Backyard - Northern Skunk x Kush Berry

[applicanon]

I started seeds indoors around the middle of March 2026 under LED lighting.

Genetics have the following story:
Started with seeds from PeakSeedsBC (a now defunct breeder who went the 'legal' route in Canada and no longer sells to the public)
In 2024, I crossed a peakseedsbc Northern lights X skunk female with a peakseedsbc Kush x blueberry male. This produced a shitload of seeds that I will refer to here on out as NS x KB.

I started a handful of seeds under 24 hour LED lighting around the middle of March, 2026.
Of these I kept the best looking 6 plants as this was all that would fit in my indoor grow area.
By the time the weather was warm enough to put the plants outside, they had matured far enough
to show their sex without messing around with the lighting. 4 were male, 2 were female.

I plan on keeping 1 of the males around the side of the yard in a bucket so that I can selectively pollinate some of the female buds in order to get a hundred or so seeds, without completely overwhelming the entire grow with seeds. I'm not sure if pollen can be stored, but I'm going to try and save some of the pollen and see if it can be used to pollinate future females. It would be nice to be able to back cross future progeny of this genetic line without having to grow out seed stock each and every year.

I planted the 2 females directly into the soil of my backyard vegetable garden.
Prior to transplanting them, the garden bed soil was prepared. I dug down approximately 2.5 feet deep in a 3 foot x 6 foot area.
I replaced the soil with a premium soil mix which was comprised of the following:

Approximately:
2 Parts promix HP or promix BX
1 Part Perlite
1 Part Vermiculite
1 Part Worm castings

This soil mix was amended with the following dry mix of fertilizers:
4 tbsp Hen manure pellets (5-3-2)
4 tbsp Dolomitic limestone
2 tbsp soft rock phosphate
2 tbsp azomite
2 tbsp humic acid mini granules
1 tbsp crustacean meal (4-2-13)
2 tbsp Therm x 15m soil conditioner
4 tbsp kelp meal
1 cup biochar

This mix of dry amendments makes up a total of approximately 400ml which was thoroughly mixed into the entire bed area which I had dug out and back filled with the premium soil mix.

This was probably on the weak side when it came to the dry amendments as the amount of soil mix that it ended up taking to back fill the hole that I dug was quite large, but I wanted to use precaution rather than use too much and be sorry. After all, if it turned out to be too weak, there is always the option of supplementing with liquid fertilizer throughout the grow, but if the mix was too hot, there's basically no going back without a tremendous amount of headache.

Oh and just an added note:
The bed has been mulched with dried oak leaves.

 

[applicanon]

Here's pictures of the grow up to today's date. As you can tell, the plants had gotten root bound and had completely outgrown their indoor grow space. This is why they look so pale and worse for ware in the initial pictures. You can tell that all they needed was some new space to stretch out their roots and find fresh nutrients, and they completely recovered and spewed forth beautiful green growth thereafter. :)

The hole in the ground:

first day after transplanting:


About 2 weeks after transplanting you can see the plant has gotten used to (and is loving) it's new home and soil mix as it was rootbound and hungry prior to transplanting:




Most recent picture taken yesterday, June 22, 2026:

 

[applicanon]

Just a little update.

I noticed on one of the male plants and on one of the big female plants a single branch on each of them had what I believe to be a genetic mutation. These branches had developed very flat instead of the usual round / boxy shape they should be. This had caused these branches to actually go limp and not be able to support themselves.

Because of this, the male plant in question was completely eliminated as to not pass its DNA to the future genetic line.
The female plant with the mutation will be kept for the bud, but I will not be pollinating it. I removed the offending branch. At this point in time, those were the only 2 branches where this had developed. I hope it does not show up on any of the other plants. It very well could because they are all from the same batch of seeds from the same mother.

Here's some pictures of the 2 big girls. They really are pumping out a massive amount of new growth each day. I'm really impressed. I fed them a VERY weak solution of worm casting tea which also had kelp meal, molasses, hen manure, biochar, azomite, humic acid, fish emulsions, hydrolyzed fish, and neptunes harvest seaweed fertilizer.

The 2 remaining males were chopped down to size today. I removed the upper 2 feet of growth to keep these plants a little more manageable in their 5 gallon buckets. If I had let them continue to get bigger and bigger then I would have had to water them every single day and this would get very bothersome. They will produce more than enough pollen at a much smaller size, and will require much less water this size as well.

I am considering moving the males into my garage at night everyday and bringing them back outside in the morning in order to force the males to start flowering early. This way I can get the pollen collection out of the way and not have to deal with them for very much longer. I'll probably start doing this tonight. My plan is to only pollinate a small portion of the female flowers in order to produce roughly 200 or so seeds, leaving the rest of the plant sensimilla. If I can get the pollen relatively early on then I can pollinate the pistils that develop in the first week or two of flowering, and all the flowers that develop afterwards will not be pollinated at all. Hopefully this will result in a small number of seeds, as well as making all the pollinated flowers develop into fully mature seeds without ending up with a bunch of underdeveloped wasted seeds, as this happens a lot if you leave the males with the females the entire flowering season. Anyways thats all for now.