Black Venus's secret garden 2022

[Openairbud]

Welcome back Black Venus! I'm enjoying your diary so far, some interesting bits growing this year. Your Redsticks sounds very cool. Here's hoping for some sun now, all the best 

[Black Venus]

Thank you for your nice comment @Openairbud, it's much appreciated. 

[Black Venus]

I made Red Sticks by pollinating a Black Cream auto with some jizz from my unknown inbred sativa thing. But it wasn't just the Black Cream I pollinated – I had a few Sweet Seeds autos on the go at the time, and pollinated all of them. I've never bothered growing any of the others out, but given how well the Black Cream cross turned out, I'm curious to see what the others might be like.

 

The best of the autos was Cream Mandarine. I have a small number of seeds from this cross – Cream Mandarine x unknown sativa IBL.

 

Here they are, photographed a couple of weeks ago when they first germinated. I'm only growing three, because of the constraints on space. Should be enough to show me what they're like.

 

 

These siblings of Red Sticks have been given the working name of Mandy Sticks. 

[Ccs141]

Nice man hope they produce the goods 

[Black Venus]

Thank you @Ccs141, it's always a lot of fun to grow them out and see what you end up with.

[Black Venus]

Aaaaaand it's that time of year again, when I start grovelling about with a magnifying glass trying to inspect plant genitalia. The neighbours already think I'm nuts so that's OK.

 

I know a lot of people are put off growing regular seeds because they find it a pain in the arse having to sex them. But I actually really love it – it's one of my favourite annual rituals. It's the mystery and suspense, not knowing whether the plants are boys or girls ... and the fun of trying to work them out really early when there's barely anything to look at, and feeling smug when you get it right. I love sexing plants!

 

The time to start looking for fannies and balls is around the fifth node (that's true-leaf nodes ... the cotyledons don't count). That generally translates to the plants being four, five or six weeks old, and still in relatively small pots – so you see it isn't that much hassle to grow regs, because you can find the males before they need to be planted out in their final positions.

 

Here's one of the Red Sticks plants at 4 weeks old, already showing some of the beautiful sativa structure which I love so much. As this is a semi-auto variety it starts showing sex quite early on. I've had a look at the two largest plants and they're definitely both girls. Within the last couple of days they've developed a fine set of lady bits. It started with just the calyx, but then some long white pistils appeared overnight. I'm pleased to have two girls, but I'm really hoping the third plant will turn out to be a boy now, otherwise I won't be doing much pollinating. Plant number three is a bit smaller because it got off to a runty start, so it's not ready to show sex yet. 

 

 

 

Here (below) is one of my Celia bx1 seedlings, which don't really have preflowers yet, but on the largest one I can see the teeniest tiniest hint of what looks like it might become a bollock.

 

This particular plant is a bit taller with longer nodes than the others, which is also an indication that it might be male. I should know for sure within a few more days. I have four Celia seedlings so I'm hoping for a mix of girls and boys.

 

[Black Venus]

There have been some changes afoot in the garden over the last week. I thought I was all sorted with this year’s garden planning, but the universe had other ideas!

 

I have been growing seven or eight young feminised plants in my greenhouse which I was about to plant out into the garden – mostly outdoor varieties from Real Gorilla, which I’d chosen because they’re reliable jar-fillers. Then a fellow outdoor-grower friend of mine had a bit of a disaster. She doesn’t currently have an account at UK420 so for the purposes of this diary we’ll call her Guerilla Granny. We’ve been friends for a very long time; it was Guerilla Granny who gave me my first joint a quarter of a century ago, and kicked off my whole lifelong obsession with these amazing plants. She’s been growing weed since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, and she was also the one who gave me the sativa bagseed line which we both grew for years and which has now become the pollen parent of Red Sticks and Mandy Sticks. Anyway, Guerilla Granny had a gardening calamity recently and lost about two thirds of her seedlings. I decided to give her the plants in my greenhouse (the fems, that is, not the breeding projects or the Celias and Smiles), and start my own grow again from scratch.

 

I actually see this as a win-win for both of us. The robust, reliable Real Gorilla varieties will now grow in Granny's Garden, where they should do very well and provide enough bud that I can still have samples from all of them, which will keep me happy. And it frees up the space in my garden for my own breeding projects and for some of the slightly more marginal and experimental varieties, like these beauties from Ace Seeds.

 

 

I had thought that I wouldn’t get a chance to grow my collection of Ace varieties until next year, so I’m delighted to have had an excuse to get them into the dirt. I haven’t found that much info about growing Ace varieties outdoors in the UK, so somebody needs to do a diary on them. They include two varieties bred by Vermontman of Green Mountain Seeds in the US and distributed by Ace. I’m very excited about these because they’re sativas with rare genetics and are especially bred for northerly climates. As they’ve only recently been made available in Europe there isn’t much info about them yet. I reckon most of these seeds will do fine in my sheltered Lat 51 garden, but there’s only one way to find out. Even if any of them do go tits up, it will be a useful learning experience for me and for anyone else reading this. But I have confidence and hope! Pooling resources with Guerilla Granny should ensure we both get as much weed as we need, so I can afford to be a bit more experimental.

