NL5 x Hz Female Select: Medical Grow Journal

T5Hz #4: Super Silver Haze aroma

Having harvested and dried seedplant #4, she smells beautiful - just the way I remember the old Amsterdam Super Silver Haze which was available seemingly everywhere there c. 98 - 00. She definitely smells like a Dutch coffeeshop.

She was cut within the last 2 weeks and is dry but uncured. She has blood red/orange hairs, very beautiful (she went 14 weeks).

Any thoughts on this? Perhaps I'm just smelling 'haze'.



A lot of our girls have a fruity, perhaps 'mango esque' aroma :)
Very pleased with this line.
 
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Beautiful flowers grown beautifully. Nice job. How's the smoke?

Thank you, Marcus. Smoke reports are ranging everywhere from 'very good' to 'best weed ever' haha. 5 girls tested, plenty more testing to be done.
A labor of love, but somebody has to do it! :)

I haven't felt the need to smoke any other bud since harvesting this 5Haze. Perhaps that speaks to my need to select something even better (Nev Mango next, Window Grail soon).

1 or 2 girls have somewhat indica tendencies, but the overall buzz is sativa. Plant 14 supplies a vigorous stream of energy (which would, no doubt, be interpreted (by the casual skunk smoker) as solid evidence of insanity :)
 
I recently heard someone advice to "keep all your clones until all your jars are empty" and I quite liked that advice. Not always possible but if it is, it probably should be followed.

I notice a lot of changing going on. The plants have cured for a good 6 weeks now and things are still changing dramatically, not only from smells/flavors but also from effect/potency.

There was actually one plant where I lost the cut very late and unexpectedly and it is looking like it has the best terp profile now after 6 weeks cure. As little as 2 weeks ago I didn't pay that pheno any mind as it seemed "middle of the pack" at best...

In my last round I also noticed that some phenos just needed more time to cure than others to bring out the best in them...

What I'm trying to say is: Don't judge till the jars are empty and till everything had its time to cure and you were able to sample everything several times and make up your final mind.

Sure some of the phenos that weren't interesting from the start, remained so. But some could jump up quite a bit on your list before you finished all the jars.
 
Pre-flip - phase 2

I recently heard someone advice to "keep all your clones until all your jars are empty" and I quite liked that advice. Not always possible but if it is, it probably should be followed.

I notice a lot of changing going on. The plants have cured for a good 6 weeks now and things are still changing dramatically, not only from smells/flavors but also from effect/potency.

What I'm trying to say is: Don't judge till the jars are empty and till everything had its time to cure and you were able to sample everything several times and make up your final mind.

Hi Bro,

Thanks for your your post. I wholeheartedly agree with every word of this, and it is clearly sound advice.

It is also necessary, with our circumstances, for us to keep within certain lawful plant numbers :) We're probably around 5 months into this selection now, so it seems reasonable / necessary for us to remove some girls from the selection process based on early observable factors such as size, yield, bud formation, resin production etc.
Starting with 39 seeds, we removed the males and were left with 22 girls. Having now eliminated a dozen girls (based on some of the aforementioned factors), we are left with 10 girls for 'phase 2' of our 5Haze selection. This frees up most of our resources to begin new selections. At the end of the day, we can't run a plant that yields only 25% in comparison to some of her sisters. It'd be tough to justify running a plant that produces whispy, airy buds when her sister produces rock her solid nugs from top to bottom. I was surprised with the amount of variance we found in this respect.
 
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I think it is good to start with WAY more mothers than you can handle and kill the ones you don't like - for whatever reason. Selection is about a lot more than just potency - it is a personal thing. I have killed many plants just because I don't like the look of them for whatever reason.

If you could only handle 10 mothers and only started with 10 mothers you won't get as good a plant as if you started with 22 mothers and killed 12 of them because of aroma and resin and yield and bud/leaf ratio and if it falls within the phenotype criteria you wanted (sometimes you are looking for a certain pheno...)

What is the difference between a plant you killed and one you never planted? There are infinite seeds out there...

If you like 50% of the phenos and you start with 10 mothers you will only have 5 you like...if you start with 22 mothers and select 10 from the pheno you like you are doing twice as well.

Just my view...seeds are cheap and in infinite supply. If you only had a few seeds that you were cherishing (for whatever reason...) then maybe that is different...
 
