[erbivore9]

namkha, on 25 February 2012 - 05:17 PM, said:

erbivore9, on 25 February 2012 - 04:56 PM, said:

Didnt afropips do some work with an Iranian indica?.

it rings a bell - maybe a cross with it called 'Fast Blast' or something

but I don't think it's possible to get his seeds anymore anyway

Thats the one, I think it was crossed with a blueberry. Its a sad thing that afropips are no more, I bought a 20 pack of mixed seeds from them and so far every plant has been pleasantly unusual.

[Ganjasattva]

Hello All! MY experience is you can coerce most any strain into the height you prefer. Albeit, you can't control the flowering time outdoors as in indoors, but you can turn even the tallest spindliest sativas into hedges if you intelligently combine a combination of selective topping and low stress training. A long, long time ago, I literally filled a walk-in closest measuring 2 square yards of floor space with ONE Afghan mistress. At the end of harvest she was just below eye level with the tallest of the colas. And these were the days of "grow lux" T8 flourescent bulbs - she grew under 4x58 Watt and one more on the two side walls.
This can also be easily done outdoors if you can visit the plant regularly and maintain the "training" of the highest growth shoots which begin to take off. The main trick is to try and keep all growth shoots at about the same height once the lower side branches have begun to "profit" from the bending down of the upper shoot(s). For example, I put the "sister" of the Afghani girl in my closet (which was sprouted at the same time) in the garden. Using exactly the same techniques as indoors, she became a "hedge" of about 1,5 Meters tall, nearly one meter deep and three meters long.
Just let her go to about 4-6 internodes, let the growth tip grow beyond the two side growth sites in the top internode and then bend it 90 degrees back between the two side tips until you cleanly snap it out with damaging the two side tips in the internode. They will become twin growth tips. When they have gone about one or two internodes, you can start tying them down (training them) which will further give the the other lower and side shoots time and more priority to "catch up" to the top. When you tie the twin tops down, spread them into directions 90degrees apart back away from you and begin to train the rest of the upper part of the plant bending it also in that direction. You will need to find materials to wrap around the stalk, which then can be tied down so you do not cut off any circulation at the site you are tying down. When outdoors, I found it best to bend the plant down to the north or northwest, to open up the lower branches to the morning and noon sun which is the most effective for growth.
When side branches catch up and you have a "level" or "plateau" of growth sites, you can decide three ways to procede - 1) top them all as you did the first time, taking only the very tip off as before, 2) bed all the shoots down horizontally in all directions or the directions you want ( left and right for example to make the "hedge" wider) like fanning them out as horizontally equal as possible or 3) both of the first two. I you wish to stop the spread in a certain direction, then you should top the branches bent down in that direction to force the vertical growth of thstraine side branches from that limb.
Following that method you can forget about having to buy a short strain. Just think about it - the difference between hunter and gatherer (searching for the short strain/pheno) and AGRICULTURE is that the gatherer just takes what he or she finds and in agriculture you take what you found and make it grow to fit your needs or climate etc. Back in those old days, a good friend had a wonderfully piney Colombian strain that he grew in his backyard. And beauty was one long and lanky Latina getting three to four meters tall so he sometimes was concerned because with her being so much higher than he fences and shrubs and hedges, she could be spotted from farther away so I told him to do the above, the next season she was no taller than my Afghan girl, but branches going all over the place, about 3 or 4 meters in all directions. I jokingly called her *****`s "field of one" cause I knew guerilla growers with fields of 20-30 plants that weren't any larger! So have fun and let your Afghani girl submit to your will. If an Afghani won't go for the bend, no strain will! Let her groove to Bob Marley`s old tune "Bend Down Low" let me tell you what I know... peace bro

[Ganjasattva]

Hey Rinse,

I was quite surprised to hear about your poor results with Afghan outdoors compared to sativas and that at 53N... I suspect that that is more of a soil pH our too or too little of something because those strains are soooo hardy but usually the soils aren't necessarily rich. And Sativas are so light hungry... doesn't seem to fit. If you look where Indicas are indigenous, you'll see what I mean, many places far too inhospitible for tropical sativas, so I really suspect, if it just wasn't maybe a bad or old batch of seeds, I feel sure it must have been a soil issue. After all, it was the introduction of the Indica phenos that not only made the indoor cultivation boom but the outdoor guerilla scene as well. You migh t want to try taking two or three different brands of Afghan or indica and plant them together at different sites and then see what works. All my old friends doing outdoors years ago, sought out and prepared their sites the fall and spring before planting paying great attention to pH. We've all heard the story, "Our forests are sick due to acid rain..."
Wish you success next time around!

[Rinse]

Hi Ganjasattva, thanks for the info, defo worth looking into.
As for the grow, it may well have been the soil, alot of pine trees and ferns around the area, not sure if that means the soil is acid or just too low in nutrients, I did feed them compost tea though.

Also I should've mentioned the sativas were not the tropical type, but northern bred stuff like leb27 x African.

Sativa's take longer but are more mould resistant, and some of them are low light tolerant (Himalayan sats seem to be)

[Rinse]

I took a look at ace's/gypsy's Mazar and there's too many mixed reports...I have a few RSC Mazar gonna give it a go and keep them in pots for height restriction, I may top as last resort but it kind of spoils the look whenn a plant is topped , my human need for symmetrical perfection Im sure.