 

So: first things first. I did a few delivery runs to get all the plants to Granny’s Garden. The challenge was to carry them, three at a time, nearly a mile through a built-up area in broad daylight without having a trail of hippies and police officers following me up the road. I didn’t have a carrier bag big enough so I covered the tops over with a sheet of tissue paper held on with clothes pegs. They still stank so I squirted myself with some exotic perfume as a distraction. In the event nobody I passed in the street took a blind bit of notice – everyone’s too wrapped up in their own life to care about what’s in my bag.

 

Having got the plants to their new home, we potted them up in big ornamental pots. See photos below. Fuck knows how many litres are in there but they’re plenty big enough. Some went into smaller fabric pots as well. It’s going to be a beautiful garden when this lot get going.

 

    

 

I’ll keep writing up the progress of all the plants, the ones in my garden and in Granny’s Garden.

[Black Venus]

Everything is now sorted for this year's grow, and I've finally finished popping more seeds (honest ) so here's a stock-take of what I've got going on.

 

Celia bx1

Smile F2 (from long-ago subbies)

No Name x No Name (from subbies)

 

My own breeding lines:

Red Sticks F1

Mandy Sticks F1

 

Some ACE varieties:

Panama

Nepal Jam

Snow Moon

Thai Chi

Green Mountain Grape

Purple Satellite

 

And some other fems:

Lemon Drizzle (Real Gorilla)

Blueberry (Dutch Passion)

Jamaican Dream (Eva Seeds)

 

There's also a few autos, but I'll deal with those separately.

 

These are the most recent ones to be added. I had some difficulty sourcing Jamaican Dream because it seems sold out everywhere, and I really wanted to try it as it seems to be a good outdoor sativa. In the end I ordered some from Spain (where Eva Seeds is based) and it got here without any problems.

 

 

 

Anyone whose bought seeds from ACE will know that you get 6 seeds in a 5-pack, and 12 seeds in a 10-pack. It's not a promotional +1 thing, it's a policy of good karma which is one of the things which makes ACE stand out from the crowd. Their ethos regarding biodiversity is very dear to my heart as well.

 

Panama and Thai Chi are somewhat marginal in my climate, but it's always worth giving things a go. It comes down to the luck of the weather as much as anything else. I do want to try the Thai Chi because it's supposed to have an introspective high which is good for meditation, and that's one of the things I use weed for. It's a hybrid of Kali China with a Thai sativa, and only available as feminised seed. Snow Moon is a limited edition cross between Orient Express and Pakistan Chitral Kush – it's mostly indica but should have a pleasantly relaxing high rather than a couchlock type thing, which is not really my cup of tea. This one was previously available as fems or regs, but I was only able to get hold of fems.

 

Purple Satellite and Green Mountain Grape are sativas bred specially for northern latitudes by Vermontman, and distributed by ACE. I've read up a fair bit about these on A.N.Other growers' forum which I'm not a member of, and they look brilliant – full of colour and fruity terpenes, mould resistant and fast flowering, and reportedly an exceptionally nice high. Vermontman is a really nice guy who has lovingly bred these varieties from some unique genetics and is openly sharing a lot of information about them. He saved seeds from some exceptional Mexican weed in 1978 and has used this as the basis for all his breeding work. I'm very excited about trying these and seeing how well they enjoy the glorious UK climate.

 

100% germination from all the ACE gear. 

 

 

The Smile F2 seedlings which I had so much trouble germinating are still looking a bit scruffy and odd, but they are growing well enough so I think they will sort themselves out. They had twisted and distorted leaves when they first germinated, which seems to be a fairly common thing with older seeds. The more recent growth has righted itself and they look a lot more normal now, apart from being ridiculously compact – they have nodes just sitting one on top of the other with barely any stem in between! I just potted them up into some good compost so hopefully they will take off soon.

 

Smile F2

 

Last and definitely not least, the Celia bx1. I sowed two lots of two seeds, so there are four altogether, and the oldest two are just starting to show preflowers. One, as I already said, appears to be a bloke. The other one has been teasing me a bit more. It produced just one preflower of an indeterminate shape. Then I saw what I thought was a pair of pistils sticking out the top, so I got all excited about that. But on today's inspection I'm not so sure, I think the long green hairs I can see might not be pistils after all but an exceptionally tufty bollock. So the jury's still out on that one and it may well be that I've got two blokes. I bloody hope one of the other two will turn out to be a girl, otherwise there may be some last-minute panic seed-popping. 

 

Celia bx1, at 5 weeks

[Black Venus]

Now then, an update on the autos. They're around six weeks old now and starting to go into bloom. This one is Auto Gelato from Real Gorilla.

