Into The Vortex
I had the idea to start 20 Vortex seeds and find the best 3 males to do a Apolo-13 cubing project. We were only blessed with one lone male out of 21 seeds started and that kind of defeats the concept of increasing our male selection pool. The good news is I ended up with 17 females. Every one a keeper in there own right. I wasnt expecting so many females and the three I killed early in seed stage would have been no different than these but enough is enough and 17 is enough. I have passed out the extra clones to friends all over and there input will help determine which is the best clone when they finish. I Took pictures of about half of the plants to give you an idea of how nice and even they all are with just slight differences in smell and shape.
The plants were budded in square 2 gallon pots and placed in 12/12 as soon as they showed sexual maturity about 24. I used super soil in the lower ½ and Roots soil in the upper portion. The plant were budded mainly under a 400 watt HPS in a room that was averaging 60 degrees so Im sure they are a lot happier now under a 1000 watt HPS with temps in the 70s. I fed the plants about a week ago as these are really small pots compared to what I normally bud in and it looks like I pushed them just right as just the leaf tips are fried a tad.
Im very impressed with the quality and stability of this many plants from seed and over 75% look just like clones. This is a very strong line and I am extremely pleased as I have been telling people for over a year how good it is based on the 5 seed run we did last year.
As the plants in bud matured and the clones rooted we started passing the females to more local med growers to run in there gardens. While I knew one would stand out every plant was a keeper in my opinion. I kept three that I liked based on smell and structure and ran all three again through the bud room to determine which was the absolute best to me.
The three phenotypes we kept were named after Chat members on my website. Pistils, Speakers, and SuperRV311 were the tag names they received and it was a lot of fun to have each member pulling for his favorite plant.
The clones were placed in full sized 7 gallon pots and run in my normal fasion on the second run.
The Pistils variation was very Apollo dominant and tasted of Spicey Pepper and fruit. The Speakers variety was sweet and fruity but the high was mellow and not as complex as I prefer. SuperRV311 was just right with a combination taste/smell of Grapefruit and Pineapple that got better and better as the sample cured in a very large glass jar.
We culled the other two females and cloned Super to run in our main medical garden. As with many clones by the third run the plant was performing better than from seed and the buds were extremely hard and dense with a liberal coating of resin.
Everyone that tries Vortex from seed finds something they love. The females are all very similar but slight variations are present and make it easy for each grower to find one that has the taste they like the most.
Super was alone this time and on her third trip through the garden she really hit her stride and the Cola shots from her are simply stunning.
Rock hard resin encrusted Grapefruit buds with just a few ambering up at day 54. I will place her in the dark in two days and let her mature to my taste.
She has so much of what I love in a strain, the sour flavor and offsetting contrast of sweet fruit. Heavy resin and a great Bubblehash strain she will be in my garden for some time to come. Enter the Vortex and see what all the fuss is about.