Agreed. It only makes sense to pop the entire seed pack (18). Popping 4 seeds from a seed pack is a waste of time IMO, as it severely restricts the possibilities of expression. Once I grok’d that seeds were inexpensive and it didn’t take that much more time to launch them all, selection became more fun and rewarding.
Of course, when the time comes, culling your babies takes courage. Second guessing doesn’t help, discipline and objectivity is required. Emotion and attachment to certain plants happens though. I suggest you get over that.
Once you have made a purchase decision on a particular variety, don’t be shy- jump in with both feet, commit and you will be amply rewarded.

Cool runnings
M
 
I think it is good to start with WAY more mothers than you can handle and kill the ones you don't like - for whatever reason. Selection is about a lot more than just potency - it is a personal thing.

If you could only handle 10 mothers and only started with 10 mothers you won't get as good a plant as if you started with 22 mothers and killed 12 of them because of aroma and resin and yield and bud/leaf ratio and if it falls within the phenotype criteria you wanted

If you like 50% of the phenos and you start with 10 mothers you will only have 5 you like...if you start with 22 mothers and select 10 from the pheno you like you are doing twice as well.

Nice post GS; infinite seeds indeed. Quite honestly, Nevil Schoenmakers was our inspiration in terms of the pool size. I was profoundly influenced by his claim to have used groups of 40-50 seeds for his selections.
You mention bud/leaf ratio, which I wholeheartedly agree (having recently harvested 22 phenos) is extremely important. Some plants had little leaf. A couple of plants were all leaf, and we do not wish to promulgate the latter :D

Agreed. It only makes sense to pop the entire seed pack (18). Popping 4 seeds from a seed pack is a waste of time IMO, as it severely restricts the possibilities of expression. Once I grok’d that seeds were inexpensive and it didn’t take that much more time to launch them all, selection became more fun and rewarding.
Of course, when the time comes, culling your babies takes courage. Second guessing doesn’t help, discipline and objectivity is required. Emotion and attachment to certain plants happens though. I suggest you get over that.
Once you have made a purchase decision on a particular variety, don’t be shy- jump in with both feet, commit and you will be amply rewarded.

Cool runnings
M

Well said, Musashi. When you see things from this perspective Shantibaba is a true hero, propagating these genetics - almost for free in some cases - via the auction site. That they will deliver your seed worldwide, tracked - for free - is icing on an already supreme cake.

I chose to make the actual culls when my wife was not present, after agreeing on our selections. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do ;)
 
I agree that selecting 40+ seeds would ensure you find really good smoke in every grow. Believe me, I'd love to do it but I can't flower any more than a half pack of seeds at a time while remaining legal. As a hobbyist and non-commercial grower, being able to select from 4-8 female plants of a given strain is all the selection I can do without getting a Tier I cultivation license license and grow up to 1,000 sf of canopy. I'm just not interested in that.
 
I agree that selecting 40+ seeds would ensure you find really good smoke in every grow. Believe me, I'd love to do it but I can't flower any more than a half pack of seeds at a time while remaining legal. As a hobbyist and non-commercial grower, being able to select from 4-8 female plants of a given strain is all the selection I can do without getting a Tier I cultivation license license and grow up to 1,000 sf of canopy. I'm just not interested in that.

Definitely, I believe we are all talking the same language here.

The nice thing about Mr Nice seeds is one can be confident that most every plant will throw up something worth smoking. My comments were not advocating everybody selecting from 40 seeds; I was explaining why, due to plant numbers / legalities etc, we personally cannot afford to keep every girl alive until every plant has cured for 6 months :D It seems we share similar reasons for keeping plant numbers low.
 
While its true, its desirable to pick from many many plants ( Males Too ) and I start a bunch of seeds, like many have said they cant grow a lot of plants.

I also feel if you have 4-5 females to look at there should be at least a fairly decent plant out of that many, if they are of good breeding.

I remember reading in The Seed Bank catalog that Nevil said of the NL1 x Hashplant.

ALL of the plants were potent.
1 in 4 was Exceptional.


So if I have limited space, and cant find 1 good female out of pack of 10-15/5-8 females , I'll pass on that strain.
All of the SSH females from the original pack from 2013 were nice plants. Though they did vary, on looks, and flowering times, potency.

We F2d 4 packs of the Mr Nice SSH x HUGE PLANTS outside 4+ years ago, and then ran 250 FEMALES inside, over 4 grow cycles, and at least 1200/250+ females after culling, to pick the 1 we have right now. Our favorite came from the Second planting.

