Indoor 60x60 cm: Solos, Sativas, Seedmaking

[parsing_trees]

Everything probably still has 3 weeks or so. The buds are swelling, and I see a lot of seed maturing on pollinated branches.

The Ghost Toof has finally stopped stretching, and it's about 31" tall. It's both literally a standout in the tent, and also obviously cut from a different cloth just because it's so frosty. Though I'd bet most of the other sativas would be frostier if they were crossed with Toof Decay, too.

Yup.

Zamaldelica Express #2's tops are all getting color now. My last one ended up with purple-blue-gray leaves on the buds, this is heading that way as well.

The HubbabubbaHaze tops are also filling in. It doesn't have much growth on the bottom, because the neighbors really crowded it, but this should still yield all right for a solo cup.

 

[parsing_trees]

Approaching harvest now (day 75), though likely still another week or two. A week will be 5 weeks from the last pollination round, which has been long enough for most seeds to mature in my experience. I've occasionally checked trichomes, waiting for mostly cloudy.

Did I mention that I can't wait to try all of these?

My EC meter started going off the rails, probably because the battery is getting low. Now I know the coin cell battery is glued in, so I replaced it, and my new meter (an HM Digital COM-80)'s EC readings have consistently been about 20% higher. I haven't checked them both with a calibration solution yet, but I'm inclined to believe the new meter rather than the really cheaply made older one. I haven't been too specific about my nutrient mix, but I have been watering around 1650 us/cm (which the old meter said was ~1300), and for a couple days was giving a mix that was stronger, leading to a bit more tip burn throughout.

The seventh plant in the middle meant that I couldn't pull the trays a little closer together and get better light penetration down the outer sides, so some of the lower branches I pollinated didn't get a whole lot of light. Their seeds may be underdeveloped as a result. The branches with the seeds I care about most are doing just fine though -- I expect to get plenty of seeds off the Zamaldelica Express in front, the Auto Zamaldelica in the middle, and (probably) the Neville's Haze Ryder.

I didn't take everything out for individual pictures this time, because they're so top-heavy that the cups tip over really easily.

Everything looks pretty different here. There's some fading fan leaves throughout, but also some really crispy leaves that have dried out and curled up after getting light stress several weeks ago, probably made worse by the EC meter issue. There's a lot of smells, but the Zamaldelica Express and Neville's Haze Ryder in front dominate.

Center/back:
- Auto Zamaldelica.

Left, front to back:
- Zamaldelica Express (#3), with the (then) tallest cola supercropped sharply to the right. Lots of color, lots of resin, smells fantastic.
- Zamaldelica Express (#2), not quite as purple, not as filled out, and grew a few pollen sacks in early flower, but none since. I could have culled this one and moved the Auto Zamaldelica to one of the side trays.
- Hubbabubba Haze.

Right, front to back:
- Neville's Haze Ryder.
- Auto Power Plant.
- Ghost Toof.

Auto Power Plant.

The Auto Zamaldelica probably has the most light stressed / dried out leaves throughout. In spite of that, it's got several long, bulky upper colas now, and looks like it should yield well (for a solo cup).

In case the perspective makes it hard to tell, the roots have pushed the Auto Zamaldelica's coco mass up three whole inches. THE WHOLE CUP IS ONLY 5" TALL. I'm not sure if there's that much root growth throughout expanding the coco, a solid soup-can-sized mass of roots at the bottom, or what. I'm not even sure it's a good thing, though aside from making the plant extra prone to leaning/tipping it doesn't seem to be problematic. Adding a rubber training wire bumper around the AZ, APP, and GT coco stopped the leaning. I guess if I had fungus gnats it would give them easy access to the whole cup, but so far I've never had any pests.

The frost on the Ghost Toof runs quite a ways down. The trim on this one will not go to waste.

The HubbabubbaHaze looks structurally like the Hubbabubbasmelloscope I grew last year: long branches separating big chunky buds, and it has mostly white pistils. The HBSS still did at harvest (day 89), but the trichomes looked ready, and I don't think I harvested it early. Mysterious. I didn't take it out, but when I did last it had a distinct sweet pink bubblegum smell. (The HBSS smells more like tropical fruit or juicy fruit gum.)

The Neville's Haze Ryder also has plenty of dried out upper leaves. The pistils look like it's close to done, but the trichomes are still mostly clear. It's had a range of smells, first skunky, then sweet, now sweet + a little skunky + something I can't identify, I wonder how it will turn out after several weeks of curing.

 

[parsing_trees]

Day 80 now, still probably another week or so to go. Trichomes getting cloudier, etc. I took more pictures, but overall they look about the same, so I'll wait until immediately before harvest to take final pictures of everything.

