A Trip to the Congo

-INTRO- Hello again friends and neighbours, With my Dos Si Dos #33 curing it's time once again to get growing! I'm hoping the indica dominant Dos Si Dos will be effective pain management for my back, so this time around I am growing ACE Seeds "Congo" - a 70:30 sativa dominant hybrid whose parents are a mix of Congolese sativas (bangi congo & congo #3) and the Pakistani Chitral Kush. I do love a good sativa. Two seeds were planted in pre-soaked soil on the 11th March and placed with my cacti for moral support. Today - 4 days later - both have broken ground. An auspicious start. I don't do any of this pre-soaking seeds in water, or germinating in paper towel or anything like that. These plants have been growing like *ahem* weeds *ahem* for millions of years, I trust them to know what they're doing without me getting in the way. -REGULAR SEEDS- I bought a variety of regular (non-feminized) seeds from ACE as I'm planning on collecting pollen at some future time to grow my my own seed stock - it seems cheaper than buying new ones all the time. Eventually I hope to cross ACE's "Panama" will their "Bangi Haze" but that's not going to happen for a while! With this in mind, I've modified a PC case and added in a small (22 watt) LED light designed for plants. I'm hoping the case will be able to house two bonsai parent plants and this diary will see its testing and first use. I have dubbed it the "BonsaiPC". I've decided to only germinate two seeds to start with - this does limit my chances of getting a female but I don't like the idea of throwing away plants that I don't have the space to grow them. By being conservative the only thing I waste is time. -THE PLAN- So this is the plan; the two seedlings will be vegged, trained using LST and topped with a view to taking clones as soon as possible for propagation in the BonsaiPC. The parent plants will then be placed immediately on a 12/12 cycle until they can be sexed. What happens next will depend on what sex they turn out to be... If both are male, the seed-grown plants will be binned. One of them will be selected for retaining as a parent in the BonsaiPC. Fresh seed will be germinated and we start again from the top. If both are female, then a clone will be kept of each. However, I might not take both seed-grown plants through flowering if they appear to be significantly different phenotypes. As I use the same space for vegging, flowering and drying I don't want to deal with one plant being ready for chop and the other needing another few weeks. It also makes it a lot more difficult to manage the scrog canopy if the different plants stretch different amounts etc. If I have to pick only one female to flower, I will pick the one which displays the strongest sativa traits. If only one is female, the seed-grown male will be binned. The seed-grown female will be flowered. A clone of each sex will be kept as bonsai parents. Assuming I do get at least 1 female, I'll be making a decision at this point on if I should continue with flowering or if I should re-veg to fill out the screen. I may even prune back and re-veg. I'll just have to make a judgement as best as I can when the time comes. Well, I've already written more than anyone is likely to read so I guess that will do for now! Thanks -wlk