Mark's Angel's Breath - New Year's Haze

Preliminary smoke report on AB2 (again) and AB5. AB2 yielded only 12 grams of trimmed flower, but that's inline with expectations for the runt of the litter. The smoke is potent and the flavor is dark, dank and improving, but the effect is more couchlocky than I'm looking for, so I will discard the AB2 clone plant. I'll have a better handle on the flavor after a proper cure, which probably won't happen because I'm smoking it and 12 grams isn't much! (This post brought to you by AB2 :) )

Last week (at around F73) I snipped a small bud from AB5 and let it dry for a few days. This was an early sample because, a week later, AB5 is still showing mostly clear trichs with no amber and some of the pistils are still cream colored. So I started with one hit yesterday morning with my pinch hitter, got a nice, slightly spacey glow, and took a second hit. Then I got lots of shit done. Had a very productive day and continued to take the occasional puff through the day until the bud was gone. Not super potent or debilitating, but a really nice buzz. Unfortunately the bud I snipped was one that had been pollinated courtesy of AB1, and I got 4 seeds, 2 of which were definitely too immature. I may pop the other two and throw a couple AB F2s in with my next grow. I was never able to get a clone from AB5 so I may try to re-veg it, because it also looks to be capable of pretty good yields if I had a second shot at it. At least I'll have seeds from AB5.

Speaking of clones, after 6+ weeks I finally got a cutting from AB10 to throw out a root, so I now have clone plant backups of AB1 and all the females except AB5. I had a lot of difficulty with cloning (rooting) this grow. I've switched to a thermostat-controlled dome propagator and either peat pucks or rapid rooters for my cloning system, and am going to be ready to take some Grail Widow and Neville's Haze Mango cuts soon for my next grow.

@wwwwww - AB9 was too far gone when you posted your message and was beyond recovery. I had also tossed the clone plant I had. If I run across a plant like that again I'll keep it around. I know Morphote had a similar intersex plant in his Grail Widow grow and he did some breeding with it. Morphote, if you're out there, I'd love to know what you did with your intersex Grail Widow plant and how it worked out.
 
G'day, MNS mates. Herewith the next photographic installment of my little Angel's Breathe grow. To speed things up, I just took some quick snaps of the uppermost flowers on the female plants. So it's all about the buds, since the plants are putting on a nice show now. Seeds from a mating with AB1 are ripening in all female plants. I do believe I've been underfeeding AB7 and AB8, and left some yield on the table, but from what I've read I'd rather underfeed haze hybrids than overfeed them.

We're in the thick of winter weather here now, so the lights-out temperatures are getting down to about 61F, with the highs in the tent around 81F. The plants don't seem to mind the colder temperatures. Maybe the weather has something to do with how fast they pistils are turning amber; I don't think any of these plants, with the possible exception of AB10, are going to go as long as AB5, which at 11 weeks is my reference plant. Again, AB5 was a seed plant and everything else but AB10 is a clone, so the clones really look to be flowering a good 2-3 weeks faster than AB5.

Here's AB1 at 6 weeks, the world's loneliest plant, cranking out pollen in the flowering chamber for randy males. I've locked him in there for a week at a time without looking in on him and he hangs in there. I'm going to clean this chamber out later tonight and collect a bunch of pollen. Also going to dry and smoke some of the flowers. Can't decide whether to cull him, because the clouds of pollen he makes when I do a simple stem rub is a risk to the nearby flower tent, but I'd like to see him go the distance. I think you can get a feel for his flower structure, which I happen to like.

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This is AB3 at 4.5 weeks. Has dark, shiny NL5 leaves and a leathery smell.

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Here's AB5 at 11 weeks. Man, she's gorgeous. Smells of sweet tropical flowers and mangos. Seeds are almost fully ripe and can be seen bursting through the calyxes. About 30% cloudy with a few amber trichs spotted. Still feeding her ~600 ppm. I'll start the flush in a few days and will harvest somewhere in the 12-14 week timeframe. I already miss the sample bud I tried a few days ago. AB5 is the only remaining plant without a clone backup so I've decided to try to reveg her because she's so sweet.

