Organic Show: Jilly Bean x Pot of Gold a.k.a. Gold Jill

Bear with this thread as the girls(hopefully) are still very small, and photos will be coming soon, step by step. Also, this is meant to be informative and entertaining and tell a bit of a story. Whether anyone reads it or not I don't really care, but I have a story that I feel needs to be told.

First of all, Subcool is my mentor for doing what I do, whether he knows it or not. Hell, maybe after this thread he will know. I hope to someday contribute half as much to the world of Cannabis as Sub has. I do not any longer smoke cannabis for various reasons, first of which is that my job prohibits the use of drugs and I am submitted to regular drug testing. I DO, however, believe that Cannabis should be LEGAL, and available not only to those who are sick with debilitating diseases like cancer, MS, HIV, etc., but should be no more difficult to obtain than a beer at the local pub.

A friend of mine had a grandmother diagnosed with terminal cancer. At the time I was growing the most top notch dope I could simply for the cash crop. After talking with her at length about how much she hated her pharmaceutical drug regimen I offered her some marijuana for her pain. She didn't enjoy smoking in any form, so my friend and I decided that some peanut butter THCookies might help. She told us, "They make me feel human again". It was something she hadn't felt in months. After this I could not deny the power of the plant, and we began supplying her with as many Cannabinoid laden baked goods as she could eat. Though I may never be able to smoke again, I do want to share this medicine with as many people as I can, because I KNOW that it changes lives. May she rest in peace knowing that she changed my life and all those I can manage to supply medicine to, at the very least. What it comes down to is this: my love for this plant is FAR deeper than the the average toker, and I dare say I love it more than most of those out there who grow it. I may not be able to smoke it anymore, but I know what it can do, the power that it has to change people for the better, and the grace and beauty with which it grows.

Alright, now that you know the motivation for what I do, here is how I came to obtain a Jilly Bean(Orange Skunk x Romulan x Cindy99) x Pot of Gold(Skunk #1 x Hindu Kush) hybrid, A.K.A. Gold Jill. MzJill I hope that I can make you and Sub proud with this one...

Both strains were obtained through online purchases by a square friend of mine looking to make a little extra cash who didn't mind having their name on a seed purchase. Was it a little paranoid to go this far to purchase seeds? Maybe, but I've never been in handcuffs either...maybe paranoia is a good thing. A friend and I were running a pretty decent organic grow show that I mentioned before and these both seemed like sound purchases. At the time there were 3 x 400w metal halides in the veg room, one 600w T5 in the clone room and 4 x 400w HPS in the flower room, an organic super soil something like Subcool's, plus CO2 and ozone and the whole nine.

At some point we realize, "why are we buying seeds when we can crossbreed our own strains, creating strains that noone has ever seen, and meanwhile increase the DANK?" This is after I had read DANK by SUBCOOL. Did I mention that he's the MAN? So We delved deep into breeding. I don't mean like "hey lets take a male and female and see what happens". I mean we read all about dominant and recessive genes of beans and tomatoes and myriad other vegetables and how scientists genetically engineered(through breeding) how to make a tomato the size of your head and a pumpkin the size of a car, and....well you get the idea. We did the research.

The Jilly I liked best, which by the way was my favorite smoke, was one of very mango smell and taste, and always stuck up this random arm from the bottom when you started flowering it, making it have an extra cola no matter how many times you topped it. Of all the Pot of Gold seeds we grew from beginning to end, none of the females tickled my fancy enough to be the mother of my first breeding program. There was, however, one male that was absolutely outstanding. It didn't even prove itself male until WELL after we were sure of the sex of all the others, and it is, to this day, the stinkiest male cannabis plant I have ever come in contact with. I wish I still had a cutting. I felt like Subcool and his Space Dude.

So we took all the extra lights we had left, which amounted to a grand total of 400 watts of CFL, and put the two parents into the bathtub to do what they would. I know, it's amateur. It was all we could do. What came out was some leaf that we used to make more butter, and 239 medium sized tiger striped seeds.

Fast forward a year: the grow show is gone(I moved to NYC for a while and couldn't grow there), but the seeds remain. I had no idea if they were still viable after sitting in a freezer for that long, but I sure was going to find out now that I've got a place to grow again. So I germinated 20 of them, just as a start. All 20 broke seed by the 48 hour mark, and some as early as 24 hours. I put all of these F1 Gold Jills into 2.5 gallon pots straight from seed. My grow room is not nearly big enough to house all these so they went in the basement until they could grow up enough to cull those that I felt weren't making the A-Team, as it were. I cut out those that had leaf deformities, those that couldn't stand on their own after two weeks, and those that just didn't seem to be all that they could. I'm left with 8 plants of what appears to be 4 separate phenotypes. Two are short, one with rounded leaf lobes and one sharp, and the other two are taller, one with purple stems and one without. All are now under a 250w MH lamp for 18 hours of light per day.

And now everyone is up to speed as of today. Once they have all been sexed, I will choose one male and one female as the cream of the crop to create an F2 generation that will be more stable and produce more of the desired traits of the Gold Jill that I am trying to produce. The rest of the females will be flowered out to finance the next step of the program, the F2 generation. I am PAINFULLY aware that 20 seeds is NOT enough to breed this strain to its fullest, and that the number should be more like 100. The simple fact of the matter is I do not have the time, money, or space to do it any other way.

If you have read this far then you probably have enough time invested in reading to come back as time progresses and see how everything turns out. I will have pictures up tomorrow and a better description of the soil, lighting, nutrients, and grow space. Any comments or questions would be much appreciated! thanks for reading.

