Examining Genetics and Nutes

[OlderStoner]

I'm doing a small indoor grow in soil. This is my 3rd grow and I'm using seeds from the first two grows for this. The parents of these plants were a Cotton Candy and White Widow mothers pollinated by a White Widow X full blown male. The mother CC plant produced remarkable smoke. The smoke from the White Widow mother was great but a couple of notches down from the CC plant. I thought the CC seed would produce more killer smoke. The weed in the last grow from these was good, but still nothing like their mother. Oddly, the White Widow + White Widow X seeds produced an abundance of very good smoke. Okay, that grow was fast and just to see if the seeds would be viable.

In this grow, I'm really taking my time to examine the plants as they grow. There's no doubt the Indica qualities of those seeds from the CC mother are apparent. The leaves are broad and the entire plants are very symmetrical.

Now for the advice I could use. I have the FF regime left over from last year. Anyone who reads my last grow journal will see that I pushed the nutes too hard before, even though I didn't use that much. This time round, I'm of course letting the plants talk to me and using the great advice I got from everyone on this forum, I'm trying not to make those same mistakes. But, as usual, there are some glitches. The plants are thriving after a full month since they sprouted. They are under 400 watts of fluoros and growing. The thing I'm noticing in at least one of them is the yellow tips on the very ends of a couple of the lower leaves. The discoloring is out on the very end of the tip of the leaf and very small. I take it that already there's too many nutes in the soil. The soil mix I made from compost and then placed the transplanted plants into FF Ocean Forest. I've found that this line of FF soil is loaded with N and the plants always get very dark green and grow nicely. I've been going sparingly on the water but gave all of them a big drink 48 hours ago, just fresh water. Tomorrow I plan on making a week1 mix of the FF chart, even though these plants are now in their 5th week. I will make the mix only 1/4 strength. But with the signs I'm seeing in the plants right now, I don't think nutes are what they need.

 

[gonegoodbye]

Regarding the tips of your leaves, they could indicate that you either have ph issues or you are over-feeding. Since it is only the tips and the rest of the plant seem healthy, I would check the ph first by testing the runoff water. If you are in the 6-7 range you are pretty good and could start adding small fractional doses of nutrients in the coming weeks. Interesting genetics by the way. Breeding seems so much fun.

 

[OlderStoner]

Quick update on this nute shy grow. I'm now in week 6 into this grow and I've yet to put anything other than to sprinkle some very organic mix I got called Plant-Tone. The plants are so far showing no signs of need for supplement. A few are showing signs of yellowing or browning at the lower leaves. The tops are all lush and green but I attribute this more to the high N content in the Fox Farm Ocean Forest potting soil.

BTW it's hard to set a standard on this because I'm using various size containers but they are all small. They are all due for transplanting to bigger pots within this week. I'm going to wait until I see something from the plants before I start applying any nutes. That may of course be inadvisable to more experienced growers but I'm trying to see for myself when the plants need feedings and not over do the nute thing this time.

 

[OlderStoner]

Another point I'd like to hear more opinions on. All of the seeds used in this grow were from two mothers in a previous grow. The mothers were different but the father was the same plant. I have noticed that even though these are two sets of siblings, for lack of a better term, there are noticeable differences between the siblings. There's increased noticeable difference between the sets of siblings of course. The CC decedents are easy to tell apart from the White Widow decedents. And they are noticeable shorter than the White Widows with broader leaves.

 

[gonegoodbye]

No on the contrary that is how the experienced farmer does it. Good strategy.

I'm going to wait until I see something from the plants before I start applying any nutes. That may of course be inadvisable to more experienced growers but I'm trying to see for myself when the plants need feedings and not over do the nute thing this time.

 

[gonegoodbye]

Breed a strain with another that has a different genetic markup and you will get a F1. This offspring will be uniform with traits from both mother and father. Breed a F1 with another F1 and you will get offspring that will look very different from each other, because they will not share their parent's genes in the same way the F1 generation did. Instead they will be either a bit like the father or a bit like the mother, i.e. more diversity and a good opportunity to find something extraordinary.

 

[OlderStoner]

Got a little more to add to this thread on genetics. The difference between the siblings is remarkable. Two of White Widow descendants are off and running and are almost 10" tall. This was very similar to their parents. If I hadn't trimmed them they would be over a foot tall by now. A few of their siblings are less than 6" tall and were never topped. They are in small pots but still I was expecting more from them by now. The descendants from the Cotton Candy mother are not growing so tall but they are lush and very symmetrical in shape. Call me sentimental but one of them looks almost identical to it's mother. And she produced some of the best smoke around.

 

[Bluemonday]

Thing to note with F1's is you will have hybrid vigor, typically the plants will be really efficient on nute uptake so require very little, they may also produce really well in comparison to subsequent generations. Sounds like you'll have some really nice smoke there...

There's some good info on Mandala Seeds website on feeding efficient plants.

 

[Conradino23]

Most of the White Widow on the market has hardly anything to do with the famous original bred by Shantibaba, and for this reason might be mediocre. Cotton Candy on the other hand is a A to A+ strain, slightly sativa-dominant and quite potent. I found hash to be much better than bud itself, and I grew this strain twice in different conditions. Unfortunately in my climate CC is susceptible for mold, but indoor it will be fine, so your cross might be just what you're looking for.

