Do you even need a male anymore?

The only real issues with herms I have found was with a very few California early hybrids from the late 1970s and some SE Asian landrace strains (Thai and VN Black in particular). Never had issues with Mexican, South African, Asian Indian, Hawaiian, Colombians or most current hybrids out there. No commercial clones have hermed on me either. This area was REALLY packed with old school clones when Medical was legal, and the first year that rec was legal in Oregon. People sold off their excess stock of strains that they had carried over the years. Then it all dried up in a hurry as commercial growers and people from WA state snapped them all up. I grew some good old school and more modern ones, like White Widow, Colombian Black, Blue Dream, GDP, Dutch Durban Poison, Grape Ape, Bubblegum, and Ghost OG Kush. Wish I had cloned that GDP. That was the real deal. Fake grape flavor, purple calyxes, great high for sex. I have tried growing 3 other sourced clones of that since, but they were all duds. Grape Ape was as close as I got. That was also a keeper. Wish I could have cloned and run them all indefinitely. But I have plant limits with my grow license here. And grow lights cost a lot of money to run through the winter.

I have no online stuff other than what I have posted on several forums. I was banned on 420Rag, IcyRag, and overgrow for telling my version of the hey days in California in the 1960s/1970s. And listing some of the landrace strains that I have. And about freezing seeds long term. That contradicts some really fat egos out there that have conned people over the years (we have posted about a few of them here). It also conflicts with a lot of poorly informed people that were not there. I also contradict some seed companies that are making a buck off of people peddling fake strains made to look like real ones (Big Sur Holy Weed for example). I know people in Europe that Ace, Cannabio and some others have ripped off for genetics. That was from the old European collectives, which is another story. Hence my not blogging about strains, and not posting photos of them online any more. As it is there are people posting my stuff on Instagram and other places. Some are fine, like Canna's posting about growing my Durban back cross strain here on MNS. But some others out there have posted photos and revealed way too much information about me that I am not happy with. While weed is legal here in Oregon, people will still steal plants and genetics. So I prefer my private life to stay private. Several have asked me to mentor them and want to come see my grow site here. I decline. Lots of people also beg me for strains. I no longer give out seeds or pollen. They have all resulted in undesirable fall outs for one reason or another. I still trade some, but only with people I have traded with before or have known a long time.

Sadly most of the stuff out there now is not what it once was. Indica genetics have crept into a lot of sativa strains as have herm genetics. Sativas are gettting rare now. Few seed companies offer them. Regular seeds are also getting rare now. Fems are all the rage. Genetics have been thinned out in too many generations. Also some strains are simply not what they were originally. Like White Widow. There is the Shanti GHS original WW, then there is the second completely different WW strain made and sold by Arjan & Co after Shanti left GHS. Then there is MNS Black Widow, Shanti's bred sibling of the original WW parent strains. In this day and age, anyone can call anything whatever they want. On the street, on the shelf or in seed packs. Back in the day it was obvious what weed was from Colombia, Thailand, Cambodia or Mexico. Both from the look, smell, taste, high, and the time of year that it was available. A lot of it was bunk weed or marginal. Less of it was good weed, and some of it was top shelf. There was no real advantage lying about the source location. Weed was so cheap then. $20-$40 a seeded lid. Hash was a treat, less available. Good weed and hash sold itself. California has so many sources. SE Asia, Europe, The Middle East, Mexico, Colombia, the Caribbean, and Africa. The weed and hash came to us in droves. Then the Paraquat spraying in Mexico and the move to better local grows in California and Mexico. That led to sinsemilla, and "lawyer weed". Which was great in the late 1970s, as it was cheap, $60-80 a lid. Then thanks to the greedy and ego starved shitheads at High Times Rag posting weed prices and photos from the around the states, people from 'back east' showed up to the west coast with suitcases full of money for weed. Prices skyrocketed. Weed growing then moved indoors and north to the Emerald Triangle. By the mid 1980s the SW Mexican weed industry fell apart. Colombia held on for longer, but also fell apart. Thailand stamped out all weed growing. No more Thai sticks. Hash could still be found, but it varied from year to year. Northern California dominated the market. They bred new lines. All weed was virtually seedless and potent as all fuck. For a high price. Then of course California legalized medical in the 1990s, and that turned the entire weed market on its head, all over again.

