☀️Pheno Hunting, Heat Resistance, and Epigenetics, with Sun God Seeds

12:49PM Jan 28, 2025

Speakers:

Jordan River

Keywords:

breeder feature

sun god seeds

heat resistance

epigenetics

pheno hunting

desert environment

breeding work

stressors

genetic markers

seed breeding

drought tolerance

wind barriers

living soil

defoliation

strain creation

Greetings, growers of the world. Jordan River here back with more. Grow cast on an island in the sun. Today we have a breeder feature. That's right, none other than sun god seeds is joining us today to talk about his amazing work down in the southwest of the United States, where it's hot and sunny and he's been doing breeding work, selecting for this environment, doing long, intensive Pheno hunts and a ton of breeding work down there. So I know you're gonna love that. Everything Sun God has to say today, before we jump into it, though, with sun god, shout out to AC infinity. That's right. AC infinity.com. Code grow, cast one five saves you on the best grow tents, fans, and just about everything you need in the Grow game. Acinity.com not only do they have complete grow kits, which are going to have your grow tent, your intake and exhaust fan, the best oscillating fans you can get your hands on, plus ratchets, pots, lights and so much more, they've also got a whole host of accessories for you, sunglasses for your tent trimming scissors. AC Infinity has just about everything. They've got an automatic trimming machine. Check it out at AC infinity.com code, grow, cast one, five, always. And make sure to grab those Grow Tent kits. It's about the cheapest and easiest way to get started growing or to expand your garden. Grab a three by three kit or a four by four kit. You're off and running. It has everything you need to get started. Just get some media, a little bit of rooted leaf nutrients and some grow cast seed, co seeds you are off and ripping so it's how I recommend people get started. Grab those AC infinity kits. Or if you need another veg tent, another flower tent, head on over AC infinity.com and use code grow. Cast one, five, always with those amazing grow kits and more. Thank you to AC infinity for making just about everything we need to grow our own at home. Alright, everyone, let's get into it with sun god seeds. Thank you for listening and enjoy the show. Hello, podcast listeners who are now listening to grow cast. I'm your host, Jordan River, and I want to thank you for tuning in again today before we get started. As always, I urge you to share this show, take this episode, send a link to someone, or turn someone onto growing for the first time. It's the best way you can help us and our mission of overgrow. See everything we're doing at growcast podcast.com there you will find the seeds, the episodes, the classes, membership, everything's there. Thank you, especially to you supporting growcast members. Today, we have a breeder feature, classic breeder feature style episode with a breeder who we haven't had on grow cast podcast before. Actually have a few new guests lined up for you guys. But today we are diving into the breeding work of sun god seeds. We have none other than sun god seeds on the line right now. How's it going? My brother, it's

great. Thanks for having me on the show. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk. Hell

yeah, brother, we've been following your work for a while. You've been a friend of grow cast for a while. I think we first met when you came out to the San Diego or Oceanside, I think Oceanside seed swap, and, yeah, that was a good time. Yeah, it was just a member. Actually, it wasn't a member meetup. It was just a listener. Just a listener free meet up, and seed swap. And Sun God came out there, and you brought so many packs to give out. Man, that was really cool to you. And I just remember chatting with you and talking about how you grow in the freaking desert, in the heat and dryness. And I was like, I gotta have you on the show one day. And then here we are, like, a couple years later, pretty amazing. But please, sun god, why don't you start for the audience with your story, like, what brought you into cannabis and what brought you into breeding?

Totally, I would love to. So my story started back in oh eight, about 15 years ago now, I was living in Portland, Oregon, and I was going to school for landscape tech. I wanted to do landscape design work nice and, you know, having all that information at my fingertips and and I wanted to have a little side hustle. I decided to start doing, you know, growing I was in the old medical program, and I was a caretaker for three patients. And I had a, you know, the old school basement set up eight lighter, yes, and yeah, it was, it was great. Great way to get into it.

Life was good. The caretaker program was still alive.

It was the good old days. I could offload the extra medicine at the clubs. No hassle, totally. So, yeah, I come to it from a place of as I've always had a medical license myself. I had a really bad back injury when I was a kid. I fell off of plague gym onto my neck and upper back, and so my spine has been destabilized for a long time. So I utilize it, you know, for my own anti inflammatory needs, pain med needs. I've, unfortunately, my mother has been through like, seven back surgeries, and I've seen her get addicted to opioids, and we've also used cannabis to get her off of that, which is great, but, you know, I've had a lot of cautionary tales in my life, and so it led me to cannabis as a medicine, and I've just been growing it ever since my Portland days. But when. When I moved, I moved from Portland down to San Francisco and then down to the desert. And nothing I was growing in Portland would survive, you know, I could bring it all to San Francisco, but when I came down to the desert, just nothing made it. Oh, no, it's a totally different climate. Yeah, nothing Exactly, exactly. So I was like, Okay, well, you know, I went to school for this stuff. I remember learning I loved my propagation class. That was the class that really got me in school. And, you know, we learned about agricultural breeding programs and epigenetics, and, you know, these things that the way that you get plants to acclimate to specific conditions is simply by applying those stressors to them. It's a lot of the like, see what sticks. You know, you're kind of trying to force evolution with these plants, right?