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This is AB6. Looks to be an Indica leaner, but we'll see how the effect is. Sweet incense and floral smell.

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Here's AB7 at 6 weeks. Small buds, tropical floral smell similar to AB5. Not looking to yield much, probably underfed, as some fans are turning color.

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AB8 at 6 weeks. My guess is 10 weeks or less to finish. Floral, lemon-lime, sweet smell. This plant has been nute hungry since it was a little seedling, and it still is. I could've fed it twice as much as I did. Now a lot of the fan leaves are quite yellow. Not much I can do at this point.

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AB10 at 6 weeks. I estimate it'll finish in 12 weeks. Probably my favorite smell of the whole lot...like you walked into a dirt-floored metal shop wearing a brand new leather jacket. And fully 40 minutes after I did a stem rub and was typing this up my fingers had a lingering spicy peppery smell that reminded me of the Colombian weed from the 70s. I think the Haze A is strong in this one. Looks to be the best yielder also, by a significant amount. The one-rooted clone from AB10 is hanging in there but not thriving yet; I'm hoping for the best because I think I'm going to want to keep this plant.
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Love the foxtailing on AB5. I bet thats pure genetics there. That male looks like he has very good flower structure on him.
 
I'm slightly disappointed that the AB1 male has hardly any smell about him or his flowers. Maybe that was because it was all dried out from a week of neglect in the chamber, but the only way to really tell is to grow out some of the F2s. The AB5 x AB1 seeds ripening in AB5 should be an interesting test of my little structure-based selection experiment.

How long to I need to let seeds dry and cure before I can germinate them? Thinking about trying to squeeze a couple in with my next grow.
 
you can usually pop them right away or give them two weeks to dry if you can.
im sure im not the only one who has had volunteers sprouting out of plants you are about to cut down.
 
Just so you know for future reference, generally when working with haze strains, males with little smell, are often the most haze like, and stoniest.
Next time, you may want to try smoking the leaf before you cull it, if it is from a haze line, you may be shocked by how stony it is.


I have a male mango here that smell like mango until it started to flower. It lost all the smell now, only a faint pine smell left.
I think I will make some seeds to test him.
 
I have found that in general (not only with males), smells/odors change quite a bit throughout a plants lifecycle.

The CM male I selected was by far the smelliest when I examined the males and chose one.

When I discarded/culled all the males I already regretted my decision because there were several, considerably more smelly ones among them.

I have come to believe that during transplant from one pot to the other, the smell exuded from the root zone is probably a better tell about the smelliness of a plant than the stem rub.
Might be wrong with that but I have a feeling that you get more pronounced smell from the root zone than a stem rub, when you agitate it during transplant.

And the smell on my "prized" male has since died down considerably. Depending on how it is feeling etc. it sometimes returns stronger or fainter.
I have not flowered that male yet but from my experience with the females, I can say that smells also massively change during flower.

I remember the MKS sativa leaning pheno I had which was very low key in terms of odor then during mid flower it became overwhelmingly pungent with that great wintergreen smell which it lost again at some point of flower, only to return towards the finish line.
Then after harvest it and hang dry it was all there, then at a certain time during cure it was completely gone again only to return a week or so later and then stayed ...

It's weird sometimes with the odors...

Regarding males:
I recently saw someone running an entire seed-run, then culling all the females (he kept cuts of one or two since they looked special) and flowering out all the males.
He constantly applied what he calls "selection pressure", meaning he is applying his technique (in his case defoliation) to the plants throughout veg and flower to see how they react and then eyes those most closely that react best in his environment/under his techniques.
But he did flower out the whole bunch of males before making a selection.

I think that might be a better way to go about it.