thank you to share your experience with us
 
As for fem seed domination... that pervades the hemp industry here. They are even trying to ban growing Cannabis males as all the hemp grows are either cloned female plugs or fem seedlings. The scale of hemp growing here is ramping up incredibly fast and it is becoming dominant. You can grow hemp anywhere in Oregon with a cheap ($500 a year) hemp license and otherwise no requirements. in contrast to grow commercial mj here you have to buy an expensive license scaled to canopy size and renew it for full price every year, and go through insane hurdles and hoops to get that license. New commercial mj licenses are not currently being issued here because of the flood of legal weed on the market. But when they were available, you needed land use reviews, building permits, security fences, local approvals, armed response security, video monitoring systems, secure buildings with commercial locks, access restrictions, criminal and financial background checks, electric and water use reviews, a very expensive inventory and labeling system, bagging and labeling reviews and approvals, and comprehensive testing done on batch lots. On top of that you have to grow the weed, find a buyer to sell to, and get paid in CASH because the banks here cannot deal with weed sales. You also have to designate a vehicle for weed transport, and my insurance company will not cover any vehicle that transports commercal mj. Also only a limited number of counties in this state allow for growing commercial mj. Whereas all counties allow for commercial growing of hemp. Most all states allow for hemp growing as well. Idaho is the one holdout that I am aware of. No amount of measurable THC is legal there, down to like 0,01%. Now the caveat to growing hemp is that it has to be tested under 0.3% THC. That has not always been easy to do, and some have grown large lots in California and Oregon and are facing fines or jail time as the tested amount has been upward of 1-3% THC. Unknowingly some farmers have planted hemp seed that have variable THC content. And if random field samples test those higher THC plants, that leads to trouble.

With the hemp strains that I have grown, they have all resulted in females. Even when (supposedly) bred with regular males. Now I am trying breeding these females with an array of regular landrace and heirloom hybrids this year to see if the next generations do that as well. We shall see. According to Clarke in his books written in the 1980s, he claims that even by that time the breeding of fems had led to a 60% leaning toward female plants in the general population of mj seeds in the US available at that time. If that is true, it may be that we will (in time) breed out genetic sexual reproduction capacity in Cannabis plants. I can see that happening in hemp for sure. Already there is a 10:1 hemp to mj ratio in this state. I can see that going to 100:1 here in a few more years. I also see a coming collapse of the hemp industry here as supply exceeds demand. As it is now, hemp supply greatly exceeds processing capacity. Even after last year when cool summer temperatures and early rains ruined much of the state's hemp (and outdoor mj) crops. Finding buyers is also an issue with hemp growers. There are just not many hemp processors here. And so a lot has to be transported to Colorado where most processors are now. And some here say that some of the Colorado buyers are not upholding their contratcs to buy from growers. Its a fickle and shameless market. Lots of hemp is beong grown here now though. From the Oregon state ag dept: Today 62,000 acres of hemp are grown in Oregon overall, an astonishing 427% increase over acres grown in 2018.
 
I was poor then, so poor I didn’t even know how poor I was There were lids I got nickels. For that I had to pump gas in the winter on route 1 worked the night shift with work boots and a cotton hoody. Looking back on it now I’m lucky to be alive. Pretty sure we got the crumbs of what was in California. Once in awhile we got Columbia’s gold, Panama red, Thai.
around 1980 I saw my first Indica. And in like 1983 I got some (supposedly) Hawaiian I was in the slums of Lowell, Mass then It was beautiful...smelled like love, and it was so resinous it would stick to the wall. Never saw that stuff again.
As time went on weed became ‘killer green bud’ indica and kushes. Decades past, and Sativa disappeared, at least from my world. Some great skunks and Kushs came and went. Now, the weed is strong and tasty, but it doesnt even taste like cannabis.
Im so lucky to live in a state with a 12 plant legal grow. Still don’t have much money but dont feel as poor now with a half dozen jars of the ‘El Supremo and a crop in the fields
 
The only real issues with herms I have found was with a very few California early hybrids from the late 1970s and some SE Asian landrace strains (Thai and VN Black in particular). Never had issues with Mexican, South African, Asian Indian, Hawaiian, Colombians or most current hybrids out there. No commercial clones have hermed on me either. This area was REALLY packed with old school clones when Medical was legal, and the first year that rec was legal in Oregon. People sold off their excess stock of strains that they had carried over the years. Then it all dried up in a hurry as commercial growers and people from WA state snapped them all up. I grew some good old school and more modern ones, like White Widow, Colombian Black, Blue Dream, GDP, Dutch Durban Poison, Grape Ape, Bubblegum, and Ghost OG Kush. Wish I had cloned that GDP. That was the real deal. Fake grape flavor, purple calyxes, great high for sex. I have tried growing 3 other sourced clones of that since, but they were all duds. Grape Ape was as close as I got. That was also a keeper. Wish I could have cloned and run them all indefinitely. But I have plant limits with my grow license here. And grow lights cost a lot of money to run through the winter.

