Mephisto all hype?

[Capt.Quirk]

Is that ministry of cannabis?

Yes Sir.

 

[Capt.Quirk]

Its a good thing you're posting this question here where most people are nice, I asked reddit’s mephheads if the seeds were worth the hype before i bought my first and I almost got death threats Mephisto fanboys are really passionate....

I just started my first Double Grape. I have great expectations, we'll see!

MephHeads and DeadHeads = Fanatical.

 

[Waira]

I just started to chop my first mephisto grow. Double grape first, man bear alien pig and skywalker another couple of weeks.
They grew amazing, no problems at all, nicest grow I've ever had aesthetically speaking. But that's were it ended, the buds on one dg was grand but the other two plants were small airy buds, a grown the same way in the same tent. During the grow a man bear alien pig went hermie and a double grape started growing bananas out if the top of the bud.
I have another 85 mephisto seeds, went mad after hearing so many good things. Don't really want to go another 3 months to be disappointed. Thinking of sticking to fastbuds.
I have the following seeds, any ideas of which have heavy dense yields? Anyone ever grown them?

bubblegum smile
Northern cheese haze
Man bear alien pig x 3 bears og
Sweet and smelly
Bear assed monkey
Pinot noir
Fugue state
beary white x 3 bears og
Fantastmo express x toof decay
pink livers
hubbabubbahaze
samsquanch og
bears og x double grape
Hubba bubba bear

Mate, all I can tell you is this:
After seeing all kinds of breeders, cultivars, variations of the same, etc etc., there isn't a single one, not even my personal fav's that haven't had some hiccups in their seeds at some point. For the best, it's pretty rare, for the worst, it's a repeat shit-show coming down mainly to poor breeding, shallow gene pools and too-soon F generation releases,... it is RIFE with those out there now!
Keep in mind no matter what, each seed is a little gamble, there is never even anything certain or automatic about how they perform! Fem'ing is already a pretty squirrely procedure, it's why it wasn't until the bloody '90's that it became well worked out enough to show consistent reliable results from; plenty can go sideways.... Same for "auto's"! Lineage origins, genetic expressions, breeding down through generations, the specifics of exactly HOW it works is not well understood. I can tell you from many chats with breeders, private high skilled ones especially (read no commercial retail bias, just passion), that there's more than one way the plants go about this... "ruderalis" derived is just one of them,... Shit, even the taxonomy is anything but settled these days, genetic analysis has shaken the crap out of the classification/taxonomy, those guys are all still in bitch-slap fights over it to this day....
But one interesting example: a friend at another forum got hold of Papua New Guinea landrace seeds, collected by Skunkman Sam (Watson) himself... Shared seeds to 3 other growers I recall, and all of them got a weird pheno that bloomed under 20/4 or higher light hours! This is a true tropical landrace, most are 8-10+ months full life cycle, 4-5 in bloom... Others with old heirlooms/landraces, like Oaxacan, Colmb. Red, Thai's, etc. have found similar anomalies, not common but its out there,... Think about this: all those are under near 12/12 light their entire lives at that Latitude, right? Begs the question, and IMO it's part of Mama Natures bag-o'-survival tricks,... a handy variant that's been successful enough to carry on in open populations...
The adaptation of the various "ruderalis" types is mainly to living in tough, short season conditions, where there's no f'ing way thay can make it to the usual light/dark hours shifting before the weather shuts it all down,... Mother Nature is notorious for work-arounds, trust this biologist on that!
Modern auto's run the gamut for life cycle time, and keep in mind it's not the length of their life cycle that determines it's being an "auto", it's whether it blooms under long light hours (doesn't need those longer dark period hours to work the phyotchrome pigments hormone feedback loop).... Shoddy breeding I've seen, some auto's took 3 months+ in veg! -- (most shitcan their plants long before this, but some venture forth out of curiosity!).... I've often seen auto's go 6-8 weeks then show up in Sick Bay wondering WTF... Some try the 12/12 gig, to force it, risking going back to higher light hours to bloom, or leave it at that... makes it hard to say if they were "auto's though, or throw-backs to photo status... Human error factors in as well with packing fuck up's, mislabeling at breeder or grower ends,... you get the gist!
Point is, most practical cycle auto's are bred to run 8-10 weeks, give or take,... IMO, past 12, you might as well have grown a photo and saved on the light $$!

pardon the lecture post, it just flowed out on me-

 

[WildBill]

Waira
Stop making so much damn sense!

I'm really

 

[parsing_trees]

But one interesting example: a friend at another forum got hold of Papua New Guinea landrace seeds, collected by Skunkman Sam (Watson) himself... Shared seeds to 3 other growers I recall, and all of them got a weird pheno that bloomed under 20/4 or higher light hours! This is a true tropical landrace, most are 8-10+ months full life cycle, 4-5 in bloom... Others with old heirlooms/landraces, like Oaxacan, Colmb. Red, Thai's, etc. have found similar anomalies, not common but its out there,... Think about this: all those are under near 12/12 light their entire lives at that Latitude, right? Begs the question, and IMO it's part of Mama Natures bag-o'-survival tricks,... a handy variant that's been successful enough to carry on in open populations...