So far I looked for males in veg only. I did let them veg long enough that they were fully mature and more than ready to flower but I still find my results more than inconclusive.

Currently considering to just collect 8 or so males and then flowering them all out in the small chamber to make my selection.
But that will be one hell of a task to not have them pollinate everything over in the other room...

Might have to resurface my plans for DICKS (Daddy Isolation Chamber KitS) and flower a few isolated males in tiny pots...

Let's see.
 
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Smells come and go throughout the grow. Hey a jingle!
Doin great there MndD! I gotta get back to the AB once I finish these other projects. Your posts are the reminder I need. Hey and good luck with your NHM, a little more zing on the high end compared to the AB which is a bit heavier IMJ.

Cool runnin
M
 
@musashi - Thank you, brother! I really like this strain so far. Just took cuttings of my NHM and GW seed plants last night so we're on track! I'll start a grow log once I move them into flower.

@Broseidon - DICKS for males makes sense! Just be real careful about pollen contamination. Last night I was showing a friend AB1 in the flowering chamber for randy males and generated a yellow plume of pollen dust that started floating towards the inlet of my flower tent 6 feet away!

@wwwwww & @jack hairy - I've read that technique but have a hard time believing seeds can tell the difference how fast they come up to temperature, or that it makes any difference in germination rate or vigor.

@blackberry - thanks for finding that quote from Joshuahazen, it's encouraging. That guy knows his shit, has contributed greatly to this forum in the past, and his presence is missed.

Everyone can agree that the best way to see if a male is worthy is to test its progeny, so I decided to try to squeeze in three AB5 x AB1 F2s with my next grow. I have lots of pollen from AB1 in the freezer and have it backed up in my veg cabinet and clone dome. If the product is as good as or better than AB5 I'll keep the male. I will also use his pollen to make seeds from the GW and NHM girls.

Here's a couple pictures of AB1 after I pulled him out of the FCRM and moved him out of the basement.

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I don't have much time to harvest F2 seeds, dry them and germinate them in time for my next grow, so I'm going to harvest a small seeded bud from AB5 tonight and germinate a couple seeds from that bud after it dries for a few days. I also just popped a couple seeds from AB5 from the bud I snipped last week, they are dry now for sure but look a little immature. We'll see.

I'll post a photo update of the female plants soon.
 
Observing AB1 male in more detail before I cull it at 7 weeks. Still zero to very faint odor. Here's an image of AB1 flower that I shot with a cheap USB microscope. Tiny, tiny trichs. Good resin coverage on leaves and stems, but not so much on flower calyxes (?). I'm thinking because those are very small they are still growing, suggesting this plant probably has a long flowering cycle to full ripeness. Definitely a sativa - haze leaner.

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The clone plants in the flower tent are ripening faster than I had anticipated. Lots of cloudy and a fair amount of amber trichomes showing up at 7 weeks. I think everything will be done in a few more weeks, and most of the plants will be 9-10 weeks from clone. Shorter than I expected...I think the far-red flash at lights out helps (no need to go shorter than 12/12).

