Undercaker - Darkhorse Genetics

popped 9 undercaker(strawberry shortcake x savage hulk) regular seeds i got from jason at darkhorse genetics, 100% germ, put em in solo cups under a fluorescent until about 6" tall, 3 weeks or so, then putting them in my 2x4 tent with a sp-250 for vegging, pictures taken before placing in the tent after labeling the phenos as i plan to take clones to sex them, and the other picture is same day after placing into tent.

my grow weeks start on monday, so after a week adjusting to the tent and light i transplanted them into 1 gallon containers and staked them with bamboo, not much to say, they are drinking fast and adjusting to the new containers.

not much vertical growth as they push out roots to fill the new containers, topped them all yesterday for the first time, by the end of this week i hope to be able to top them again for 2 clones each, otherwise next week, but i don't plan to veg longer than 4 weeks altogether, we'll see. been hitting them with a foliar of tap water and calmagxtra (2ml/L) once or twice lightly daily as well as setting the lights to 6hrs off

took 2 cuttings from each, was going to transplant to 3gal fabric pots but time eluded me, i'll do it tomorrow, regardless they are going to be flipped next monday and things will become interesting for a week or two, nice structure on this cross; as soon as i topped them they all just bushed out uniformly, most likely after transplanting them tomorrow i will also give them another topping, allowing them the rest of the week to bounce back before flipping them, ill drop another pic in here tomorrow after getting them right

starting the first week of flowering today, after transplanting 3 plants into 3 gal fabric pots i decided to just sex them before transplanting the rest, nothing much to see here, moved the light up some to compensate for the plants height as i haven't adjusted it since day 1, i'll try to take some snaps throughout the week as they start to show sex update: thursday - added a photo of the first male, i had the plants labeled from a to i and this was the "I" plant fwiw, also confirmed at least 3 females (didn't make a note of which) so still 5 plants of unknown sex, will post further updates as things develop. update: sunday - culled 2 more males throughout the week, the 6 plants i have remaining look to be females with 1 still yet to reveal their sex. grow room has been through some changes: the veg slash flowering tent (vivosun 24x48x60) is fated to become a veg-only room as i build back out my perpetual, and with an eye towards a new flowering room i scored 3 gavita 1000de pros from a bankrupt hemp farm and have swapped in one to replace the marshydro sp-250, piped in ac from a whynter arc-14sh i also scored on a budget a few months back so everything stays nice and cool under the sweltering blue-tinged orange radiance of the gavita (currently running at minimum dimming of 600watts, effectively double the draw of the sp-250 running wide open). whatever your thoughts on the HID vs LED debate it's hard to ignore these HID deals that are everywhere on marketplace, ebay and craigslist for a fraction of the price, these 3 gavitas with newish bulbs and extra long 30' power cables cost me a total of 0, 3000watts of 1000+PAR covering 6 square meters...less than a nickel per watt, ill post up some pictures with the weekly update tomorrow

week 2 flower starting, changed out led to gavita pro 1000de dimmed to 600watts, add an ac, culled the males and transplated the remaining 2 females into 4 gallon plastic pots and surrounded them with a bamboo trellis and tied all the colas off opening them up to fill in during the next two weeks of stretch, i dont really want them getting any taller to be honest as i only have about 2 feet to play with, ill probably end with a lot of supercropped colas tied off by harvest time but for now im just glad to have these ladies set up for the races, each backed up by two clones that are about ready to transplant themselves, let's just hope one or both of these ladies is my type

not much to say really, heading into week 3 of flower, thinking i have about till the middle or end of next week before the stretch finishes and it starts setting buds so i've just been keeping everything as open to light as possible to fill in the center of each plant with minor defoliation of inner-oriented leaves, today i will start cutting nitrogen from my masterblend mix and rotating my feedings to masterblend(without calcium nitrate and half-measure of magnesium sulfate) then calmag extra the day after and water only the next day and repeat as the plants are starting to show minor deficiencies which i mean to compensate for preemptively, had to go back to the mars hydro sp-250 as the gavita was too close and frankly too hot for this 2x4x5 ft tent, but i really just wanted to get a feel for these gavitas before building out the new flowering room. thoughts on these genetics: other than relative size of these phenos, they appear identical and have the same structure and morphology and give off the same aroma, which the culled males also shared, so i feel like this strain is pretty stable. the cross is "savage hulk" (bruce banner #5 x zkittlez x dosi-dos) with "strawberry shortcake" (juliet x strawberry diesel) and the limited experience i have with dark horse genetics makes me wary of their strawberry strains as the last bruce banner #5 cross named "gamma berry"(4 females) i ran was total garbage lacking potency, flavor and aroma which after curing and sampling i proceeded to give away by the handful to any nearby stoner, so this is my dark horse swan song as it were and ill seek out the strawberry terps elsewhere should these plants prove to be garbage...3 packs popped and only one good plant (king's banner f2)

