TROPICANNA COOKIES BY ONI SEED COMPANY GROW AND REVIEW

Here is my Tropicanna Cookies grow and review of this strain from Oni Seed Company. The Tropicanna Cookies strain was part of an experiment with one node and flip but she is such a standout that I felt a review of this strain was in order.

Here is what I am talking about:

And here is a video shot on day 60

Here is what the breeders have to say about this strain:

Tropicanna Cookies is a unique hybrid, created by combining the Girl Scout Cookies Forum cut and our Tangie male. Everything that male touched was a standout and Trop cookies and her sisters have become legendary in our camp and abroad. Finishing in 70 days or less, Tropicanna Cookies delivers flavor on a level most people are unused to. Strong flavors of oranges, cinnamon and sugar to be expected as well as a deep, purple color. The concentrates of this plant are truly elite and unique in both flavor and color. This strain is one of the Crown Jewels in the ONI kingdom for good reason. http://www.oniseedco.com/strain.html

I have to say this is one strain that truly knocks it out of the park. Thank you Oni Seeds for making this cross. She is very frosty and potent, shows lots of purple and really does smell like tangerines. She more than lives up to all the hype!

Growing Tropicanna Cookies

This lady was part of a training experiment using the one node and flip technique. If you are not familiar with it you can learn more about it at http://420dotcom.com/one-node-and-flip-vs-leaf-stripping.html

I definitely like this method of training and it worked very well on this Tropicanna Cookie girl. She was grown using New Millenium nutrients.

Watering was with top feed drip on a 1 gallon pot filled with rockwool croutons. Lighting for this grow was 2 PLC 250 COBs in a 2 x 8 closet.

She was fairly easy to grow and doubled in size. Growth is pretty upright, kind of like an OG but her branches are not weak or floppy. I dont feel the small pot size in any way limited her growth or yield. She makes big fan leaves like most cookie crosses do and very little leaf removal is needed because of the high bud to leaf ratio.

I read somewhere she is supposed to be mildew and rot resistant and I have to say from my experience this is true. A closet grow can be hard to control at times. My grow closet is in an unheated room and although temps and humidity were good throughout the grow I still had some minor issues.

I found the start of some powdery mildew on the Pink Lemonade to the left of her and also discovered some bud rot starting on my Wedding Cake to the right of her. The Tropicanna was right between them and had no issues at all with any mold or mildew.

The plants were given a quick spray of Serenade a certified organic fungicide containing Bacillus subtilis bacteria which are non-pathogenic and can be used up till the day of harvest.

I lost 3 buds on my Wedding Cake and none on the Tropicanna. I harvested the other plants a bit early as a precaution and so the Tropicanna pretty much has the closet to herself at this point.

If you watch the video and look st my pictures you will see a lot of purple on these buds. This is genetic and not caused by low temperatures. This girl never went below 70 degrees and during lights on she was about 81.

She had green cookie buds to start but the purple tinge started showing up around week 6 or 7 and started to spread and deepen in color. She could be taken right now at day 60 but I want to give her another week or so to see if it continues to purple up. I took a scope to her and the trichomes are cloudy with a few amber here and there so harvest is not far off.

GSC Cookies has a reputation for being a low yielder and so are most crosses with it. However I think the Tropicanna Cookies might do fairly well on yield because the buds are stacked up pretty well. I cant wait to find out how she yields. I will be updating once I find out.

She is such a unique strain and brings so much to the table that I will continue to grow her regardless of the yield. I really want to run her solo so I can dial in the purple, and spread her out more where she is not being crowded by other plants.

Tropicanna Cookies Day 60 Pictures

I am definitely going to recommend growing this strain. My plant was from a clone passed to me from a well connected friend and supposedly direct from Oni Seeds but who really ever knows?

Oni made F2 seeds and they are still available some places but I expect they will sell out soon so grab them if you can. Even if you cant snag a clone they should be really good. The mother of these cannabis seeds is GSC X Tangie (Tropicanna F1) and the father is GSC X Tangie (Tropicanna F1).

Stay tuned for Tropicanna Cookies grow and harvest updates coming soon.

Tropicanna Cookies Harvest Update

Here is some Tropicanna bud ready for its final manicure:

Harvest is over and this lady did pretty good so I am flowering it again. Just went under 12/12 about a week ago along with some Black Banana Cookies.You can check that grow out at: https://420grower.org/black-banana-cookies-9-test-grow/

First this plant was an absolute joy to trim. She gave me 80 grams, just a couple of grams under 3 ounces. She was only in a 1 gallon pot and had there not been other issues in my grow closet I would have taken her later. I am sure she would have been over 3 ounces because a few of the lower buds were not as developed as they could have been.