Natural selection, as you're basically killing off the ones that don't survive

Exactly, exactly. So that's that's really where it all started, was that I wanted to continue to be able to grow my own medicine and medicine for my family at scale, and the only way to do that is outdoors, with the amount that I require and that my mother requires. So I just started my own breeding program, and, you know, understanding the fact that I would want to share it eventually with others, because I see that it has value commercially as well, but more so just wanting to be able to provide consistent medicine for my family. That's amazing, man, that is, yeah, that's a very personal goal that you have there. And I love it. I love the noble goal of breeding strains that work well in this, let's be honest, very harsh environment and very unique environment. Well, I'm in a unique position. That's the thing is that in order to make these changes happen, you know, like I remember my teacher saying, in order to make a plant resistant to a pest, you have to induce the pest into the population, right? Who's crazy enough to do that, you know? You know. Who's crazy enough to say, oh, yeah, I'm going to take spider mites and intentionally infest my crops, yeah, you know. But I've done that in the past. I've let spider mites just take over, just to see who I could reel back, just to see who would survive. So same thing with the heat, you know, it's, it's really, I'm just in a I'm in a unique position. So I've utilized my skills to to, basically, I bought a ton of genetics from a lot of very popular breeders, or just clones from, you know, I'm in Southern California, so I have access to great clone nurseries, of things that were very popular, and I just put them to the test. I literally would, you know, stick them out. You have to harden things off a little bit, you know, you can't, just, like, stick them right out there. But over the generations, they begin to be adaptable. So the epigenetics is just the foundation of what I'm working with.

Okay, let's talk about that. And I would get into your, I would love to get into your breeding projects and your goals and values as a breeder. That's what we always cover on on these breeder features. But first, let's talk about, let's talk about what you just said. Let's talk about epigenetics and how you're trying to kind of craft these strains that will slowly, over time, acclimate and kind of select for these resistant these resistant traits. How do you approach your breeding and epigenetics?

So like I said, it's it's really just about consistently applying these stressors to generations of a population over time. It's nothing that you could do in a year. You know? It's something that needs to be done over generations of time. But So basically, epigenetics is the way that DNA interacts with a series of molecules that are within the cell, and these molecules are introduced because of

stress. Oh, say that again. You just, you just broke up for a second. Say these, okay, you know, it's important molecules. Yeah, these molecules are in, are, are. Say, these molecules are, sorry,

these molecules are created within the cell, or they're, they're placed within the cell by the stressors that the plant is undergoing, right? So imagine the cell like a little like a ball. Okay? And these stressors are like little tags on the ball you're putting, like a little hang tag on the ball. So the heat stress, the wind stress, the drought, all of these things are making their mark on the cell, and these tags are like the lenses through which the DNA is read, because DNA has to be transcribed, right? DNA does not just express it has to be read by the plant and transcribed into exactly so it's read into RNA and then it's expressed. So these, these stressors, these tags, they can activate and deactivate specific genes, specific expressions. So over time, it's it's they're not like making choices. It's. Just like, I like to imagine it like a like a lens of a glasses, you know, the more of them that are present, the the difference occurs. So it's about their presence and about their their intensity concentrate. They're in concentration. Yes, exactly. And so their concentration, over time, then creates inhibitions or expressions from the genes that then get passed on hereditari from one generation to the next. So then these stressors that the parent population has undergone their progeny and now have a natural resistance to these things. Wow, that

was well explained. Really, yeah, and it's funny because it comes up in my it used to come up in my coffee show a lot, because they talk about epigenetics when it comes to people in human health, right? And this idea that that your genes express and are affected by your choices and and and activities and attributes. So you genes, like, determine what happens to you and the susceptibility of things and the probability of things, but then what you do affects your genes going forward, down, down the genetic lineage, exactly, very, very fascinating. What have you? Have you observed this in real time? Like, have you observed these strains and their progeny acclimating?

Yeah. So because there are such intense stressors in these desert conditions that I'm growing in, and because I'm allowing really intense dry back periods, they're they're getting an elongated exposure to these things. It's like through from spring to fall, they're having these this impact upon them, so it's enough for them to really build up these genetic markers that they're then going to pass on to the progeny. So it's actually very interesting, the way that the parent population grows is significantly slower, weaker, smaller than when I bring the progeny in the next year, it's like night and day that the progeny can take half as much water. They grow twice as fast, you know, because they they're ready for these conditions. It's like a genetic transcription has been passed on. It's like their parents wrote them a letter and they were like, these are the things you're going to be dealing with

that is so wild. We know that occurs in in like insects and stuff. So it's funny when you say that occurring with plants, and it doesn't really happen like that, just generation after generation. I imagine even the parent plants would probably adjust somewhat, and then the kids are better, and their kids are even better.

So you've heard of something called hardening off a plant. Are you familiar with

Sure, this idea that, like, you know, you're going to be putting it out into a into a very stressful environment. So you start to, kind of like, give it small doses of that stress to prepare it for the big shift. So

that's exactly what you're describing. Is a in life cycle, epigenetic shift.

So it's hardening off of a whole generation, essentially, yeah,

wow, yeah. It's basically, that's, that's why. That's why, when you hear about people keeping a clone alive and passing it on from person to person, that there's genetic drift. And there's been arguments of, you know, laymen growers saying, Oh, no, it's not true, but it is true. The thing, the conditions that the plant undergoes, imprint on that specific genetic code, yes. And so that if you pass that for better or for worse, 100% for better or for worse. So just another reason why people need to be doing seed breeding projects. I know we think we can keep everything alive with a cutting but that's how things get lost change. And I think that it's a one irresponsible breeder, and it gets disease, and then it's, Ooh,

yes, the accumulation of viroids, you know, harmful or otherwise, very important. And I think that's why it's important to spread everything. Because, like you said, the worst case scenario is that someone holds on to the strain and a, it gets lost, or B, it gets somehow corrupted. So you have to spread everything out in hopes that you can get that genetic again. And like you said, work from seed. Continue to work from seed

100% I think we need more people doing proper seed breeding programs. That's another thing that I learned about in school. You know, I remember my teacher saying, you don't get anything worthwhile till f6 f7 because that's, that's how these companies make, you know, stable sweet corn seed. They have a parent stock that is their, you know, secret combination. They've got two parents that are 2f sevens that alone aren't very good, right? We know that inbreeding plants, you lose a lot of vigor, you lose a lot of traits that you're looking for, but a specific two very homozygous things can make a heterozygous, you know, consistent at one

and that's how it's after so much inbreeding, can really stabilize the traits you're looking for

exactly, but it also produces an even seed stock. And we don't see that in cannabis. Nobody's taking things, nobody's inbreeding lines far enough to then create a stable cross, because it just takes too much time. Everybody's obsessed with the hunt. Yeah,

