My 2024 Seed Run: A Progress Report

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share an update on a project I embarked on back in 2024. This was a particular breeding effort focused on preserving some of the older, perhaps less common (or no longer in stock), seed strains that I've had stored in less-than-ideal conditions, specifically from purchases made around the 2018 timeframe. 

2024 Season Strains:
AK x WW
Jelly Pie (Grape Pie x Stardawg - GreenPointSeeds)
Dream Catcher (Blue Dream x Stardawg - GreenPointSeeds)
Sky Dweller (Skywalker OG Kush x Stardawg - GreenPointSeeds)
Butch Cassidy (Girlscout cookies x Trainwreck x Chem 4 x Chem D - GreenPointSeeds)

These seeds endured extreme temperatures during storage, so getting them to germinate was certainly a challenge. I've recently had a chance to check on their progress, and I wanted to share what I found.

You can see the initial results in a short video I put together, which is linked here:

In the video, you'll see three newly emerged seedlings. After the work put into that 2024 seed run, seeing these young plants begin to grow is a welcome sight and suggests that the project has achieved some success in terms of germination. 

For those interested in the intricacies of cannabis genetics, this kind of work is quite significant. The goal of this particular project was to ensure the continuation of certain genetic lines as best as can be done. I wouldn't go so far as to make claims about these strains possessing unique chacteristics, like a specific terpene profile, a particular growth habit, or a distinctive effect. These were just strains that we liked and didn't want to lose them to age. 

Undertaking a breeding project of this nature involves considerable time and careful planning. But in actuality it really just came down to luck. Luck with which plants grew, and luck with which plants became male and female. This was especially true given the condition of these older seeds. From selecting the parent plants to managing environmental conditions for pollination and seed development, each stage requires attention. Then comes the period of waiting to see if the seeds will germinate. So, observing these seedlings successfully emerge, particularly from seeds that faced such challenges, is a positive step in the process.

We're backlogged on posting anything about the 2024 season and the seed preservation run, but this is at least a little update to note our excitement seeing the seedlings.

And to everyone cultivating this season: I wish you all successful growing in 2025.

I'd be interested to hear any thoughts you have on the video or the topic of genetic preservation in the comments.

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Happy Growing!!!

MM's

2018 Outdoor Cannabis Grow Harvesting Day

2018 Outdoor Cannabis Grow
Week: Forget the week...Today we are harvesting
Strain: Super Silver Haze

Last plant to be chopped down. Wanted to put together a quick video to pay homage to all three of them. It was quite the journey this summer and fall. That actually started way way back in early winter of 2018. When all three of these plants were selected from a cloning rig. They were the lucky ladies out of a group of ten cuttings.

All three of these plants had a slow start because of the cold temps through the spring and summer. But all of them took off once the temperatures started remaining above 70 degrees. And turned into giants that just didn't want to flip into flower mode.

They didn't need a lot of care and support during the vegetative stage. SSH strain grew tall during this stage and the stems were plenty thick to support them reaching heights of 13 feet. It didn't hurt that the summer saw very few high wind occurrences.

During this period we didn't need to provide them with any nutrients. Our soil was pre-mixed store bought 55 cubic liters and we then mixed it up with coco coir that was left over from our indoor grow.

We felt this was needed to help stimulate the root growth and allow oxygen to get and the excess water to flow out of the medium without pooling.

Although it was fun, it wasn't all happiness and orange sunshine. 

We learned pretty early into August that these ladies were going to need either a meteorological miracle where weather remained mild and dry through October and maybe into November. Other option would be to physically manipulate the plants light cycle.

Unfortunately due to the heights of these plants any kind of tent or cover was going to be impossible for us.

So we were left with the natural option and had a wild ride watching the weather get progressively worse over the next 2.5 months. September went by without any major issues, and for the most part October's temperature didn't drop too much. But the constant humidity in the fall months was severely damaging to the bud development.

Some weeks the temperature was hovering in the 60's but it was either raining all day and on the off days the humidity was still >75%. That promoted a bud rot to form on all of our plants. And try and we might to remove the diseased sections, it wasn't always successful.

Given our experience with just three outdoor plants. We gained a new respect for any groups that professionally run farms out in the other legal states.

We also didn't use any pesticides this year. Another factor that promoted bud rot was the caterpillars we didn't realize were in our buds until harvest time.

