First Grow, Panama Red!

Hello all! I just signed up and thought I would do a journal type of thing for my first grow! My old neighbor gave me some seeds from a 1965 strain of Panama Red. I started the germination proccess today with 8 of the seeds, after just a few hours some are beginning to pop out their roots. I will hopefully get them potted tomorrow. Once they start to sprout I will put them under light. I heard 18/6 cycle while they are growing and then switch to 12/12 when you want the plant to flower. I am hoping for no males, but if I do, oh well, out they go. I got a 400 watt hps light and hood, and I hope that will be good enough for both the growing and flowering, I know it emits too much on one side of the spectrum but I am broke now and can't get different lights for the different stages. Any tips are more than welcome and I will try to post pics once I get them planted and growing! Let's hope all goes well!

You should make some more seeds before you throw those males away.

make sure your enclosure is light proof and research LST training and super cropping before you start, its very worthwhile, especially if your grow height or space is confined aswell as to reduce stretch.

All of these things I have learnt in my first failure of a grow, once things go wrong its hard to reverse!

..just be patient
unless youve got the green thumb your first grow wont produce the weight or caliber buds you covet.

but dont let that detur you, take time to understand how the plant grows and what it responds well to,

advice i wish someone told me as a noobie:
over-watering kills
dont rush to flower
a good cure can make or break your buds
*and just have fun with it*

cannabis is an extremly vigorous plant, dont baby her
air-water-light is all it takes..


best of luck breddren!

Thanks for the replies! I am going to look up low stress training and super cropping after this post. Also going to try to get some seeds made so I have fresher ones that the 50+ year old seeds I have now. I also eventually want to cross the Panama Red with Green Dragon or blackberry kush.

One of the seeds started to pop today, I can see a little root starting to show. Makes me feel like a parent lol. I moved the 8 seeds that were in the paper towel to peat pellets, and diluted superthrive in some water, 1/8th teaspoon to the half gallon, and soaked the peats in that, then put the seeds in them. The mini green house is on top of my wall heater to get the heat it needs, and I check them frequently enough to make sure they are still moist.

Yes with a strain like panama red lst/supercropping are your best friend lol. Good luck should be some old skool fire

So i have been reading a bit on lst and super cropping. Are these two methods of increasing yield an either or type of thing, or can i do both at the same time? I was thinking that I would be able to crimp the stems a bit while I lst the plant down and around the perimeter of the pot, and when the new tops start to grow up, that I would be able to crimp the stems and FIM the tops. Is this something that would be viable? or would it just be too uch stress on the plant?

If you choose lst or super cropping you are going to have to commit to a longer veg time, but trust me its worth it. My first grow was soil and my final pot size was 5 gal.

Welcome to RIU Rings. Sorry but my BS detector went off when you posted the seeds were from 1965, and again when you said you had roots just a few hours later. Pix or it didn't happen. BTW, I hope you're right; that would be some great landrace genetics!

ranchos429 said:

You should make some more seeds before you throw those males away.

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I concur. If you can preserve a 1965 Panama Red strain, you have a moral obligation to do it and pass those seeds around. You have a treasure there, my friend.

I second the advice to allow the males to pollinate the females on your 1st run to obtain fresh seedstock. In future crops you can kill the males and grow a seedless crop.

It is not impossible that your seeds from 1965 will germinate, but just know that as time passes less and less of the seed will germinate, especially if they are not stored properly, so the smart thing to do is make new seed.

I would not selectively breed them, i would allow all the males that pop up pollinate all the females. You will end up with thousands of seeds, store these with dry rice in film canisters or mason jars and put them in the fridge. You will be able to keep the strain alive for years to come!

If the beans are REALLY Panama Red, not making seed would be criminal. Bobs right. you have a moral obligation to continue the genetics. Real Panama Red beans would be worth way more than thier weight in gold. I know for certain I'd be wanting some.

By the way, you will love a pure sativa smoke. It's very uplifting, energetic. You'll smoke and then do things, rather than lay around talking about how stoned you are.