I think people like. The Hunt, but when you're dealing with specific stress, like, okay, so why is there? What is the reason that we have like that, that corn that you mentioned, that corn that grows the way it does, well, it's because of all the fucking stressors and troubles that corn farmers face. They can't be just hoping to get a unicorn fino. They need this crop to grow exactly how they needed to grow consistently, just how they know how they know how to feed it, and they got to get through to the end of this year, because guess what? They're going by the skin of their teeth. They're actually not making money. They're probably subsidized. So it's like, listen, we don't have the time for the hunt. I think the same thing goes with certain cannabis growers. If I have to grow in the desert climate, I'm not going to want to have to hunt through and find a unicorn. I'm going to want to find someone like you who's done the work already and done that breeding, and then apply those very uniform genetics to my already stressful environment 100%

and you know, it's not just desert environments that this is good for. I mean, all across the Southwest, we've we're seeing temperatures still right now in the 80s and 90s. All summer long, it was peaking in hundreds places. You know, I think it's a very valuable thing, especially for people who are looking to grow for themselves, to be able to grow something that can handle the heat that they only have to water once a week. Yes, exactly. The planets only getting hotter. Things are fluctuations are only getting more extreme. So I'm just interested in breeding for that, you know, that's I'm really in it for. That's cool, you know, like I said, I did agriculture. I've worked in nurseries, I've, you know, I've worked with the the general population. Most people don't have such a nuanced understanding of plants as your cannabis breeder, right? But corporate cannabis is going to charge everybody an arm and a leg. And the only way to grow an adequate to have an adequate supply that's not going to just strip your pockets, is to grow for yourself. So as the medicine becomes more, you know, destigmatized societally, there's going to be more and more people that are interested in growing for themselves. And they're not going to set up a whole room. They're not going to build a whole green so, you know, they're going to want to stick one or two plants in their yard with the rest of them and hope for the best. Exactly. That's what I'm so those are the people that I'm, that's, those are the people that I'm I'm really focused on breeding for

that's amazing. And that's what I'm becoming obsessed with, right? Is these smokers who, basically, if you smoke every day, you should be growing 100% I mean, it's one thing if you're an occasional smoker, right? Or if you know a grower already, like, you know, you got a cousin that grows. Aside from that, you should be growing and and if you're in an apartment, you might need to get a two by two tent to squeeze in somewhere. Still worth it. And if you have a yard stick that seed in the backyard and grow a fucking pound from a seed. You tell these smokers, you know, you can grow a pound from a seed, right? You know those seeds that you do throw out of your joint that you get mad when you find you can put those in the dirt and you'll get a pound of weed, bro, yeah, yeah. So that's, that's kind of what I'm becoming obsessed with. And I agree you have to go outside eventually if you're going for scale, if you're going for not breaking the bank, like you said. Now I'm an indoor grower. I'm an avid indoor grower, but I see you outdoor guys, man, and it's like the sun is free. That's the largest cost point you can take an Earth Box. Just take an earth sub, irrigated planter, take an Earth Box with some nice soil, sprout some sun god seeds, and throw it in there, and you're on autopilot. Man, you're on fucking autopilot. I just, I love that. Now, let me bring this around, though. Let me ask you a question, because I know it's not just about genetics, right? Like, I imagine you still have to change the way you're growing in this climate. Can you talk about things that you do in the desert, aside from just the breeding project, do you use shade cloths? Do you have a specific watering regimen? How do you deal with those intense dry backs? Just what are some ways that you grow differently in the desert? Totally.

So I am smack dab in the middle of the Santa Ana winds. So Santa Ana's blow 40 miles per hour today. I'm looking outside. Everything's blowing at about 20 miles per hour right now. So my biggest battle is always the wind, yeah, because it'll just dry them out really, really quick. So it took me a while to figure out what I needed to do, but I kind of do like a like a hoop house in reverse. So what I'll do is I'll build a wind barrier that's a yard that's got a nice, sturdy wall, and then the top is the permeable part. So usually on people's hoop houses, they'll have the top is plastic, and then they raise the side walls. Instead, I'm blocking the wind from the sides, and then allowing the heat to rise out of the top and the wind to blow across the tops of the plants to create that, you know, circulation that I need so very, very different than any other way I've ever grown. It took me a long time to figure it out, but it works incredibly and then. As far as shade fabrics, I do start out so if, if I am putting the seed directly into the bed, I don't need a shade cloth like I could. I could just if it, if it acclimated from the time it's a seedling, it's fine, wow. But if I'm moving, Mm, hmm, wow. But if I'm moving a plant from indoors to outdoors. I'm going to hard it enough, from a 50% shade to a 30% shade and then eventually to full sun. Wow, wow, wow.

But from so in from seed, they do Okay, and as long as they're used to it, that's wild man.

They just get used to it. Yeah, they just get used to it. They I don't know it's exactly what we were talking about, but talking about before, just the epigenetic shift.

Cannabis can take a lot of sun too. It does, like the full sun, the heat that comes along with it might be a little different story. But the wind, I didn't, I didn't expect you to say, like, wind is the number one enemy. And basically you're saying, put up some sort of structure. Like, yeah, any way you can frame something out. So the

way that I started this, you're gonna love this. I moved on to a property that had old

duck shirt, duck structures,

uh huh, just little, like, low, low chicken coop kind of thing. It was all framed out. And so I was like, and, but the roofs were all like falling apart, just terrible. And I was like, You know what? I'm just going to frame out these roofs and protect it from animals, and we're just going to grow in here. And I popped up some shade fabric, and it just worked so well. It was like, I had been fighting because I had been trying to use little hoop houses and greenhouses and things like that, and it just I couldn't get the heat to disperse properly. And so I was like, I'm just going to flip it on its on its side. That worked so well.

