TGA Genetic Guide

SPACE JILL
Breeding Better Cannabis - part 2
Written by: Subcool

I have been growing for some twenty-five years now, and I have started hundreds of different strains in my life. Recently I decided to start some Space Queen that I had stashed for many years. Vic High originally created this cross using his Romulan and Cinderella-99. I was never a huge fan of Romulan, although I liked the exotic flavor of Romberry.

This is what Vic had to say about the Space Queen cross.
â??Space Queen was the only reason I invested in C99 in the first place. Ever since I heard the description of Soul's princess I knew her and Romulan would be the perfect match. Then prototype crosses between P75 and Romberry started pumping out the winners that have found keeper status in many select gardens. Each of these keepers, exhibit a blend of the C-99 and the Romulan characteristics. Space Queen is a Romulan/C-99 hybrid. Flavor and potency are sure things; both parents are known for their high potency and great highs. Lemon, pine, and pineapple all swirl in a pungent bouquet to tantalize your taste buds!! Vigor will be outstanding and you'll be able to cut back on the light intensity somewhat Flowering time will be comparable to Romberry, averaging eight weeks but depending on grower and grow environment. Yield will be above average, but she won't be a top production plant. I hope she puts a smile on a few faces.â?�

We started a ten pack of seeds just too finally; give this strain a run organically. We selected the best four males and best four females. Iâ??m sure I will catch some heat from the larger scale breeders for starting with such low numbers, but it is the only pack I had to work with. Each plant was labeled and photographed each week to record progress. Resin was forming extremely early on the stalks and the undersides of the leaf surfaces. By week three of the flowering process (twelve hours of light-twelve hours of dark) each female had taken on a wonderful Pineapple-Lemon-Mango smell.

We selected the male which was the slowest to show sex, this theory is based upon â??breeding selection processesâ?� spelled out in my last article. We are looking for the â??recessive drug traitsâ?? in the male rather than â??hemp dominant traitsâ??. The male we choose was the very last to show sex and he best met all of our other selection criteria. (The other males were passed along to other TGA members for testing.) Large tight stamen clusters on a selected male is also a good indication of quality, as you can see; our dude has nice tight clusters. You can also see â??resin blobsâ?? on his empty stamens. I have never before been able to see the â??resinous glueâ?? on an empty stamen, mainly because I have just recently upgraded my camera and I am now able to photograph down to one centimeter. This male was tested by â??out-crossingâ?? with a known â??true breeding IBLâ?? Orange Skunk, known as Orange Velvet. The off-spring was grown-out to determine if the proper characteristics would be passed on. The out-cross of Orange Velvet and Space Queen was created by MzJill, the strain is known as Jilly Bean. This hot new strain is winning over gardens everywhere; with a dank orange-mango smell and more resin than the original Orange Velvet mom. My favorite phenotype smells like a candy store! We now have a male that we know will pass along the proper taste, potency and in the case of Orange Velvet, added yield as well.

The female Space Queens were labeled as follows; they also took on nick names or trait descriptions to help us keep better documentation of each.
A. Smallest over-all with a funky semi-rotting smell.
B. The most resinous nicknamed Frosty-Queen.
C. Best internodal spacing, potency and largest buds.
D. Jolly Rancher
The females grew rapidly during vegetation period.
*MzJill picked the phenotype labeled C, as the best based on internodal spacing and over all look. As they started flowering, phenotype C still stood out as the best looking, based on size and overall growth.
*The smallest phenotype appeared to have the most resin, B renamed Frosty Queen is over the top with raised trichomes, forming all the way to leaf edge and tip. This is probably the most photogenic plant. You can see the raised trichomes and amazing coverage of resin.
*There is a red phenotype, labeled as D but renamed as Jolly Rancher. It is the strangest and the most unlike the other three. It has a hint of cherry and extremely red pistils that really stand out as the colas dry. My favorite of the four is A. It is less fruity than B and C and has the smell of Genius and Apollo-13. I say it smells like â??baby pooâ?? but thatâ??s not right really. It smells of slightly rotten fruit, a slight pungency mixed with fruit and citrus. It was not a heavy yielder. The plant only yielded forty-eight grams on a five-foot bush with four heads, so she was culled. She has been passed along to SunyCheba for safe keeping.