I think the yield was very respectable for a cookie strain and I love her growth style and easy trim. She smells great, looks great and is very potent. Winner winner. I definitely plan on keeping her around for quite a while.

Grim Bastard OG Solfire Gardens Biker Kush X Black…

I just scored a pack of Grim Bastard OG from Solfire Gardens. Pretty excited about this cross which is Biker Kush x Black Bananas.

I have been running Karma Genetics Biker Kush for a few years now and she is a favorite of mine. So this will be great to cross with it, and if I am lucky the Black Bananas will add some purple coloring to the mix.

According to Solfire the Black Banana male used consists of Banana fire cookies x Orgn kids Black Berry Kush

Several years ago I had a tough run with pythium and lost my male and one of my best cuts of her.  Luckily I still have one original Biker Kush and a bunch of fems I made. I want to try and revigorate this cut and cross it and my fems to a Grim Bastard OG male assuming I get some.

I’m getting ready to run Solfires Black Banana Cookies #9 cut and have really seen and heard good things about this girl so I may consider reversing her if I have to.

 Germinating Solfire Gardens Grim Bastard OG

So after the seeds arrived I put them in a shot glass of plain water. In about 4 hours they had sunk so they went into a paper towel and a bit of H2O2 was added.

It is now 24 hours later and I am happy to report all 12 have cracked and have small tails. In a day or 2 they will go into some Root Riot plugs.

I dont like to let roots get too long before transplanting because they are fragile and easy to damage. So here is a picture of them 24 hours after they hit water. I like it when seeds show good vigor sprouting to me it’s a good sign.

Day 3 Grim Bastard OG Off And Running

Seeing some great seedling vigor on these little bastards. Not even 72 hours after dropping them in a shot glass and they are off to the races.

There are only 11 because I dropped one while putting them in the root riots. I was on my hands and knees with a flashlight for over an hour but could not find it. RIP little seed!

Day 7 Grim Bastard OG Spreading Its Wings

Today is day 7 and the seedlings are growing nicely. They are stocky and sturdy and now have their first 4 true leaves.

I will be transplanting them later this week into either rockwool or hydroton filled net pots.

They were given a light foliar feeding with New Millenium Lightning Start which is a kelp based nutrient designed to promote branching and root growth.

About To Take Off Day 14 

It has been 14 days since these seeds were first dropped in a shot glass. They were moved into rockwool cubes. There are still 11 but one is a runt and will probably be destroyed.

Biker Kush was the hardest plant I ever raised from seed. Seedlings are very tempremental and exhibit yellowing in spite of being fed with cal mag. They do grow out of it but initially growth is very slow. These are definitely similar. They are pale green but starting to darken up.

I placed them 36 inches below my HLG 300 quantum board and they got leaf burn from it. This is a powerful light but I thought 36 inches away would be fine but apparently not. It would not have happened under my COBs which is what they are now under.

So what you see on a few of these seedlings was self inflicted and not caused by the seeds themselves. I expect these Grim Bastard OG seeds will green up and start to take off over the next week.

Grim Bastard OG Day 21

Today is day 21 for my Grim Bastard OG. The runt was destroyed and now there are 10 plants left. Here is a picture of them in my grow tent.

Will probably move them out and put under 12/12 lighting later this week so I can sex them. After that I will take some cuts and reveg them. Theres plenty of time before I flower them but I dont have space for a bunch of males. If I find a really nice boy I may keep one for breeding.

Grim Bastard OG Going To 12/12 Lighting

To be honest I lost track of the time but it is 2-3 weeks later now. I still have 10 plants. 5 are pretty tall and 5 are short. If I was to guess I would say the larger plants are boys. But I hate guessing which is why they are going under 12/12 lighting. In a few weeks I will have my answer.

I removed all leaves except for the top set. I want to try and get some lower branching going on. Also they are kind of crowded in that tray and I want to make sure airflow is good.

Thankfully the stems thickened up and are sturdy now. For a while some were pretty wimpy and I actually used some spare drip stakes to support them.

There are a lot of healthy roots coming out of the rockwool cubes they are in. There is a bit of browning but it is from the nutes and from air pruning. I have kept them in a tray and hand watered because they are smaller than my drip fed plants. With out the tray the blocks would soak up way too much water. So here’s a few picks for you:

Grim Bastard OG Seedlings

These have been under 12/12 lighting for 3 or 4 days now and some nice lower branching has started.