I have no online stuff other than what I have posted on several forums. I was banned on 420Rag, IcyRag, and overgrow for telling my version of the hey days in California in the 1960s/1970s. And listing some of the landrace strains that I have. And about freezing seeds long term. That contradicts some really fat egos out there that have conned people over the years (we have posted about a few of them here). It also conflicts with a lot of poorly informed people that were not there. I also contradict some seed companies that are making a buck off of people peddling fake strains made to look like real ones (Big Sur Holy Weed for example). I know people in Europe that Ace, Cannabio and some others have ripped off for genetics. That was from the old European collectives, which is another story. Hence my not blogging about strains, and not posting photos of them online any more. As it is there are people posting my stuff on Instagram and other places. Some are fine, like Canna's posting about growing my Durban back cross strain here on MNS. But some others out there have posted photos and revealed way too much information about me that I am not happy with. While weed is legal here in Oregon, people will still steal plants and genetics. So I prefer my private life to stay private. Several have asked me to mentor them and want to come see my grow site here. I decline. Lots of people also beg me for strains. I no longer give out seeds or pollen. They have all resulted in undesirable fall outs for one reason or another. I still trade some, but only with people I have traded with before or have known a long time.

Sadly most of the stuff out there now is not what it once was. Indica genetics have crept into a lot of sativa strains as have herm genetics. Sativas are gettting rare now. Few seed companies offer them. Regular seeds are also getting rare now. Fems are all the rage. Genetics have been thinned out in too many generations. Also some strains are simply not what they were originally. Like White Widow. There is the Shanti GHS original WW, then there is the second completely different WW strain made and sold by Arjan & Co after Shanti left GHS. Then there is MNS Black Widow, Shanti's bred sibling of the original WW parent strains. In this day and age, anyone can call anything whatever they want. On the street, on the shelf or in seed packs. Back in the day it was obvious what weed was from Colombia, Thailand, Cambodia or Mexico. Both from the look, smell, taste, high, and the time of year that it was available. A lot of it was bunk weed or marginal. Less of it was good weed, and some of it was top shelf. There was no real advantage lying about the source location. Weed was so cheap then. $20-$40 a seeded lid. Hash was a treat, less available. Good weed and hash sold itself. California has so many sources. SE Asia, Europe, The Middle East, Mexico, Colombia, the Caribbean, and Africa. The weed and hash came to us in droves. Then the Paraquat spraying in Mexico and the move to better local grows in California and Mexico. That led to sinsemilla, and "lawyer weed". Which was great in the late 1970s, as it was cheap, $60-80 a lid. Then thanks to the greedy and ego starved shitheads at High Times Rag posting weed prices and photos from the around the states, people from 'back east' showed up to the west coast with suitcases full of money for weed. Prices skyrocketed. Weed growing then moved indoors and north to the Emerald Triangle. By the mid 1980s the SW Mexican weed industry fell apart. Colombia held on for longer, but also fell apart. Thailand stamped out all weed growing. No more Thai sticks. Hash could still be found, but it varied from year to year. Northern California dominated the market. They bred new lines. All weed was virtually seedless and potent as all fuck. For a high price. Then of course California legalized medical in the 1990s, and that turned the entire weed market on its head, all over again.
Man I could listen to first hand knowledge of the good old days forever. Thai was/is a big notch on my list so I'm determined to find at least a half decent one I can try to work with, glad to hear some of the other landrace strains won't be much of an issue if I can acquire some. Haze is something else I'm eager to grow, after dodging ace seeds I came across Mr nice beans. nothing I've tried that's named haze has lived up to what I've read hazes should be like... Usually stoney things with no uplift or buzz just full on stoned.

Finding reliable landrace strains or even worked landrace varieties has proved somewhat difficult, after reading reviews and journals I had given up and stuck with indica Dom hybrids before I shut down. Since firing back up and smoking some devastatingly strong indi strains I've realised I enjoyed the other side of the spectrum more so that's what I'm planning for the new year.

