Round 2 of the Lemon Skunk project has gone down! The rest of the Supreme Lemon babies, more of the Lemon Citron x G13 Hazeplant, and a few [Lemon Pie x (Super Lemon Haze x Moonshine Haze)]. The last round will be beans from
@agseedco, both (Lemon Tree x ON Haze) and (Sour Lemon Kush x ON Haze), joined by TNF's Lemon Skunk Redux. Lo, motherfuckers, there will be lemony goodness.
I could watch toddlers eat lemons all day, I don't give a shit about yer kid.
All of the Digital Dream [Blue Dream x (Wifi OG x Snowlotus)] have differentiated! Only two more [(Blue Dream x ON Haze) x G13 Hazeplant] plants left to differentiate and then it's on to the next step of the Go Blue Dream project!
The Swazi x Burmese are growing slowly, but they're definitely growing. 9/10 on germination, I'd guess 6 weeks until they're showing sex based on provenance.
Two of the Vale Tudo are very, very close to finishing. 1.5 to 2 more weeks on only water and they'll come down.
As far as the broader Skunk project goes, here's the general idea. This might hit character limit, so get the eye drops ready.
Some suggested reading on chucking/sample size here:
Nathaniel Pennington from Humboldt Seed Company explains his phenotype mega-hunt — the search for the best and brightest of the cannabis genome.
cannabisaficionado.com
"According to Pennington, the holy grail of cannabis breeding is the discovery and exploitation of rare genetic traits in an effort to develop new and stable cultivars. The overall goal is to develop strains capable of delivering to consumers novel medical efficacy, wellness benefits, or lifestyle enhancement.
When he began considering the state of the cannabis genome, Pennington knew that he needed to start fresh with a traditional breeding strategy to discover this plant’s true capabilities, outside the limits of prohibition and its disorganized underground markets. “We bring distinct, distant populations together in breeding to examine their ‘phenotypic array.’ Essentially, DNA reproduction loves new DNA! It loves DNA it hasn’t seen before…or for millennia,” he said."
One of the best breeders in the world is breeding around the theory of hybrid vigor. They've got a sample size and technology that I can only dream of, and they breed more for outdoor grows, but the ideology is the same line of thinking that led to me crossing Uzbekistan and Nepalma- and if you're reading this (thanks, btw, fellow nerds) then you already know how that turned out.
My first grow diary here
(CLICK), for those curious. If I came across a resource that helped me, I posted it there. Some great interactions with OG's like
@MIMedGrower,
@Dirtbag ,
@Aqua Man,
@cemchris ,
@chemistry ,
@Moshmen ,
@dire wolf ,
@Poekie ... y'all get the idea. Some all-around good, intelligent humans that know their weed and have shared their knowledge freely.
So as far as Skunk goes, up until this year I'd leaned towards genetics that weren't made with/from Skunk 1, Cookies, Chem, GG4, or Blueberry. Not because there's anything inherently wrong with those strains, but better breeders than I could ever be are working with those genetics in numbers that are orders of magnitude larger than mine.
Ergo, the genetic quality of the end product is predicated on a number of factors- including initial pheno hunt size and all of the previous genetic selections. Realistically we're all standing on the shoulders of giants that were more concerned about their passion for growing and breeding than their passion for not eating prison food.
That means that many of the lines that we're working today didn't just come from those vaunted 10k+ seed pheno hunts. Some did of course, but some (ECSD/Chem, GG4, etc) are crazy mutations or accidental crosses that gained cult followings.
Take Soma's G13 x Haze C cross, for example. His own words:
"In 2001 I tried sprouting some very old G-13 Haze seeds that came from Neville of cannabis genetics fame, They were created in 1988. I had ten of these 13-year-old seeds. Only one sprouted and it was a male. That left me with but one choice – in order to use the genetics, I had to breed the male to some of my existing strains and select some choice female phenotypes."
