SJ x (BK x CW) Vegetative Phase

For the retail reviews I write, it’s easy to find an hour to sit down, use some cannabis, and write about it. For me, it’s a fun little exercise; very non-committal, and I feel lucky that people take the time to read them.

For the plants I grow, writing about it is much more difficult. Mostly due to timeline and the workload; capturing a 30 minute review requires much less work than capturing a 3 month grow. Plus, it always goes off the rails somewhere. But I figure I can break the work up to get it done. 

This post outlines the background and initial vegetative stage for an F1 cross. The text covers all relevant details so far, or you can read the bold text and headers to hit the high points of the post. 

Background Info

I like to seed my grow; just as a hobby, although I do aspire to make a contribution to the market at some point. 

If a good male appears in the set of regular seeds I’m running, I’ll isolate him. Once I have the guy, I start to pull together other females I think might work with him. Usually I have one or two specific females in mind, but if I have the room, I’ll pollenate anything I think is halfway interesting, just as a by-the-way.

Even though the mother of this cross was a late addition, the plant is still interesting, I’d say because it’s a limited edition, collaborative cross of two fairly popular offerings.

Cannaventure Cookie Wreck

In 2017 Karma Genetics released an offering to their limited edition line, through a collaboration with Cannaventure Seeds. Once of Cannaventure’s more popular offerings is called CookieWreck (CW). You might be able to guess, it’s a Forum Cut Cookie with the Arcata Trainwreck.

Karma Biker Kush

Karma selected a CookieWreck that formed buds in a shape of a spear, crossed it to their Biker Kush (BK), and those seeds became the limited edition Cookie Wreck x Biker Kush; there was no retail name given.

Karma CookieWreck x Biker

I ran the pack of CookieWreck x Biker Kush and settled on one female to keep around. This female is actually quite fussy, especially in sun & soil where she grows smaller, with many nodes. She becomes difficult to handle during flower, the weight she packs on is larger than her structure can bear. I’ve run her in hydro too, where she tends to be larger in size; bigger leaves, longer nodes.

Her olfaction is why I keep her. She’s a floral OG, with citrus and petrol. I’d say her character interprets like a garrote; taught and cutting. The floral notes are the base of the profile, but they’re stacked, at the thin edge, like razors. The OG/petrol notes seem to hang outside, giving it more reach. I’d call flavours somewhat feminine, and savage. I’ve grown to like it quite a lot, so she stays around.

In House Silky Johnson F2

In 2019, In House Genetics releases an F2 of Silky Johnson, which appears to me as one of their lesser known offerings. I’d tell you it’s special for the inclusion of popular (Gage Green’s Grateful Breath and DNA’s Skywalker OG), and lesser known parents (Secret Weapon, which is a Cheese Quake, White Widow cross).

I grow in DWC hydro, with two inch net pots. From time to time, a plant will grow so quickly, that it will surpass the containment of the net pot, blowing it open. This is how this particular Silky Johnson became the male parent, it grew better than any other plant at the time, and was male. I had good experience with Silky previously so I was like ‘hey, why not?’

I started stacking plants around the Silky male, one of them was my keeper of Karma’s CookieWreck x Biker Kush.

I flowered the tent. Nature happened. And now I have a seeds from different mothers, fathered by the same Silky Johnson.

SJ x (BK x CW)

Ideally, we’d run all the seeds this cross produced, and make diligent observations to find the best plant. Then we say “aha, we’ve found it”, and we’d name it something catchy, after doing a bunch more work, not fully described by this sentence.

Instead, I running a small group of these seeds, just to see what comes out of this sample. If it’s something really attractive, I can spend more time on it later. If not, I’ll just have a clean fish tank.

Aquaponic Setup

You’re looking at the meet and greet here. Cheap and cheerful; free Kijiji fish tank, $12 Green Terror fish,  $15 rubbermaid container, $5 for plumbing, $10 of lava rocks, $40 air pump with a $20 bio filter ($102 total, not including light).

I ran about 10 SJ x (BK x CW) seeds. These are the runts of the bunch, the seeds that looked a bit iffy. Some germinated, some didn’t. Most that germinated made it to seedling stage.

At the seedling stage, I modified a bio-filtration setup in a 35 gallon fish tank to output into the lava rocks I have placed in a rubbermaid container. The seedlings are in peat pellets, soaking up the output from the bio filter. The runoff water drains back into the tank via gravity.

In this system, the bacteria in the bio-filter live off the fish waste, the plants live off the by-products from the bacteria, and the plants clean the water for the fish. I buy expensive fish food from Amazon to feed the fish without changing the water quality. This process should yield some cannabis, and make everyone involved happy. Namely: millions of bacteria, the plants (ladies only), the fish (named Jude), Jeff Bezos and finally; me.

The intent here is to see what these things can do. I’m going to grow them, cull the males and grow them some more. Once I have a good bush going, I’ll flip the light cycle and see what’s doing with this cross.

Problems

There’s going to be problems, we have a few already.

Initially, I had the peat pellets in a row, in the trail of water outputted from the bio filter. Some seedlings formed roots faster than others. I’d move them to a permanent location in the bin, and they’d shock for a few days before resuming growth. Due to this, some plants are further along than others. I’ve topped some, which should spread them out. I just hope they’re not male, otherwise I’ll lose coverage and will have to react with training.

I’m keeping the light as low as possible. The more mature plants are reacting to the heat, curling up at the leaves. I’m keeping the light low, hoping the shocked plants will catch up before it becomes too much of an issue. I’d like to create even height, as much as possible. So I’d rather bake the keener plants, thinking I’ll cut them back to match the ones still getting over the shock.

Drainage will be a growing concern. The input rate from the bio filter is low. For every input, I have 3 drain outputs of the same diameter. The root system from the plants will find their way to these drains and will clog them. Apart from monitoring flow (visually) and weight of the container, I’ll mitigate these problems by changing to flowering period before the plants grow large. Otherwise, I’ll clear the lava rock and trim the roots, putting up with the resulting shock to the plant. If all else fails, I can remove the bin from the bio filter output, place it over a Home Depot bucket full of water, and use a small pump to keep the roots moist.

Next Steps

I’m going to create uniform height for the plants. This means growing the short ones, and training the tall ones. 

Thinking I’ll be back with you for the sexy stuff; when I can start to determine which ones are male, and which ones will live.

Thanks for reading this journal!