The Doors - Outdoors 53 degrees South

scrubdog

New member
The Doors 2016

Where to start? I could've done a huge grow log and I might eventually but I doubt it. Suffice to say ran about 70 plants total... MNS strains, Purple Kush, Thai and Thai hybrids. Ended up with about 20 females.

To start at the beginning I have a Thai line which is like my line that I've reworked for five years. I'm happy with it but wanted to inject more kick so began my search of MNS strains for a plant worthy to hit my Thais with.

So... after about 200 plants in total of MNS strains... Black Widow, Early Haze, Mango Haze Inbred, Neville Haze, Neville Haze X mango, U2, The Doors, Neville Skunk... and five years later...

Last year I had my first hit with a Neville Haze that actually flowered before winter (two out of 30 matured at my latitude) so i hit it with a Thai male and also hit a Neville Skunk with the same male just so I'd get an idea of how these hazes go in a cross with my Thai.

Wasn't a good take so I got only about 20 seeds in total but ran them this year to see how they looked.

Then I found the plant I'd been looking for amongst the MNS strains I planted for 2016...

doors1-x2.jpg


The Doors killer pheno

scrubdog
 
Last edited:
polyhybrids

Okay lets talk about polyhybrids for a minute because they were new to me when I first purchased MNS seeds. I've spent 30 years working with mostly landrace and IBL lines and mostly sativas though I do grow landrace kush for the novelty value but don't smoke it.

To be honest I though polyhybrid was a bit of a joke and just a fancy name for a mongrel plant made up of a mess of mixed up strains. The concept of maintaining "cuts" forever just to continually make the same cross is completely alien to me as an outdoor grower continually making fresh seed every season from completely new plants.

When I first grew the polyhybrids I hated them! Absolutely ghastly big round bushes... nothing at all like the slender sativa dominant hazes I imagined. In fact the various MNS strains look pretty much the same until they flower... just big bushes with medium leaves and all the plants look about 50/50 sativa/indica which is apparently what they are anyway.

I know big bushes are all the rage in California and Canada but they go mouldy in the middle because you just can't get the air circulation necessary and they flower very uneven with buds maturing at different times up to a month apart. Plus the endless manicuring. I have to say I am not a fan of big fat bushy plants despite the enormous yield potential.

doors-1.jpg


The Doors 2016 bushy pheno

scrubdog
 
Last edited:
Polyhybrids continued...

So... it took me four years to work it all out but let me explain the beauty of polyhybrids...

You take a potent plant... and a plant that flowers early... and cross them hoping for at least a high percentage of early potent offspring. Then you cross that with something with huge buds for example because you want to increase bud size... etc etc. We're into maths and percentages here but each plant has recessive and dominant traits as you know that they bring to the party and the more strains in the mix then the less the chance of getting all similar plants.

Okay thats quite confusing so I'll jump to the bottom line... with a polyhybrid there is always that outside chance that the universe will line up and you'll get an early potent plant with all the desired traits you were after. You may need to wade through a lot of plants (as Shanti and Neville are quite honest about) to actually get what you want. Not just grow ten seeds and say three are keepers which I see over and over on the internet.

In total I went through about 400 plants in five years... of which about 200 were MNS strains... to find just that one plant. I should point out that this is perfectly reasonable odds to a dedicated plant breeder.

doors-9.jpg


The Doors 2016 chunky pheno

scrubdog
 
Last edited:
Background Info

So some info about The Doors in general after five years of growing it outdoors...

The phenotypes are all over the place but the genotype is stable. In other words you get short plants and tall plants and early plants and late plants but the potency is surprisingly consistent across all phenotypes and the actual buds are all very similar in structure.

There is an indica pheno in about 10% of plants. Short stout round bushes with thick stems (like a tree trunk) and fat indica leaves and huge buds. This pheno has the largest buds by miles and turns purple. Well pretty much all the Doors phenos turn purple eventually but some much earlier than others.

There is a HUGE bushy pheno with a massive yield but like most huge bushes it takes forever to finish. If you're into those huge Cali style plants with ridiculous yields then The Doors has a pheno that is an excellent starting point.

I found Shantis description rather misleading because he makes it sound like The Doors is a real sativa type haze when in fact the sativa phenos aren't all that sativa at all and are not really the most common pheno... more like 10% again. Most common is just an inbetween not sativa... not indica... semi bushy average height typical polyhybrid.