So without that one male plant, strains like Hash Heaven wouldn't exist today. Smaller pheno hunts can be worthwhile if they're followed by larger ones to get a better idea of the range of genetic expressions the cross produces- and careful, brutal selection. But also, think of what might have come from dropping those beans in, say, 1990.
The fatalistic viewpoint is to say that there's no point in smaller-scale breeding because the sample size won't be as big. In a sense, that's correct- the "best" seeds are generally going to be ones from breeders that can run numbers large enough to find and cross phenos that are statistically likely to be outstanding.
But with those seeds come hidden costs. How will that seed react to being indoors? When seeds come from a central source, they adapt their genetics to those surroundings over time. The environment in a commercial greenhouse or outdoor grow is significantly different than what people are running, and outdoor plants aren't exposed to the same kind of drought, light, and feeding stressors that indoor ones can be. Most of those breeders are also generally aiming at an ideological target (THC at all costs) that hasn't necessarily adapted to the paradigm shift that comes with the discovery of minor cannabinoids and the entourage effect.
All of that is just a hypothetical preamble in defense of small-scale breeding, of course.
Why start dropping Skunks now?
Because I fuckin' wanna. Go against the grain and get off my dick.
What Skunks will be dropped?
Well, let's think about that. As I said in the latest Skunk thread, Skunk #1 has branched off into different phenos/subspecies over the years. Cheese, RKS, Lemon Skunk, LSD, and Green Crack (both American and Canadian versions of it). Those seem like good places to start.
The Lemons: (all regs, all Lemon Skunk crosses, many F1's from my lemon project last year)
- @agseedco Lemon Tree x ON Haze
- AGseedco Sour Lemon Kush x ON Haze
- HSO Lemon Citron x G13 Hazeplant
- Vision Supreme Lemon [(Las Vegas Lemon Skunk x SSH) x (Super Lemon Haze x Moonshine Haze)]
- Greenbud Lemon Pie [(Lemon Skunk x Amnesia) x (Super Lemon Haze x Moonshine Haze)]
- The Nature Farm's Lemon Skunk Redux
These will all be going down in March.
Cheesier plants than both this joke and a power metal ballad:
- Big Buddha Cheese (fems)
- Big Buddha LA Cheese (Cheese x LA Confidential) (fems)
- Barney's Farm Triple Cheese (Original Cheese x Blue Cheese) (fems)
- Freedom of Seeds Cheesedom (Exodus Cheese x Cheese Quake) (fems)
- Hazeman's Blue Stilton (UK Cheese x Blue Cheese) (regs)
- Hazeman's Cheese BX
- 710's Stilton (UK Cheese x Afghani) (fem)
These will be going down during the month of April.
Hoping these smell worse than a sorority girl that tried to cuddle a skunk in the porta-potty on day 8 of Coachella:
- Coastal's American Super Skunk x Colombian
- Mr. Nice G13 x Skunk
- Mr. Nice Shit
- Copa's LSD x Ancient OG
- TNF The Shoeshiner
- TNF Silk Road Skunk [(Original Haze x Skunk 1) x Skunk 18] x G13 Hazeplant
These, as you may have guessed... will hit the dirt in May.
Yes, I could dive further into things with a Green Crack pheno hunt. But I feel like it's a bit redundant after running those.
So then what's the point?
What's the point in anything? Why not just let the icy grasp of ennui take us all into oblivion? Maybe to distract myself from the inescapable truth that "The world is empty, there is no point to anything, and you're just gonna die."
Well that got dark.
This thread is like Bojack Horseman. Come for the laughs and entertainment, leave a little wiser while feeling worse about humanity as a whole. Thoughts and prayers!
) are whining and talking shit on Franco because the indigenous people of these areas are doing whats best for themselves and families by growing more productive strains/plants, instead of still relying on unproductive crops just to prerve their purity in the hope that Fatt riot might want to go grab a hanful of beans one day in a furture that would never happen... Lool 