Sorry to hear the forum world treated you so badly, I didn't realize the forums could be so bad... I left the forums behind about 5 years ago and when I returned most that I used were gone and Instagram is a digital cesspool or toxicity especially where anything weed is concerned.

Luckily this forum is active and full of good people so it's not all bad eh 😁

Bong 🤘
 
Man I could listen to first hand knowledge of the good old days forever. Thai was/is a big notch on my list so I'm determined to find at least a half decent one I can try to work with, glad to hear some of the other landrace strains won't be much of an issue if I can acquire some. Haze is something else I'm eager to grow, after dodging ace seeds I came across Mr nice beans. nothing I've tried that's named haze has lived up to what I've read hazes should be like... Usually stoney things with no uplift or buzz just full on stoned.

Finding reliable landrace strains or even worked landrace varieties has proved somewhat difficult, after reading reviews and journals I had given up and stuck with indica Dom hybrids before I shut down. Since firing back up and smoking some devastatingly strong indi strains I've realised I enjoyed the other side of the spectrum more so that's what I'm planning for the new year.

Sorry to hear the forum world treated you so badly, I didn't realize the forums could be so bad... I left the forums behind about 5 years ago and when I returned most that I used were gone and Instagram is a digital cesspool or toxicity especially where anything weed is concerned.

Luckily this forum is active and full of good people so it's not all bad eh 😁

Bong 🤘
You have come to the right place.
 
Man I could listen to first hand knowledge of the good old days forever. Thai was/is a big notch on my list so I'm determined to find at least a half decent one I can try to work with, glad to hear some of the other landrace strains won't be much of an issue if I can acquire some. Haze is something else I'm eager to grow, after dodging ace seeds I came across Mr nice beans. nothing I've tried that's named haze has lived up to what I've read hazes should be like... Usually stoney things with no uplift or buzz just full on stoned.

Finding reliable landrace strains or even worked landrace varieties has proved somewhat difficult, after reading reviews and journals I had given up and stuck with indica Dom hybrids before I shut down. Since firing back up and smoking some devastatingly strong indi strains I've realised I enjoyed the other side of the spectrum more so that's what I'm planning for the new year.

Sorry to hear the forum world treated you so badly, I didn't realize the forums could be so bad... I left the forums behind about 5 years ago and when I returned most that I used were gone and Instagram is a digital cesspool or toxicity especially where anything weed is concerned.

Luckily this forum is active and full of good people so it's not all bad eh 😁

Bong 🤘

Well, if you want an uplifting sativa, look for old school Colombians (which Haze is said to be bred from). Last year I grew Colombian Gold from seeds that I have from the 1970s and it smokes like old school Colombian Gold. An uplifting mellow clean high. No brain fog or brain lock like Kerala. No speedy rushy effects like Colombian Punto Rojo. The $40 an oz seedy as all fuck Colombian Gold stuff. Not the more common lowland red that puts you under the table either. Colombians take forever to finish though. Durban Poison is another line I have grown and it has a super uplifting high to it. Wake and bake. It is high in THCv, so no couch lock there. Durban finishes about like SE Mexican landraces. Early to mid October outdoors here. I am growing some Kona Gold this year that I got from the Big Island. That also has a good sativa type high to it. It finishes earlier as well. It should be done by the end of this month. Another good party high strain is Maui Waui Cherry Bomb. It finishes in October as well, and has a divine smell to it when fresh cut. Like cherries with a hint of pineapple. Durban Poison also smells great when fresh cut: anise and sandalwood. These strains all have no couch lock stones to them.
 
Well, if you want an uplifting sativa, look for old school Colombians (which Haze is said to be bred from). Last year I grew Colombian Gold from seeds that I have from the 1970s and it smokes like old school Colombian Gold. An uplifting mellow clean high. No brain fog or brain lock like Kerala. No speedy rushy effects like Colombian Punto Rojo. The $40 an oz seedy as all fuck Colombian Gold stuff. Not the more common lowland red that puts you under the table either. Colombians take forever to finish though. Durban Poison is another line I have grown and it has a super uplifting high to it. Wake and bake. It is high in THCv, so no couch lock there. Durban finishes about like SE Mexican landraces. Early to mid October outdoors here. I am growing some Kona Gold this year that I got from the Big Island. That also has a good sativa type high to it. It finishes earlier as well. It should be done by the end of this month. Another good party high strain is Maui Waui Cherry Bomb. It finishes in October as well, and has a divine smell to it when fresh cut. Like cherries with a hint of pineapple. Durban Poison also smells great when fresh cut: anise and sandalwood. These strains all have no couch lock stones to them.
Do you know of a seedbank or breeder that stocks Maui waui cherry bomb, Durban poison I had read Columbians can take a life time to finish. My indoor set up is small but I can wrangle sativas and train them but super long flowers are a test of my will and also my bud supply.

