stay alive-- organic medical grow

The growth of these ethiopian x afghani hybrids is totally wild. They are completely wild and asymetrical in their growth. Some have very viney growth, they lean and cling to each other and have grown completely intertwined. They are ultra competetive, constantly trying to shade the others, or sneak a cola into the canopy of another plant. Two phenos are growing massive top colas alongside the light hood in indirect light. They are totally overgrown and out of control haha. They resist all attempts to train them with bending or pinching, the only thing that works is tying their branches to the frame of the tent. When I grow these again from the clones, I will try to flower them small so I can get these big colas as low as possible and avoid light burn. A few phenos have growth so crazy competetive and parasitic, they will have to be grown in some kind of hannibal lecter cage. The aggressive growth of these phenos might make it good for outdoor, but I have concerns about pest and weather resistance for this climate.



Pheno 3 of the ethiopian x afghani started showing some herm growth in its flowers on march 10th, and was harvested early to prevent pollination. This is one of the stretchiest phenos, and it absolutely insisted on roasting itself with my lec blulb. The top colas are somewhat severely light burned, so I will definitely run this one again from the clone to give it a second try with better conditions. It's quite possible that this herm was stress induced from the light burn. It was harvested on march 15th and 16th, and actually produced a good amount of quite nice looking buds.

The buds have some very nice red/magenta speckles and highlights, the colas are decent, and it smells amazing. Strong gasoline, with a background of lime or kaffir lime leaves, floral lemon/ lemon flowers, and occasional hints of candy smells like lemon drops and watermellon jolly ranchers. The gasoline smell is truly realistic and very strong, I hope it will retain some of this in curing but the gas smell is so oily and volatile it might all evaporate away during drying.

It's quite mature for being harvested at day 44. When you take into account that it had already put out preflowers before 12/12, I think it's not surprising that it was a little closer to finished than other strains would be at this point. plenty of frost, buds have begun to plump, and all leaves are somewhat faded. quite sticky. the resin glands are absolutely tiny on this pheno, barely distinguishable to the naked eye. Resin glands %50-65 cloudy, %40 clear, %10 amber.
Here's a shot of some bananas on pheno 3-

 

thanks man, this cross has really got my attention. a lot of variation, with unusual terpene profiles and growth characteristics I've never seen before.
here's the top cola on an ultra sativa looking pheno:

smells like asian fruit, wild onion flowers, and acetone. my friend thinks it looks like the face grabber from alien because of the way it's grabbing onto the light. the resin is really building up on these flowers, and the fan leaves have some nice frost on them as well.

 

Pheno 5 dried buds:


notes from trimming day 46:
Pheno 5 is one of the viney, ultra competetive, parasitic type phenos. It has 4 large tops, and about 8 smaller ones which it has stretched into the growth of the other plants. This one is seriously weird. It only wants to grow against surfaces. it's main stem bends and snakes towards the light, giving it an overall insane sideways growth structure. It's main stem grew laterally to the center of the tent until it was directly under the light, then angled upwards and off to the right, before bending backwards again at eye level, and growing sideways until its top hit the back of the tent. This is the pheno that requires some kind of hannibal lecter scrog cage. This is a vine. The branches have twined through the other plants like a parasite, using their branches as a guide to reach the light, and growing it's flowers alongside the branch of the other plant. The flowers themselves have the same general structure and appearance as pheno 3, but a bit more spear shaped.

These flowers smell really interesting, like fallen pine needles decaying on the forest floor, and mangosteen (funky tropical fruit with pale pulpy flesh), with a hint of juniper and solvent in the backround. For the most part, these buds are totally finished, but the tips have some immature foxtails. Like I said, this one is wild. It looks like it might have a trait I've seen in some landraces where the flowers actually die off as new foxtails grow on top of them, but I can't say for sure at this point. Even though most of it is finished, there is still about %15 percent white pistils and tiny foxtails on most buds. Nothing is actually dying off, but all the fan leaves have dropped, and the guard leaves and preflower calyxes are faded yellow as well. Resin glands %70 cloudy, %10 clear, %20 amber. This plant is finished at only day 46. I'll be harvesting this one progressively starting with the tops and working my way down.

I don't have any photos of the plant before chop, it was difficult to photograph the intertwined growth. I love photography but being disabled I sometimes need to choose between taking photos and actually getting the work done.

I have the feeling this one will grow a much different structure when flowered from a small clone, so it will be interesting to see what it's like next time. This plant has some mutant leaves that look just like a martini glass. they come out of the main stalk with a thin stem, and a single leaf on top bent into a cone. never seen that one before.