okay, here we find ourselves starting week 4 of the flowering stage and surprise there's not much out of the ordinary going on, i would usually do a heavy defoliation at this time, but the way they are trellised or staked, if you will, has pretty much trained the already ideal morphology of these plants into 3 "rings", the outer ring is where the major bowers reside and these are tucked all the way to the outside, the second ring it tucked once and houses the secondary growth from the major bowers and finally the sanctum sanctorum which constitutes the open middle and lower shoots from the major colas as well as vigorous stragglers from the maristem pushing into the light. of course the lower and middle growth is considerably behind the primary growth but accessing full light and filling in fairly well. i usually go wild with net trellises, super-cropping any "proud" shoots and laying them on the net and by the time i cut them down it looks like an amazing spider-man cover by mcfarlane and frankly i'm getting a little weary of it which is why im trying new low-maintenance training options...so far im pleased as usually id have filled a plastic shopping bag with fan leaves every week but still havent filled a single one yet and the lack of rough treatment has cut down on micro-deficiencies that develop during a plant's recovery from stressful heavy defoliation...every amputated growth of foliage leaves an open wound for the plant to redirect it's attention away from stacking flowers, allocating needed nutrients away from photosynthesis and moving around mobile nutrients unnecessarily. im one of those people who push the plants as far or further than they can go and always, always, ALWAYS eventually end up with tip-burnt leaves completely but the leaves are quite lush and lean towards shiny, instead of nipping the leaves off like a madman with a pathological fixation on removing leaves that cast shade on other lower leaves, this trellis allows me to "tuck" offensive inward-growing fans to the outer rings..enough about that. i'm cutting back nitrogen part of the masterblend and maintaining a masterblend feeding followed by a sensi calmagxtra feeding, i cut the masterblend to half nitrogen during the stretch which is coming to a stall as the colas start to set bud and even begin stacking. while these two phenotypes are mostly similar in the major categories (morphology, structure, vigor, stem scent, flower appearance/size) the second phenotype is roughly 6" shorter than the #1, has a thicker main stem and has started to blanket the baby golfball nuggets and surrounding sugar leaves with trichome production. only "issue" with the grow is i'm noticing a lot of humidity build up during the night cycle, my exhaust fan's seal keeps slipping and its just a matter of time before i build up a new seal with my aluminum tape repairs, aside from that some inlets would aid its moisture balance (currently i have an 8" inline exhausting directly into a carbon filter with pre-filter on the inside and even on the minimum cfm it creates a large negative vacuume and without a complimentary amount of input venting it's just sucking out the volume of atmospheric gases present and while off the tent slowly "inhales" through the few gaps i've missed. thoughts: ive grown many plants with similar genetics, i feel like this cultivar will turn out like 99% of "kine" bud , that is to say, og kush hit with the flavor of the month...good grower will make it dank, unskilled grower will come out with good mids...maybe im getting black-pilled on strains but i hope to god something shakes up this game soon...maybe it's time to detox and get my tolerance back to bubblegum-popping level

here we are at the start of the fifth week since flipping, nothing much to see or say, buds are "set" and in the process of stacking and pumping out trichomes, i have a carbon filter so the smell is always in check but i have noticed slightly more smell lately, have maintained a hands-off approach to defoliation and have absolutely zero yellowing leaves but the lower growth is predictably less robust although vigorous, i do plan to do a late defoliation when i start the flush as that point in the lifecycle will benefit more from the stress, we'll see, just seeing about this myself. gonna cut back on the calmag extra unless i start seeing deficiencies as to avoid a build up.

monday again, starting week 6 of flower with these 2 phenotypes of dark horse genetics' "undercaker", which is a cross of their "strawberry shortcake" with their "savage hulk" strains. these past couple of days both of these ladies have really started to come into their own and compete for domination of the airspace with their sultry perfumes, i stopped short of calling the smell "strong" in the form for this week as that would be the maximum and i need a more granular choice. anyways, pheno #1 started really pumping out intense "unripe strawberry" aromas mid-week and soon after pheno #2 had some red hairs starting to show here and there and emitting a persistent "og kush funk" that seems to settle like a miasma always in this entire room with only the sharpest tinges getting cut out with the carbon filter, pheno #1 commands your attention only when nearby and does so stronglly, but pheno #2 while not as loud up close maintains a ubiquitous presence in the house. i have added a dehumidifier set to 50% rh as i had a couple of nights and days for that matter get over 70% and with me being hands-off with the defoliation i feel like i need to be on top of the humidity and air circulation doubly so. horizontal growth is all but non-existent and every bud-site is pretty much buckled up for the ride on into harvest. they have started drinking a gallon each day, my mix is masterblend 4g/gal, calcium-nitrate 2g/gal, magnesium-sulfate 1g/gal, adv. nutrients cal mag xtra 8ml/gal. i just combined the calmag with the normal nutrients and ph it to 6.3-5 and its about 2.1-2.2 ec. like i say, they are drinking a gallon each every day spaced out into 3 feedings and im getting absolutely zero runoff which tells me the rootball has completely filled the medium, which is both good and bad at this stage i guess, they are in peak health so i feel like 3 or 4 more weeks won't be enough time to cause any lock-outs, especially when they drink up the nutes so fast, i keep fighting the urge to clean up the underskirts of the plants but aside from a couple of yellowing, dried up leaves in zero light locations everything is lush with only a slight tip-burn starting to show since i increased the ec and was expected. as any farmer is wont to do of an evening with harvest around the corner, i have begun casting hopes onto my plants and imagine a miraculous harvest of super s-tier boutique cannabis, i kid...slightly. anyways, my mood and outlook have improved this week as pertains to these genetics, i'll check back next monday -weewilly

start of week 7 flower...no time to comment, will do so later, just wanted to post photos for now -weewilly

over a quarter-pound of dried flower off of each pheno, the #1 mustve hermed slightly late into flower because i found a couple of seeds (literally 2) but a little bit of hermaphroditism is expected with fire weed and this stuff is indeed the chronic, while "strawberry" is a bit of a stretch the terps are on point for legit og with a touch of sweet gas on both the inhale and exhale, the head is where it's at for these phenos, will instantly cure both loss of appetite and insomnia, no heavy machinery use at all! props to jason at dark horse genetics for sending out this banger, literally in a daze typing this up..oh yeah, cut it down mid week 8, dried in 60f/60rh darkness for 8 days, then put it into mason jars...been about a week and a half in the jars, cheers!