End of the third week of the stretch and they certain out did stretch indeed馃槼. Had to crop over the tallest female - she just stretched wayyy too much and that鈥檚 gonna go against her in the rankings when we draw out our seed on each plant.
The first male has dropped fully and the others are another 1-2 days out from harvest. We鈥檒l collect all that pollen and store it for future use if it鈥檚 needed. The plants are all showing both similarities and differences - there鈥檚 an even distribution of sativa and indica leaning phenos which suggests that there is def. Some variability in terms of traits for this F1 generation. Exactly what we were looking for as we pare this down to the second filial generation.
On the overall growth - absolutely no issues at all with nutritional deficiencies which is a welcome change of pace. The last while we鈥檝e been growing some strains that have shown very odd reactions to nute changes and I suspect this is a result of certain strains simply being bred out too far. Hard to say but the radar is definitely up with the well known breeders right now.
We have some real winner pheno clones that we鈥檝e rooted and will be flowering out once we get this tent cleaned up and free of pollen. All told, the run is progressing much better than anticipated and with the rate of turnover through transition, I鈥檓 happy to say that there isn鈥檛 any one plant I won鈥檛 consider test running on the next cycle. We did have some og auto genetics in the tent for pollination as well but that plant is looking like a bit of a mutant. Not sure if we鈥檒l even bother with testing it at this point but you never know. Expect a harvest update on the males as we move in to the flowering side of the grow and then it鈥檚 just waiting around for seed馃憤. Alls well for now.
Background
This project has been a year in strain selection (and another year in the actual making) to get to this point with a viable potential cross. It鈥檒l be a true polyhybrid with a mix of sativa and indica leaning properties for each. We鈥檝e combined an especially powerful hybrid sativa strain of Strawberry with an equally manageable and hard hitting strain of indica dominant Skywalker OG.
The hope has always been to combine them and boil out the best characteristics of each. The strawberry is phenomenal in terms of terp profile and a mix of strong head and body effects while the Skywalker is a mind bending, body butter kind of indica with that earthy Kush profile and flowery undertones.
The strawberry is prone to botrytis and fasciation but features excellent terps and yields if grown correctly. She鈥檚 Also stretchy and somewhat unruly when she gets going. The Skywalker is a contrast in growth characteristics with a squat structure, medium sized buds and excellent resilience and resistance.
The plan is to seed out the available females and take cuts of what we can post-stretch to get a closer look at any differing phenos. Still very much early stages for a stabilized new strain but we鈥檝e got the right foundation of solid genetics. Now we just gotta get it off the ground to the next generation馃憤. We鈥檙e predominantly focused on the plants that demonstrate that hybrid vigour and wasting no time with any problem plants or runts. Stay tuned - with a little luck, this cross is gonna be straight 馃敟馃槑馃憣.