Here's a closer shot of the AB1 flower. The flowered plant was culled today and there was much pollen collected.
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Here's AB3 at 5.5 weeks. Nice frost but tiny buds. I doubt I'll get much more than an ounce or dried bud. Odors are leather and wood.
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AB3 flower at 5.5 weeks.
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Here's AB5 at 12 weeks now. Started flushing yesterday and will give it at least one more week to harvest. 40% clear, 50% cloudy, 10% amber. Still shooting a few white pistils. I harvested one small seeded bud so I can try a couple F2s in my next grow. Smells are mangos and tropical flowers with a pine-lemon finish.
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And here's an AB5 flower (the same one as before) at 12 weeks.
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This is AB6 at 7 weeks. The smell is somewhat sweet, soapy, astringent lemon-lime. 60% trichomes clear, 30% cloudy and 10% amber.
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Here's the AB6 main cola at 7 weeks.
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Here's AB7 at 7 weeks. She's lanky and has small, very dense frosty buds. Smells similar to AB5 - tropical flowers with a piney lemon background. Less than 2 oz of yield expected.
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AB7 flowers at 7 weeks.
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Here's AB8 at 7 weeks. Sweet floral incense lemon-lime odor. 50% clear, 10% amber trichs.
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AB8 flower at 7 weeks.
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Finally, here's AB10 at 7 weeks. This plant made a lot of progress in the last couple weeks, and quite a few amber trichs are observed on the uppermost buds, still about 40% clear. I no longer think it'll go 12 weeks, more like 10, despite being a seed plant and not a clone. The smell is Haze A dominant and really interesting, dark and spicy incense, metal, leather, decaying wood and moist earth. Not sweet at all nor is it unpleasant. Yield looks to be pretty good; I expect over 3 ounces from the 32" tall plant. Almost trimmed an upper bud for a test smoke tonight but decided to hold off until New Year's. :)
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AB10 flowers at 7 weeks.
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Finally, my 4x4 tent, 600 W of COBs, with 6 Angel's Breath girls putting on a show.
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Nicely going there brother! made some nice progress over there

i love that AB5 flower she looks really nice and ripe :cool: :) i`m really start to like the mango smells i have a MangoHaze going right now, had to get used to it but now im all over loving it!

also nice that you show some of the studs.

Keep it going! thats gonna be a nice new years smoke!


greetings
 
Everyone can agree that the best way to see if a male is worthy is to test its progeny, so I decided to try to squeeze in three AB5 x AB1 F2s with my next grow. I have lots of pollen from AB1 in the freezer and have it backed up in my veg cabinet and clone dome. If the product is as good as or better than AB5 I'll keep the male. I will also use his pollen to make seeds from the GW and NHM girls.

I was thinking about it and realized that even for a mother this is true. Unless you test the progeny you can not tell if the plant is a good mother or not.
Maybe the plant is a good female but a bad mother and vice versa (obviously the most common is a good female=good mother)
 
Yes that is true but with a female, you can clearly see/experience if it has the desired characteristics from the cultivar itself and the odds of it passing along none of the desired traits to its offspring are very slim (and also depending on the male, it would have to be dominant in the traits you wish to pass on to the offspring and have these dominant traits be more undesirable than what the female would have passed on).

I also believe this is one of the reasons some/many "breeders" try to work with recessive males. Their basic idea is to pass on all the visible, desired characteristics from the female and basically none of the male. How that is supposed to lead in a "better" F2 generation is beyond me though. From where I stand, this method can only lead to eventually losing dominance of desired traits in the female population and bringing out inferior traits in a cross when the previously recessive traits, now dominate the cross through the male and leads to a loss in potency and the like.
This would also be a potential explanation for some of the old school seedlines, beloved by all, going to shit over the years (see Sensi, Dutch Passion catalogue etc.). I wouldn't be surprised to find out at least some of them worked with recessive males and didn't notice they were watering down their seedline before it was too late to fix it (or they didn't have the skills/knowledge/cultivars to do so).


On the flipside, identifying a stud is only possible through crossing. You can't work with recessive females or anything since you can't see/experience if the male exhibits desired traits. Because its flowering time, cluster formation, smell, resin formation etc. are all just hints, none are definitive answers to whether or not these traits will dominate in a cross and even if there were, you wouldn't know if that particular trait is desired to dominate in a cross or if that would water down/lessen the F2 generation.

So it becomes a shot in the dark much more than selecting a mother is...
 
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@bb247 - I use a 3000K fixture in the back of the tent and a 3500K fixture in the front. I also flash a 12W 730 nm far red for 20 minutes at lights out to put the girls to sleep, obviating the need to flower with less than 12 hours of light. Seems to be working as most of these plants look like they'll be ready in 8-9 weeks.
 
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