Germination and seedlings – the most common reason this genetics fails
This section comes before the genetics on purpose. Almost every complaint that reaches me about my lines goes back to one of these two mistakes, and both of them happen in spring, months before you see the result.
What does not work
- No indoor start under artificial light. Seedlings usually sit under 18 to 20 hours of light in there. The day outside is never that long, not even at midsummer.
- No forced flowering to sex the plants. Putting plants under a short light cycle for a few weeks to weed out the males and then sending them back outside is the same intervention as above, only deliberate. With my lines it is the most expensive mistake of the whole season.
Why the plant never properly settles into either phase afterwards
A photoperiod plant does not measure day length, it measures the length of uninterrupted darkness. Move it from 18 hours of light down to 15 and it reads that shortening as autumn and starts building flowering hormones. Then the days outside get longer again and the signal flips back.
Plants rarely recover from this back and forth within the same season, and the reason is not simply that they carry on growing. They often keep flowering while trying to revert at the same time. Reverting takes weeks, and by the time a plant would really be vegetative again, the day outside is already so short that it ought to be in flower. It arrives in neither phase. One possible outcome is hermaphrodites, male flowers on a female plant, and with them seeds in your own harvest.
The light sensitivity itself is not a defect, and it is no sign of autoflower genetics crossed in. It is the goal: outdoors the plant should react to the shortening day soon after the summer solstice instead of rambling on into October. The very sensitivity that helps in the open field is what makes it vulnerable under lamps.
For the same reason this genetics is hard to carry through the winter as a mother plant or as cuttings. That is the price of lines bred outdoors and for outdoors, and nowhere else.
What does work
- Direct sowing at the final spot, early May at the earliest.
- A small greenhouse or a windowsill with natural daylight, no supplementary lighting.
On sexing: with regular seeds the decision falls outdoors anyway. If you want to sort them out, wait for the preflowers at the natural site. That costs space and patience, and it is the only route that does not damage the plant.
Start in the natural light cycle and, given decent care, you get plants that clear 2 m easily and tend to end up at 3 to 4 m, unless you deliberately keep them small.
What kind of hybrid this is
F1 means the first generation from a cross between two different parent lines. That much applies here. What many people additionally associate with F1 does not apply, namely uniformity. Uniformity only appears when both parents are homozygous, carrying two identical copies of the genes in question and therefore able to pass on one variant only. Worked lines of that kind are on none of the four sides here.
The Mextiza is lightly stabilised but still carries the variability of its landrace background. The Ultra Early Love was picked as a sativa pheno and chemically induced to set male flowers; her pollen went onto the Mextiza. The Baglung Nepalese I open-pollinated over four generations, keeping it as a population instead of narrowing it down through inbreeding, so it comes true to type without being uniform. And the Ultra Early Love on the father’s side went in as a regular plant.
Ultra Early Love sits on both sides
On paper the UEL contributes roughly half of the mother side and half of the father side, which puts it at around 50 % in the Neue Deutsche Hecke. The two parents are therefore not unrelated, they are linked through this line. That was the plan, not a side effect.
What follows from it is the one trait I will commit to for this generation: the early, light-driven flowering is laid down twice and comes through reliably. In this first grow year the plants have been in flower since the third week of July, with natural germination and late transplanting.
Everything else segregates: growth habit, branching, the balance of aromas, ripening date. Six founder lines sit in the family tree, but they are unevenly represented, so “6-way hybrid” describes the origin and not the proportions.
Genetics and origin
Mother line: (Mextiza × UEL) S1 by @arnold / Outdoorking
The mother genetics come from the Belgian breeder Arnold. They were feminised seeds, and that will not sit well with everyone. I still rate the cross as a masterpiece: every single seed turned into a usable plant, and the line finishes reliably in Belgium and a fair bit further north.
Arnold’s work is in the selection. He found a Mextiza that is absolutely sativa-leaning and still ripens in the Belgian climate. He paired her with an Ultra Early Love selected over several years for outdoor performance, which he reversed chemically to get pollen from her.
The Mextiza from Cannabiogen
The Mextiza is a cross of NepalJam F6 × Oaxaca ’79, bred by Charlie Garcia at Cannabiogen. For it he brought together three landraces, meaning populations that grew in their region of origin over a long time and were never mixed with breeding lines:
- Jamaican Blue Mountain ’85 – collected in the Blue Mountains in 1985, then acclimatised in Spain
- Nepal Highland – a hardy highland sativa
- Oaxaca ’79 – Mexican landrace
Jamaican Blue Mountain and Nepal Highland were crossed and consolidated over six generations to F6, with a backcross to the Nepal: (Nepal Highland × Jamaican Blue Mountain ’85) × Nepal Highland. A backcross means the offspring are paired with one of the parents again in order to emphasise that parent’s traits. The NepalJam F6 stabilised this way then went onto the Oaxaca ’79.