Yeah Bub. I'm talking to you and all your friends. Next year it's on, like Donkey Kong.

Fun fact as we were trimming the leaves off the buds. This one caterpillar had an aphid riding on it's back. The aphid is just out of focus in the back but you can see it's body outline.

So this may sound like the grow was a total loss, but that's not true. We had pests, rot and harvested all three of the plants well before full bud development. And all of these facts are not ideal.

But we did learn a lot, and now know true sativa strains like SSH will need help converting over to flowering to make go full term before the season ends in New England.

And we have a lot of bud to work into oils, concentrates and edibles.

I have to say we are still perfecting our skills at the Ice Water Hash Bubble Bags. Our first run was good, but all other runs have not yielded anything great.

Here is a photo of some scissor trimming and finger hash formed into a little ball. Although it's small this was the first time i've been able to get nearly all of it all my fingers. Usually I would just scrub that stuff off and accept the loss. Again just another example of the small victories from this grow season.

This shot is really poorly focused and I don't have the caterpillars in the shot. But I took the photo because they would slowly start climbing the bag, even reaching the top after a little while. 

Kind of felt like I was playing a caterpillar version of Tempest. Where I would need to knock them back down to the bottom or they would escape into the house and I'd be in trouble.

We have a ton of the pre-developed popcorn buds. If you can call them that. :(

Now all we have outside is around 100 gallons of soil and stems and roots which will be composted and spread around the gardens. Lots of experience gained this year, and a new approach to the 2019 grow season.

So that's where I left those pink flamingos... 

Thanks for reading, please leave a comment or check us out at:

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Happy Growing!!!

MM's

2018 Outdoor Cannabis Grow - Week 11 of Flowering

2018 Outdoor Cannabis Grow
Week: 11 of Flowering
Strain: Super Silver Haze

Well we did it! We were able to get one of the three Super Silver Haze plants to get nearly through the flowering stage. There were a lot of doubters out there. And a couple of times it really looked doubtful that these plants were could go the distance. But hey to poorly paraphrase MeatLoaf, "1 out of 3 ain't bad". And that's basically how we feel. 👏🙏

So we are seeing that this plant ended up having the slowest development during the flowering stage. It also had the least bud rot. Which could have been due to the fact that it was the farthest away from other plants and bushes.

The top colas were looking pretty ripe. And with the incoming weather bringing frost warnings and rain it seemed like a good time to harvest.

As you can see below even some of the top colas weren't fully ready for harvest. Oh well. There is always next year. And we'll have plenty of product from this season to convert into hash and canna-coconut oil for edibles.

We're definitely going to be testing our baking abilities this holiday season. 🍪🍫🍬

So of the plant really started showing a lot of purples.

According to WikiLeaf and other sources on the interwebs. Purple is unfortunately not indicative of a higher potency. But this could be due to genetics or the environment was optimal.

In our case it was almost certainly environmental. By that we mean the plants were allowed to flower in cold temperatures below 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Under these conditions the chlorophyll in the leaves started to break down and another compound called, anthocyanin starts showing through as the concentration overtakes that of the chlorophyll. As you can guess this compounds color is purple.

The purple buds also stood out with these thick orange pistils (see below). The buds were ultimately not ripe and were not as filled out as we would have liked them to be by week 11. It was probably due to the cold, rain and end of the growing season weak sunshine.

We are very excited to try out these purple buds though. Our indoor grows haven't yielded any of these so this is a first.

From our research Super Silver Haze lineage is primed for purple buds. Northern Lights is a strain known to contain large amounts of anthocyanin.

Anyways this was a fun run. After this post we're transitioning into harvesting posts / videos. And then edible creations.

If you have any suggestions for edibles we would love to hear them and get any special recipes.

Thanks for reading, please leave a comment or check us out at:

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Happy Growing!!!

MM's

2018 Outdoor Cannabis Grow - Week 9.5 of Flowering

2018 Outdoor Cannabis Grow
Week: 9 and 1/2 of Flowering
Strain: Super Silver Haze

Week 9 and 1/2 and we are cutting down the second plant. Unfortunately it is also immature, but the harvest was required to prevent the spread of bud rot. And the weather in New England was supposed to be cold and wet for the majority of the next 10 days.

Looking at the plants using a jeweler's loupe we saw that the plant had a pretty decent presence of amber trichomes. Not enough to really warrant harvesting at this time, but a higher concentration than the first harvested plant.

