Indeed. And I agree for the most part. But I'm studying hard and doing my homework, and this is a goal I'm gonna pursue either way, and I learn best with hands on, and I have extra seeds to use, so no worries.
I'm in a meager 2x4
spider farmer kit, currently growing autos. I enjoy LST and train my plants to grow with an even canopy. I'm just starting on my third run, and each run is getting better. I have my soil dialed in a lot better. I started with crap soil in bags as compost (some non-miraclegro stuff from Walmart), and ended up with stunted plants from all the fungus gnat larvae that came in the bag. Since the first crop, I microwaved all that soil (yes sir yes sir four bags full) to kill the eggs, then I added perlite, peat moss, worm castings, and some fairly coarse sandy compost sifted from about a foot below my own back yard compost pile. I use an aquarium air stone in a gallon jug to aerate my water, which has a few worm castings and a small bit of molasses to help the biology. I also hit them with the occasional sprouted seed tea, mostly from cantaloupe and pop corn seeds. I have home-made calcium from baked egg shells and vinegar, diluted 50:1 in dechlorinated tap water pHd with lemon juice to around 6 on the litmus strips, and use that with Epsom salts once in a while if a plant yellows up on me.
Thanks to my seed guy, I have a ton of ancestral seeds and several sub-crosses, but I still have an 8 plant limit. I can't afford another grow tent for now, so I'm crossing some of THOSE pollens with this super-aggressive bag seed I grew. It came from a Colorado dispensary, and I thought it was a photo, so I beat the hell out of her with training and FIMing and all kinda torture: and dude, she never went into flower from that abuse (!). I was sure she was a photo. Then, about two weeks later, she went into flower at 18/6. Like,
aggressively went into flower. I want to save that durability, while breeding out a little ruderalis, and adding some better characteristics. So I have my guy sending me some pollen from ancestral skunk, black skunk, hash plant, gmo, and pineapple skunk. Gonna quarantine with multiple paper bags (plastic makes static), and isolate each bud while I work on it. All the fans will be off, and I'll be in a mask to prevent breathing on it. I will use a tooth pick to carefully pollinated each flower with a different pollen from a little seed vial. Then she'll get covered with a paper bag for a little while as the pollen sets in. Worst case, a few of my other plants make me some free seeds. I'm a home grower, so no big deal. This is a learning experience, after all, but I'm doing my homework. This is my breeding "self education" phase. Worst I can do is pollinate a tent full of plants.
However,
once I have some practice, my real goal is to try and replicate a limited edition "Banana Cake" strain from my medical dispensary that worked perfectly for me as daytime "mids" medication. I want to try and replicate it (Jealousy + Banana Cream Cake), only using a ruderalis version of a Jealousy. The goal is to have a perpetual grow in my limited space, without having to buy or build a separate veg tent, and be able to pop a new seed every two weeks. But to be clear: if I can get some Banana Cake Pollen, I will do a run of exclusively Jealousy Autos, and I'll pollinate the whole damned tent to do a seed harvest. Nothing will be perfect or exact, but it might get me close enough. And dammit, it will be fun ;)
Here's the one I'm trying to replicate / improve on:
www.iheartjane.com