Huge production, smells like Pine/floral citrus/Sk1. Its got a lot of the Sk1 genes in it Terpene wise. Very obvious. Good fast growing plant. Done 75 days. Will produce 24 oz x 1 plant in a 20 gallon container of Promix BX, and 1 x 1000w Hortilux HPS. Stretch is 4x+ in flower.
 
All I can add to this from experience is that from 50 seeds started and 21 females flowered out so far there was one in there that was definitely unique. I have about 8 more females to flower out from that seed pop but there were definitely phenotypes that are slightly different but mostly similar.
There is a group of about 4-6 females that exhibit some form of berry or red-fruit terps and somewhat candy like and another group of 4-5 that are more in the musky area and a hand full that were slightly citrusy.

The one that stood out from all of them was in the citrusy/woody direction but regarding yield, growth structure and overall resistance to abuse/suboptimal conditions, there was no other like it.
Regarding frost/resin production, there was 1 more plant that equals it and it is the best out of the berry/red fruit terp corner. These 2 clearly stood out while one of them had "peers" (other phenos that stood out through their berry/red fruit terps) while the other had none.
There was another unique pheno, the most skunk leaning I believe. It was the quickest in terms of vegging vigor and also the quickest to deplete all nutrients from the leafs and turn full yellow, weeks before others.
I think that pheno wants a lot more nitrogen than all the others and didn't have enough in its pot. Trying to run that one again with proper nute levels and it could be the third one that stands out.

But I doubt I would have noticed all of this if I had just popped a 12 pack...

I understand and agree that plant numbers are often a limiting factor and I would never say that you can't select unless you pop X beans.

Yet I agree with the assessment that for "proper" selection, a certain number is required. What that number is, I don't know. It depends on the breeder and the strain I suppose?

I asked a breeder once how many beans of his strain I should pop to find that one particular pheno he is advertising and he said about 30 should ensure that I find it. I think that is a decent number to pheno hunt but more would always be better imho. As many as possible, if you pheno hunt, is what I would summarize this ...


Another thought on the topic:
Currently, you do have to go through potentially hundreds of seeds to find that 1 special plant. Some would argue that is because cannabis breeding is not refined to the point of vegetables or fruits where if you pop 10 seeds, you guaranteed to find just that type of tomato plant that the breeder advertised.
Instead you will only potentially find the phenotype advertised in 10 seeds but potentially could need 30 or 50 or even hundreds.

Now imagine a few years in the future. Imagine we have "successfully" bottlenecked various cannabis strains to the point where tomatoes etc. are and every 10, scratch that every 3 or 5 beans you pop will result in several plants that are exactly what the breeder described, they are all that one pheno.

At that point, we would no longer have to pop "only" 30 or 50 or hundreds of beans. At that point, the gene pool will be so bottlenecked that to find an anomaly/a truly special/different phenotype, we might have to pop thousands upon thousands of seeds.

And if the bottlenecking has gone far enough, even popping a hundred thousand won't yield a holy grail or whatever pheno.

Catch my drift?

We should be grateful over the current state of things.

Would it be nicer if we could pop a 12 pack and were guaranteed to have that holy grail phenotype at least once in there? Sure it would be.
But don't forget that will come at a cost as well and if your holy grail pheno is another, you might not be able to find it anymore no matter how hard you try because the necessary genetics were bred out of that seedline.

Right now, you can though and we should be happy about that.

I would much rather be where we are with cannabis than be where we are with tomatoes.
You can change the laws so people can pop more beans but it would be much harder or impossible to change the genepool in retrospect once it has been bottlenecked so you don't have to pop that many seeds to begin with.
 
Sometimes that 50/50 ratio doesn’t hold true. Several years ago in my search for a hybrid out of the many available, I was doing 6-8 seeds per variety. Oh, the candy! Growing 9 strains at a time got a little hairy and is not recommended haha. I got 6/6 males with Medicine Man and 4/6 Mango Haze males. Additionally, germ rates for a CBD variety yielded 1 plant out of 5 seeds (BTW, Shanti immediately took care of this anomaly and made me whole).
What a drag to go 4+ weeks in veg only to find nothing usable. While it was nice to have some brutish looking males to work with from the MM bunch, my goal at the time was to process as many females from each variety as I could to find “the one.” This exercise set me back 2+ months.
I realize the constraints the Man puts on us but there is logic to growing as many of one variety as possible if only to assure a decent female selection. One has to be flexible...