MzJill was completely right about phenotype C. She just became a tremendous plant with large dripping colas that started plumping after day fifty of flowering. She smells a lot like C-99, she has a sweet smell that reminds me of Granny Smith Apples cooked in vanilla. She yielded more than any other plant with four mass heads that just look like showcase nugs. As Phenotype C started curing the nugs took on a candy-like smell with a hint of apples, lime-green in color with bright orange and red hues accented by brilliant resin production. In sunlight it looks like jewelry sparkling like diamonds.

At three weeks of curing the unique cherry smell of D or Jolly Rancher, seems to have faded and although the buzz is extreme, it doesnâ??t measure up to the other three and will be culled from the heard. Phenotype B known as Frosty Queen may be too small to keep for long term but for now she makes a great head stash with amazing cream colored kief. I still like the flavor of Phenotype A but she grows like a vine and is a bit hard to manage, so time will tell. Phenotype C will be in our garden for a long time and is used as our P1 mom for our Space Queen F2, aka, Space Jill. MzJill still keeps a jar of Space Queen, phenotype C, as head-stash. So now we have a proven male based on out-crossing with a known IBL (Orange Velvet) and we have a female of the Space Queen strain that would be a prize in any garden.

We grew out a good sized Space Queen C and placed her into flowering time, seven days prior to starting the male to assure a good amount of pistils to be pollinated. The male will start to show flowers at fourteen days and by twenty-one days the first stamen will open. We place the female in a room completely separate from our main growing area and place a fan in the room. Jill and I both like to use barely open male stamens to sprinkle grains onto each bud and try and capture the grains of pollen falling in the air. The plants spend a few days together under a 400 watt light with the fan gently blowing the pollen all over the female as each stamen opens. After three full days the female is then removed and rinsed repeatedly with water to de-activate the pollen and make any loose grains non-viable.

It takes a full forty-five to fifty days from this point (after pollination) for the seeds in this particular hybrid, to mature, every cross is different and some may take much longer to fully mature. We generally wait until we can actually see mature seeds protruding from the calyx. We pulled a test bud at sixty-five days flower and ran a germ test on one-hundred seeds and got a ninety-five percent germ rate after the seeds dried for two full weeks. The resulting cross was grown-out in test gardens. The cross took on the nickname Space Jill because MzJill was the one who knew which female was the best long before it had buds. The hybrid has quickly become a favorite because the first one-thousand seeds were given away as freebies. Usually free seeds are not primo, but in this case I had a few people tell me they liked the Space Jill more than the more expensive crosses.

We liked the attributes and stability of the Space Queen male, now known as Space Dude. He has been used in out-crosses with Apollo-13, creating the Vortex; Jacks Cleaner, creating Jack The Ripper and Sweet Tooth #3, creating Space Tooth. We continue to work with this line to improve upon other crosses or to bring a â??clone-onlyâ?? strain to seed form so that others may enjoy the dankness. We are now working on a UK Cheese X Space Dude (Space Queen male) cross, so that I may enjoy that famous strain without obtaining a clone myself. Space Dude is one of our â??work horseâ?? males, now we can use him to add flavor and resin along with potency to almost any hybrid cross.


Space Queen C our Momma

These shots were collected by friends of TGA

So we now had a Purple plant that I loved the looks the flavor even the buzz in the mornings. Black Russian even has scissor goo that looks like grape taffy. The problem is I am known for devastating potency and incredible raised trichomes. Now if you follow us at all you know I think Grimmâ??s Apollo-13 is the cure all to lack of potency and so far I have been absolutely correct. So we take a male using our same criteria with a new twist, we budded all the males out and selected the one with the most purple coloring. Now we can have a month long discussion on botany and argue if this works or not or like we did make it and grow it out and see what happens.



What happened was amazing!

We also use the power of the internet and through auction release the new hybrid to hundreds of growers all across the land. What we found out is there are two basic phenotypes in SP 1 a Pink/purple pheno that is much better than Black Russian with hint of A-13 and a great deal more resin than any of the BR phenotypes. This was about what I expected in the outcross and we ran Pinky several times enjoying every bud, but more so it was just an amazing plant to take pictures of so I kept it around J

The other phenotype was the big surprise. About day 30 the White phenotype we nick named simply whitey was forming a much more dense Cola and had a smell that reminded me of Fanta Blue Cream Soda. As time went out say week 6 in 12/12 she started smelling nasty like rotting turkey of something bizarre past day 56 she started getting sweet but the weird meat or stale refrigerator smell kinda lingered in the bottom. We jarred it and I didnâ??t touch it for a few weeks. One morning I was surprised at a sweet/sour smell that was very nice and that cream soda smell had returned. I smoked a few bowls while answering e-mails and all the sudden noticed I was extremely high. My peripheral vision was shot and space and time slowed to a crawl.
Later I sent some samples to TOB and she commented it made her trees seem cartoon like. I knew we had a winner and released it.