Sativas need to be preserved in this day and age of cannabis... It's the landraces we seem to be losing with all the fad strains and fast flowering indicas, it seems everyone just wants to smoke and glue their arse's to the sofa lol.

Bong
 
Locally those strains are randomly available as clones in Oregon at some weed shops. As for seed banks, I do not know. I do not buy seeds as a rule. I was warned that one seed bank in NorCal or Southern Oregon had inadvertently bred herm genetics into their MWCB. The Dutch Durban Poison (Ed Rosen. -> Mel Frank -> Dave Watson hybrid with de-skunked skunk) is available online in Europe. Or it was last I looked. What Royal Seeds has looks exactly like my landrace back cross strain of Durban. I traded lots of those beans worldwide some years ago. I have seen several seeds banks offering them.

Yes, Gorilla Glue #4 is the big seller here. Along with OG Kush XYZ hybrids. Talk about bottle necking genetics.
 
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Locally those strains are randomly available as clones in Oregon at some weed shops. As for seed banks, I do not know. I do not buy seeds as a rule. I was warned that one seed bank in NorCal or Southern Oregon had inadvertently bred herm genetics into their MWCB. The Dutch Durban Poison (Ed Rosen. -> Mel Frank -> Dave Watson hybrid with de-skunked skunk) is available online in Europe. Or it was last I looked. What Royal Seeds has looks exactly like my landrace back cross strain of Durban. I traded lots of those beans worldwide some years ago. I have seen several seeds banks offering them.

Yes, Gorilla Glue #4 is the big seller here. Along with OG Kush XYZ hybrids. Talk about bottle necking genetics.
It seems everything is an OG or gg4 cross and while these strains are strong I find the flavours are all very similar with almost no diversity.

Bong
 
It seems everything is an OG or gg4 cross and while these strains are strong I find the flavours are all very similar with almost no diversity.

Bong

Indeed. I find most weed shop weed here to be the same flavor and strong highs and stones. Most hybrids these days seem to have Northern Lights, skunk, or Chem Dawg (mother of OG Kush), some Thai (father of OG Kush), an Afghani, and some form of Haze. GG#4 is just an in-bred of a bunch of cousins that are Chem Dawg hybrid strains (Diesel, Chem's sister, and Sour Dubb or Sour Diesel, I forget which). Then there are the rash of desert named strains out there now. Vanilla Chocolate Smoothie. Does anyone know what these strains are bred from?

Another strain you may want to grow is original White Widow, or rather, the new sibling to the original White Widow available here called Black Widow made from the same parents. BW is a nice change of pace. It is a cross of Kerala Ganja and a Brazilian. Shantibaba bred the original White Widow many years ago. It has an uppity high to it, and no couch spud lock for me. Good day weed. Great plants and easy to grow and clone. They have large frosty colas. Hence the name. I cloned about 100 of them one year and they all rooted! I though maybe 30% would root. So I propagated a lot of WW plants that I wound up giving out that year. I find the first hybrid of disparate strains to be the best. Maui Waui Cherry Bomb, White Widow, original skunk, and Cali-O for example.
 
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Indeed. I find most weed shop weed here to be the same flavor and strong highs and stones. Most hybrids these days seem to have Northern Lights, skunk, or Chem Dawg (mother of OG Kush), some Thai (father of OG Kush), and maybe some form of Haze. GG#4 is just an in-bred of a bunch of cousins that are Chem Dawg hybrid strains (Diesel, Chem's sister, and Sour Dubb or Sour Diesel, I forget which). White Widow (now the sibling to White Widow available here is called Black Widow) is a nice change of pace. It is a cross of Kerala Ganja and a Brazilian. Shantibaba bred the original White Widow many years ago. It has an uppity high to it, and no couch spud lock for me. A bit of a cluttered high to it, but good day weed. Great plants and easy to grow and clone. They have large frosty colas. Hence the name. I cloned about 100 of them one year and they all rooted! I though maybe 30% would root. So I propagated a lot of WW plants that I wound up giving out that year.
I'm looking to run medicine man soon and really spice up my smoke stash, I smoked white rhino about 12 years ago and loved it so I had to grab a pack on the auction.