That's wild. So you use what was already there, the duck houses that were already there.

And you know what? It's really nosy neighbor friendly, if anybody's like, trying to grow in an area where you don't want your neighbors to see what you're doing. You know you just you build some walls, you make it opaque, exciting. And you put your 50% shade fabric across the top, and once they're in flower, change it to a 30% nobody's going to see him. Wow, I like that. And you don't really smell until the last couple weeks anyways. So you know it's, it's really nobody's going to know until that last month. And then it's just, oh, there's a dead skunk in the

neighborhood of some I don't know, right? And then, like you said, the sun being so intense, just just from the time that it's like peeking over those walls, you probably your plant, probably gets plenty with the, you know, it's DLI is probably met thoroughly just from a few hours that of that full on filtered sun. Very cool dude. Very cool. So don't mess with, like, the stakes and all that bullshit with the wind, to just put up a structure. I think that's, that's, that's great advice. You said something else too, which is, leaving your pots exposed to the wind is a terrible idea. I didn't realize how much the wind dries out your medium. That's, that's a huge one. Do you mulch and protect your medium? So

I have raised wooden beds, or I go directly into the ground and I mulch with like horse manure, wood chipping, plant clippings. I am again, I like to try and imagine that I'm just trying to grow like your average Joe. So I I don't use I use water only. I have a lot of worms in my bed. I bought 1000s and 1000s of worms, put them in my bed, and I just bury scraps from my kitchen. I literally, I've got a little, you know, a couple spots where I lift a lid, stick in some scraps, and the worms take care of it. For me, I go fishing. When I clean my fish, I throw everything in the garden, you know, I'm just, literally, just burying organic matter and letting my worms and decomposition do the work for me. I've got, I've got a couple horses, and the property that we're on now has been a horse ranch for a number of, like, decades. So there's a lot of established mycelium already in places where there was a lot of manure and, you know, so I'm just constantly kind of making my own IMOs and brewing alfalfa tea and composting manure, living the life, yeah, yeah, we've got chickens, so I throw the chicken manure in there, you know, it's, it's really, I'm very, I'm a lazy gardener. I think that, you know, just taking advantage of everything that we have available to us

is the best way to go. That's amazing, man. I like that a lot. You get lazy after 15 years, yeah, for sure, exactly. Do you want to do as little as possible? Because, you know, I like that, though, with the wooden raised beds or the in ground, because I have some rain science grow bags, which I love. My rain science grow bags. But if you stick those outside above ground, and you don't shade them or insulate them, and then you let the wind hit them, you're gonna get some really fast drybacks, which the peppers are gonna love, but the tomatoes, not so much.

But that people don't realize, that's why they got popular. People were looking for fast dry back. It. Hydro grows so that they could pump more

nutrients, fucking right, even with liquid organics that can that can be a benefit, depending on how you garden, that can be a huge benefit. But, yeah, it just depends on your situation. Man, depends on your situation. Grow cast membership. If you love grow cast podcast, you will absolutely love our membership program. Find it at grow cast podcast.com/membership, it'll bring you right there. We've got hundreds of hours of bonus content. We're actually doing a whole member revamp to have more content offerings for the members. So if it's been a while since you've been in membership, or if you've been thinking about joining, now is the time, because we have the weekly live streams that's grow cast TV every Wednesday night and the Ask Me Anything live streams on Saturdays. But we're also adding a whole host of members only content, monthly PDF resources. We've also got short form members only videos, instructionals every single week, plus the growcast community, where we're giving people personalized garden advice and so much more, monthly giveaways. We got the weekly grow challenge giveaways. We're doing so much content, and it's all at grow cast podcast.com/membership, we even have members only discounts on products that you use every day, so you can get extra discounts on these products that no one else gets. And we're adding to that list as well. So brand new and improved grow cast membership. It's dropping in November, I hope you will come and check us out again, hundreds of hours of bonus content and archived content. Come and connect with me and all the gromies in our Discord. I would love to see you there. It's all at growcast podcast.com/membership our little club the order of cultivation. We'd love to see you there, everybody. Thank you so much to all the listeners and especially all the supporting members. I appreciate you so much. All right, let's get back to

the show. So, speaking of drybacks, I know you were curious about my dryback periods during veg I water every other week, and I will, I use a drip hose that's emitting a gallon per foot, okay, per hour, kind of water for about three hours. So, yeah, so, and then I'll cut it off, so it's like a night, deep soak, and then I'll beam again in two

weeks. Wow, that's crazy. That's a long time. Man, yeah,

it is. I like, like you said, I It's on autopilot. These plants are growing themselves. And then in flower, I'm watering at most once a week. Do

you what timely around 10 day? What time do those? Do those springs? I

water in the morning. Water in the morning. I personally just go out and I turn the spigot on, and it starts to emit and then I put a timer on my phone.

Wow. And then two super

watering, easy, breezy, through Veg I'm doing every other week. Once flower starts, I'm doing every 10 days. And then at the end of flower, like the last four weeks of flower, I'm doing every seven days. Wow,

that is wild man, yeah. Really, really

long dry box again, because I'm not super focused. I mean, I probably could have this season if I started watering them, you know, twice a week, and using nutrients and this and that, I could have gotten a bigger yield for myself. But I'm more interested in, you know, creating progeny for the future that are going to have the attributes. And I know, I know what yields I get. So I know how to if I have enough square footage growing, the way that I grow, that I'm going to get enough, that I'm going to get enough yield for my family, right? And I'm not looking to to sell anything other than the seeds. So it's like a balancing of both.

That's interesting, man, that's very interesting. And you know what? That doesn't surprise me, though, if you have the the wooden beds that are sitting directly on ground or, you know, bottomless, and then you have a nice sounds like your multi layer is thick, and it's creating a nice cap. I can see you getting away with those 10 plus day dry backs.