There are three magic things about The Doors though which make it an absolute killer potential strain in my opinion.

  1. The buds tighten as the plant matures instead of running to fluff!!
  2. The buds are consistently potent across all phenotypes.
  3. The Doors does finish in time.

All these things are huge!!! Mango Haze for example just runs to fluff if conditions are not perfect. Its actually a diabolical plant to try and finish properly and not all phenos are super potent. Black Widow runs to fluff and is consistently potent but stupefying and confusing compared to The Doors effect. Neville's Skunk is also a very consistent strain but The Doors just does it better.

Neville Haze... don't start me... grrrrrrrr. The potential is there but a lot more work is needed to make that line really fire.

My only (yep just the one!!) complaint about the entire Doors line is that some phenotypes are very prone to mould and just fall apart and rot before they flower. I lost about 3 out of about 30 to mould.

doors-2.jpg


The Doors 2016 chunky pheno

The chunky phenotype which is also the HUGE bushy phenotype this season would be the "pick of the crop" except it takes too long to finish and starts flowering too late. I was very fortunate this season in that we had a hot dry Autumn which is so rare as to be a miracle almost... I do live next to a rainforest... but any other season this plant would not have finished... so for that reason the super early Doors phenotype wins.

I know you can't tell in the photo but that plant pictured is about ten feet tall so its actually a huge plant.

scrubdog
 
Last edited:
The killer phenotype

So 2016...

I had this very sativa looking Doors plant that started flowering before anything else except the Purple Kush. Sometime in March... I've got it written down somewhere... at least 3 weeks before any other MNS plant of any strain.

No big deal I've had that happen before with The Doors but that particular plant two seasons ago was only reasonably potent and nothing very special. Every season... no matter how much I grow... I run out of weed before the next crop so the first plant to flower always gets heavily picked, oven dried and smoked to death. Usually I burn through the whole plant before its anywhere near mature because i'm hanging out for fresh weed.

So I'm into this early flowering Doors plant and it stopped me in my tracks!!! Potent! Just absolutely ridiculous. Insane. For 20 years I've been saying the weed these days is just blah... has no real kick to it. Four years of growing MNS strains and I had two Neville Haze that I would class as "potent" and everything else was just blah... okay but nothing to write about.

Then I ran into this early Doors plant...

doors1-x3.jpg


killer pheno... over ripe because its seeded and I'm ripening the seed

scrubdog
 
2016

This is my seed crop...

0ROB5515-Pano-Edit.jpg


Far right is The Doors indica phenotype with top buds already gone... note the short and squat round shape and fat leaves...

just out of interest going left... Thai82 and then two Neville haze that will never finish in time... gotta love that Thai though... it always rocks

I hit my killer Doors pheno with Thai pollen and hit the indica pheno with Purple Kush pollen. I'll post photos of the males at some stage because this is my two main lines now that I will grow and work with...

The Doors (killer sativa pheno) X Thai

The Doors (indica pheno) X Purple Kush

scrubdog
 
Doors - killer pheno

Thanks guys...

As I was saying the Doors plant I hit with Thai pollen finished very early and was very potent. It also has an incredibly strong mango smell and a high calyx to leaf ratio... plus it turns purple and doesn't run to fluff if you leave it too long.

In the old days we always bred for a high calyx to leaf ratio and plants that dropped all their big leaves at maturity so they were easy to manicure. I've been greatly disappointed with modern strains where its obvious no breeding work has gone into reducing the overall fluffiness. I like a nice clean plant with distinct bud sites where every bud flowers properly.

I ran 80 Black Widow and have never been more disappointed in a strain compared to the hype. It's like a half-done strain. Absolutely zero attention to calyx and leaf ratios and overall structure. Just a fluffy leafy mess outdoors.

I'm very fussy about what my Thai line has sex with and I have gone five years running plants just to find a keeper... so I do think this particular Doors plant is special.

Out of interest and off topic... but the difference between a sunny dry autumn and a wet cold autumn with the Mango Haze is like night and day. The buds tighten instead of running to fluff and you get these huge long flower clusters that smell all fruity. This is the first season I've actually got a decent result from the Mango Haze. Haven't sampled any of the 2016 MH yet but at least now I can see why Shanti likes it so much. Much fruitier sweeter mango smell than The Doors mango plants.

scrubdog
 
Back
Top