 

trimmed number 4 a week and a half ago, very large pure grean spears of nug. smelled amazing during trimming, very fruity. like light floral fresh blueberry, milk oolong, and some sharper lemon and cologne notes. I'll add photos later, just wanted to post this before I forgot the smell.

 

thanks man, I'm really glad that people are finding this interesting. That bud looks amazing. It's definitely similar to that #5 pheno, I wonder if your cross has some afghani or african in its genetics.
It would be nice if you get a male and female from those last two seeds, but two more frosty females would be just as nice haha.
I love growing bagseed, I've been saving a durban pie bagseed (cherry pie bx to durban) that I can't wait to grow.

 

I've been chopping ethiopian x afghani pheno 1 starting on saturday 4/7. this is definitely the heaviest plant in the group:

these plants really are wild. it looked completely ready a few weeks ago, but then entered a period of aggressive growth and consumed all of it's remaining leaves. I let it go as late as possible to maximize yield and to bring out a striking red color in the tops.

This one has almost no leaves left, the fans are gone, and most of the guard leaves have been dropping off as well. Hardly any trimming to do, but the crazy bud structure makes it a bit slow to work on. This one ripened unevenly, there are a decent amount of dried brown guard leaves between the buds. this would make it totally unusable for outdoor growing, at least for all of the climates that I have worked in.

The smell is amazing, and hard to describe. It's incredibly floral and fruity, there are definite peach and jasmine green tea with a hint of dank and fuel in the background, with a little bit of mint at the end.

I've never seen red buds like this before:

It's too bad they're red at a few of the mid height colas. if someone could find a pheno that fully fades to red like this, that would be the true keeper from this strain.

now for some bad news:
Early in flowering, all but 2 phenos put out bananas on their main stem at nodes that didn't have a branch. Pheno 3 put out copious bananas on day 43, but it had a lot of light burn.

I had a new timer fail on day 55 or so. unfortunately, I've found at least one banana on every plant. Pheno 1 popped one banana the day after the timer malfunction, and was fine after that. The others had hidden bananas that I found while trimming.

In summary, all phenos will be run again from clones at least once. I would have needed to anyway since they were all light burned, but it's a bummer that the timer failed on a round of testers. This makes it impossible to report accurately on the performance and stability of the strain. For now, I'll only be able to give bodhi a smoke report.

On the plus side, these are giving me a decent harvest and good meds.

 

sorry for the lack of recent updates, I've had a lot of stuff going on and with the indoor grow running at full speed it's a lot more work than just my outdoor grow. I usually like to have photos with every update, but I'm going to start doing more frequent text only updates to keep things current.

All of the ethiopian afghanis have been harvested. I'll post bud shots and dry weights for each pheno soon, so far I have 8.2 ounces in jars and one more plant still on the drying rack.
Like I said before, all phenos popped one or two bananas after the timer failure, and pheno 3 had bananas at I think day 46. Fortunately, I have clones of everything so I'll be able to run them all again and find out for sure if they're stable. Right now I'm flowering pheno 2, pheno 3, pheno 5, and 2x pheno 4. I have clones of 1, 2, and 4, still in veg because those are the potential keepers. pheno 1 will be cloned and flowered soon.

outdoor update:
Last week I put one of my black cherry soda mother plants outside as my primary outdoor plant. It's looking very good. soon it will be transplanted into a 25 gallon pot. I'm hoping for a real tree.

As an experiment, I planted one branch of the pheno 1 lebanese about 3 inches deep in a pot last fall. I was curious if the seeds would sprout in the spring without any intervention or care. I now have about 20 lebanese seedlings growing wild in a 15 gallon pot. germination rates were way higher than expected. I haven't given them any water or care of any kind, and for now I'm planning to simply let nature take it's course.

I'll post some photos soon, and there will be regular text updates to keep the information current from now on

 

I've also been helping my sister out with using medical cannabis for the first time after a surgery (nothing to worry about ). she has never used cannabis before, and was a little nervous about smoking, so I made her some full plant concentrates by filtering and evaporating well extracted jars of tincture. She has been using the concentrates to make coconut canna-oil, and says that the effect is similar to kava for her. She is recovering very well.

I also bought her a simple bubbler pipe and gave her a selection of indica flowers to smoke or use for more edibles. She was having problems with the prescription painkillers, so I encouraged her to try using the bubbler instead, and it was very effective for her, especially for sleep.