The pollinated branches are looking pretty mature now, too. Here's a small lower branch on the ZE3 that I pollinated with the ZE male. Instead of getting a little popcorn bud, or just removing it, it should be good for a couple dozen Zamaldelica Express seeds, plus some kief.

 

[parsing_trees]

Day 85. I checked the trichomes, everything looks mostly cloudy now, with a few ambers on the Auto Power Plant. I can probably harvest whenever time allows. It's very dry here right now, so I will probably chop and hang whole for only 4-5 days, then dry trim and go to jars. The pollinated branches (and there are many!) will get labels, then hang for another couple weeks so they can thoroughly dry for seed extraction and dry sifting.

I guess it's a good problem to have, but I still need to figure out a way to manage the solo cups tipping; it's a real problem when the plants are this big. The Ghost Toof is incredibly sticky, I don't want it to fall over and pick up dust/etc. from surfaces it hits on the way down.

More pictures later. I also added threadmarks to the posts so far.

 

[parsing_trees]

I checked the trichomes, everything is mostly cloudy, with amber starting to appear. All the plants have been chopped at the main stem and and hanging whole now. Before removing the lights I took pictures of everything, and I put labels on most of the colored zip ties marking pollinated branches.

It's been incredibly dry here, and the tent humidity has been settling somewhere at or below 30%, which is probably too low for drying. I added two small humidifiers outside the tent, near the passive air intakes (the two plastic gutter extensions, with vent dust filteres duct-taped onto the ends), which brings it up to 40%, but that will need some occasional supervision so I probably won't run them overnight. I might also try adding a wet towel to gradually evaporate inside the tent. I'll dry-trim in a few days, then hang the seeded branches for a couple extra weeks.

Everything in the tent, with the Ghost Toof a head and shoulders taller than everything else.

From overhead.

Auto Power Plant.

One of the mains, up close.

Auto Zamaldelica.

Four main colas, not much popcorn. Just some dried out sugar leaves to trim.

Ghost Toof.

Lots of frost, some dried out sugar leaves. Smells like sweet berries.

Hubbabubba Haze.

This smells fantastic, sweet pink bubblegum. Another that should be pretty quick to trim.

Neville's Haze Ryder.

This has a complex smell to it, a bit skunky. The breeder's description says incense, wonder how it will smell after the cure.

Zamaldelica Express (#2). Smells sweet and spicy. Pretty leafy, but the sugar leaves are covered in frost, so this one may be almost as good for sifting as the Ghost Toof.

Zamaldelica Express (#3), probably won't yield as much as #2.

A lot of frost on the leaves, even underneath.

I'll update again in several weeks with info about flower and seed yield, and once I've tried them.

 

[parsing_trees]

It's been a bit over two weeks since harvest. I think I over-compensated for the dry winter air, because some of the flower went into jars around 75%, but I aired them out longer once I saw the RH creeping up. Everything should be out of the mold danger zone now, but I'm still burping the jars daily, and it may be a few more weeks before I try them. I got a quart jar each of everything except the Ghost Toof (quart + pint) and ZE #3 (just a pint), but I won't weigh them until everything is stable around 60% RH.

While trimming, I tried using a cannabrush for the first time -- it's essentially a stiffer barbecue basting brush, marketed as a dry-trimming tool. It was about $20; I figured it was worth a try, worst case I'd find uses for it in the kitchen later. It is noticeably stiffer than any brushes I've found for sale locally as cookware, and I've spent more than $15 worth of time checking, so whatever. It's also cheaper than a bowl trimmer. (Did I mention I hate trimming?) It didn't do much with the airier sativas, but was surprisingly effective on the denser Ghost Toof buds -- sweeping up and down the main colas a few times did like 80% of the work in seconds, so I will keep it in mind for a first pass when trimming denser strains.

The pollinated branches have dried out pretty thoroughly, so yesterday I extracted the seeds, then added everything else to the jar of frozen trim for dry-sifting or washing later.

I use a sifter box to extract seeds. Carding small branches back and forth and against the sides is enough friction to shed most calyces from the seeds. Tilting the box slightly and scooping everything up with the card encourages most of the seeds to roll down to the other end, everything else in the box stays put, and the screen collects kief at the bottom.