[namkha]

Rinse, on 23 May 2012 - 06:47 PM, said:

I took a look at ace's/gypsy's Mazar and there's too many mixed reports...

which Mazar is this?

is that the one that is said to have been brought back from Afghanistan by a British solider?

have ACE started doing some breeding work on it?

[Ganjasattva]

namkha, on 24 May 2012 - 11:43 AM, said:

Rinse, on 23 May 2012 - 06:47 PM, said:

I took a look at ace's/gypsy's Mazar and there's too many mixed reports...

which Mazar is this?

is that the one that is said to have been brought back from Afghanistan by a British solider?

have ACE started doing some breeding work on it?

Hey Namkha! The one description I am sure of that states acquired from Afghanistan by a British soldier is the Mazar Afghani from Dutchbreed.
Here is their description:
"Mazar Afgani > description > Our Mazar Afghani comes from stock sent to us from a friend in the military while serving in north Afghanistan near the Mazar I Sherif region. We have inbred selected offspring in order to stabilize a variation in plant height. Mazar Afghani is medium height plant with heavy side branching."

I don 't want to engage in any major advertising for others since I am such a convinced and enthusiastic fan of your work to make the authentic strains available for us. But I have communicated with the folks at Dutchbreed and feel that their level of customer service is comparable to yours at the RSC. However, they are in a totally different segment of the market, most of their strains are hybrids, albeit most make more sense to me than many others do. The Mazar of theirs is an exception to their hybrid products as they say worked on only in that a phenotype of shorter height had been observed, isolated and reproduced.
As your Mazar-i-Sharif was already sold out then, I ordered 10 from Dutchbreed and continued to search the market for any rest of stock of your Mazar-i-Sharif. There is apparently some still in circulation here and there, but since you were so kind and supportive to include 12 of the Mazar as freebies (which were a wonderful surprise, Thank You!) in one of my orders, I now have both. My plan is this, to use your authentic Mazar-i-Sharif "Indica Giant" as the base stock and cross it with the shorter pheno from Dutchbreed, if this one should in fact appear to have the quality and characteristics of a true Afghani. Then I would inspect the F1 offspring and look for any showing shorter, stockier growth and cross those back with your Mazar-i-Sharif to try and reduce the height somewhat. Then I think I will take a look at the f2's and probably cross any shorter ones with the Mazar Afghani from Dutchbreed again, then finally cross that offspring back to the shorter F1's which should give a good amount of shorter growth and still a good portion of genetic diversity within the Mazar family.

I too noticed the Mazar on the new Website from ACE but have not inquired into it any further as yet. There is no mention of their strain having been worked as they state that the seeds come directly from Mazari growers. Since I have your excellent stock to work with and that from Dutchbreed, I don't really need any. The other consideration I had is that ACE has been more or less specialized in Sativas and Sativa-dominant hybrids. Being from Spain and obviously Spanish-speaking, ACE along with CannaBiogen, seem to have an advantage in the Latin American regions, as they have the most strains from those regions of origin of any other Seedbanks to my knowledge. So as equatorial Sativa Specialists, they are not the obvious first place I would look to find an exceptional, authentic Indica.

Despite all the wonderful characteristics of some of the strains from Central and South America that they offer, (many of which I am familiar with from the old days) I still feel absolutely certain, that for our growing purposes in northern Europe, the Himalayan strains you offer are the superior Sativas due to their greater resilience against cold and rain as well as their adaptation to a somewhat longer light cycle, which the tropical/equatorial Sativas of Central America cannot handle as well.

[Rinse]

namkha, on 24 May 2012 - 11:43 AM, said:

Rinse, on 23 May 2012 - 06:47 PM, said:

I took a look at ace's/gypsy's Mazar and there's too many mixed reports...

which Mazar is this?

is that the one that is said to have been brought back from Afghanistan by a British solider?

have ACE started doing some breeding work on it?

Yeah its gypsy's one, from what I gather Ace is selling it after they tested the strain and got good results, but unsure whether they inbred the strain or if they're selling the gypsy stock, most likely the latter.

[Bad Penny.]

Quote

Seeing Pics of fields in Afghanistan though, they all look massive

Your right about reeferman,I have grown his triple afghan slam in the past and they did ok.Seen plants in afghan that were small and spindly,also seen them huge and bushy,I used to grow them here in the UK and some of them take off.

[Rinse]

Bad Penny., on 26 May 2012 - 06:05 AM, said:

Quote

Seeing Pics of fields in Afghanistan though, they all look massive

Your right about reeferman,I have grown his triple afghan slam in the past and they did ok.Seen plants in afghan that were small and spindly,also seen them huge and bushy,I used to grow them here in the UK and some of them take off.

Awesome, there is no denying reef had some top quality afghans, and fully outdoor hardened.
I believe the Double Afghan slam (Das) was Petrolia headstash x Afghan ibl,
and the TAS was DAS X Kabul Afghan.

I miss my Das, luckily I have some seeds in the form of a cross which is das x pakistan.

This post has been edited by Rinse: 26 May 2012 - 01:49 PM

[Artificial Emotion]

Some of the phenotypes of Mazar-I-Sharif are relatively short, like this one.

[Rinse]

Nice, fingers crossed I get those pheno's,
did you harvest her yet?