Well Folks,
It's GREAT to be back from Hiatus! As some of you know, I've been on a break for personal reasons. When I started back up, I had hoped and expected to be coming back with the Garden of My Dreams..but alas...this is not yet to be! It's still on the radar...just a ways "further on up the road"! No matter..we've got lots to be excited about! I've procured some amazing genetics, and was able to add at least a little High Pressure Sodium to the mix...so all in all, I'm quite excited about the doings here at the Pad!! So I invite you to kick up yer feet, twist (and share) a phatty, and get ready to see some work...allot by lesser known breeders...that is gonna blow you away! (Not my growing...just the quality of the genetics)!
You'll notice some changes from my past journals. Where in the past, I have just kind of shown the whole grow, I'm not going to bore you with all that tedium. This time around, we'll focus on the plants themselves, the genetics and the breeders that make it all possible and available to us!
This round, I'm on a mother/pheno hunt! Since i broke down completely and re-started from seed, I gave up all my old mothers and am starting from scratch. This round I'll be growing out strains by:
ROC Seeds
BOG Seeds
Green Goo Labs
Aligee
Reserva Privada
Mmm-mmm! You KNOW there's gonna be some fire in there!
Up this round from
ROC Seeds is his Grape Romulan and his Blackberry x Romulan.
From
BOG, I'm featuring his Sour Strawberry Kush, as well as his Sourbubble in a couple of Ali's crosses below!
Green Goo Labs - Got some AMAZING gear from these guys! A relative newcomer to the scene under this name and management...but he's been an active and successful breeder longer than allot of us have been smoking! I'll let him reveal himself as he likes, instead of me trying to tell you about him.
Aligee - Running his Trainwreck x Sourbubble & WiFi x Sourbubble
Reserva Privada - Skywalker Kush and OG-18 * Special thanks go out to my brother and good friend Don Peppy for gifting me these killer beans for my birthday!! Thanks bro!!
There have been a few major changes with the re-vamp! First...I've been able to add a couple of the new
Gavita 750 Pro DE HPS lights...so at LONG last...I'm back under HPS! I've enjoyed my stint with the Indagrow Induction light, and it'll still be giving service. For now it has been relegated to the position of a veg light out of necessity...but I'll have to give the devil their due...it's a bad-ass veg rig! It stacks nodes better than a T-5 and has allot more growing energy to boot! I've said it before...there's something about the phospers they use or something, but plants just REALLY dig the spectrum! I've added the requisite cooling/heating/airflow to support the HPS, so now it's just a matter of dialing everything in and finding some good mothers for my own meds!
The biggest change you're going to see here is that, I NEVER thought it'd happen in a million years...I would have bet good money against it ever even being a possibility...but ol' Maxy has gone full on HYDRO!!! And guess what...I ain't EVER looking back! I was a dyed-in-the-wool SOIL grower...getting more and more toward TLO every day! So how did a confirmed dirtbagger for life swap his worms in for water? One word...well two...QUALITY and EFFICIENCY!!! We'll get more into this down the road if there's interest, but I DON'T want to lose focus on the strains/genetics here and get spun off into a soil vs hydro debate. There are plenty of those around of that's your thing. I also would like to discuss this with the friend who's helping me and see how much he's comfortable with me sharing before I just go blurting out all about him! For now, suffice to say, I became convinced (and not overnight either) that this method will give better growth, quality, potency, yield, flavor, aroma, cost less and be less work! You can judge for yourself. My old grow links are still available in my sig. It'll be easy to make a comparison at the end and see if I'm right! From what I have seen so far...it's killin' it hands down in every department!
THIS IS A SMALL, PERSONAL MED GROW. lol...I'm just really into my gear and my hobby, so it probably looks like a lab to some of you. haha...it's not! It's just a simple back-room operation in my home that is achievable for any of you who are wondering if you can do this. You can!! I'm running "passive hydro" in modified Hempy buckets. My medium is perlite and some coco during veg. Nutes are primarily Gen Hydro with a couple of simple additions, and water is out-gassed tap water. I'll get more into things as we go along, but if you have questions...feel free to ask. We like for things to be real laid back here!
Since I'm on a 'mother/pheno hunt' at present...I'm growing quite a few more plants than normal. I'm also keeping cuts of EVERYTHING until I know what's going to be kept or not....then most of this will be given it's walking papers. I'll always do a few new strains each run...just cause that's part of what I enjoy so much, but overall numbers will be small. Any new keepers will replace a current mother. I have the room divided up into a veg room and a flower room. As some of you know....I've been living in an apartment and forced to grow in tents in a spare bedroom, so I just can't tell you how GREAT it is to have some room to work without falling all over myself!