So now I have an established dank color strain but I am more intrigued with the Whitey genetics. We crack a load of Sputnik 1 and select a male that does not have any purple traits visible. We later learned it was still passed on but in smaller percentages. The coolest thing is Apollo-13 taken late past 65 days gets color as well!

Sputnik featured on Big Book of Buds 3

One set of pics ain't gonna do this.

Sub

The other phenotype was the big surprise. About day 30 the White phenotype we nick named simply whitey was forming a much more dense Cola and had a smell that reminded me of Fanta Blue Cream Soda. As time went out say week 6 in 12/12 she started smelling nasty like rotting turkey of something bizarre past day 56 she started getting sweet but the weird meat or stale refrigerator smell kinda lingered in the bottom. We jarred it and I didnâ??t touch it for a few weeks. One morning I was surprised at a sweet/sour smell that was very nice and that cream soda smell had returned. I smoked a few bowls while answering e-mails and all the sudden noticed I was extremely high. My peripheral vision was shot and space and time slowed to a crawl.
Later I sent some samples to TOB and she commented it made her trees seem cartoon like. I knew we had a winner and released it.

So we grow out Sp 2 and basically we have a mystery. Its really good like as good or in some cases better than the A-13? It looks extremely similar to Apollo but has a added sweet taste that is very pleasing. We are also pleased to say that the Pink/Purple gene still lurks inside the Sp 2 just at a much lower percentage.

There are only a few packs of this strain left and Non left of Sputnik 1.0

What would happen if we combined the genes of three ultra potent Elite strains all with very different flavors but similar high types? This is the question I set out to answer when creating our new release â??The Third Dimensionâ?�. The strain Apollo-13 has long been a favorite of mine and many other collectors, it has a very unusual taste and an amazing high. Only 500 of these seeds were ever produced and those lucky enough to grow her never let her go. I have focused a good deal of my breeding efforts in back crossing her looking for the best make up to create an Apollo like hybrid in seed form. We have out crossed her with Black Russian, Space Queen and Now a Combination of SQ and Jacks Cleaner. The second part of the make up is Space Queen a BCGA hybrid of Romulan and Cindy99 and delicious cross with a candy/mango flavor.
The final part of this potent three way is of course my famed Jacks Cleaner mom. If it sounds complicated it was and also a lot of work but thanks to the great people at Heads you will be the first to hear about the project.

Having had great success with our cross Jack the Ripper (JC X SQ) we decided to work with a male and pollinate the Apollo as we also use her to test a males attributes in a known cross. This means we have made a lot of hybrids using her and by growing out her off spring we can determine if he is a good male or not lending either potency and or a different flavor. Once the seeds were mature and removed from the buds I allow the outer husk to dry for 2 weeks and then I refrigerate them for 2 nights stimulating winter, this also removes moisture as well. I am going to try something a bit differently here and pretend I am your average Joe Stoner growing some plants and only having room to start 2 seeds. This will narrow my odds considerably getting a keeper mom but itâ??s the same real world choices you guys make everyday when it comes to making some head stash of quality meds. I started the seeds in Rapid rooters and transplanted once they established roots. The plants grew very well and under a 400 watt MH grew up fast, I was able to sex one of these at least a full 2 weeks earlier than the other, well that question has been answered and started just 2 seeds we have had great luck and have 2 females. Theyâ??re starting to mature enough that there taking on noticeable characteristics. I donâ??t see a huge difference in the two plants and at 30 days they look pretty much alike.

I am happy so far with this initial run and I can see traits from both mother and father. I mentioned one reason for this cross is to learn how dominant the JTR father we have chosen is going to be. JC parents are known to dominate crosses and Apollo-13 is or base line female since I have grown it out so many times and now also bred with her working this sibling cross will give me a good indication of how the father will react with other moms with use. The plants were transplanted into 5 gallon containers and topped to form a nice bush and when they hit 24â?� in height they were budded.
These are the signs I am looking for,
Early resin with fast formation of trichome heads and quick maturation of same. This will indicate a Apollo-13 dominant trait. Also I am looking for the weird funk/spice smell A-13 has to shine through and I have that as well. Now I am not testing the strain so much as running it for my own pleasure but while I am at it I will take notes on things to look for in larger generations. One day we will select either Vortex or The Third Dimension to keep as a main TGA strain but for now we can all enjoy the journey. Itâ??s no secret I am a big fan of what Mr Soul did and I am just playing along following the path he blazed.
The shorter female I am extremely excited about having started only 2 seeds and finding an Apollo dominant female means to me anyone getting a pack has a very good chance of it as well. At day 28 she already smells like Apollo momma, heavy resin and short structure with thicker stems is dead on target I couldnâ??t wait to see what the second half of bud growth brings to us.