Aloha
M
 
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All I can add to this from experience is that from 50 seeds started and 21 females flowered out so far there was one in there that was definitely unique. I have about 8 more females to flower out from that seed pop but there were definitely phenotypes that are slightly different but mostly similar.
There is a group of about 4-6 females that exhibit some form of berry or red-fruit terps and somewhat candy like and another group of 4-5 that are more in the musky area and a hand full that were slightly citrusy.

The one that stood out from all of them was in the citrusy/woody direction but regarding yield, growth structure and overall resistance to abuse/suboptimal conditions, there was no other like it.
Regarding frost/resin production, there was 1 more plant that equals it and it is the best out of the berry/red fruit terp corner. These 2 clearly stood out while one of them had "peers" (other phenos that stood out through their berry/red fruit terps) while the other had none.
There was another unique pheno, the most skunk leaning I believe. It was the quickest in terms of vegging vigor and also the quickest to deplete all nutrients from the leafs and turn full yellow, weeks before others.
I think that pheno wants a lot more nitrogen than all the others and didn't have enough in its pot. Trying to run that one again with proper nute levels and it could be the third one that stands out.

But I doubt I would have noticed all of this if I had just popped a 12 pack...

I understand and agree that plant numbers are often a limiting factor and I would never say that you can't select unless you pop X beans.

Yet I agree with the assessment that for "proper" selection, a certain number is required. What that number is, I don't know. It depends on the breeder and the strain I suppose?

I asked a breeder once how many beans of his strain I should pop to find that one particular pheno he is advertising and he said about 30 should ensure that I find it. I think that is a decent number to pheno hunt but more would always be better imho. As many as possible, if you pheno hunt, is what I would summarize this ...


Another thought on the topic:
Currently, you do have to go through potentially hundreds of seeds to find that 1 special plant. Some would argue that is because cannabis breeding is not refined to the point of vegetables or fruits where if you pop 10 seeds, you guaranteed to find just that type of tomato plant that the breeder advertised.
Instead you will only potentially find the phenotype advertised in 10 seeds but potentially could need 30 or 50 or even hundreds.

Now imagine a few years in the future. Imagine we have "successfully" bottlenecked various cannabis strains to the point where tomatoes etc. are and every 10, scratch that every 3 or 5 beans you pop will result in several plants that are exactly what the breeder described, they are all that one pheno.

At that point, we would no longer have to pop "only" 30 or 50 or hundreds of beans. At that point, the gene pool will be so bottlenecked that to find an anomaly/a truly special/different phenotype, we might have to pop thousands upon thousands of seeds.

And if the bottlenecking has gone far enough, even popping a hundred thousand won't yield a holy grail or whatever pheno.

Catch my drift?

We should be grateful over the current state of things.

Would it be nicer if we could pop a 12 pack and were guaranteed to have that holy grail phenotype at least once in there? Sure it would be.
But don't forget that will come at a cost as well and if your holy grail pheno is another, you might not be able to find it anymore no matter how hard you try because the necessary genetics were bred out of that seedline.

Right now, you can though and we should be happy about that.

I would much rather be where we are with cannabis than be where we are with tomatoes.
You can change the laws so people can pop more beans but it would be much harder or impossible to change the genepool in retrospect once it has been bottlenecked so you don't have to pop that many seeds to begin with.

I'm hearing what you are saying there, for sure... this is why I just don't like the Nevil 1:1 breeding style. One great female and 1 'magic' male... I prefer best 3 females & best 3 males but at the moment I am working with Land Races and not F1s etc - so it may be different, I suppose... You find better, kinder highs in the Landraces...just forget about 8 weeks and good yields!!!

Which is why I prefer lots of plants - imagine having just 1 female from a variety (Costa Rica Red High or Oaxacan, for example) going 14/15 weeks and then finding out it wasn't a good one. AAAARRRGHHH


BTW you can find 'landrace' tomatoes if you look. I have a variety I got from seeds I took from a big, pink, sweet tomato variety that they have been growing in just 1 village in the mountains in Cyprus for generations.....there is some variation from seed to seed. Some are hardy in England, some are not. Selection is required.
 
Yeah the thing with cannabis is unique regarding the gene pool, bottlenecking etc.

I agree with you that Sativas have moved somewhat out of range for the average consumers. I lived for close to a decade in the Netherlands and not once got a true Sativa. EVER.
And trust me, I looked on the menus everywhere.
The closest you could get was a sativa dominant hybrid like Neville's Haze. And that was quite rare.