-The Angry Leprechaun

DUDE IM STOKED!!! and subbed

and yea sub and the rest of tga are gods among growers hehe

sounds like a good thing you got goin angry lep! i made seeds with a sour diesel male and a cheese female when i first started growing, turned out good but not the greatest. seeded plants are fun to harvest though!! cheers to horny females!

So the site has been malfunctioning for me for quite some time and I wasn't able to put anything up. Here's the next step of what I've done: The space I have is quite limited but could be worse(at least its not a cabinet!). It consists of a closet underneath a set of stairs so the ceiling is actually the bottom side of the stairs with sheetrock walls and a southern yellow pine hardwood floor. As you can see from the pictures I painted the walls white and pretty much left the rest as is. My light is a Galaxy 250w MH/HPS switchable with regular Plantmax bulbs because of my budget. I put together a 100 cubic feet/minute bathroom fan with a vent pipe to go up through the stairs and out an attic window, thus helping to eliminate smell/stale air problems. I put in an oscillating adjustable speed fan and a "cold mist" humidifier. Im using ProMix BX with worm castings, bat guano, blood and bone meals, and a bit of dolomite lime for my soil mixture. I'm using Fox Farm Organic Nutrients only when absolutely necessary(which isn't very often), but mostly just good old fish emulsion and my pretty warm soil. It's not as good as Sub's Super Soil(which I have used with the Light Warrior/Ocean Forest base, as I couldn't easily get Roots Organic), but it seems to be doing the job so far.

So we are very behind at this point, and Ill provide some pictures and descriptions.

The first two are with the babies a little while after popping soil in the room with everything all set up. At the point that I started taking pictures I had already culled several that just weren't the healthiest, and as I am only looking for one mother and 4 to flower, Ive still got more to remove.

The next three are close ups of the tiny little babies, and you can already tell they have very Afghan tendencies with the leaves, and as it turns out there's only one that holds the Jilly look, but we'll get there.

nice. I am very interested. I grew jilly out four times last year. Great sativa. Smokin on some jillybean bho wax right now.

I'm subbed. Don't let anything stop you man, these little plants are going to be very interesting, as not a lot of us have a large amount of breeding experience. Every time someone breeds their own strain a new genetic being with an unknown potential is made. We all love to watch as you go through the motions and create something new, and maybe it will be some of the best smoke you've ever had! Very interesting!
Seize the day,
ILove

its been a while, and the site continues to give me problems...and sorry for bitching about it EVERY time i make a post but its REALLY EFFING ANNOYING. alright im done venting.

so at this point ive chosen the four girls that i will flower to completion. i got a very choice male out of the bunch(there were 3...3 out of 20. not bad!) that is going to be the father of the F2 generation that is the next step in the breeding program but i couldnt manage to clone the female i really liked so im just going to have to grow out some more later on to cross with the male that is FIRE.

this guy is stinky as can be. it smells like a basket of oranges and is SUPER short. it didnt throw a whole lot of balls at first and seemed slow until a few weeks into flower and BOOM. this thing has so many male flowers that the groups are shaped like buds and you cant see through them. this guy is going to keep getting cloned until i find the perfect female to go with him. if you care to pick him out of the group just look at the last photo of the whole room: hes in the middle row on the left side behind the one labeled "brianna".

as for the ladies: ive got two taller phenos that had to be trained to fit in my space. they also produce a lot of sun leaves which had to be removed because my little 250w HPS just doesn't have a whole lot of penetrating power. this was a pain in the ass. bigtime.

the other two phenotypes are shorter with perfectly spaced nodes and very few sun leaves to get in the way. i would later find out that one of them smells absolutely fantastic in peak flower. the mango/orange smell it leaves on my fingers when i rub the stems is stronger than the marijuana smell itself. if i could go back and use this as the mother for the next generation, i would in an instant. this thing is a real winner. my fiance named her Josephine. it fits, a dainty name. hahaha.

the pics here are just of the girls and boys before they were all culled. if i can get the site to work for a second post ill show some more later ones of just before flower cycle started. the one with the massive top branching above the topping point is one of the two that had to be tied down. the one that looks real small compared to the rest is Josephine, and she turned out to be stellar. her leaves looked less and less afghan as time went on, and once a couple weeks into flower the newer leaves thinned right out and look so much like the jilly bean that its uncanny. maybe a bit closer bud sites than the jill, and started packing on weight earlier into flower than my jillys did.

this is one of the short females that i like more, not Josephine, but a great specimen none the less.little Josephine. my what a girl she turns out to be!the afghan tendencies from the Pot of Gold father show strong in two of the girlsone of the two that had to be tied down. notice the high number of large leaves that had to be cut in the next photo.all 4 of the girls that are destined to be flowered out!this is one of Josephine's leaves. as you can see, she looks quite a bit more sativa influenced that the previous photos showedthis is one of the chinchillas that my fiance owns that you can see in the background of a lot of the photos(in case anyone was wondering what those cages were all about) loves to get high on the Gold Jill. She will snatch a piece of crystal covered leaf outta my hand and devour it while making these hilarious sneezing noises. funny shit! ive found that their busy nature and their general oddity for most households helps to keep people well away from the grow closet thats right next to them. with most cannabis smells being sucked through the attic window or masked by the chinchilla odor(not as smelly as ferrets or beagles but distinct none the less) people fail to notice any lingering dope smells coming from 6 feet away.

by the way: the reason that some of the girls look quite bushy in some pictures and not so much in the others in the above post(mainly the pic of Josephine by herself vs in the group) is because this was the very first days of the 12/12 HPS flowering cycle and i trimmed a whole lot of fan leaves from the girls so that they could get more light penetration to the bud sites. needless to say, it worked...and quite well at that. youll see when later rounds of photos come, as they are about a week or two from harvest while i write this..im a little behind on the posting, but itll get there, i promise.