Haze dominant pheno: Ripening

Gaper

New member
I just recently retired a fabulous NL5 x Haze plant, which produced great yields and was incredibly potent. It's some of the best smoke I've ever had and have been told it was great for 'clearing out' your head between varieties. I personally love it for daytime use as I got lots of energy and enjoyed the buzz immensely. A real testament to the classics of cannabis genetics and to Shantibaba's ability to maintain them for decades. My hat off!

Some info on this pheno, and my question:

Must have been Haze dominant, as it was very different than the other plants. It grew hideously ugly, branchy with tons of medium-sized buds. It really looked like hell midway through flower, going yellow early and leaves dying before it was ripe. I almost killed the first run because of it.

Before everyone flames me out on nutrients and my style, let me tell you it tested as high as 25.8% THC, and produced 6 oz per plant without even trying. A classic example of why you shouldn't make assumptions. I grow organically in dirt and keep it really simple. Indoor, vegged to a foot tall, pseudo-SCROG setup, 4-6 plants per 4x4 area. My system has worked for countless varieties and my results have always been excellent.

Finally, my question. I found this to be at the peak of harvest at around 68 days. The trouble I always had was how clear the trichomes stayed long past that! I found that as soon as I saw a few cloudy trichomes, I started harvesting and had amazing results. I held one as long as 84 days and it looked absolutely hideous, and tested at 17% THC - trichomes still mostly clear! Didn't have nearly the smell and taste profile either, and wasn't the best smoke ever but... still very good!

Is this the Haze in the pheno, or something else I might be missing altogether? For a variety of reasons it was time for me to move on to other horizons, but I have stayed very curious about this phenomenon and would appreciate any feedback!

Stay safe, and grow with love.
 
nice!

i am going to see if I can pm shanti and a couple others to ask, maybe they haven't caught your post yet. do you have any pics to share? sounds like a very interesting pheno at any rate - did you try feeding it longer into flower to see if the smell and color would last longer or did that not work?
 
68 days but haze dominant? 68 days is extremely short for a 50% haze.

I can only suggest (without pics or any firsthand experience) that perhaps it actually has a number of potency windows and also that you can't quite expect sativa (dominant) flowers and their trichomes to act exactly the way indicas do, necessarily.

A lot of very experienced sativa growers insist that you do not, DO NOT, harvest before there's plenty of amber, that anything else is a waste and that quite probably in your case (and in my case previously when I've early chopped heavily sativa hybrids) you simply chopped early.

Really not quite the same logic as people who claim to harvest cloudy/clear indicas for "racy highs".

I recently decided to take this advice to the garden and test it, and waited on a Cinderella 99 stated to be 8-9 weeks, chopped at 77 days waiting on 20% amber. Came out beautifully. The main colas had foxtails all over them.

How was she with feeding? Did you feed her lightly? Or try feeding her light to see her response?

I have no answer to, nor much experience with THC testing but I would again suggest perhaps that the maturity window with such a long flowering strain is of course much longer, but my question to you is this - you say at 68 days you have some cloudies but at 84 days all the trichomes are clear, so where did the cloudies go? :D

Trichomes go clear, cloudy, amber, they don't go clear then cloudy then clear, nor do they just disappear. The ratio may change, there may be more trichomes so more of them might be clear? Is it THCA in clears? Does it count that as THC on the test?

I presume you checked and/or tested several parts of the plant for trichs when looking?

Did you ever consider just leaving it...and leaving it...til it ambered up?

Also finally, you say you got this as a clone - so are you certain it was 5hz?

Please don't interpret any of this as "flaming you out"
 
68 days but haze dominant? 68 days is extremely short for a 50% haze.

I can only suggest (without pics or any firsthand experience) that perhaps it actually has a number of potency windows and also that you can't quite expect sativa (dominant) flowers and their trichomes to act exactly the way indicas do, necessarily.

A lot of very experienced sativa growers insist that you do not, DO NOT, harvest before there's plenty of amber, that anything else is a waste and that quite probably in your case (and in my case previously when I've early chopped heavily sativa hybrids) you simply chopped early.

Really not quite the same logic as people who claim to harvest cloudy/clear indicas for "racy highs".

I recently decided to take this advice to the garden and test it, and waited on a Cinderella 99 stated to be 8-9 weeks, chopped at 77 days waiting on 20% amber. Came out beautifully. The main colas had foxtails all over them.

