New Year's Haze

I have a lot of respect for Mr. Nice Seedbank and Shantibaba, and they have some of the the genetic building blocks (haze, Afghan, skunk) that were originally worked by Nevil. I decided to pheno hunt through Mr. Nice Seedbank Angel's Breathe because the parents (Mango Haze x Afghan Haze) are so well regarded. Nevil has commented that AB looks like a great strain with some great flavors and highs to be found. I'm looking for an uplifting, euphoric, cerebral energetic haze high with some really good flavor, and I realize the pheno I'm looking for is probably going to need 12+ weeks to flower. This is my third grow so I think I'm ready for the challenges presented by long-flowering, stretchy, nute-sensitive haze hybrids. I hope to have a few nice plants harvested around the new year, hence the title of this grow diary. My plan is to grow out up to 10 plants from seed, take clones, and flower the clones in October, when my flower tent is available. This should reduce my flower time by about 2 weeks compared to flowering seedlings. I'd like to flower a couple males outside before it gets too cold, so I can collect some pollen and make some F2 seeds. I'm growing in coco hempy buckets and using the General Hydroponics flora series drain-to-waste (DTW) feed schedule, with supplemental CaliMg. This week was only tap water (100 ppm) + a few drops of GH Rapid Start after most of the seedlings were up. A week after I popped the seeds, I have a 90% germination rate, with one still in play. These seeds were slow to germinate, some needing 6+ days, and I helped #2, #5 and #8 along by removing the embryonic membrane with tweezers. These seedlings will go into 6" square pots with coco next week. And we're off!

I got a 100% germination rate from these Mr. Nice seeds. Plants #2, #5 and #8 received my assistance removing the embryonic sack with a tweezer, I may have forgotten to flush all the coco coir I reused when I transplanted the Rapid Rooters into 6" square pots, because I saw a tiny bit of leaf tip burn on one seedling and the cotyledon leaves on another plant turned brown, so I'm going real easy with the nutes. I've heard that many hazes are highly sensitive to nutes so better safe than sorry. The plants have been in my veg/clone cabinet which is equipped with three 64W T8 fluoros, but two of these fixtures keep turning themselves off, so most of the growth has been done under poor lighting with only one measly T8 fixture operating. THese T8s were recycled from when I upgraded my workshop to LED shoplights, and I'm sick of these cheap-ass Wal-Mart pieces of shit. So this coming week I'm gonna rip out the T8s and upgrade to 80+ W of LEDs, which will hopefully get these seedlings moving.

Three weeks have passed since I planted these seeds. Most of the plants are on their third node and doing OK. All of them have suffered from too little light, as 2/3 of my fluoro fixtures were essentially inoperable, so I upgraded to 80 W of LED shoplights in my veg cabinet . They seem to be responding well. Not sure if I'll be able to have any clones ready to flower in October as I had hoped, at least not early October. Three of the seedlings have issues, and I think I must've screwed up by transplanting some of the seedlings into coco that I reused without flushing, so they almost OD'd on flower nutes. The cotyledon leaves on these three shriveled up, the seedlings were dark green, I saw a little nute burn, etc. When I realized my mistake I flushed them and have been feeding light nutes since. Two of these runts, #2 and #5, were also quite late to germinate and needed some help. If I were selecting for vigor I'd cull them but runts seem to have a reputation for bringing recessive traits to the fore, so let's see what happens with them.

The Angel's Breathe plants are coming along fine, despite me seriously underfeeding them for a while. They have responded well to the improved LED shoplights. No smells as of yet. I still have three runts but I'm gonna see what happens with them; you never know. They are still at least a couple weeks away from being able to take clones.