And then the canopy gets thick. You know, I train. I like to train. My canopies really big. I love, that's another thing I loved that I learned in school is pruning. You know, pruning does not diminish your yield. It directs growth. So I'm constantly topping and pruning and directing and bending and, you know, high I love high stress training. I'll just super crop the shit out of things. How

many fan leaves do you take? Are you big fan of defoliation? Or do you

fully eating? Yeah, no, I'll defoliate the whole top people. I don't see outdoor guys defoliating nearly enough. But, yeah, I'll defoliate Not, not going into flower, but mid flower, so that the light penetration can get even.

I like that. I like that was still kind of in that vegetative still, you know, stretch the pre

flower I call lifting the skirt. You know, you shave the legs. You get everything underneath, totally clean. No Mercy, bring it up to, like, just the top notes. But then you leave, you know, the growth there. I leave fan leaves at the top. And then that will, you know, and then I'll top it too. So then that'll. Explode into a bunch of new branches as it starts to flower. And then, yeah, I like, you know what? I think I even top, had one plant that started flowering before all the rest, and I topped it really late, and it ended up making these, like, Triple Crown, like three nugs on the tops.

Ooh, nice. Yeah,

it was wild looking. It was cool. But yeah, I mean just just topping and stripping right before flower, and then, like week six, doing on defoliation of the families, so that everything is getting that even distribution away.

That's wild man, very, very cool, the living soil style, utilizing what's around you, and having to take all these kind of steps to deal with the heat and the dryness and the wind. I think it's, it's a very noble effort that you're breeding out there and selecting for these straights, for these traits. Can we get into some hunting? I want to talk about your pollinations and your Pheno hunts. Let's do it desert candy. Talk about the creation of this strain, the candy slab, Pheno hunt, and yeah, how you came up with this desert candy? So

desert candy is the one from this last year of testing that I'm super excited about. It's, it's not got the most insane bud structure. I've definitely got other ones, but like, when you take a photo of them, they're, they look a lot gnarlier, but this one's, it's a great yielder. And the smell and the profile is like strawberry Cherry with a little hint of almond. My wife has been saying that my wife is from England, and there's apparently some pastry back there that's a cherry almond pastry that she's like this smells exactly like this. And we all my family, we all utilize extract, which is another reason that I can do breeding all the time is because I pull the seeds and then I make the extract out of, you know, the husks. So the yield on this desert candy is insane. I need to take some actual measurements, but I did a butane honey oil blast with just an ounce and we yielded about four grams, so that's over 10% my math is nothing, so I'm very excited for that. And then the candy flab is from heart and soil. He's a really great guy. Love his work. I know you've had him on a couple times. Yes, I got things from him, specifically that were from Desert genetics of his. And then I kind of the beginning of any of my projects is like the see what sticks method. I'm really just taking things and torturing them and seeing who survives and who survives best. And then from there, I'm going to do specific Pheno hunting for specific traits that I'm wanting. So it kind of takes about two seasons to do anything that I'm doing, because I have to stress the parent populations, figure out who's surviving, and then take cuttings of those flower them out so I know what I'm dealing with, and then hunt through them. So when I did that with, you know, the candy slab line, there were a couple of different cultivars that I was considering using as the male. So I kept back those three males that were doing really well, and then I flowered out the females and checked them out. And I just, I really loved what I saw with candy slab just beautiful. Sativa cone like structure, fast flower had some nice red finishes in there, you know, just was giving the things that I was looking for, as well as just growing really vigorously, smelling really sweet, fruity, all those things that I was looking for. So then I brought that back to I had a greenhouse full of all of my things that I had flowered out last, the previous year, that I had enjoyed, and I just crossed it to all of them, females. Nice,

nice. Yeah. So you did a whole candy slab drop

Exactly. That's kind of what I'll do is I figure out what I'm looking for in the mail and then slap it across a bunch of

stuff. Nice. And what created the desert candy? What was the cross that did that? The

desert candy is the candy slab, and the desert Nomad, and desert Nomad is actually another heart and soil creation. Yeah, yeah. Which did just amazing out here.

Red Headed stranger. By that's it, yeah. So

that red headed stranger, he really likes the red headed stranger. I know he's used it a couple of times. And then I was looking through his Afghani work, looking for, again, just stuff that I always try and source, things that at least have one parent that's from a micro climate similar to mine, so that I'm working, you know, from a good starting point,

there's at least some semblance of heat resistance in that Afghani somewhere

for the for the males that I'm hunting, anyways, the females and the cuts that I've used, it's really, again, just what can survive. It's the torture method.

That's amazing. And then tell me about your deeper filial generation work. You've taken your berry blast pretty deep, right?

So berry blast is currently at an f3 and I'm wanting to take specific phenos of that to do s1 work in the future. But, yeah, that's shock wave from ocean grown by blueberry muffin, by Humboldt. And the the initial cross just yielded, it was the purple fino of the blueberry muffin. Oh, wow. And so it yielded a really large amount of purple, which I was really excited about at the time. I couldn't I grew up in the Bay Area, you know. So there was, like, a huge purple craze when I first started smoking.

God, that craze is still alive in my heart.

I love purple anyways, so I had never had consistent access to it, so I was like, I'm gonna make my own purple stream. You know? I got really fed up with thinking I'm going to get something that looks one way and then getting it look in another way, so I'm going to breed for purple. So I just have kept at it with purple, and just trying to, you know, keep isolating that. And also for structure. I love looking for things that have really strong branches. When I first started breeding, I thought, Oh, the internet should be so close together, you know? But I realized now that I think I like a little bit more space between the inner nodes, I've found that those ones tend to have a better flower to leaf ratio. They don't get so fuzzy, difficult to trim, you know, you end up with those more defined flowers. Sometimes

you can get pretty dense in there with that really short intern o' spacing. So I agree, having a little bit of space can be beneficial overall, depending on

Yeah. So this is great. I haven't honestly had anybody complain about growing that strain. I'm almost out of the f3 population. I need to do another round with her. How far are you taking?