What the Mextiza brings into this line is high mould resistance with the sativa traits intact. A short flowering time is explicitly not part of the package, because she is a long-flowering sativa. The early finish of the mother line does not come from her, it comes from the early flowering onset of the UEL.
The Ultra Early Love
Arnold selected Reeferman’s Ultra Early Love over years, specifically for sativa traits and outdoor performance. She brings the early-starting, light-driven flowering that this whole cross is built on.
On paper her background is mixed: G-13, an indica clone, and Santa Marta Colombian Gold, a sativa landrace. After all those years of selection she presents as clearly sativa-dominant.
What the mother line looks like outdoors
Mextiza × UEL gets big if you let it. One of my plants sat in a 0.5 l pot until shortly before flowering and then went into the ground. She was sticky with resin and produced buds with that lime and honey aroma, the one that reminds you of buttermilk lemon ice cream.
Finishing a sativa of this build outdoors with no rain cover is not something you can take for granted, and the credit goes to Arnold’s selection work.
Father line: Baglung Love Rush F1
The three males that did the pollinating come from my Baglung Love Rush F1, a cross of the Baglung Nepalese and the regular Ultra Early Love F6. It has turned out to be one of my better outdoor hybrids. What it lacks is uniformity, for the same reason as above: neither side is a worked line.
The Baglung Nepalese I open-pollinated over four generations and ran as a population throughout. She contributes colour, mould resistance, an early start to flowering and a short flowering time, along with fruity, berry-like and bubblegum aromas over an earthy, hashy base. The Ultra Early Love F6 reinforces the early flowering onset that already comes in from the mother line.
The exact family tree
Neue Deutsche Hecke F1
│
├── (Mextiza × UEL) S1 – Outdoorking @arnold
│ │
│ ├── Mextiza [Cannabiogen]
│ │ │
│ │ ├── NepalJam F6 (ACE Seeds / Cannabiogen)
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ ├── (Nepal Highland × Jamaican Blue Mountain ’85) × Nepal Highland
│ │ │ │ ├── Nepal Highland (landrace)
│ │ │ │ └── Jamaican Blue Mountain ’85 (landrace)
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ └── Backcross → Nepal Highland (landrace)
│ │ │
│ │ └── Oaxaca ’79 (Mexican landrace)
│ │
│ └── UEL [Ultra Early Love – Reeferman, Arnold]
│ ├── G-13 (indica clone)
│ └── Santa Marta Colombian Gold (landrace sativa)
│ (selected over years for sativa traits · chemically reversed, pollen donor)
│
└── Baglung Love Rush F1
│
├── Baglung Nepalese (4 generations open-pollinated)
│
└── Ultra Early Love F6 (regular)
├── G-13 (indica clone)
└── Santa Marta Colombian Gold (landrace sativa)
(selected over years for sativa traits)
Aroma and character
The lime and honey profile with the buttermilk lemon note comes from the mother line, the fruity, berry-like and bubblegum side with its earthy, hashy undertone from the father line. How the two mix in an individual plant is open, because this generation segregates.
The character is clearly sativa-dominant, lively and clear rather than heavy.
Latitude and climate: what can honestly be said
Outdoor growing is trial and error, and no strain covers every latitude. What I can pass on in good conscience are the sites where the lines involved have actually run, and for the mother line that is Belgium and a little further north.
The further north your garden sits, the earlier autumn turns cold and wet, and the tighter the window between the start of flowering and ripeness gets. Past a certain point the grow is an experiment run by the buyer and not by me. That is not an excuse, it is the reason I put no latitude guarantee in this description: a number here would suggest a certainty that does not exist outdoors.
Who this strain is for
For outdoor growing in Central Europe, with people who want a sativa standing in the garden and are willing to select through a pack. Anyone breeding on gets material with a deep pedigree and a clearly set direction of selection.
It suits you less if you need a harvest date you can plan around, if you want to start indoors, or if the season at your site is so short that a sativa will not make it through October.
Where the project is headed
Neue Deutsche Hecke is the beginning and not the result. Over several years I want to consolidate the line towards predominantly sativa-typical traits while keeping it fully outdoor-capable. Later it should also serve as a crossing partner, among others with the sativa landraces that are already in the family tree.
The aim there is to preserve the character of those sativas and change as little about it as possible, while getting them outdoor-ready and resistant to mould and cold.
What is in the pack
Ten regular seeds of a sativa-dominant outdoor cross drawn from six founder lines, with lime and honey aroma and the mould resistance of both parent sides. The early, light-driven start of flowering is laid down twice and comes through; everything else segregates and wants selecting.
Photo gallery – Baglung Love Rush F1
One of the 3 fathers of the Neue Deutsche Hecke. Of the other two there are only poor photos, taken after they had been cut back
This is what the ladies of this line (Baglung Love Rush F1) look like on 30 August,
Contents: 10 regular cannabis seeds | Breeder: Bunkerlinge Seeds | Genetics: (Mextiza × UEL) S1 × Baglung Love Rush F1
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