors, but I realize I know nothing about their breeding paradigm. Actually, I've come to realize other than hearing how awesome they are, I really didn't know much about them specifically at all. My recent discovery is that they seem to take a week or two longer to finish than most of the other autos out there. Comes into play in mixed breeder perpetual tents, and some of their strains would test the envelope of my outdoor season.

 

[Humanrob]

Follow up to my last post, I ordered some more Double Grape in the last seed drop and and learned that the current run are F7, so now I have a few in stock that are breeding-worthy.

Just some update pictures from the last couple of days

Grapey Walter starting to frost up -

Double Grape showing her first boy parts, I guess you could say she is transitioning. Now she prefers the pronoun "they"

A recent shot of the whole set up, I reoriented the table and spread things out. It ain't rocket surgery but so far they keep growing

Other follow up... I've read more on Dutch Passion experiences and came across a lot of love (here and everywhere else), and a lot of hate for them (everywhere else). I like this forum, but it seems like once you log into AFN, it's as though MDMA oozes through the keyboard into your finger tips, and everyone loves everything and it's just all good. It's pleasant and I accept it's the nature of this beast, but it also means sometimes coming here for information a person only gets half the story. I had to go elsewhere to read the bad reviews, but they exist and are valid and at least now I have more realistic expectations. I love the lack of trolls here, I just wish there could be more polite dissent.

 

[Humanrob]

New Years updates --
Balls are developing, kind of slow like everything else. I sprayed two opposing branches, the one on the other side barely has any balls, I'm glad this side has something to work with.

The GW on the left was started just 5 days before the DG on the right, but it looks about 3 (or 4?) weeks ahead in development.

My plan is to harvest these top buds when they are ready, maybe a couple of weeks out...

...and then pollinate the remaining lower buds which are less developed - hopefully that will address the timing disparity.

And here's the two plants as of today

 

[Humanrob]

I was looking at the calendar, reviewing my initial goals and what I've learned since this grow began, and I've decided this experiment is over. This grow started on a whim, and then I researched as I went, kind of ass-backwards but I needed a productive distraction.

One of the core lessons I learned about halfway through is that I don't want to make crosses from F1 seeds... and the Grapey Walter I have going is an F1. So, with that reality check, there is really no reason to keep it alive for 6 weeks past its prime smoking harvest time, just to let seeds mature that I would never use.

As far as the experiment of growing out in the open on a table, I consider that a success, it's totally doable. That said, it's kind of impractical to have over 300w of COB lights in a room in the house (with nice big windows) glowing like a stadium on game night -- so at least during the short winter days that aspect doesn't work for me. To that end I spent some time today designing an enclosure I'm going to build.

I'm at that steep part of the learning curve with breeding autos, where I can read something I wrote a few weeks ago and realize how much I didn't know, and weeks from now no doubt I'll read this and think the same thing.

I've got other plans in the works, with indoor growing and with other pollen runs, but we can stick a fork in this experiment, it's over.