It? You said you're going to go s1 so you're going to narrow the traits even more.

Yeah, so I've seen what I want out of the f3 populations, but I want to specify fades. They're really the flower structures are all the same. But I want to have one that's like black, black, and then also one that's got that really bright yellow fade with the purple flower. Those are both in there. So I'm gonna self those ones and see what happens.

Yes, fantastic. Man, that's very cool. Do you plan on doing any like ibls and out crosses like that? Or it sounds like you're gonna try some other stuff with the reversing the selfing.

So the selfing, in my opinion, is the fastest way to stay bottleneck a specific genetic that you're looking for, right? I could IBL,

but then I've heard, I've heard arguments for all three well, back crossing specifically

is when you're is when you've already got a parent that you're wanting to mint true. And for me, I'm, I'm generationally searching for something new. And so once I found the thing that I want in a specific population, I'll just pop like, 100 more of seeds from that population and go back and find that same thing. Sure, that's a lot of what I'm doing. I don't keep, I don't have a huge, you know, Mother room, and I don't keep a ton of cuts. What I'll do is kind of like visual marker assisted breeding. So I will, I'll test anything that I cross, indoor and outdoor, and I take a ton of notes. Hell, yeah. So then I so then I know, you know, okay, this expression does this. This expression does this. So then the next time I'm I'm popping them, I can look at the leaf structure, I can look at the inner node spacing and say, Oh, that's that guy, you know. And this is the one I want to keep a little harder to do. You got to have a little bit of a finer eye for the filo taxi elements, you know, but, but once you do, you can do that sort of thing where you really get to know population. And it is my intention to just keep working my own lines. I'm I've done out crossing over the past four years, really just looking to perfect my genetics so that I can get things as close to being, you know, homozygous as possible, so that I can make stable heterozygous crosses. That's, that's the long term goal.

That is very cool. Man, that's good transition though you say, taking copious notes. I imagine that's a huge part of your fino hunting and breeding. Do you want to expound on that? Or give us and, or give us some other tips on, like, large scale Pheno hunting with purpose?

Yeah, I would say get, get some notes on your computer, you know, and just start keeping a log you go like,

so you can, so you can control F and search through, so you don't have to fucking paw through your papers.

Honestly, dude, it's just because I'll lose the notebook, infamous for losing notebooks. So, you know, I could take all the notes in the world in one notebook, and then it disappears. I'm not going to lose my laptop. I love that, you know I'm saying. And I can also take pictures on my. Phone, and then get right in the photo and just label what it is, you know, I'll just put an initial in the corner, ah, of what it is. And then you send that onto your computer. And then you can make yourself a little word document where you got the picture from the season and your notes, you know, so that you have a visual reference. And you can go back and say, oh, yeah, this was this, take a take a ton of photos, take a ton of notes, and then also get other people involved. I one of my biggest drawbacks is I, my smeller is not the best. I've been smoking my entire life. My sense of smell is not the best, but my wife is incredible, and she bakes, she cooks, and she knows all that. She's really great with scent association. So anytime I grow anything, what does this smell like while it's growing, and then once I dry it, okay. Now, what does it smell like? Okay. Now, what does it taste like? You know, because you're gonna the effects and the profile are read by everybody differently. True,

very true. That's a really good point, man, getting other people involved. Get your friends in on the fino hunt, exactly because you might taste something different than someone else. I know a lot of people are like colorblind or partially colorblind. You might that too. You might not pick up on something that another person can can visually or aromatically or taste wise pick up on, and especially

if you're breeding for other people, if you're, if you're genuinely serious about becoming a seed breeder, you know, obviously a lot of us are kind of these projects have started because we're breeding for ourselves and we're, like, looking for, you know, our own preferences and profiles. But if you're serious about providing things to other people, you gotta get other people's inputs.

Yeah, exactly. Especially if you're trying to do like a medicinal type breeding program, a lot of people say, oh, you know, I want to help people who are sick or who have this condition or that condition. Well, that's going to be pretty much impossible to just test on yourself, because everybody's so different. You need to give that to a wide variety of people and get real, honest feedback, and then react to that feedback. You know, if people say it ain't working for him, you got to, you got to take that to heart. So very good advice on God like involve other people, bring in the community, and then, and then actually take that advice to heart. Totally. That's good. That's good stuff. What's the largest Pheno hunt you've ever done? I Yeah.

I mean, I typically pop at least 100 season, something nice. That's a lot, man, when I, when I'm like, seriously looking through a population, but if I don't have, you know, that's if it's my own work. You know, when I start like, if, like, things from heart. I had bought two packs, just like anybody else. So it says, I've got, you know, 20 seeds, not 200 but when I am, you know, excited about working with something for the future, 100 I'll, I'll cross it back to itself, so that I have a seed stock to then look through. So like, like, I'll never sell candy slab, but I have a bunch of you know, the the f2 stock for me to search through in the future, because I really liked that work, and I want to put it into my work, but it wasn't my original cross, so I'm not going to go selling it. You know what I'm saying, but it, but it is valuable for just looking through a population that you're excited about, to see what it is, to see where you could take

something definitely. And there's nothing wrong with hunting a pack. Man, I think a 10 pack is is a great hunt. But you know, there is something about like mathematics and nature. When you say 100 it's like you're gonna see what this strain has to offer. At 100 you know what I mean? At 10, I feel like you're gonna find it. I feel like most people who pop a pack find something they like, right? Or even find a unicorn. But if you take 100 you're gonna get to know this cross. You're gonna get to well. So

in school, in propagation class, we learned 16 as the minimum. That's the minimum population you would want to look through, because it divides into quarters, right? So then it gives you an even distribution to start doing your math. Well, theoretically,

