rdc420

Thanks guys!

Yip that's the 115l smart pot from Hydrobiz. The material it's made from feels quite flimsy and it doesn't have any handles. Let's hope I can get a couple more grows out of them. Next time I will look for something more robust.

The bud structure is very loose and I'm seeing plenty of foxtails developing. This is good for making hash since a large surface area makes it a little easier to extract the trichomes. 

The leaf claw symptoms are still visible on about 10% of the leaves on the wider-leaf pheno.

A number of weeks ago I chucked the pollen from the two males onto two branches of each female. The pollinated branches have become so heavy with seeds that they've started bending over sideways! I've since added some support to prevent the branches from breaking. Here's a pic of a seeded branch:

Unfortunately the broader-leaf female has become over-fertilised, as can be seen from the "claw" leaf shape. I've since removed the top-dressing layer and flushed with water. Let's hope it doesn't get worse.

39 minutes ago, Weskush said:

This semi auto thing is getting to me.

I'm not sure why this is such a big problem for you. I guess I can use alternative words, such as "early", or "highly photo-period sensitive". However, semi-auto is the word that landrace collectors/breeders use, so why change anything?

I'm not feeling much love here, so I might just delete this thread.

16 minutes ago, Weskush said:

Lets stop this semi auto malarky.

This is just some marketing mumbo jumbo.

Thanks for the kind words. You seem like a great guy.

16 minutes ago, Weskush said:

Are you an ACE seeds brand ambassador by any chance?

No, but I haven't found a breeder with more info about their strains and more grow reports on the internet.

7 hours ago, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

Also, the statement of 100% sativa is just a hot load of bullybeef anyway and I wont eat one bite of it.

Pure sativas can be found. You just need to know where to look.

The semi-auto trait is also found in Moroccan Beldia Kif, which is another landrace plant. Here's a description of this trait [1] :

Quote

Over the centuries, kif plants have adapted to a summer with less and less rainfall becoming Quasi auto-flowering. The only other auto-flowering cannabis strains come from cannabis ruderalis. It is a low-thc Cannabis species originating from Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Cannabis Ruderalis flowers early because the Estern European summer is short and fall season is to cold for the plants to fully mature. Likewise, Kif has gradually started flowering earlier because the end of summer and early fall are too dry for the plant to survive. It is not an auto-flowering variety per say but it requires much shorter dark periods than most cannabis strains in order to enter its flowering stage. The Moroccan Beldia is therefore a semi-autoflowering variety.

5 hours ago, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

Real Sativa, I am talking about 15/16 weeks. Not the ones you get in America

If you are looking for a long-flowering pure sativa, you can try the Oldtimer's Haze from ACE seeds [2][3]. It has a flowering time of 14-20 weeks! ACE also has many Real Sativa varieties with somewhat shorter flowering times.

[1] https://khalifagenetics.com/beldia-the-endangered-moroccan-landrace/

[2] https://www.aceseeds.org/en/oldtimershazestd.html

[3] https://www.icmag.com/forum/icmag-vendor-forums/ace-seeds/54839-oldtimer-s-haze

1 hour ago, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

you have something soooo rare and special that minimal people even know it exists

This is exactly what I'm saying. Here's the strain description, taken from https://www.icmag.com/forum/icmag-vendor-forums/ace-seeds/349127-lebanese:
 

Quote

Lebanese

01-26-2018, 12:34

 

AUTHENTIC PURE LEBANESE, WORLD-FAMOUS FOR PRODUCING THE RENOWNED RED AND BLONDE LEBANESE HASH

https://www.aceseeds.org/en/libanostd.html

After more than a decade of breeding and intense selections, we have the pleasure to offer you this classic lebanese sativa, a traditional hash plant, famous for producing the renowned red and blonde lebanese hash.

A very uniform, vigorous and well-branched pure sativa, especially adapted for outdoor growing in hot and arid climates, showing excellent resistance against drought and high temperatures. Although its flowering is moderate (9-11 weeks), this lebanese sativa matures early (at the end of summer) due to its semi-autoflowering tendencies, which mean it begins to flower after about a month and a half of life.

 

Its flowers produce delicate and resinous foxtailed buds, which accumulate with successive re-flowerings, forming large sized colas. The aromas in flowering are sweet and floral, acquiring mango tones during curing. 'Blonde hash' aroma in the smoke, reminiscent of moroccan hash.

Its effect is clean, cheerful and pleasant, a great quality high that is smooth and not too long lasting, with great medicinal potential due to its remarkable content in CBD. This lebanese strain consistently produces CBD quantities between 6 and 16%.

ACE Seeds offers you another gem of the cannabis world, a essential traditional hash plant, that should be present in any landrace lovers' seed collection.

1 hour ago, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

Fourth - he grows a lot of plants, I am sure these are different ones, all flowering

I see that these seedlings/clones were placed under lights for the first part of their lives. Did the photoperiod changed when they were moved outside?

11 minutes ago, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

so technically, all "autos" are "semi-auto"

This is incorrect. Please read the Lebanese strain description above.