We are smoking some homegrown sativa that is way short of mature (probably needs 4-6 more weeks...only 5-6 weeks into flowering right now) and we are loving it. The plants we're smoking went hermie and were removed to another location to continue growing for a bit. One of our household particularly likes it because it removes her depression. Better than all those nasty pills in my opinion.

I was told by my neighbor that they were from the 1965 strain of Panama red, I am sure I will find out when they start to grow, and the root was a day and a half after I started germinating and it was barely 2 millimeters out of the seed. I really hope the strain is what she said it is, it would be really cool to have a really old strain. Also, I kind of agree that I have an obligation to the smoking community to make seeds. will the seeds just be in the flowers? and will letting the males pollinate cause the females to be unsmokable?

rings said:

I was told by my neighbor that they were from the 1965 strain of Panama red, I am sure I will find out when they start to grow, and the root was a day and a half after I started germinating and it was barely 2 millimeters out of the seed. I really hope the strain is what she said it is, it would be really cool to have a really old strain. Also, I kind of agree that I have an obligation to the smoking community to make seeds. will the seeds just be in the flowers? and will letting the males pollinate cause the females to be unsmokable?

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The seeds will be produced in the female flowers. Making seeds will not make them unsmokeable, but when pollinated, the flowers will stop growing and make seeds instead.

I would recommend moving the males to a different location once they begin to flower. This will allow the females to continue putting on flowers. About a month before your anticipated harvest, collect pollen from the males (use several if possible to maintain the genetic diversity in the strain) and apply some to one flower head on each female plant. This will let all the other unpollinated flowers to continue growing into those beautiful colas we all love so much. You will get plenty of seeds and still have a harvest of sinsemilla.

So the seeds are not from 1965, they are 25 years old but they are panama red. Just an update. Glad they aren't as old as I had thought, makes me feel like I will have better luck germinating and growing. So the seeds are in some peat pellets, and in the mini green house box the pellets came in, I put a diluted solution of super thrive on them, and I was wondering if I should put them under the light now? they haven't sprouted but I figure that when they do they will already have light and they will take better that way.

So the seeds have yet to sprout up, they had been in a damp paper towel for a couple days, then I moved them to the peat pods carefully with with tweezers and put them under light and have been keeping the peats moist. Is it normal to not be seeing sprouts yet? Should I try again? or just keep waiting?

I personally think putting seeds into soil, leaving them almost on the surface, then watering that and keeping it constantly damp has more success than the paper towel method, but thats just me.

You can both supercrop and LST a young plant, cannabis is stupidly resilient and you have to do so much wrong for it to die completely, as mentioned above you're gonna be looking at longer vege times but your overall yield will be far superior.

Growing sativa without LST training is such a bitch inside, sativas grow up not out and can reach absurd heights, meaning the lower part of your plant once mature isnt going to getting much light.

xthrx said:

I personally think putting seeds into soil, leaving them almost on the surface, then watering that and keeping it constantly damp has more success than the paper towel method, but thats just me.

You can both supercrop and LST a young plant, cannabis is stupidly resilient and you have to do so much wrong for it to die completely, as mentioned above you're gonna be looking at longer vege times but your overall yield will be far superior.

Growing sativa without LST training is such a bitch inside, sativas grow up not out and can reach absurd heights, meaning the lower part of your plant once mature isnt going to getting much light.

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I said fuck the peat pellets and moved them to just a pot of damp soild just under the surface, all 12 in one pot, and I am hoping they sprout soon, I am going to head to san fran tomorrow to pick up some fresher seeds and try my luck with those if these 12 don't sprout. i put them all in water and only 3 didn't sink, so i am guessing 9 are still good and should grow. But if they don't sprout in the next couple of days I am going to start new seeds. Probably going to leave the 12 in the pot while i germ the new seeds to just see if they are going to sprout late. I was told that this strain is a really slow grower, would the speed the plant grows effect the germination time?

So here is an update.

I have 5 pots with seeds in them planted in miracle grow moisture control soil, 2 with a pandora's box seed in each, 2 with a panama red seeds in each, and the last with many panama red seeds in it. They are all under a 400w HPS light on a 18/6 cycle, and in a closet with a space heater set to 80 degrees. I have seran wrap over all the pots to help keep in moisture. Anything I should add or change to the setup?