but I'm a I'm a poker player, right? Which is like 16 is still really small. I encourage people. Okay, so this is funny, son. God, somebody said, how many seeds do you need to pop to officially constitute a fino hunt? I'm glad that academia said 16 now I have, like, a number for me, my original answer was two. My original answer was two. And then someone came in and said, Wait, one, once it. I don't want to discourage it, because technically you are hunting, yeah, but I understand academia is perspective too. They're thinking of like a Punnett square, right? They're thinking of like exactly four corners to a square. It's 16. But listen, I've had aces dealt 16 times and lost 16 times in a row. Doesn't matter sometimes, bro, sometimes it's just about popping that one seed and it's the fucking one seed is the unicorn. So I don't know. I

think sometimes you totally get lucky. But just as like a in order to do some. That you could properly assess, yeah, what has happened and and give some sort of an idea of predictability for the future, I think 16 is the minimum totally. But with one, if you find one that you really like, clone that bitch self, it reverse it, and then you're going to look through because you still find unicorns and s ones. There's this really big misconception that a s1 is a clone in seed form, right? Right? As not the reality, but what you're gonna see is you're gonna get to those recessives that are in there really quick,

because you have less dominance to choose from, because you're cutting out half of the gene pool, which is the man. You're cutting

out all these dominant things that could possibly come in and muddy the water, and you're doubling up the genetic code that has recessives in it, so you're in tensing the likelihood that you're going to get a doubling a pairing of where the genetic recessives link up, so that they can be expressed right

and and to the to the misconceptions point, if you hunt through enough, you'll probably Find one pretty similar to the one that you self but like you said, you're also going to find these unicorns because there are more chances for recessive traits to pair. Yeah, that's fascinating. I like that a lot. Do you see a lot of male past traits? Do you see a lot of dominant male traits?

It? I don't think that it has to do with male or female. I've heard that argument from from breeders and growers, and it's it's about how much genetic dominance is within that

code, regardless of male or female. It

doesn't matter male or female. I've had crosses where the female was super, super strong, but like the candy slabs, the male is coming through really strong. I mean, you can see the the influences of the females for sure. But across the board, it's not like the different crosses look so different from one another that you can't tell that they're from the same father,

right? And that's probably where the misconception comes from, which is like, how many people take a dominant female and then s1 that out to see how dominant is? No, it's like, usually some people just get a really good male. You talked about your work with Wilson, right? Like, Wilson is a very dominant male, but I think it's just a dominant plant, like you're saying,

yeah, the more bottleneck the genetic is, the more dominant it's going to be, right? So Girl Scout cookies, perfect example. It's a self of a self, it's going to pass on really strong because it's the female, whereas, like I would assume that candy slab is passing so strong because it had that Afghan father, right? And then the probably the mother was a little less dominant. So it's just like passing through,

how long have they been selecting down that Afghan? How many generations have they been selecting down that Do you wonder?

I do wonder. I would love to know, but that's exactly it is that if there's nobody, if there's no hand of the farmer in there selecting for recessives, and the population is allowed to develop naturally, the dominant traits are going to override, right? So they're going to then become a, what we call true breeding. Those things are going to pass on very easily, because they're already mostly dominant traits. They've kicked out all the weak recessives.

Here we go, and they've been there for so long. So that's why things like flowering time on an Afghan pass so strong that would make a lot of that sense, because it doesn't matter, like you said, really doesn't even matter what, what they're selecting for, as long as they're not selecting for longer flowering times which they're not. It's

not even what people we're not even talking about people. Just talk about just nature, naturally. That's epigenetics, right there. That's epigenetics. That's the natural forces. Okay, we've got shorter days, you know, sooner in the year, and you know, less hours of light, and, you know, all of these things just naturally, okay, the plant is reading the world around it and saying, I've got to respond, you know, all these different varieties of plant that are still from the same family. You know, there's pine trees all over the world, and there's desert pine trees, and there's rain forest pine trees, and there's, you know, but they're all still pine trees, right? But they survive in these different places, because they've been placed under these pressures for long enough that now they've adapted and they're a whole new

type. Yeah, you know it type is a good word, because I've said before, like, these strains of cannabis are, like, different species of plant, like we it's they're technically not, but they you, if you were just looking at them, you might think they were if you look at their true variety, it's a different variety, that's for sure. It feels like a different species, because, like, they're so different from one another. And then you find out that, I've said this before on the show, but you find out that, you know, Maui Wowie was just a Oaxacan that adapted to Hawaii over the course of like, 50, 6070, years, or whatever. Yeah. And now it's totally different. You know what I mean, because of the sun and the volcanic rock and the way they grow and the fucking chickens and everything just plays into the salt, salt, water, air, all that shit, it's wild.

Yeah. So people are really afraid of losing, losing strains. But I think that we can also think about this as we can create new ones too, if we are consistent, if we're not constantly just doing poly hybrid crosses, if we as individuals, just choose a project and keep working it. Yes, that's the way that these things developed in the first place, you know. So if you know that you live in an area and you're going to live there for the next 40 years, start making a strain that's developed for that specific climate. If you've got humidity issues or moisture issues, take a couple years to just really examine your populations. Push things to the limit. Don't be afraid to let things die. And four years from now, you're going to be thanking yourself because you're going to have mold resistant strains, you know. And then, and then you can bring those to market and help other people who need that. But it doesn't happen unless we go through that, you know, trial and error period where you're going to kill some things, you're going to lose some things, you're going to have disease, and you just it's part of the process. It's the only way to push the genetic code to evolve. I

think that's wonderful man. That's a great message. One of the things that we teach in our breeder class is like, we want everybody who wants to breed to breed, but we want you to get clear on why, what's your mission? Like, how are you going to impact the world? And then why are you doing it? So, like a lot of people say, Oh, for a certain condition, like we mentioned, or I want to bring back a certain profile that I missed. Those are two big ones, but the one you just said is really it's right there in front of you. I need something that works in my environment. Every micro climate is different, and I love ordering seeds from all over, but sometimes just doesn't work in your garden. I've certainly had that happen before. So, yeah, I think all of those goals are noble ones, and it's cool that you're that you're about, like, like you said, we have enough poly hybrids going. That's just part of the game. Cannabis wants us to do that, and it's and so that's covered. Okay, now let's do these specific ones. Let's preserve something. Let's make something work well in a certain environment. Let's keep heirlooms around so we don't lose those. Those are all noble goals. You know what? I mean, totally.

