Bay Area winter/spring crop experiment 2018

Here’s my Jack Herer f2 selection, pic from last week. We’ve had just a little sun this past week and things are humming Flowers are coming.
As for the seedlings, I’m a month in and the PCKs are showing flowers...the Hawaiians are thinking about starting to show, some more than others.

El Sobilly said:

I’d love to light dep these to finish, but I’m not sure logistically how I could darken my gigantic hoop house completely. Maybe just a huge tarp...but it’s really windy here coming up soon. Then I’d be out fussin with it every night and morning and my wife would be wondering why I’m not helping w the kids....

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You pull the tarp on a couple hours before dark, then pull them off as soon as it's good dark. It is a lot of work. And you need to pull it on at about the same time everyday. But you wouldn't have to start until pretty late in spring.

About 6 weeks in. Things are looking strong. The clones are deep into flowering. Predictably, the seedlings are a little behind. They were only about five weeks old when I put them out into 10.5 hours of light. I think if they were a little more mature they might have kicked into flowering a little bit faster. I think too Larry, you have convinced me to go ahead and light dep to finish. These Maui x konas and PCKs are gonna flower into May. I need to study up on the daylight hours between now and next month and figure out when I’m going to start lengthening the night manually.

These are the 4 Alenuihaha (Maui x kona.)
I like the way these are forming up. The two taller plants are very spacious, which is important to me for this climate. The two shorter plants are stacked a little tighter. Some great smells coming from stem rubs ranging tropical fruity to sharply herbal. Flowering initiated as a fast or faster than PCKs. They’re showing no PM succeptibility with some preventative measures. A little burn on the leaf tips from a heavy compost tea application while they were still in #5 pots. Same treatment of clones in ground yielded no burn.

These are the 4 Pakistani Chitrali Kush. These are showing a lot of resistance to PM here as well. Keeping up exactly with the Hawaiians in height, leaf size. Flowering initiation may even be a little slower. The stems are good and thick with sturdy structures all branching held tight to the main stems. Not my favorite trait but to be expected w kush. Three of these have a great spearmint/menthol smell from stems.

We have had a lot of rain and cloudy skies lately, so sun has been in short supply. I think that could extend flowering times a bit. Another reason to go ahead and light dep these maybe starting mid month in April to be sure to get finished flowers.

This is Bay 11 from clone. I got this strain as a freebie seed about 4 years ago and it remains some of the tastiest flowers I know. Smelling a jar some folks are actually offended. Pyew! Lemony funky hashy sticks on the palette flavor and everyone wants more

One of the Maui x Konas that I really like was also interesting to a local gopher. It came up and girdled about 50 percent of the stem yesterday The plant will survive and flower, but I hope this isn’t the beginning of something.

Get one of those big ass rat traps. Or a dog.

El Sobilly said:

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Clones on the right: Kona gold in front, bay 11, 2x chemdog, and Jack Herer. Seedlings on the left in #5 pots for first few weeks to show sex. All 4 Maui x Kona are female, And 4/6 PCK are female. Looks like 2 green and 2 purple. The two most vigorous and least leaf-tweaky are the males. One green and one purple. It really worked out great...the mouse left me enough to work with!

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This is a great post. Your babies look healthy. Happy harvests to you.

We had a lot of sun and 80 degree days this week...finally some heat. Plants ate it up and are looking strong. I’m starting to see some differences in this spring crop vs long season crop in terms of bud formation. It’s really noticeable on the clones because I’ve grown them all before. This crop is going to be modest in bud density and size. I imagine that all the cold temps through early flowering have limited the formation of flower structure. So now I’m seeing buds that have more leaf, less robust bundles of hairs, and they’re a little more spaced out. As temps stay warm, the calyxes I do have should swell up beautifully. I’ll post some pics soon to illustrate.
Seedlings are thriving...no more gopher damage! One PCK is pushing some nice resin glands, so I got to smell something good today