This is a grow in progress and I will keep updating as I go. It will be a while before I actually flower these so you might want to bookmark this page and check back. Once they are in flower (about 2 months) I will be updating weekly, but for now updates will be less often.

Sexing Is Done

It has been about a week now and everything has been sexed. There were 5 girls and 5 boys, There appears to be 2 main pheno types, short and tall. I think the shorter ones will lean more towards the Black Banana and the taller towards the Biker Kush.

I saved 2 males for possible future breeding. One tall and one short. The 5 girls will go into my veg closet in a few days. I will top them and try to take a clone off of each. I will let them reveg and hopefully they will be flowered in the next 2 months. Here are a few pics:

Flowering Grim Bastard OG (Finally LOL)

Time to flower my 5 Grim Bastard girls. Clones were taken and they were moved into one of my grow closets to flower. They are a bit smaller than I would like so I decided to give them another week of veg. So here is the first video:

During my veg I ran out of my

I always thought most veg and bloom nutes were pretty similar but I was wrong.

I substited Veg+Bloom and my plants suffered. They were not a healthy green, looked stunted and were showing deficiency symptoms.

So I changed to Jacks 3 2 1 and they improved but still were not right. Finally I got some more Summer Shift and within days they were turning a nice healthy green and starting to really grow.

I really set them back a few weeks by changing nutes and I would really encourage you to give New Millenium nutrients a try. They still are not widely available everywhere but you can get them on Amazon and they usually ship free.

Flowering Grim Bastard OG

This process has taken quite some time so I am going to split this grow up and do a 2nd post on flowering this girl. You can find it here: https://420grower.org/grim-bastard-og-in-flower/

Taking A Second Helping Of Wedding Cake From Seed…

I’m taking a second helping of Wedding Cake from Seed Junky Genetics. I liked the way she grew so much the last time that I just couldn’t resist. Here are some pics from day 51:

This is a clone only cut of J Beezy’s Wedding Cake and not the seed version. I just put 4 girls into flower today. They are in 5 gallon pots with rockwool mini cubes or croutons.

I vegged these for about 6 weeks using New Millenium nutrients. They got Summer Shift and Lightning Start through out their veg.

I also added Roots Excellerator to the mix a couple of weeks ago because I was not happy with my root development using Recharge. It is expensive but at 1 ml per gallon a little goes a long way. I am seeing roots pop out of my pots for the first time in a while. I definitely think it was worth it. They are off to a very good start.

Taking A Second Helping Of Wedding Cake From Seed Junky Genetics Day 1

Grand Master Level Topping Technique

Here is an older video showing the topping technique that I started using. GML only removes leaf sets and there is no pinching or topping. The tallest branches get this treatment. It holds them back while the shorter branches catch up and helps the plant bush out.

He is a commercial grower from Canada. He does an extreme leaf strip on day 14 with excellent results and just switched from HPS to LED. You cant argue with his results no matter what you think about defoliation.

I wasn’t really sure if this would work well but it really does and to my knowledge he was the only one using this method. If you check out this guys grows it is obvious he knows his shit. Since the YouTube Cannabis purge this year he has moved to his own site and posts there regularly. I really recommend you check out him out at https://www.grandmasterlevel.com/

One Node And Flip

One node and flip is a defoliation technique developed by the Jungle Boys. The idea is to get rid of the lower branches and buds that will not reach the screen and will make small and larfy buds. By doing this the plant can focus on the buds in the optimal light zone and the result is fewer but larger buds.

To do this you would select the best 4 – 8 branches. You remove all branches on them except for the top 3 -4 nodes. Then you put the plants into flower. Here is a video from HiGrow Group showing how it is done. The quality of the video isn’t great but you can get the idea. This grower used to do a total leaf strip at 21 days which can be very labor intensive. Using this Jungle Boys technique he no longer has to leaf strip later.

 Seed Junky Genetics Wedding Cake Day 7

Pistils are showing.Yay! I have been feeding these girls only during their transition week from veg to flower. I love this product. It helps hold back stretch and speeds up bud initiation.

Wedding Cake From Seed Junky Genetics Day 14

So today is day 14 and things are looking good. Flowers have been showing for a few days now and it looks like buds are starting to stack. The girls are being hand watered at this point and are drinking and drying out about every 2 days. Being fed about 650 ppm with New Millenium Autumn Gold which is their bloom nute.

LEAF STRIPPING WEDDING CAKE DAY 17

The girls got their bottoms cleaned out along with some heavy leaf stripping. I need to make sure light can penetrate down to the lower screen so most fan leaves had to go. Also I lowered the lights quite a bit which will also help the situation. I was getting PAR readings around 4-500 and that was at the tops of the tallest plants. Levels were much lower in the middle area and wouldn’t be enough for these lower buds to develop fully.