Imagine if we had someone crazy enough, like I was talking about earlier, to just infest their stuff with spider mites for a couple years. And do it? Imagine if someone, imagine if we found a resistant, you know, that a certain terpene profile was resistant to thrips or aphids, or both. You know, like there's basal herbs. There's so many herbs that you can plant that the pest will not touch and it will draw I've got this massive praying mantis living in my basil plant right now because he he loves it, and she's just attracted to it. For some reason, I couldn't tell you why. If you plant basil, if you have you plant basil, the beneficials will come and the pests will stay away. Okay,

what's your favorite plants to plant, alongside cannabis real quick. I

love the concept of pest sinks. So planting something in your property, where you're trying to attract all of the pet that you don't want to make it to your garden, and just doing a ton of herbs, wildflowers, and then also Sun sunflowers. So I like to think about it like I'm building a herbaceous wall. So you've got, like the bottom is your herbs, and then above that, behind that is your row of wildflowers. And then you've got the sunflowers sticking up real tall behind that. So everything's just going to hit that and sink and stay and just eat that stuff for you, and then you can spray all this stuff there and not have to worry about spraying your garden. So, natural

fortress, exactly. That's dope, you know, I grew up, I grew to see the mammoth sunflowers. And after they were done, and we finally chopped them down, those things had grown above the fence, right? They were probably, they're probably like eight feet tall, and after they were dead and chopped down and dried out, those thick sunflower stocks are the best garden stakes ever. They're six feet tall. They're as hard as bamboo, and now they're like the centerpiece of my garden for holding up all my leaning over tomato plants and shit, are these old dead sunflower stocks. So you

do just keep doing that every year, do your little sunflower barrier, and then before you know it, you're gonna have, like, all the

stakes you'll ever need. Yeah, totally a fucking or, like you said, a wall of them. That's like, literally, a fortress of nature. So cool, man. So cool. Listen, this hour flew by. Is there anything else you want to say here at the end? Like, do you want to just talk about just talk about your message to the people, or your values as a breeder? Or anything else you want to say before we wrap it

up? Man, I just, I would, like I said, I want to encourage everybody to start growing for your environment. Try and grow outside, experiment more and also just you. Not just for cannabis. You know, regional seed collection and breeding for your environment is so important that basil plant that I was talking about, I planted close to 200 seeds. It's the only one that survived, because I put it through the torture protocol, and now I've let it go to seed, and I'm going to collect that seed, and now I have my own drought tolerant basil for next year. So these sorts of things are so important for you know, we've lost the genetic diversity in our food over the past 60 years. We've lost so much of the genetic diversity farmers aren't saving their own seeds and creating new varieties. So, you know, we as backyard gardeners can do that with our cannabis. We can do that with our food, and it is extremely valuable, because the more acclimatized what you're growing is to where you're growing, it's going to be less input, less work for you, you know, more bountiful just it's a really beneficial thing to to apply your time to. I

love it, man. Listen, this was an amazing appearance. You killed at Sun god Where can people find you? People want to follow you or get the seeds. Where you at? Yeah,

I'm at Sun God seeds on Instagram, and then you can find my seeds at the tribe seed bank. Tribe seed bank, com to the guy out of Humboldt is just starting that two case California breeders, and really excited to part of that as well. So hell

yeah, brother. Thank you so much, man. Everyone give sun god a follow at Sun God seeds on Instagram, like you said, that's the place to get after him. And one more time. Thank you, sun god. This was a dope episode. Thank you for sharing your tips on Pheno hunting and all your, you know, acclimation work and your awesome values as a breeder, we appreciate you.

Yeah, man, I'm happy to share. And then,

let's just say, really quickly, we're going to tease this for the members. We do have a special little gift just for the members from sun god, thank you for for doing that. Sun God, there might be a members exclusive strain that you can look forward to. So I wanted to say thank you, yeah for that.

Yeah, of course, I'm happy to hang my my very blast lineup has got limited stock left, but the midnight avatar has been one of my favorites and a fan favorite, so I'm looking to just release that exclusively to your following, so you guys can can get a hold of it. While there's still some left to that population, I

love it. Show them your love everybody. Send them a message and hope you enjoyed this episode. I know you did. That's all for now. Stay tuned. Growers. We got some good stuff coming your way. But for now, we'll let you go. This is sun god seeds in Jordan River. Signing off saying, Have a great day. Be safe out there and grow smarter. That's our show. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you to sun god seeds. Thank you to all the listeners. Thank you to the members. Broadcast podcast.com/membership for all the bonus content. I'm out at NOVA cup. That's right, Northern Virginia. Can a breeze. Hemp is putting on the Nova cup. That's November 11, I'd love to see out there. Canna breeze hemp.com, is where you can find the information. Click on the banner at the top. That's the Nova cup. Can't wait to see you there. Members, as I said, check out growcast podcast.com There you'll find membership. Check out seed co we've got some rare packs up there. The tie packs are live. They might be gone by now, maybe the low high tie is still there. Thank you to everyone who took place, took part in that drop. Really appreciate you guys. And I'm just working hard on membership for the foreseeable future here and then on the islands when I go to head out. So stay tuned. Everybody. Don't touch that dial. Give us a follow. Stay up to date, and we'll see you next time on grow cast, bye, bye.

Honestly, dude, it's just because I'll lose the notebook. You.