Oaxacan gold X Yunnan

Redbudaquaponics Ok this diary is starting pretty late. A bit of backstory. I ordered some “Yunnan region Landrace” seeds from China. They took something like 6-8 months to ship to me. Out of all the seeds, only 3 popped and they were all male. Large tall stretchy giant leafed males that hated to bush out at all. My uncle was going through some stuff and he found some old brick weed seeds from some time pre-1990ish. He said they were from some field grown Oaxacan. I had popped one of those seeds around the time I was trying the Yunnan and it was a female. I decided on a whim to breed the two. I cloned the original mom and still have multiple moms and cuts from her. Very nice sativa but very bushy. Quick uplifting and happy high. The seeds from that pairing then went through about a 50 seed Veg only Pheno hunt. My keeper mother and father from that generation was breed together for an F2 generation. This plant is a clone off that keeper mother. It spent about 2 weeks in a solo cup, then transplanted into a 3 gallon container. After one week in the 3 gallon I started tying weights to all the branches and leaned her over to one side and grew her sideways for another 2 weeks. Then she was transplanted into the above pictured 30 gallon fabric pot. The soil being used is reused soil that I add compost to, smother in some fishy water from my aquaponic greenhouse and covered in a plastic tote and left to ferment in my greenhouse. I’m doing this run full KNF like style. “Korean Natural Faming” I added a cover crop that is a local chicken feed mix I get and has all kinds of seeds, rock dusts, molasses and a lot of goodies. I usually see grasses, peas and sunflowers and corn sprout from this. The main nutrient I’m using is a fermented plant juice made from rainwater and lots of grasses and weeds from my greenhouse anaerobically fermented for a couple months. This is added in pretty dilute.

Redbudaquaponics Cover crop is starting to poke up. The girl is picking up speed on her growth. I added a scrog net to start spreading her out.

Redbudaquaponics All the cover crop exploded. It was all trampled down, ripped and patted into the straw mulch. Some more straw mulch was added on top. This week I also had a few large oyster mushrooms that I blended up in some water and fed that to the girl. Had to defoliate a bit and adjust a few branches. I used a good bit more ferment this week since I know the flower stretch is coming.

Redbudaquaponics 2nd week of flower and she is really stretching now. Had to add a second trellis net to control her. I also cleaned up the skirt. You can see what the mulch looks like above. I just pinch and twist when I see new green cover crop peeking through and work it in a bit. Once you dig down the mulch and greens are composting well and the worms are loving it.

Redbudaquaponics She is really filling out the bud sites now and I think she is slowing in her stretch. Mid week I flipped to 11/13 light schedule. She is taking a long while to shoot out pistol hairs and I suspect she is like her mother and wants to flower a little longer under 12/12. The plan is by next update I’m going to add about 1.5lb of crushed malted barley as a top dressing to finish the girl through flower. I checked ppm once with the ferments, vinegar/egg shell and ash water and they only add about 80ppm. But with the large bed of soil and how the cover crop and mulch interact with the worms and soil biology. I think we are not going to need anything else to keep this girl happy through flower.

Redbudaquaponics This week on Tuesday I did one last lollipop and took off a lot of lower bud sites and thin branches I was not impressed with. I took all the trimmings, chopped them up a bit and turned them into the mulch. At this point the much is starting to all look like it’s decomposing. Wednesday I added 8-10oz of malted barley. It was an equal mix of acidulated malt, bries 2-row and rahr 6-row. I then added a whole pound of rice hulls on top for a new mulch layer. I watered all week with rain water but on Wednesday with the top dress I added some fermented plant juice to make sure I have the biology going strong to break down that top dress.

Redbudaquaponics Ok update on this plant was a day earlier due to Christmas being tomorrow. Merry Christmas everyone. This week I had to do a deep watering of about 1 1/2 gallons on Monday and I watered in another gallon over a couple waterings this week. I used tap water with 15ml/gal of chicken bones dissolved in apple cider vinegar, 15ml/gal of ash lye water, and 15ml/gal of fermented plant extract. This is a hungry and thirsty girl. The mother Oaxacan is a big girl but does not grow as vigorously as this one. I might just call this a Oaxacan XL. The frost is just now starting to creep out onto the sugar leaves. I’m betting that is going to start to explode here in the next 1-2 weeks.

Redbudaquaponics She is right in the middle of bulking phase. I believe I have under estimated how much this girl can drink. Also I think next time I will take some plastic wrap and cover the top 4/5 of the fabric pot to help hold in some moisture. We are seeing signs of some under watering and stressing happening. I should have noticed last week but didn’t. I have had easily 3+ gallons watered in this week but it probably should have been closer to 4-5. I did dig around a couple days ago and was able to spot worms feeding under the mulch layer and found some beneficial rove beetles. I’m going to kick up the watering over this next week and see if we. An get some bulk up on these flowers by next week.

Redbudaquaponics We had a timer malfunction and there was a day where the lights did not turn on. When I noticed it and fixed it, we flipped from having light on at night to day. Not ideal but we roll with what we can. Light feeding and mostly rain water this week. The night temps are dipping pretty low now and we are seeing a lot of purple in the leaves. Still not ideal but she is growing fine none the less. However I have found 3 separate nanners and I’m sure there are more. There will probably be a handful of seeds thanks to the cold stress. Buds smell of sweet pine and an almost minty smell in there too.

Redbudaquaponics This week ended Saturday the 15th. Was just late at getting update done but the pictures where taken Saturday morning. Going to wait out another 9 days on this and check. We are in the tricomb and terpene development time frame now. About mid week I also stripped a dozen or so of the oldest looking leaves to try and get a little more light penetration down to some lower buds that looked a little less developed. I also did a final top dress which is less for this plant but really planning for the following grow. I added 6 cups of used coffee grounds that all started to mold a bit and some popcorn grain spawn I was using to grow out some oyster mushroom mycelium. That was all placed under the mulch layer and watered in with plain water. When pulling back the mulch layer, the worms are really active. Lots of them feeding and working the soil. Good sign of healthy soil.

Redbudaquaponics The purple is really settling in now. Frost is getting heavy too. Looking at tricombs I think we are just seeing cloudy, no amber. So we may have a whole another week ahead of us.

Redbudaquaponics Today marks the end of the 10th week in flower. Everything looking good. I’m going to chop down on Monday here in a couple days. 72 days is plenty of time for the buds to be mature. More updates to come with drying, curing and smoke/edible report. Also I plan on sending in samples to a lab to check cannabinoid content. It’s going to be fun to see how she yields. Guesses on final dry weight?

Redbudaquaponics Harvested last Tuesday. Right now I’m 4 days into drying. Hoping to keep it drying slow so I’m trimming and jarring somewhere between 10 - 13 days of drying. The smell is very old school skunky. No sweet smells really. Nothing new age. No lemon pine. Just pure skunk lol. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen something so frosty smell like this. It’s nice but I could see people loving or hating it. I can’t wait for the smoke report and the lab testing I’ll send off for this plant.