Some of the buds still had a lot of white pistils on them. As you can see in the photo below.

Some thoughts after growing Super Silver Haze outdoors in New England.

1. Train and top the plants 

We didn't do this and they grew to be between 10-13 feet in some places. That was fun but it made them hard to manage. Had we topped and trained them over the course of the summer. The heights would have been managed better, and we could have better addressed other issues as they developed.

2. Provide support for the plants as the buds developed

Here in New England as the season changes from summer to fall the area gets a lot of wind and heavy rain. Both of which did a number of the tall top heavy sativa plants. By not providing them with proper supports, most of the plants had branches and stems that snapped and died.

3. Manipulate the light cycle

We allowed the plants to enter the flowering cycle naturally. This was by far our biggest mistake of the outdoor season. Had we forced the plants into flowering one month earlier, they would likely have reached their full potential in the flowering cycle.

4. Pesticides during the vegetative cycle

We didn't use any pest control methods this season. As a result the plants were attacked by caterpillars. These were in the buds as they were harvested and dried. Doing some general research on this subject, we could have found a number of safe options that would have helped the end product.

Thanks for reading, please leave a comment or check us out at:

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Happy Growing!!!

MM's

2018 Outdoor Cannabis Grow - Week 9 of Flowering

2018 Outdoor Cannabis Grow
Week 9 of Flowering
Strain: Super Silver Haze

The Super Silver Haze strain is a 100% true sativa plant, and in our opinion they have truly thrived here in the New England climate. Today is chopping day for one of the three plants. It is farthest into the flowering stage, and also is getting hit the hardest with infection.

Although these plants have been very resilient to the cool climate here in New England (lows in the high 30's), they were susceptible to both mold and pests. And that has pushed up the harvesting timeline.

But that was not exactly their fault. We decided not to use pesticides, and did not provide them with any covering during the wetter weeks between September and October. It is very possible that these plants would not have had these issues if we tended to them differently.

Ultimately this was an experiment to see how well the strain could grow here in New England. And we provided them with minimal assistance. Other than the nutrients in the pre-mix store bought soil, we fed them nothing during the entire vegetative stage. And then offered only a handful of feedings during the early-middle flowering period.

In our opinion this strain did very well, and grew tall and healthy. And probably could have gone another couple weeks if the rot and pests weren't a factor. And that is without a covering.

All of the flower and sugar leaf from the plant being chopped today will be converted into concentrates which will be used for edibles. The plant matter will be bagged and frozen fresh. From what we have read, drying can remove some of the Terpene flavor profile from the concentrates if plant matter is allowed to dry.

That will be another video down the road.

Thanks for reading, please leave a comment or check us out at:

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Happy Growing!!!

MM's

2018 Outdoor Cannabis Grow - Week 8 of Flowering

It's mid-October and the plants are doing okay.

Bud sites are starting to really fill in which is great. But we've also seen a fair occurrence of bud rod on one of the plants.

Having come from mainly running indoor grows, we have been trying to manage these new challenges as they develop. Which is obviously not ideal, but it's sort of all we could do.

We have been very lucky with the temperature. But the excessive moisture really hurt our plants.

Here are some bud shots at week 8. They are clearly not ready to be harvested. But we are racing against factors that we cannot control. So harvest is likely coming in the next week or two.

Even the lower bud sites have started to show amber colored trichomes and red pistils.

This photo was used for our youtube video. One of the better buds on the most eastern facing plant. It's been hit hardest by the bud rot.

Under a jeweler's loupe we are seeing a mix of clear, cloudy (white) and even amber trichomes.

We've noticed that the pistils and trichomes are in different stages based on where the plants are positioned. They sit in a row with one plant facing the east, one being in the middle, and the last plant facing the west.

The most western plant is the least ripe, with majority of pistils being white and the trichomes largely still having that clear look.

The most eastern plant is the most ripe, with about 40-50% of the pistils having turned red, and the trichomes being majority cloudy, followed by clear, and less so amber.

Here is an example of the bud rot. Such a shame that we couldn't control or prevent it from happening this year... 👎

It has been a really fun ride, watching these plants go from being cuttings, to foot tall transplants, to 12-13 foot giants.

And we arrived to this point with minimal feeding and training.


Thanks for reading, please leave a comment or check us out at:

YouTube <--- please subscribe to our channel!!!

Happy Growing!!!

MM's