Black widow will be one of my next purchases in the new year I've got plenty to run in the meantime.

Bong
 
Back to the OP and growing male plants... I have 4 male Kona Gold in bloom now. I have been collecting pollen this week from them and freezing it in vials, and also drying the male flowers from it. I smoked a bowl of KG male flowers tonight. I am reminded of that great high from the small stash of Kona Gold hash that I got one fall back in 1978. Yes, gold hash from Kona. That was the best hash I have ever smoked. Anyway, these male buds have a good high to them. The females will be exactly what I am after in this strain. Wait a minute, I have read onlikne a thousand times now that smoking males definitely, emphatically and by millennial paradigm simply cannot get you high in any way, shape or form! I must be stoned out of my mind to think that I am high. Yet, it seems so.

Ahhhhhhh, the mysteries of Cannabis on the brain. Will we ever figure this plant out for all it is worth? Methinks not, even though the medicinal value is beyond my comprehension. And I comprehend relativity and quantum physics. Well, QP is not intuitive, and there is no really grokking it. But I know the principles, I can do the math and I can deal with engineering using it. Same with special and general relativity. Light is everywhere at once. Reason being is that time collapses at the speed of light. Which gave me an interesting thought. That the sun is a birthing mother of a gazillion photons. No! I am not stoned! "They" say that it cannot happen smoking male plants. So I must be hallucinating.
 
The only real issues with herms I have found was with a very few California early hybrids from the late 1970s and some SE Asian landrace strains (Thai and VN Black in particular). Never had issues with Mexican, South African, Asian Indian, Hawaiian, Colombians or most current hybrids out there. No commercial clones have hermed on me either. This area was REALLY packed with old school clones when Medical was legal, and the first year that rec was legal in Oregon. People sold off their excess stock of strains that they had carried over the years. Then it all dried up in a hurry as commercial growers and people from WA state snapped them all up. I grew some good old school and more modern ones, like White Widow, Colombian Black, Blue Dream, GDP, Dutch Durban Poison, Grape Ape, Bubblegum, and Ghost OG Kush. Wish I had cloned that GDP. That was the real deal. Fake grape flavor, purple calyxes, great high for sex. I have tried growing 3 other sourced clones of that since, but they were all duds. Grape Ape was as close as I got. That was also a keeper. Wish I could have cloned and run them all indefinitely. But I have plant limits with my grow license here. And grow lights cost a lot of money to run through the winter.

I have no online stuff other than what I have posted on several forums. I was banned on 420Rag, IcyRag, and overgrow for telling my version of the hey days in California in the 1960s/1970s. And listing some of the landrace strains that I have. And about freezing seeds long term. That contradicts some really fat egos out there that have conned people over the years (we have posted about a few of them here). It also conflicts with a lot of poorly informed people that were not there. I also contradict some seed companies that are making a buck off of people peddling fake strains made to look like real ones (Big Sur Holy Weed for example). I know people in Europe that Ace, Cannabio and some others have ripped off for genetics. That was from the old European collectives, which is another story. Hence my not blogging about strains, and not posting photos of them online any more. As it is there are people posting my stuff on Instagram and other places. Some are fine, like Canna's posting about growing my Durban back cross strain here on MNS. But some others out there have posted photos and revealed way too much information about me that I am not happy with. While weed is legal here in Oregon, people will still steal plants and genetics. So I prefer my private life to stay private. Several have asked me to mentor them and want to come see my grow site here. I decline. Lots of people also beg me for strains. I no longer give out seeds or pollen. They have all resulted in undesirable fall outs for one reason or another. I still trade some, but only with people I have traded with before or have known a long time.