I know defoliation is controversial but I think it works and so do many other top growers. It enables air and light to penetrate through the canopy. So I think it makes less than ideal conditions for powdery mildew and better conditions for lower buds to size up. I also believe it tells the plants veg time is over and it’s time to concentrate on growing flowers instead. Since plants take a few days to bounce back I think it helps to reduce stretch which is why I like to do it a bit earlier than the usual 21 days.

Day 21 Wedding Cake Video

My day 21 video is actually a comparison between 2 closets. Wedding Cake is in both but my other closet is actually a mixed grow and about 10 days behind this one. So it is in a separate article and seemed redundant to post the video twice. So you can click on it to watch it there.

How Much LED Light For Weed And Is 750 W COB LED Lighting Too Much?

Return Of The Wedding Cake Day 28

My Wedding Cake is slowly returning to normal after being leaf stripped 10 days ago. Leaf stripping definitely shocked these plants and it took a while for recovery. Meanwhile my other closet trained with the one node and flip technique never even skipped a beat.

It’s too soon to tell which grow will turn out better but my money is on my other closet right now. The girls in this video had some other issues besides the defoliation. I think they had too much light which also resulted in some stunting.

Right now things look pretty good. After the leaf strip the pistils started to turn brown even though the buds were way too young for that. I am happy that there are new white hairs everywhere and plants seem to be on the road to recovery.

Wedding Cake Day 28 Pics

LEAF STRIPPING RESULTS ON DAY 35

Today is day 35 for the Wedding Cake. It got a full leaf stripping on day 17 and any buds developing below the screen were removed. So it has had 2 weeks to recover from the defoliation.

At first growth stalled and pistils on the buds stopped growing and started to brown. I made some adjustments by lowering the light intensity and growth resumed again.

On day 28 they were fed with at 4 ml per gallon top fed. Almost immediately there was an explosion of growth. The buds grew larger and the pistils got fatter and seemed more erect. It gave my girls a woody. This is one of the few bloom boosters that I have ever seen really work!

The grow is going well and the ladies seem to have made a full recovery from the leaf stripping. I will always use some form of defoliation but I don’t like the way a full strip stalled my plants out. It is a good technique used by some of the best growers I know but I think it should be used with CO2 in the room so the plants can recover faster.

Just my observation. I used the one node and flip technique in my other closet and it seems to be much easier on the plants with similar results.

When To Flush Day 42

Some people say flushing isn’t necessary often pointing out we don’t flush vegetables from the garden. Well that is true but no one tries to smoke a carrot. Until they do I am going to say it makes a big difference in the quality of the smoke.

My lungs are sensitive from years of smoking cigarettes. E cigarettes make me cough like crazy and so does improperly flushed weed. But the same weed properly flushed is smooth and does not make me cough at all.

So what is a proper flush? Plants have about a 2 week supply of food stored up. Even if you flush the soil to 0 ppm they still have that stored food. The trick is to start your flush while they still are making white hairs. That way they are still actively growing and can use up their stored food and by flushing the pots with pHed water there wont be anything in the grow media for them to take up either.

Wedding Cake Day 42 Pics

Wedding Cake Day 49 – Two Different Phenos?

So today is day 49 for my Wedding Cake and it really looks like I have 2 different phenos even though they all came from the same mom. I have a plant on the right that is taller and has more cookie shaped buds and 3 plants to the left that are shorter and have thicker more upright pistils.

Check out the video and see if there are 2 different phenotypes here. Look at bud structure. One clearly is showing a cookie influence. I believe this is what the plant should look like and the others are a different variation.

Wedding Cake Day 49 Pictures

I can’t explain why this happened but stress from cloning or leaf stripping may have been a factor causing some genetic drift to occur. The plant on the right was not affected much by the leaf stripping while the other 3 stalled out for about 5 days while they were recovering. It is also fading and showing color faster than the others.

These girls are being fed Winter Frost from New Millenium Nutrients and will get one more feeding around day 52 and following that they will be flushed until day 63 or until done.

Flushing On Day 56

Day 56 and fall is here, at least on some plants. These girls just got their second flush with just water. They will probably get 2 more depending on how fast they fade.

Some still are pretty green but they are stating to show some yellowing now and I dont think it will be long before my grow closet is full of pretty fall colors.

At this point I am pretty happy with how the grow is going. I am starting to see some nice purple coloration showing up in the buds as they mature. So here’s the video:

 Day 56 Pictures

Wedding Cake Harvest Day 63

Today was harvest day for my Wedding Cake. They spent 2 days in darkness and were cut this morning on day 63. As you can see from the picture below there was a lot of purple in the buds.