Do you ever learn the same lessons over and over again? I’ve looked at ugly re-vegging plants too many times over the years in too many of my other experiments. After my last post I started to wonder about the stretchy flowers. I didn’t think things would try to re-veg so early in the season. It’s only April 3rd, and equinox with its 12/12 daylight/ dark was just back on March 21st, making today surprisingly already 12 hours and 43 minutes long sunrise to sunset. So I got to looking at the timeanddate website, which I’ve used before when I was trying to figure out when I could safely put clones out in spring. I again came up against daylength and the gradual transition from light to dark and back again. As illustrated on the website, there is daylight totaling 12 hours 43 minutes today, twilight, nautical twilight, and astronomical twilight each total about an hour, so 30 minutes each when it’s getting light and 30 minutes each again when it’s getting dark. So where in that spectrum do the chemical changes take place in the plants that start and finish the day and night? I’m guessing that at least the first layer outside of daylight, twilight, is light enough to extend the day that 30 minutes on either end, making today really about 13 hours, 45 minutes long. That’s long enough to re-veg more equatorial strains for sure...as illustrated by my garden, especially the chemdog and Jack Herer. So I’ve learned the same lesson again and I’m looking at stretchy plants that want to re-veg...again. But I may have saved this one in time, we’ll see.
I finally got the panda film I needed today to darken the hoophouse at 5:15pm. This should make about an 11 hour day, or 12 if I count twilight. I’m going to stick with that for a week or two, then shorten day a bit more. I’ll see if I can keep things in flower and moving towards completion. Things still look great, but I see too much stem in too many places for perfection to be reached...I guess I’ll have to let go of that...again.
I’ll post some pics when I feel less embarrassed.

This is the Jack Herer f2 yesterday, getting stretchy. This leads me to believe days have been too long for at least two weeks. That means light dep would have to begin even before equinox to keep things flowering as prescribed.

This is my choice so far of Alenuihaha. It is biggest and most spacious form. Also best smell on stem rub. Looks exactly like I hoped it would so far. Not terribly stretched from daylight extending.

This is the greenest of the PCKs. Looks like it will yield well and smells sweet. It looks a little stretched from the lengthening days.

This is my favorite PCK. Small but smells strong and sweet. Interesting on the smells of these Pakistanis. So far they’re all sweet and no funk.

Night is coming early these days, so flowering should commence and finish hopefully in May.

El Sobilly said:

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Night is coming early these days, so flowering should commence and finish hopefully in May.

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The days are getting longer every day. You have to keep an eagle eye out for reveg. White hairs all over the buds will be the first sign. You will need to do some sort of light dep when that happens.

I wish I lived in a legal state IM JEALOUS The culprit could be a rabbit. Do they have cottontail rabbits there? I have heard that grape pomace is the bomb and your plants are loving the compost. I read George Lassens book on cannabis. Secret Garden.

RetiredGuerilla said:

I wish I lived in a legal state IM JEALOUS The culprit could be a rabbit. Do they have cottontail rabbits there? I have heard that grape pomace is the bomb and your plants are loving the compost. I read George Lassens book on cannabis. Secret Garden.

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No rabbits in my yard for sure. Gopher hole was inches away from the stem! It hasn’t returned for any more of my plants, though. The poppies and clover are tastier!

I know the light was not great for pics, but it’s a look anyway. Here are the 4 PCK girls after a wild ride through a start at re-veg, and now back squarely into flowering with light dep. Yikes! I lost about three weeks at least, mid flowering. The experiment has yielded a lot of good info for me. If I did this again, I would start light dep right at equinox to keep things in flower. Had I known this then I’d be harvesting now, but....
The fastest PCK is the small purple one middle bottom. It did not go back into flower per se. Just stretched then swelled up super frosty tiny buds with gigantic calyxes. There’s scarcely a hair to be found. Same goes for the other shorty on the right, but it’s leafy as fucking lettuce. The taller one on the left is actively flowering again and will yield more in a couple of weeks. As is the tallest one middle top.
I’ll hopefully share some better lit pics of each plant before the end of it.