Day 35 and beyond


You never stop learning and the biggest leap forward in knowledge has been working closely with both Apollo and JC as well as the man plant Space Dude. We are learning what is locked inside the JTR male visually at first and by this point by fragrance. First off. The Apollo dominant female we call Jane is spot on the mark with A-13 looks and traits with a beefier frame and an added sweet I canâ??t place yet. Maybe from the Cindy but I was hoping for this exact make up in a female.


At 35 days you can see trichomes that are fully amber just like with A-13 and most are fully formed so were taking speed from the mom and the Bi-father SQ. I added support stakes after this shoot but I could have gone longer A-13 wonâ??t stand up at all at this stage and that alone is a huge plus. I will of course stay on top of this so we can see what we have created. I am also happy to announce that unlike some of our gear this is a Sub project and you wonâ??t see it going away of running out of stock. Just the outcross of JC x SQ and then selecting a male took over a year I donâ??t plan on loosing my male.

The sativa Dominant female is starting to pack on the buds though and this girl may get huge and hopefully not take forever. She stretched like crazy and I was sure at this point based on smell and resin build up, the buzz will be very speedy with high THC content with virtually no CBDâ??s, the taste to me is kinda metallic to go along with the spicy smell.
As the Indica reached maturity she took on very tropical smells almost like a Pina Colada or some other frozen drink containing fruits and pineapple. The resin continued to expend and she matured very rapidly. I took her at about day 50 and she was just dripping with resin and gave up 2 ounces of dried cured buds. For a plant not even 36â?� tall finished I am happy with the results and will keep her in my garden.
Here are my smoke notes
Toke 1#
Sampling very small micro nugs so they will be dry. Inhale is smooth and reminds me of a passion fruit drink I used to get in summer camp. Exhale is smooth and also surprisingly sweet. Instant lobe floating and I started smiling the second I exhaled.
Toke #2
Large inhale and crosses my eyes.
Excuse me one second
Subcool does the happy dance across the Room â??IT TASTE GOOD! I am getting High!
Ok thatâ??s what they call a conniption fit I believe.

Toke #3
Our bongs a simple straight glass piece with a large water bin.
I use a simple cheap V shaped 3 hit that I pack about ¾ full and I pull it through in one hit clearing the toob as well. Sticky takes about 3 hits to my one and this is not a diss to Sticky but a reference as to how large a hit I take.
I exhale a cloud

The Buzz on the Indica was soft and pleasant and I sat staring at my pc for quite awhile but I didnâ??t feel the need for a pot nap but ended up doing a photo shoot. I found myself smoking a lot of this strain in the following week even though I have full jars of some of my other favorites.


The sativa took a full 9 weeks to mature and as predicted the buzz was very racey and not to my liking however a good friend of mine that loves the energy head buzz of pure like sativas absolutely loves it. Even though the plant was very tall itâ??s total yield was only 3 ounces. I did a smoke test on this one and found the smoke to be flat as airy buds tend to be but after 3 hits I was soaring along jamming to music and smiling my ass off.
No one would complain about its potency and high but its not up to my standards on taste but variety is the spice of life!

The results of my little â??plant 2 seedsâ?� idea went very well and I pulled almost 5 ounces and some amazing bubble hash from these two plants. The Indica has been cloned and topped and is just entering bud as I type this ending. I am happy to give this one my stamp of approval!

Luv yer genetics and cannaseur's service. You folks are :thumbsup::thumbsup: in my book.



b0nger

ok what would you grow from your catalouge if you were me, i have 5ft high plant space, 75-90 (degrees depending on time and stage of plants life), DWC, and 400+watt

i don't care about time, just potency, weight, SCROG ability, and bud beauty... i am new to hydro and rarely finish indoors.

i really like your strains, and would love to grow some with your help

Thats an easy call JTR and Querkle are both Very short and easy to grow plants. I do not top mine they stay so short and fat. The JTR is maybe the most potent plant we have seen and if we would have had enough since to provide the HT crew with an ounces instead of just the judges maybe it wouldnt have been taken and smoked. Querkle is all about Grapes and Indica :)