Well, let's have a little peek at the inner workings of the Maxy Pad first, then we'll dig right into the ladies!
While the room was being readied, I went ahead and started my seed in a spare bathtub using the UNO VHO T-5 to veg. It's a SUPER light in it's own right! I had a 50-50 mix of bloom & grow spectrum bulbs however, and would have been happier if I'd had more blue in the spectrum from the get-go. I did notice a bit more stretch in a few, but overall...it performed like a champ, You'll be seeing allot of this light!
BOG's Sour Strawberry Kush & seedlings
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Once the Veg area of the room was ready (enough), they went under the IndaGrow Induction light::
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After removing the flowering LED "Pontoon" from the Indagrow (Anybody looking for one)? it made a wonderful veg light! As veg light's go...it may be the world's most expensive veg light, lol, but it did a great job of stackin' nodes and pushing out green! Part of the reason I went with this growing method is the overall increased speed and efficiency. All the plants you see here had been fully sexed (while still in the Solo cups)! had 4 cuts taken from each, and were then up-potted to their final pots by Day 31 since germination!! (Fox Farms Grow Big Quart is for size reference only).
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And here they are, flipped and under the High Pressure Sodium! (Ahhhh)!! :angelic:
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THE CAST:
We'll get around to all of them eventually, but this will have to be a work in progress. Unlike allot of you lucky fuck-tards out there...I have to work for a living!! :yuck: haha! There are only so many hours in the day)!
ROC's Grape Romulan:
I'm hoping ROC will make an appearance and set the record straight on the exact lineage, but it's my understanding that this cross is from an OLD Federation Romulan that he crossed with a special '"grape line" he broke off from D.J. Short's
original Blueberry. These are some OLD SCHOOL genetics here my friends! Those who have grown it are getting enormous yields of some of the dankest smoke you could hope for. If anyone has pics of it you'd like to share with us...feel free to post them here! I never like to top my plants on the initial seed run, but next run, I'm planning to top early and work with them allot in veg to get a nice bush going in!
ROC's Grape Romulan:
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ROC's Grape Romulan:
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ROC's Blackberry x Romulan:
Also from ROC, here is his Blackberry x Romulan. I know NOTHING about the lineage of this lady. I'm counting on ROC to stop by and fill us all in. (I'm dying to know all about it myself)! Any help you can give us on on flowering times, special likes/dislikes, history, genetics...we want to know it all, bro!!
ROC's Blackberry x Romulan:
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BOG's Sour Strawberry Kush:
Next up is BOG's Amazing Sour Strawberry Kush! I've run two different phenos of this girl so far, and haven't gotten that full-on strawberry queen yet! Last round, according to BOG, one of my phenos was likely the"Strawberries & Cream" pheno. It had a wonderful fruity taste that was very smooth & creamy. It also had a definite hint of strawberry on the exhale. It was super-frosty and stupid-potent!! It was not a heavy yielder, but hey...this is headstash meds we're growing with this strain, so I'll take the quality anyday!! This is VERY nice work BOG, and I know there are allot of surprises in every pack. I believe this strain has Strawberry cough, The Razz, ECSD and other stars in her lineage. The roster of cousins sounds like a "whos-who" of past cup winners!! There's so much gold in this strain, there's literally no telling what you could wind up with! I'm VERY tempted to take her to f2 and see what all comes out! On this round, I started 3 and got two females. Too early yet to be guessing phenos...but very early on one of them strongly smelled exactly like fresh strawberry's with a little leaf/stem rub!! :woot: That isn't present just now...but I'm hoping it'll be back!
BOG's Sour Strawberry Kush:
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Reserva Privada's Skywalker Kush and OG-18:
As far as large commercial breeders go, Reserva Privada has got to top my list of favs! Everything I've grown from them has been just stellar, and I hear rave reviews of MANY of their strains! This will be my second run of the Skywalker Kush. Well, I went to seedfinder.eu to copy the breeder description for y'all, but I'm not gonna perpetuate that kinda hype crap. MY description is that it's a better than average yielding kush variety that gets super frosty. It has a wonderful and complex lemon-fuel taste that I can never get enough of. I won;t bother even looking at the description for the OG-18 either. The same olks that told me about Skywalker Kush ALSO told me the OG-18 is even better! :hungry: Nuff said fo' me!! Again...special thanks to my bro Don Peppy for such a fine and thoughtful b-day gift!