It makes a lot of sense to me that since breeding behavior suggests the autoflowering trait is recessive and controlled by a single gene, it will spring up now and then in large populations due to random mutation and stick around where it has survival value. Another non-ruderalis landrace with autoflowering tendencies I've heard about is beldia, a Moroccan hashplant. In that case, apparently autoflowering helps it to reproduce in spite of their seasonal droughts. Autoflowering could be useful to avoid very long and risky lifecycles in equatorial / tropical latitudes, too.

I like beldia as an example, because I'm pretty sure Morocco isn't part of Siberia.

 

[Waira]

- fuckin' guy, right? Ok OK I'll smoke my first round of the day, clearly need some help,... that's what that was, yeah, a cry for help-- that's the ticket!!

 

[BigB6]

From everything I've read, it doesn't sound like a single gene, but rather a bunch of independent traits. Using silver-based chemicals (colloidal silver, silver thiosulfate) to block ethylene in the plant causes female plants to produce male flowers, but lots of stresses can also cause similar hormonal changes and trigger intersex traits in female plants. The genes may affect the thresholds for panic responses to particular stresses, rather than being some "herm"/"not herm" genetic switch -- some will get stressed out very easily by topping or excess nutrients, some might need really intense temperature or pH swings before they're stressed enough to do it? Also, in Marijuana Botany, Clarke mentions several landraces being really prone to it (especially Thai), to the point of being practically monoecious.

I tend to think of it more like the cannabis equivalent of some people getting cold sores when their immune system is busy fighting off other things, but that's me. (Granted, that's viral rather than genetic, and from the plant's standpoint it's a last ditch effort to reproduce and survive, but the idea is that from the grower's standpoint it's a usually-dormant annoyance that can be triggered by stress.) Thinking of it in terms of human sexual expression is probably a misleading mental model.

Would be great if there was a list of genes

Mate, all I can tell you is this:
After seeing all kinds of breeders, cultivars, variations of the same, etc etc., there isn't a single one, not even my personal fav's that haven't had some hiccups in their seeds at some point. For the best, it's pretty rare, for the worst, it's a repeat shit-show coming down mainly to poor breeding, shallow gene pools and too-soon F generation releases,... it is RIFE with those out there now!
Keep in mind no matter what, each seed is a little gamble, there is never even anything certain or automatic about how they perform! Fem'ing is already a pretty squirrely procedure, it's why it wasn't until the bloody '90's that it became well worked out enough to show consistent reliable results from; plenty can go sideways.... Same for "auto's"! Lineage origins, genetic expressions, breeding down through generations, the specifics of exactly HOW it works is not well understood. I can tell you from many chats with breeders, private high skilled ones especially (read no commercial retail bias, just passion), that there's more than one way the plants go about this... "ruderalis" derived is just one of them,... Shit, even the taxonomy is anything but settled these days, genetic analysis has shaken the crap out of the classification/taxonomy, those guys are all still in bitch-slap fights over it to this day....
But one interesting example: a friend at another forum got hold of Papua New Guinea landrace seeds, collected by Skunkman Sam (Watson) himself... Shared seeds to 3 other growers I recall, and all of them got a weird pheno that bloomed under 20/4 or higher light hours! This is a true tropical landrace, most are 8-10+ months full life cycle, 4-5 in bloom... Others with old heirlooms/landraces, like Oaxacan, Colmb. Red, Thai's, etc. have found similar anomalies, not common but its out there,... Think about this: all those are under near 12/12 light their entire lives at that Latitude, right? Begs the question, and IMO it's part of Mama Natures bag-o'-survival tricks,... a handy variant that's been successful enough to carry on in open populations...
The adaptation of the various "ruderalis" types is mainly to living in tough, short season conditions, where there's no f'ing way thay can make it to the usual light/dark hours shifting before the weather shuts it all down,... Mother Nature is notorious for work-arounds, trust this biologist on that!
Modern auto's run the gamut for life cycle time, and keep in mind it's not the length of their life cycle that determines it's being an "auto", it's whether it blooms under long light hours (doesn't need those longer dark period hours to work the phyotchrome pigments hormone feedback loop).... Shoddy breeding I've seen, some auto's took 3 months+ in veg! -- (most shitcan their plants long before this, but some venture forth out of curiosity!).... I've often seen auto's go 6-8 weeks then show up in Sick Bay wondering WTF... Some try the 12/12 gig, to force it, risking going back to higher light hours to bloom, or leave it at that... makes it hard to say if they were "auto's though, or throw-backs to photo status... Human error factors in as well with packing fuck up's, mislabeling at breeder or grower ends,... you get the gist!
Point is, most practical cycle auto's are bred to run 8-10 weeks, give or take,... IMO, past 12, you might as well have grown a photo and saved on the light $$!