Good luck

 

[OlderStoner]

The Strawberry Blue plant in this grow is shorter than I wished for but after 75 days since sprouting this freebie seed, she's looking nice. And what the heck the price was right. I've collected pollen from two males, both of which came from a Cotton Candy female and a White Widow X male from previous grows. I'm very interested in pollinating some lower branches on this Strawberry Blue. Hey, we could call it Blue Cotton or CottonBerry Blue. She's at day 75 of her grow and day 24 of 12/12. Buds are thick and starting to pack the single stalk. She's the only one in this grow that I didn't top. And to make it worse I only took two clones from her and they don't look so hot. I was too interested in seeing what this strain would do when left to it's on to mess with another clone but now I wish I had. I want to let her get all the work she can done before pollinating her so when would be the best time? By pollinating I mean only a few buds, not the whole plant. And I'm even thinking that if I cut one of these lower branches off and stuck it in a vase with some water, if the cutting would live long enough to produce seeds if I dabbed it with some pollen. That way she'd be way off from the grow tent and lessen the chance of pollen getting where I don't want it. Perhaps that's too far fetched. The only reason I'm thinking this is that a few days ago I trimmed some lower branches off one of the plants. These branches have buds on the end of them. So I stuck them straight into the dirt in a sunny spot in my backyard and guess what, they are growing. This plant species known as Cannabis is extremely adaptable.

 

[OlderStoner]

Two of the plants I had in this grow were males. And I got pollen on some of the choicest females to get some more seeds for later. As I referenced before, these males were brothers if you will, because they had the same father. The mother's were different and the one I'm interested in is shown below. Actually, this is a clone of one of the males and it's the one from the Cotton Candy mother and White Widow X father. I'm really impressed with this one. It took forever it seemed for the clone to show roots through the 3" grow block I had him in and then I stuck it in some FF Ocean Forest soil. Once again that soil is so rich in N that the plant is such a deep, dark green. The lighting in this one photo doesn't really show it. What I'm also impressed with are the broadness of his leaves. The big ones are 1" wide and more at their centers. The closeness of the nodes too is also extremely impressive and I've only had it under some fluoros for a couple of weeks now. So all in all, this one is a keeper and I want to capture some of it's genes for my seed collection.

Okay, now here's where I need information. This plant's mother was a Cotton Candy plant that produced top drawer smoke. And she was so beautiful and symmetrically shaped, with close node spacing. So I'm going to cross this male's pollen with as many of the females that will be in season when he is, which should be about 3 or 4 different plants. The one I'm particularly interested in crossing him with is a beautiful Strawberry Blue which the original plant from seed is about to domino for me but I've got four clones from her in various stages which I hope will be ready when he is. So looking at this male, I'd like to confirm if the shape and broadness of his leaves is an Indica or Sativa trait? And what if any would more educated botanist predict the offspring from this guy and the Strawberry Blue females I've got coming right behind him?

 

[Conradino23]

Yeah these are more of a sativa shape leaves, which CC definitely has. Still the high you get with such a hybrid is pretty unknown as there's a whole gene poll in play, and this is impossible for anyone to figure out.

 

[OlderStoner]

Okay, and here I am again with some questions for the more educated growers with genetically inclined expertise. I have one plant about 6 weeks along growing. I topped it at the three week point and cloned the cutting. The clone and it's parent are doing nicely. I'm curious as to what I might expect from this one. First off, here's hoping it's a female. I haven't sexed it yet and don't plan to go 12/12 for at least another two weeks.

The mother plant that the seed for this plant came from was a Strawberry Blue that I got in a freebie package with my last order. You can check her out in post #23 of this thread. Post #11 above in this thread shows a nice shot of the father who sired the seeds from this strawberry blue mother. The father of these new plants was from a Cotton Candy mother, which turned out to be some of the best smoke I ever grew and a White Widow X male. I ended up with about a dozen or so seeds and just to keep my hand in the genetics I took one of the seeds and started this new plant.

Okay, so what my observations are thus far, the plant looks healthy and under 160 Watts of fluoros it's got some closely spaced nodes. This plant was started in FF Happy Frog soil mix and after 3 weeks of growth I noticed that it was lacking a few nutes, mainly N because some of the lower leaves started to yellow. I gave it a nice dose, about 1/2 strength of the FF regime and then transplanted it into a big pot mixed with 50% FF Happy Frog and 50% FF Ocean Forest. The dark green color that I've seen before when using Ocean Forest is now showing abundantly in this plant. The Ocean Forest product is known for this, at least in my use of it and I have seen it take plants from clone all the way to 3rd and 4th week of flowering without needing any added nutes. I think this soil mix can be classified as hot, but it seems to make the plants very happy.

Another observation is that the serrations on the leaves are more like it's father than it's mother. The strawberry blue mother had serrations on it's leaves that were very pronounced, almost looking like a head of cabbage rather than a cannabis plant.

And third, but probably not the last observation I will make is the number of fingers on each leaf. I find that most plants I've grown start out with 5 fingers on the lower leaves, then growing to seven, then nine as you get to the top of the plant. I've also noted that some plants I've grown never get more than seven fingers. This one already has leaves that have nine fingers. I'm curious about this because a very long time ago a friend showed me one of her plants and it had eleven fingers on most of it's leaves. I have never seen another plant with that many fingers since then. And I'm wondering if this plant may eventually sprout some upper leaves with 11 fingers. And what does this say about the plants genetic makeup.

This is the plant grown from the seed I got when I crossed the above plants.

And this is the clone taken from this plant about 3 weeks ago.