My impression, too, is that 90% or so of cannabis being grown, particularly now, commercially, is indica leaning, as you surmised.
I just have some OG Kush and Diesel genetics in veg and I can already see in veg how much more definitively indica dominant these plants are, just from the leaf shape.
Even the Ortega didn't have as wide leafs and the CM, which should be an indica dominant hybrid by all accounts, had nowhere near as wide leafs.

Ever since I saw those Chemdog varieties grow myself, I have assumed that Chemdog was simply a stellar indica or heavily indica leaning hybrid. This hit the grey/black market's nerve as it was exactly what it needed to grow out of sight of the law (we all know sativas are harder/less feasible in that regard) as well as what most people in the US seem to prefer when looking to cannabis: that recreational, couchlock indica "stone".


Either way, one of the positive side effects of prohibition was that we indeed have so many varieties of this plant in so many places and the whole bottlenecking issue is less severe/accelerated as of now.

But one could argue that the US and Canada already started towards bottlenecking the gene pool with their Indica craze (Chemdog genetics). And the Dutch certainly did, too, with their Hazes and Skunks...

And just because genetics are so widespread and kept in so many different places without control, doesn't mean they can't be lost. AK47 comes to mind for me ...

Also there are positive trends with breeders focusing on landraces and more and more growers working with open pollination not because "pollen chucking is easy lol" but because they realize it preserves a wider section of the gene pool.


It's a tricky topic....

Bottleneck too much and you potentially loose genetic markers forever.
Bottleneck too little and everyone calls you a hack and not a breeder because they expect several keepers, as advertised, out of a 10 pack...


And if you look in history how it went with Monsanto and their GMO corn, tomatoes etc., then you would be cautious with regard to cannabis.
I say it is not unlikely that within 10-20 years, the gene pool has shrinked drastically as Big AG GMO seeds take over. Then you have a phase somewhere in the middle where you can't get any heirloom/landrace seeds anymore and then eventually after 15 years or so, the first heirloom seedbanks start popping up and affording heirloom/landrace genetics again to people who don't mind a purple tomato as long as it tastes great, and prefer it over the perfect looking but tasteless GMO tomato.
But what will be lost along the way?

I know I saw purple carrots when I was a little kid. I know I liked them and it took over 20 years till I ever saw them again in a market.

Know what I mean?
 
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Yeah the thing with cannabis is unique regarding the gene pool, bottlenecking etc.

I agree with you that Sativas have moved somewhat out of range for the average consumers. I lived for close to a decade in the Netherlands and not once got a true Sativa. EVER.


Know what I mean?


Hi Broseidon, got you on this one. The Queston for me is: What is Cannabis Sativa? Sativa means = cultivated. So thats it. Makes no sense at all. Is there one Plant growing without the care of human? No? Maybe... Deeeeeep in the jungle. But who cares? The Plant has evolved, we have too.

Tell me what you are looking for in a "real sativa", look for the traits, not the names and you will find what you are looking for.

The High probably... Well, Africa... nice place for plants to be. And some farmers did inbreed for generations to preserve the material wanted, so real sativas...

So next point, the High yes, thats what we classify the plants of... Sativas are stimulating euphoric ones right? So what now? I don't get it anymore.. What is what? Ahh.. who cares.. As long as we have the benefitials..

Everyone gets what he/she wants, if asked nicely.

Be well.
 
you guys notice a difference between real indicas, and what passes as indicas these days?
og kush, sour diesel, cookies...

they all have sativa in them. stretch much taller than the typical indicas.
i have a grape kush, was the first time trying it, and it surprised me by growing just as tall as the skunk hazes and NH x mullumbimby madness did.
was taller than a g13/hazeA x La Nina hybrid.
i had some black dominas going and they finished at about half the height.

for the first time in a while i am liking a indica/kush/chemdog type strain.
i got a hybrid of cookies and creme x ogkushbreath.
4 out of 4 females are high quality, hard to pick just one.
will probably make a much better cross to haze than og kush does.
going to cross them to a mullum x oaxacan male also so i can try a similar cross with no haze in it.
 
If it really was Northern lights, it should have been a pure indica or something close.

Yes. The dispensary NL (while widely varying in quality) all seems fairly similar. I'm not an indica connoisseur, but the various NL I've tried were comparable to Critical Mass for me. Perhaps that is close to pure indica? I smoked 'hash plant' which was far more licking. A dispensary carried a cross of Nev haze x Critical Mass, which was interesting but forgettable.
 
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