I am kind of surprised with the colors on these girls. I was expecting mostly green buds with a bit of purple here and there but most have turned purple. And it’s not just the fan leaves but a lot of the small sugar leaves too.

The plants are very sticky and smell great. I am not that good on smells but they are similar to an OG to me but also a bit different. Sweeter and less gassy. Nothing about them even remotely smells like a wedding cake to me or even a cookie cross. But things can change during a cure.

So these ladies will hang for about a week and then go into quart mason jars to cure. Here is a video shot just before harvesting. I was able to remove the top net which makes harvest much easier and the plants are leaning now.

I have tried cutting the net but it still seems to get stuck on some stems and be in the way. This seemed to work a bit better and I was able to pull the stems down through the first net to harvest them.

Final Thoughts On Wedding Cake

So now that harvest is done the yield on these girls was only about 12 ounces maybe a bit more. Not a bad trim and quality is good. Would I grow it again? Maybe.

I only have room for so many strains and Wedding Cake has been very difficult to clone. In addition I am seeing some instability in this cross with one plant a different phenotype. You would be surprised at some of the strains I let go.

Wedding Cake is a good strain and all that but it is not that good. To me it is overhyped and there are definitely better strains out there. Still, I like the way it grows so I may give it another run.

Powdery Mildew! Day 28 Wedding Cake, Tropicana Cookies, Pink…

Powdery mildew started to show on a few leaves. Luckily I spotted it early. It was mostly on a few fan leaves and 4 hours earlier it wasn’t there. It was on the Tropicana Cookies only as far as I could tell.
Here is this weeks video taken on day 28.

Powdery Mildew Sucks! What I Did To Fight It

Powdery mildew is everywhere. In my neck of the woods, which is Western Washington, the humidity can be fairly high. Usually it is low enough when the sun is out that it is not an issue. But we have had several days of cloudy weather with high enough humidity and the right temperature for it to flourish. Mid sixties and 50%+ humidity are optimum for it.

Everyone says prevention is better than cure but that is not always possible so I needed a plan of action to fight and get rid of powdery mildew on my cannabis plants.

My closet stays in the lower to mid 40% humidity range which is normally low enough to keep it from gaining a foothold. Because my house isn’t heated at this time of year humidity can be mid fifties inside. My air intake comes from there so with spores everywhere it is really no surprise some got pulled in.

What I did was add another fan to improve air circulation. Because space is tight in my grow closet I like to use tower fans. They are upright and move a tall and wide swath of air. They give me good air movement without beating my plants up.

Here is what I use:

I have had one of these for 3 years now and it still works fine so I did not hesitate to buy another.

Besides adding the fan I also did another leaf strip. I removed the few infected leaves I had and a bunch more to help get air flow through the canopy. I also wanted to get more light to the lower branches on the first screen. I was a bit hesitant to defoliate on day 28 because I was not sure how much, if any, regrowth there would be. Usually I do this by day 21 while plants are still stretching.

I sprayed the leaves with water and a bit of peroxide. Some say this works and some say it doesn’t. Actually just plain water can remove it from the leaves. PM likes moisture but not wet. Other people swear by spraying a 10:1 mixture of milk on your plants. The idea of milk spoiling on my buds definitely did not appeal to me.

I have used in veg as a preventative and it seems to work but it can burn leaves and leaves a residue so that was not an option at this time even though I know people do it.

What I decided to do was order a product called Serenade that is a natural fungicide.

It is certified organic and contains a special strain of bacteria that attacks mildew and other plant diseases. I have heard you can use it right up to harvest but I certainly hope I wont have to.

I will test it out and see if it works, probably on my veg plants first to see if it burns or leaves a residue. I am hoping I wont need to use it at all in flower but I will have it just in case.

THE TRUTH TRIANGLE KUSH CROSS PICTURES – ROCKING HARD…

The Truth Triangle Kush cross pictures from day 49. The Truth is getting close to harvest and a bit sooner than I expected. This week I will begin using Winter Frost, a finisher that helps bring on the fade. I will run it about a week and then begin flushing and hopefully harvest around day 65.

THE TRUTH TRIANGLE KUSH CROSS VIDEO ROCKING HARD ON…

Here’s The Truth Triangle Kush Cross Video on day 49. She is rocking hard. Nugs are developing nice calyxes and are rock hard. Just hit it with some Winter Frost from New Millenium which will start the fade then in a week it’s time to flush.