pardon the lecture post, it just flowed out on me-

Great read. I've often wondered what is the point of some autos when it's almost the same time frame as a photo and you can save a shit load on electric. Yes some breeds seem to finish very fast. Like sweet seeds stuff. Some of their stuff would finish in 7-8 weeks. Low yield but bloody good smoke. When

 

[Waira]

It makes a lot of sense to me that since breeding behavior suggests the autoflowering trait is recessive and controlled by a single gene, it will spring up now and then in large populations due to random mutation and stick around where it has survival value. Another non-ruderalis landrace with autoflowering tendencies I've heard about is beldia, a Moroccan hashplant. In that case, apparently autoflowering helps it to reproduce in spite of their seasonal droughts. Autoflowering could be useful to avoid very long and risky lifecycles in equatorial / tropical latitudes, too.

I like beldia as an example, because I'm pretty sure Morocco isn't part of Siberia.

-- look into Mighty Mite, not an auto, not a rudi, not a photo. It can show variable tendencies, but in general it's considered a naturally super speedy culitvar... A couple breeders have played with MM for years, been pickin' brains with them when I can,.... neat plant, IF you can find the real deal anymore,...It's been worked a lot with different selection objectives.... I'm told the short stubby super fast one is the true blue cultivar...
Personally, until I see actual genetic proof, I reject this is a double recessive gene linked thing at all,... the proof that turned me: a few private breeders I know and trust have had F1 auto x photo crosses auto on them, with stable well established and known lines, not "random" auto pollution or anything in their history like MM's behavior... If you do that basic Punnet square at F1, there's zero chance of auto'ing, but I've had two such crosses from breeders do just that,... One, showed sex early, auto'ed outside, but took almost as long in bloom as the parent Maine's Own Blueberry does (full photo) ... the theory is it should be a fast version in some outcomes, like Sweets F1FV line (great article on that in their section BTW)....

 

[WildBill]

MEPH SUCKS!

DAY 47
5TH NODE DOWN
OF SOUR STOMPER

​

 

[Waira]

LOL! .... honestly, I've not run dozens of 'Phisto cultivars, but I've not had one that actually sucked; some were not to my personal tastes, but that's quite subjective after all... HBBHaze is a fav', very interesting terp profile (I got a Haze leaner, not the BBgum I wanted) that's enticing and potency is excellent... Sour Livers is another fine cross, also unique aromatics along with Livers bx I run last year... That one needed more cure time than usual to transform, it was kinda meh fresh, but after a couple months or so she really changed into a gem! Fantasmo Exp. is a winner, creamy lemony Hazey terps and lofty high,... Gotta get to White Crack, Sour Crack and HBSS next!
My advise is not sweat so much over the new stuff, Illuminato's and all that jazz,.. some of their best is still in the Originals line...

What most folks don't know about Mephisto is that they came to us here well before they had anything to sell,... shared their journey, breeding info, up's and downs and got off to a rocket-style launch when they did because of all this... It was smooth riding for years, but growing pains, as always, hit small co's eventually,.. some their fault, some NOT, but some loud torch-waving malcontents blow it up into retail conspiracy and incompetence no matter what the facts are... This is why we had to totally change their Customer Service gig here...constant bickering between fanboi's and haters, with folks just trying to resolve a basic issue getting caught in the scrum! ...RocBud is turning into that now...
Nowadays, I have to admit it's nothing like it was in the good ol' days, it's a PITA scrum to get seeds now... but "hype" it isn't, that doesn't come from thin air in this market with such vast coverage of grows here and elsewhere... that's the real litmus test IMO-

there are some great small breeders out there, two who used to work for Mephisto (might still?) now have their own lines: Night Owl (GBD/Daz), an excellent breeder! .... in our home-girl Rebel's Green Grass Seeds company, she features Twisted Tree, showing very well so far!
We have new folks like Twenty20 Mendocino coming in hot,... For something totaly off the beaten track, ACE has 2 auto's derived from landrace genetics like Zamadelica, a fierce African badass photo now in auto format!... Night Owl used this for some crosses in fact, thats how good it is! ...But ask around about it? Most never even heard of ACE,... too bad, they are a premier heirloom/landrace company, with some amazing hybrids as well. Many private breeders I know of use their stock in breeding, very picky MoFo's to say the least!

So, look around, shake the info tree, shove the cheers and jeers aside and be your own researcher... No one company is the total gold mine IMO, some have lots, some have only a few good'uns,... and always keep in mind what was said about ALL seeds being a dice-roll for pheno's and quality....