56 minutes ago, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

The only information on Sativas taking longer to finish indoors than outdoors, that I could find, was that you can veg for as long as you want indoors as you control the light cycle and push it for longer than the plant would naturally outdoors following the seasons. I do however find more information supporting the stating that the more Sativa leaning the genes, the longer the plant will take to finish. I guess that statment comes from the fact that there are lists of traits that seperate and define the genetics and this happens to fall under what represents a part of a Sativa genetic. Then there's also a lot of reference to the idea that the more environmental fluctuations the longer any given plant will take to finish. Not only cannabis. What that means is that, because we control the environment when growing indoors (again, any plant) there should be less hiccups/hurdles that would cause the plant to finish earlier. No cloudy days, minimal obstructions throwing shade, minimal external factors that can cause stress such as heavy winds, extreme high/low RH, hot/dry winds suffocating the leaves, long perdiods of rain with high RH. All these things that are ever present when growing outdoors and cannot be controled will play part in extending the time the plant takes to finish.

Maybe I'm wrong about this. I just repeated a rumour I heard.

48 minutes ago, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

Those plants are flowering, because of the same reason everyones outdoor cannabis is flowering at some random time this year. 

Wow you seem to know my garden/genetics/conditions much better than me. My other (non-Leb) plants aren't flowering yet. Semi-autoflower plants are supposed to flower early. Who else has outdoor plants that are flowering at the wrong time of year?

@Weskush, I've come to realize that most/many modern popular strains are not pure sativa because breeders try to reduce the long flowering period. Also: Dutch Passion's website claims that Durban Poison is a "Durban X Unknown Indica".

ACE seeds is a trusted breeder that has many pure sativa lines.

You can find more info here:

https://www.aceseeds.org/en/libanostd.html

https://www.icmag.com/forum/icmag-vendor-forums/ace-seeds/349127-lebanese

32 minutes ago, Weskush said:

I take it that this is not a fast flowering or auto strain then?

These are autos that work a little different because the autoflower trait didn't come from Ruderalis.

13 minutes ago, Ill_Evan said:

That's a crazy amount of bark in the first few pictures.

There's a layer of wood chips above the soil in all my pots. I also added a bunch of pine leaves on top of the wood chips to further increase the moisture retention in the containers. When I top-dress (e.g., guano/compost) I add that below the wood chips.

The indoor flowering period is 9 - 11 weeks. However, Sativas can finish faster outdoors.

These are semi-autoflowering landrace Sativas that express both THC and CBD. The semi-autoflowering trait causes them to start flowering after about 6 weeks, or if they become root bound, or if they detect that the photoperiod is shortening.

The stretch has finished and these ladies are now between 110cm and 140cm. The pics show a broad-leaf and two narrow leaf phenos. I got some yellow leaves on the broad-leaf plant, so I top-dressed with compost and bat guano and started keeping a closer eye on the moisture levels in the smart pots. They dry out quickly when it's hot!

The flowers are releasing some lovely floral notes. I pollinated a branch of flowers on each plant with the pollen from the two male Lebanese plants. 

Some females are showing many pistils but no smell yet. The height is between 100cm and 120cm.

24 December. These plants are between 90cm and 105cm.

14 December. The two males started growing towards the reflection in the window. I moved them to the tent to prevent open pollinating the females. The tall male is growing fast and is super vigorous.

16 December. All three female plants are flowering.

12 December. Two plants are flowering.

7 December. Since these plants are semi-autoflowering, they showed their sex quite quickly. I chose to grow out the three most vigorous females (pictured below) and placed each in a 114l smart pot. One of the females were already flowering. Two strong males were kept for seed production. 

1 December. All the plants were moved outside by the beginning of December. I saw a big variation in the structure and leaf shape of the different plants. In general the seeds that popped first are the strongest and grew the fastest.

17 November.

11 November.

I will use this thread to document my experience with the Lebanese landrace strain (from ACE seeds) used to make Lebanese Red/Blonde hash. My main motivation for growing this strain is to try to reproduce the uplifting and clean effects that I used to get from the hashish that was commercially available in SA in the early 2000s.

ACE's description of the strain:

Quote

Its effect is clean, cheerful and pleasant, a great quality high that is smooth and not too long lasting, with great medicinal potential due to its remarkable content in CBD. This lebanese strain consistently produces CBD quantities between 6 and 16%.

Excellent breeding tool to produce vigorous and high yielding outdoor semi-autoflowering hybrids, with fast flowering, high resistance against heat and drought, and high CBD content.

I germinated 6 seeds on 27 Nov en 6 seeds on 1 November, but unfortunately lost two seedlings due to slugs. The seedlings were germinated in a tent but spent some time in the first few weeks in a small homemade greenhouse to increase the rate of growth by increasing the temperature. I'm in Cape Town and it's much cooler here than inland.

Taken on 5 November:

My last purchase  I'm very much looking forward to making Lebanese hash in the new year.