 

 

We did have a bit of an accident though at the weekend. I've been in the habit of putting the autos outside in the garden during the day to get some extra sun, and then back into the greenhouse at night. One of them, an Auto Lemon Kix from Dutch Passion, got blown over and the stem snapped at 90°. It was my own fault as I hadn't bothered to stake them and the wind was obviously blowing a bit harder than I realised!

 

However, cannabis is fucking amazing stuff. I took the stricken plant back into the greenhouse, shoved a bamboo stake in there and tied it back up in an upright position. As far as I can see, it's making a full recovery and just carrying on as if nothing had happened.

 

Fuck

 

Tied it up to a bamboo stick to hold it upright, and 48 hours later it looks as good as new!

   

[Black Venus]

A few pics of the seedlings which I started off last month to replace the plants I gave to Guerrilla Granny. It's incredible how fast they grow at this time of year!

 

Snow Moon

  

 

 

Thai Chi – already looking quite sativa

 

 

Purple Satellite and Green Mountain Grape. Lots of purple pigment in the stems on these, apart from one Green Mountain Grape pheno which is all green.

 

 

Nepal Jam

 

 

No Name x No Name (subbies). These are showing signs of colour in the leaf petioles.

 

Panama. You may have noticed (or not) in the seed packs photo that I've got both regular and feminised versions of Panama. The idea was to mix and match, so instead of sowing three regular seeds and hope for a girl (as I have done with most of the others) I sowed two regs and a fem – to be sure of getting at least one girl. This one shown below is the fem. Incredibly vigorous (she's outgrown everything else from the same seed batch) she also has a slight but unmistakable red/pink blush in the petioles.

[Black Venus]

Red Sticks, my F1 breeding project, has hit a slight snag. All three of the seeds I popped have turned out to be girls. A good thing for filling the jars, but not such a good thing for making F2s (I don't really want to get into the business of reversing them). So if I want to make seeds I'll have to cross them with something else. The obvious thing would be Mandy Sticks, a sister project using much of the same genetics. The aim after all is really just to preserve the genetics of the unknown inbred sativa line which is the father of both of them, as it may not still exist anywhere else (it was a locally-saved bagseed line which I and a couple of others used to grow 20 years ago). But would you believe it, the first two Mandy Sticks plants to show sex have also come out as girls! That just leaves one unsexed plant, but that one is a bit of a runt which has been slowed right down by mutant leaf growth, so not the most promising prospect for a breeding project even if it does end up being a boy (which it may not).

 

The good news is that ALL of the offspring of both Red and Mandy lines are leaning very strongly towards their paternal heritage, the unknown sativa. The Mandy Sticks in particular are the spitting image of their dad, with very fine narrow sativa lobes. Selecting phenos which lean towards the dad is certainly not going to be difficult! What I will do if there's no male in this generation I'm not sure; I might cross them with something else or I might just use this year's grow to observe and study, and try again next year to make some F2s.

 

Both the Red and Mandy lines are semi-autoflowering and were starting to bloom while rootbound in their pots so I thought I'd better get them out into the ground. Here's the biggest and best of the Red Sticks girls, before and after being planted out into the spud patch. She is just starting to develop the scarlet petioles which were the reason she got her name!

 

  

 

The other really good Red Sticks girl I gave to Guerrilla Granny. I gave her some Red Sticks bud a couple of years ago and it was her favourite out of all the samples I gave her, so I thought she might as well have a whole plant this time! They make quite big plants so I'm glad I don't have to find space for three of them.

 

Here's the Mandy Sticks, which is a little way behind Red Sticks in terms of growth, but also now planted out in to the spud patch so that I can grow them side by side with their half-sisters and compare them more easily. These have a consistent leaf shape on all three plants, and look just like the old sativa father line. They have dusky-coloured petioles as well, but not as red as Red Sticks.

 

 

Just to recap, Red Sticks is Black Cream x unknown inbred sativa and Mandy Sticks is Cream Mandarine auto x unknown inbred sativa. I've grown out Red Sticks before (and it was lovely) but this is the first growout of Mandy Sticks.

[CustardVape]

Great stuff @Black Venus. Really enjoying your diary and may the sunshine bless your garden 

[Black Venus]

@CustardVape Thank you most kindly. 

[ratdog]

wow, loads going on in here and all looking super healthy!

 

i bet your friend is very happy with your generosity

[mikeydoughnut]

Top read was that @Black Venus. Very rarely find myself in the outdoor section but glad I did. Didn’t want to drown you with likes so thought I’d pop a comment up instead.

Whole heartedly agree on the regs thing. I find it exciting too. Managed to sex a pack of blues using only 10cm pots, dunt have to be so much aggro really.
I’ll pop a follow on n try n keep up and watch those Ace seeds. Malawi regs keep a-winking at me. 
Beautiful stuff  

Edited July 11, 2022 by mikeydoughnut