 

hey stomata, great to hear from you. congratulations on the move, should be plenty of sun out there to grow some nice trees. I've never monitored ph in organic gardening, and haven't experienced any problems. living soil seems to be a very effective buffer. use plenty of good worm castings, and you should have some nice strong microbial life active in your soil. I'd also recommend alternating with a well brewed compost tea every 3-5 waterings. worm castings, seaweed, and neem meal should make a great tea. this will keep your microbial life going strong, and the brewing process should bring the ph close to neutral.

If you know the water is heavily alkaline, don't use much lime in your soil. maybe just a sprinkle of oyster shell powder or something similar for trace calcium. I'd recommend adding something like rock dust, or just natural clay soil. Clay and rock dust contain a lot of trace minerals, and the surface area of the fine particles increases the cation exchange capacity of the soil (sites for storing available and non-available nutrients until the plants can access them or break them down into available forms). This will make the soil a more effective buffer.

If the water turns out to be severely alkaline, or if it effects the grow more than expected, there's a member called Brass-n-wood who could probably help. he grows in southern california with very alkali water, and after years it affected the overall ph of his soil as well. Now he compensates by amending his soil with sulfur pellets. I'm not sure if that would be necessary in your case, but it would be a good option if you experience problems, and I'm sure he could help you out with the details.

 

indoor update:

1x ethiopian afghani pheno 2
1x ethiopian afghani pheno 3
1x ethiopian afghani pheno 5
2x ethiopian afghani pheno 4
the ethiopian tester clones are looking really nice as small plants, there's no chance of light burn this time. The flowers are bulking up nicely. I'll post smoke reports from the first harvest soon, I'm really liking the variety of highs and flavor from this line.
I have my doubts about the stability of the line though, most of these are still putting out tiny tufts of leaf and banana from the empty nodes on the main stem. these tufts of growth die off, and the bananas don't seem to be viable, but I don't consider that normal. Unfortunately I think only 2 or 3 out of 5 of are actually stable. It definitely shows how important it is to test new crosses.

 

veg tent:

I'm really excited about these. Those bushy seedlings are my Lebanese Sinatra hybrid from last years outdoor season.
(dank sinatra [la affie x 88g13hp] x pure lebanese male)
The seeds had a %100 viability across multiple germination methods and different methods of drying and storage, and were very strong starters. they have the serration and leaf shape of the lebanese, but the color, bushyness, and slow veg growth of the dank sinatra. There is plenty of variety within the seedlings, compared to the sinatra which was almost completely uniform. I'm very intrigued.

The three taller branchier plants at the back are (from left to right) phenotypes 1, 4, and 2.

The clone in the foreground is a fresh cut from the black cherry soda mother. I just took about 6 clones from the black cherry soda mother, and it's looking worn out. It's been getting some light burn on and off because Ive had a hard time balancing my lighting between the seedlings and the very established mother plant. Especially after this batch of clones, it's looking pretty tired and sparse. It will be moved into the flowering tent early next week.

 

pheno 3 smoke report

smell: peach, peach jello, gasoline, lime, kafir lime leaf, cucumber
flavor: kasugai peach gummy, cucumber, a hint of cactus cooler.
effect: full body head rush. I like this one, a lot.
medicinal value: effective for pain relief, reduces swelling after a strain or minor injury, really helps with naseau.
yield: 1.52 oz (43 grams)
notes: great refreshing smell and flavor. nice colors, decently dense, and sticky with tiny resin crystals.

grow notes
Con: this plant was stretchy, and had poor internode spacing. buds were dense, but far apart. susceptible to light burn. put out small tufts of banana like growth at empty nodes on the main stem. This plant was harvested at 44 after it went herm, possibly due to light burn. however, it was within a week of being ready to harvest. low yielding for being such a large plant.

Pro: The flowers had nice colors and resin coverage. It matures very, very quickly, it was pretty crazy watching these buds bulk up. aggressive root growth, cloned easily. buds have great smell, flavor, and high. If they helped with appetite stimulation as well as getting rid of naseau, it would really be valuable medicinally.

I'm flowering pheno 3 again from clone, and there's no possibility of light burn this time. so soon I'll know for sure whether this one is really unstable or not. I didn't want to keep something so low yielding, but if this one turns out to be stable, I'll regret not keeping another copy. The flavor and smell of this one is really great.

update: Photos added-

 

I'll post photos and more updates asap, there have been some minor technical difficulties after my cat dumped an entire pitcher of water on my laptop....
fortunately I have an older one to use as a backup machine.