big Sur, and i am inclined to beleive and listen to what you have to say, it all adds up and i can tell from what your saying is true, i really appreciate your info and would like to read more of what you have to say. I am also wondering t
what is the truth regarding indica lines and when they really entered the united states, and were worked with. Did you hear much about sacred seeds and were the genetics availble to you? Was sandy a member or was he just doing his own things? again thanks for your info, much appreciated...S
Well, the truth about indica is ambiguous. For several reasons. One being that what a lot of people think are indicas are really not indicas. Lebanese red for example. With the exception of early blooming, these things grow like sativas for me. They also smoke like sativas. They are not harsh like Afghani, and have floral and lemon terpenes. They have narrow leaves. It took me 2 years to source seeds from Lebanon, but I finally got two sets, one from RSC and the other from (now defunct) Blue Hemp. They are said to both be from the Bekaa Valley, and they both grow virtually identical for me. The Lebanese is unique in that there are no closely related strains to it that have been tested by the likes of Phylos Bio, so the verdict is still out. The high CBD to THC ratio would imply that it is likely a hemp cross at some point, but when? True landrace Mexicans were also originally from Manila hemp strains that were brought over on Spanish Galleons in the 1500s. They test out to be genetically the most similar to south Indian sativas. Colombians test out to be related to Thai strains. I mention the Lebanese being like sativas because some people say that they found seeds in pressed Lebanese hashish. I smoked and moved a LOT of hashish, and I never cut into or saw a seed in any hash, ever. Hash is (or was) typically screened and sifted for stems and seeds and then pressed. At any rate, some claim that they got indica seeds from hashish. I never did.
As for BOEL influence, it was not that great in Northern California as it was in Southern California. Also there were so many sources of marijuana products around the Monterey Bay, including hippies in Big Sur and Santa Cruz importing it by the truckload, and by competing military personnel stationed in SE Asia and Europe. As a result, we got gobs of That sticks from SE Asia through the Navy and Army stationed on bases there. The the Colombian weed rolled in my the ton, typically through Los Angeles (or Florida or Texas), but also via ships in the SF Bay area from overseas ports of call. I mean the stuff was from all over. But... it was predominantly sativa weed from Mexico, SE Asia, Colombia, and even Africa (Durban and Congolese). Some stuff came in from India, but that was also sativa (ganja). Some came in from Hawaii, also sativa. Now and then we had hash from Nepal, Morocco or Afghanistan (and once from Hawaii). I mainly had red and blonde hash from Lebanon. Oddly I never saw anything there from Brazil, ever. *shrug* Dunno way. No direct links there, as compared to the others?
Anyway, several like Watson claim to have gone on the "Hippie Trail" through Afghanistan in he late 60s or early 70s, but when Watson claims to have gone there? There was a HUGE drought, and things in Afghanistan were really bad. No mention of that by him or others that claimed to have gone there then. Funny that. I was in Chiapas, Mexico at the tail end of a big drought and that influenced the entire trip! By the time CARE showed up with trainloads of corn, the drought was over. So the locals, not really wanting to eat free corn, became chicken farmers and fed the corn to the chickens and they ate chicken! Its how this 'save the world' BS goes from what I have seen. In my experience sativas remained DOMINANT in NorCal through 1983, if not longer. Imported and local grown. Local crosses with indica like Skunk began to show up in the late 70s, say about 1978 or so. My entire landrace collection through 1983 is pure sativas, with exception of a few African and Afghan seeds. And those were from growers that likely sourced them through the early catalogs. This notion that indicas were around NorCal in 1969? Maybe a few people here and there... but they were not available on the local black market. Most indica strains (and even some sativa strains) in Asia were always made into hashish. I never saw any Afghani, Lebanese, Morocco or Nepalese weed as loose or even bricked tops like the others.
I never heard of Watson or the Haze Bros, or Sacred Seeds when I was living in NorCal between '66 and '86. My oldest brother was into more exotic seeds and he argued with me early on that I had to ~buy~ seeds to get good genetics to grow good weed. He had the early catalogs starting in the late 1970s. He also had friends breeding in Pacific Valley (just south of Big Sur). I never bought into that notion, and I have a freezer with seeds from many potent strains, many of which are seemingly near extinct these days. I speak Spanish and guys on the Latin sites claim that all the old Colombian landrace strains are gone in Colombia now. They say that only old hippies like me that saved them have those strains any more. I have seen the same in Thailand, where there are YouTube videos from the center of where Thai weed was grown and there is narry a Cannabis plant growing there now, which pretty much ended when the Vietnam War ended. Early landrace strains in southern Mexico pretty much dried up after the Paraquat campaign. Even Durban Poison is no longer available in Durban, SA, from what friends tell me that live there.
From what I saw in NorCal in the 60s and 70s, no one really knew how to grow good local weed until the book,
Sinsemilia came out in 1977, and other books like
Marijuana Potency and
Marijuana Botany came out. Yes, we grew local weed and harvested it, but typically too late, too early, or we let the males bloom. We also did not know how to cure it, but it did not really matter. Some strains like Colombia basically never bloomed. Anything and everything was smoked up pretty fast in those days. No one had any stash that lasted more than a few months. If it was any good you sold it, and fast. I grew great weed compared to typical imported bricked weed. Starting about 1978 people I gave seeds to grew some phenomenal stuff. That was also when local sinsemilia showed up. And sinsemilia from Mexico showed up (briefly). I never saw any sinsemilia imported from Colombia. Ever. They call sinsemilia Punto Creepy there now. It varies by region in Colombia though, as Punto Creepy is also a term used for weed that is crossed with indica.
In the end? I dunno. I am a sativa lover. But that was and is mainly because that was all there was to smoke in the 60s-80s in the western US. Indica crosses started to show up in the late 70s and became more prevalent in the mid 1980s, and after the weed grow scene moved farther north into Mendocino and Humboldt County. My experience, anyway. I read these posts by people saying that nothing compared to Hawaii for weed in the 70s, but I was sending Mexican weed to my brother on Maui then and it was better than Maui Waui and Kona Gold. I have also known people from Texas and Florida saying that nothing compared to what they had there in the 70s as well. I would put up the weed we had in California against any others at that time, and in the 80s the Emerald Triangle (and later Southern Oregon) became the defacto growers of the best black market weed available in the western (and maybe the entire) US. A lot of it I did not care for, and I certainly did not care for the price when it went over $200 an oz. So I grew my own, and until a few years ago, they were all landrace sativas. Two hit weed mostly, except the Kerala, Durban and Colombian Black. I laugh at people saying that landrace sativas all suck. I sourced some Vietnamese Black seeds this year, and I cannot wait to grow them. Like Durban, they are high in THCv. People take 3 hits of my Durban and complain, so I warn them about the delayed effect, and let them smoke some more if they want. Then it hits them about a half hour later when the THCv wears off, and WHAM!
Long reply, sorry. Not an easy question to answer though. My experience is growing mainly landrace sativas from bag seed, and traded seeds. I am also getting some indicas from India and Afghanistan next year in trades from around the world though. So maybe I will grow some out. I also have a tightly held Afghani strain that I grew a few years ago. That stuff was from seeds in bag weed that sold in SF for $400 an oz. Early bloomer, cough lock is not overwhelming, but a full body and mental high.