How was she with feeding? Did you feed her lightly? Or try feeding her light to see her response?

I have no answer to, nor much experience with THC testing but I would again suggest perhaps that the maturity window with such a long flowering strain is of course much longer, but my question to you is this - you say at 68 days you have some cloudies but at 84 days all the trichomes are clear, so where did the cloudies go? :D

Trichomes go clear, cloudy, amber, they don't go clear then cloudy then clear, nor do they just disappear. The ratio may change, there may be more trichomes so more of them might be clear? Is it THCA in clears? Does it count that as THC on the test?

I presume you checked and/or tested several parts of the plant for trichs when looking?

Did you ever consider just leaving it...and leaving it...til it ambered up?

Also finally, you say you got this as a clone - so are you certain it was 5hz?

Please don't interpret any of this as "flaming you out"

Sorry for the confusion:

- Not clones. Seeds from Mr. Nice.
- Different phenos of same plant had different ripening characteristics. The one in question was mostly cloudly, with some clear and some amber
- Cannabis effects are different, for different people. I test all my cannabis to find what is the 'ideal' for the plant - not for me. The cannabinoids help tell me where the plant is in its maturity cycle, helping take some of the guesswork out of the definition of 'ripe'.
 
Just uploaded some test results, which have microscopic images, and a bud image, to help!
 

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Howdy Gaper, nice bud and test scores.

How old were the NL5xHz seeds? Are they from the current stock?

I had a bubba kush (s1?) that had wouldn't ever amber up and was best around 70 days, the quality seemed to wane if taken any later.

May I ask what soil set-up you use? I'm always looking for effective organic soil mixes.

And last.... why did you retire her??
 
Howdy Gaper, nice bud and test scores.

How old were the NL5xHz seeds? Are they from the current stock?

I had a bubba kush (s1?) that had wouldn't ever amber up and was best around 70 days, the quality seemed to wane if taken any later.

May I ask what soil set-up you use? I'm always looking for effective organic soil mixes.

And last.... why did you retire her??

These are current stock, or at least I bought them from Seedsman.com about a year ago, and popped the whole package. The Bubba you had sounds a lot like mine.

My whole approach is about giving the plants everything they need to succeed, and just getting out of the way. I use the Subcool mix, and am now actually going to be trying out Clackamas Cahoots recipe, as made available on buildasoil.com. Here's my last version which aged about 2-4 months as it was used:

Subcool's soil mix (slight tuning based on what I had onhand):
- 4 bags Roots Organic
- 2.2 lbs Jamaican bat guano
- 2.5 lbs blood meal
- 2.5 lbs bone meal
- 25 lbs good, local worm castings
- Approx 1 cubic foot of small Perlite
- 2 lbs Rock Phosphate (using it up - won't buy again due to the environmental impact)
- 3/4 cup Epson salts
- 3 cups sweet dolomite lime
- 1/2 cup Azomite
- 2 tbsp powdered humic acid
- 1 cup powdered crab shell

Why did I retire it? It was hard. Bottom line, I'm a small grower, and have a few patients that I grow for. Turnaround time was one small piece of it, but I just have a simple 2 phase grow going. I can do up to 4 varieties at a time, but I really like to try a lot of different plants. I'm very happy to have access to seeds/clones to try all the wondrous Cannabis the world has to offer, so... I enjoyed it while it was in my life, it was a great plant and I learned lots from it. And when it's time came, I let go back to Earth. And I kept a little sumpin' so I can enjoy it for a few years to come ;).
 
The best Mango Hz I had was very also fast despite being stringy, perhaps a combo of influences. Sam always said the haze shines more in hybrids. And occasionally you strike gold.
 
Quote:

Remember I suggest real Original Haze for breeding, not commercial crops, you may be lucky and find a real keeper for production, but the odds are low. Just try and cross the best you find X your favorite varieties, and you will find lots of keepers.

-SamS
 
nice test scores! and great quote by sams, too, fellas. gotta love the haters, there is always one around.

Shanti is really busy, he won't be popping in until after January i think to check out what you posted, he will appreciate the pics of the bud - do you have any of the plant in flower you could post? might help others anyway, in identifying traits with theirs. Thanks bro!
 
deep thruth !! with the Original hazes u have like 15% possibility to find a real keeper on 100 seeds but man! if u search...u will find!
 
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