I got about 300 mature seeds total:

- Auto Power Plant x Zamaldelica Express: 3
- Auto Zamaldelica x ZE: 54
- Neville's Haze Ryder x Anvil: 2
- Neville's Haze Ryder x Blue Microverse: 11
- Neville's Haze Ryder x Blueberry XL: 15
- Neville's Haze Ryder x ZE: 34
- Zamaldelica Express #2 x Anvil: 32
- Zamaldelica Express #2 x ZE: 136
- Zamaldelica Express #3 (hermed a bit) x ZE: 30ish, keeping these just in case

All the pollen besides the ZE's has been in my freezer for at least a year, so that's not bad at all! I was hoping to get a couple dozen of the AZxZE, ZExZE, and NHRxZE, everything else is a bonus. There were some other pollinated side branches whose seeds didn't mature because they were in a corner and didn't get enough light, but the AZ, ZE, and NHR's worked out well.

 

[BlueRidgeReefer]

Congrats on the successful breeding! Thank you for all the details along the way, very inspiring!

 

[parsing_trees]

After a couple weeks of curing, all the jars have settled around 60-62% RH.

I weighed everything, about 192g total. 48g/sqft, pretty good for solo cups. That's around 25g each, give or take, with the Ghost Toof yielding the most (46g!) and the smaller Zamaldelica Express the least (15g). The picture is the Auto Zamaldelica, 30.56g.

The cups have had some time to dry out, so I separated the coco, hydroton, and roots. This is from the Auto Zamaldelica, whose coco had previously pushed up over three inches past the rim of the cup. Somebody who knows roots better might be able to tell more about what it means, but the cup started out as maybe 10% hydroton at the bottom, then all coco with a little perlite. The hydroton visible about halfway down there was at the bottom before, and there was no hydroton below that, just a solid mass of roots with some smaller coco fibers.

Here's a bud of the Auto Zamaldelica, complete with my half-assed trimming. I tried it this weekend. I will probably have something more coherent to say after I've tried it more, but wow, it did not disappoint. Anybody who passes over flower like this because it lacks bag appeal is missing out.

 

[Dr. Collie]

After a couple weeks of curing, all the jars have settled around 60-62% RH.

View attachment 1423430

I weighed everything, about 192g total. 48g/sqft, pretty good for solo cups. That's around 25g each, give or take, with the Ghost Toof yielding the most (46g!) and the smaller Zamaldelica Express the least (15g). The picture is the Auto Zamaldelica, 30.56g.

View attachment 1423431

The cups have had some time to dry out, so I separated the coco, hydroton, and roots. This is from the Auto Zamaldelica, whose coco had previously pushed up over three inches past the rim of the cup. Somebody who knows roots better might be able to tell more about what it means, but the cup started out as maybe 10% hydroton at the bottom, then all coco with a little perlite. The hydroton visible about halfway down there was at the bottom before, and there was no hydroton below that, just a solid mass of roots with some smaller coco fibers.

View attachment 1423432

Here's a bud of the Auto Zamaldelica, complete with my half-assed trimming. I tried it this weekend. I will probably have something more coherent to say after I've tried it more, but wow, it did not disappoint. Anybody who passes over flower like this because it lacks bag appeal is missing out.

Great thread glad I found it. Couldn't agree more on that auto zamaldelica. I usually go more for the couch lock indica types but found the high from this astonishing and a very unusual smell/taste. Have 3 legacy zamaldelicas to try but kinda scared to pop 'em. I haven't tried a reversal yet but might make some spray as a back up. I'd love to know how the az and ze compare taste/smell/structure/high wise I'm sure you'll let us know Great job sir

 

[parsing_trees]

Great thread glad I found it. Couldn't agree more on that auto zamaldelica. I usually go more for the couch lock indica types but found the high from this astonishing and a very unusual smell/taste. Have 3 legacy zamaldelicas to try but kinda scared to pop 'em. I haven't tried a reversal yet but might make some spray as a back up. I'd love to know how the az and ze compare taste/smell/structure/high wise I'm sure you'll let us know Great job sir

I have some Zamaldelica photoperiod fem seeds too, but 100 days in flower is a lot to plan for, so I may not get to them for a while. I really like doing mixed-auto-strain small container grows like this.

I plan on reporting back once I've tried both the AZ and (new) Zamaldelica Express a couple times, but so far the AZ seems more psychedelic, the ZE has stronger terps, and they smell & taste quite different: The AZ has pleasant but mild fruity terps, peach with some melon and mango. My previous ZE had sweet earthy carrot/beetroot terps, along with some enigmatic spices (ginger, quinine, and ...something else), and the newer ZE #2 here has the same sweet spices but without the carrot/beets. Apparently the carrot is a Zamal trait. The other new ZE (#3) and had similar terps, just weaker. All the ZEs turned purple late in flower, the AZ did not. The AZ had the ideal structure for a solo cup grow, as far as I'm concerned; four big colas up top, not too much larf or much trimming necessary. The ZE was a lot leafier, but it was very frosty trim, so it might be a wash.