Sadly most of the stuff out there now is not what it once was. Indica genetics have crept into a lot of sativa strains as have herm genetics. Sativas are gettting rare now. Few seed companies offer them. Regular seeds are also getting rare now. Fems are all the rage. Genetics have been thinned out in too many generations. Also some strains are simply not what they were originally. Like White Widow. There is the Shanti GHS original WW, then there is the second completely different WW strain made and sold by Arjan & Co after Shanti left GHS. Then there is MNS Black Widow, Shanti's bred sibling of the original WW parent strains. In this day and age, anyone can call anything whatever they want. On the street, on the shelf or in seed packs. Back in the day it was obvious what weed was from Colombia, Thailand, Cambodia or Mexico. Both from the look, smell, taste, high, and the time of year that it was available. A lot of it was bunk weed or marginal. Less of it was good weed, and some of it was top shelf. There was no real advantage lying about the source location. Weed was so cheap then. $20-$40 a seeded lid. Hash was a treat, less available. Good weed and hash sold itself. California has so many sources. SE Asia, Europe, The Middle East, Mexico, Colombia, the Caribbean, and Africa. The weed and hash came to us in droves. Then the Paraquat spraying in Mexico and the move to better local grows in California and Mexico. That led to sinsemilla, and "lawyer weed". Which was great in the late 1970s, as it was cheap, $60-80 a lid. Then thanks to the greedy and ego starved shitheads at High Times Rag posting weed prices and photos from the around the states, people from 'back east' showed up to the west coast with suitcases full of money for weed. Prices skyrocketed. Weed growing then moved indoors and north to the Emerald Triangle. By the mid 1980s the SW Mexican weed industry fell apart. Colombia held on for longer, but also fell apart. Thailand stamped out all weed growing. No more Thai sticks. Hash could still be found, but it varied from year to year. Northern California dominated the market. They bred new lines. All weed was virtually seedless and potent as all fuck. For a high price. Then of course California legalized medical in the 1990s, and that turned the entire weed market on its head, all over again.
Exactly. Great post
 
It seems everything is an OG or gg4 cross and while these strains are strong I find the flavours are all very similar with almost no diversity.

Bong
Yeah I noticed that too, I've grown out clones of GMO and GG#4 and they both are very similar in smell and taste. So similar I find myself smoking more Critical Mass and Mango Haze at the moment.

Still has not changed my mind in chucking pollen on them, my plan is some Critical Mass it's pretty much my favorite from Mr. Nice the buds are just so nice. I'm mostly going for male female seeds, but I have a few friends who want to grow outdoors and hate getting males, so I'm going to try out the STS method with the best Critical Mass I can find.

But I imagine the reason for similar tasting (elite clones) is that they keep selfing the same diesel, OG, Chemdog, etc. Genetics together different combinations and different names but all lead back to the same few selfed genetics, good genetics for sure, just lacks the variety of scent and flavors you get from old school regular seeds.

Males definitely should be a bigger thing in cannabis, just most people don't want them.
 
I never realized people were breeding out the fem seeds. We tried it in the 2000's and every time the resulting seeds came up with lots of deformities and herms. So we've been telling people for years "DO NOT BREED WITH FEM SEED!". Although getting online now I see many others disagree with that. I read they used stress in the early days and now with chemicals to make the fem seed. Not sure if that's true or not but I would never breed with them again. Personally, the males always seem to grow the fastest and with the most vigor, very desirable traits.
 
Hi All

Mr Nice Seedbank remains a regular seed company, CBD crew is both regulars and feminized and behind the scenes many rooms i run make specific seed for specific companies from orders. Nevil, myself and Dave Watson all experimented with all things but the unanimous agreement about keeping feminized seed out of breeding is something we all agreed about. Of course since those days there are companies just pumping out seed production with little respect for breeding properly or testing...more about new flavors and quantities than special trait breeding. However if you are interested in keeping genetic diversity healthy and alive then you use male and female selections. Maybe i am old school thinking but after the millions of seeds i have created and made over the last 30 + years i see good old seeds made with true male pollen and true females create incredibly vital and voracious growing offspring...we weeded out hermaphrodites from most gene pools over years of selective trait breeding, it does not make sense to put it back? The reality is if feminized seed is all you are after then you can produce it yourself on choice clones....why buy it? You may possibly do a better more thorough job than some of the offers available today!

Whichever way you tend to favor it is always good to keep things diverse and with a natural range...and try to replicate nature rather than monsanto.

All the best Sb
 
Yo, neat converstaion y'all. I recently got a book about breeding plants and excited to learn more so I can keep up with these conversations at a higher level. Shanti, did you happen to make the seed for Greenhouse's Super Lemon Haze CBD offering? Much love.
 
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