I’m dropping a new release of Sweet Tooth #4 F4 in a few days. Also doing LUI F7 run soon.
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It’s the first time I’ve checked out your site, great looking stuff! Wanting to grab that LUI when it’s done.
Shishkaberry has been, and will continue to be, on the list. I think he mentioned Barney’s explicitly in the potcast interview, so he definitely doesn’t have good things to say. Understandable!
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Sign me up for that LUI F7 
I am about to pop some 2009 vintage LUIx G13hp that came from Classic’s vault (RIP).
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This was a pic from Colombia Steve sent me back around 2014.
I was consulting for a few of the first Rec grows in Washington state so I was talking to Steve every week about advice in switching from home grow to a few hundred lights and multiple greenhouses.
He was so open with his wisdom.
I tried inviting him down, but at least at that time, he wasn’t allowed back in the USA for having sold seeds across the CAN/US border.
Steve and Charles Scott are very underrated for having grown 100+ acres in so many different countries.
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I’m here man. Your Siskaberry beans are scheduled to go through the preservation protocols in the next year. Very much want to get this line back out to growers, as well as the Sweet Tooth 5.0. Stay tuned, and thanks for sharing your genetics to help make this happen.
peace -b420
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Hell yeah 
, can’t wait.
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Hey that’s great news on the preservation front.
I’m kinda doing the same as far as preserving the shishkaberry goes.
The ones you have were from the 2017 batch (98shiska momx 2016 ustad shisk 3f2dad). I still have a good batch of those remaining and i just sent some of those same seeds to Josh Blue of Dark Star seeds. I am right now soaking seeds of Ustad’s Shiskaberry 3f2 that @PineTarBastard donated for a Shishkaberry seed increase. Those were the 2015/2016 release and are the same seeds the male comes from in the seeds I sent you.
fun times… good things are in the works in more places than one
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Hello,
15+ years ago i was gifted with some clones, including a sweet tooth cut
i kept it 2 years and finally gave up with it as the jars did not go down, i was a bit tired of it.
Cruel mistake…
that cut was too couchlock and made everyone too stone to do anything
Pure smell of forest strawberries, the taste was pretty close to the nose
stretchy girl with no side branches, indica leaves, only golfballs every node, dense rockbuds red/purple calyxes with crazy amount of trichs.
i miss her so much
after some researches i found that cut came from an original first pack of sweet tooth
years later i popped some spg x bb from chimera in order to hunt something close to the one
chimera said it’s original st1.1 stock from sol, just renamed.
but the cut i kept had nothing to do with what i found in those beans…
then i realized that steve released the sweet tooth, i think chimera got this second batch, unfortunately the (or one of the) original blueberry dad was replaced as djshort lost it, if i remember well.
i got the spg cut which has a nice smell but pretty boring high and a common taste, got sweet skunk too, nice “old paper” haze taste, great yielder but imo nothing to do with spg
i got my hands on a shishka cut years ago, the ES “fresita” cut, i didn’t like its chemical strawberry nose, high and taste didn’t impress me, i think there is better phenotypes of that strain circulating
nice to see people still work on those genetics 
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Just spoke to Jay of Federation and he had nothing but kind words to say about Steve and everyone. Steve’s been kind to me over the years, but definitely have heard diff tales from diff Canadian breeders iver rbe years that have relegated him to Scott Farms/Reef status. One of my favorite lines was the Blue Satellite 1.0. Koots / Kootenay Icmag deserves a big push for what he contributed so thanks to the above poster for referencing him
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Damn ! Would love to see old Spice gear available again ! Real legit Spice gear ! Very grateful for all work you guys are doing ! Seriously on the edge of my seat ! Haha I know good things do take time !
Mad Respect !
Peace
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Kootenay was just breaking onto the scene when I had to take a break from growing indoors and I really didn’t engage with the “community” back then. I have some blue satellite crosses in the seed freezer … not sure if they were Koots work or not.
I have never been able to reconnect with Breeder Steve but was fortunate to meet him the day I bought my first Spice of life and dj short seeds. His voice is what I recall the most… I got nothing but kindness and sincerity as a recollection of that meeting. And I also left with an urgency to pop the seeds after how passionately he described his strains and the DJ blueberry. Nothing but mad respect from 1998 till now.
I am doing somewhat of a shiskaberry revival and have been on and off since 2017… I don’t take the task lightly and I’ve been trying to approach it with as much respect as I can. I don’t want to be on Breeder Steve’s shit list like the cash crop ken’s back in the early 2000’s out there winning cups with steve’s work and calling it his own… shame!!!
anyhow, would be cool to see legit shishka genetics availlable again and I should not that fleur de mal seeds is also doing some great work on reproductions of some of the great strains from the tail end of the 90’s /early 2000’s. Well worth supporting those projects and I sent him a small lot of the shiska seeds I made in 2017.
Right now I have 2 seed lots going… small ones … shishkaberry 3f2 by Ustad Seeds to be open pollinated for a seed increase and I started a small grip of my 2017 batch which is the 98 shiskaberry female x ustad shiskaberry 3f2. The 98 shiska female used was the only plant out of 2 that popped out of the old seeds which were put away in 2005. I have been trying to source a spice of life shishkaberry clone in canada but so far have only been offered Barney’s Farm sourced cuts and I’m not interested in the barney’s farm version or the kish from 2003-2005. Only genetics from spice of life releases are what I will work into this project.
Hopefully many OGs will benefit from all of this in the end.
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I remember what got me sparked up about Steve’s gear was hearing him on the potcast and the way he described some of the flavors of his work, DJs too. Specifically when he was talking about the one blueberry male that he helped to hunt that he said he actually smoked because it looked so good. If I remember right he said that smoking that male tasted like “licking blueberry syrup” or something similar and I thought that if the dudes MALES taste like that I probably gotta try what he’s got. Haven’t had the opportunity to yet but it’s certainly on the bucket list.
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Breeder Steve is incredibly well known for, exactly as the name says, breeding. Steve has been growing his own since 1989. He shared incredible stories and shared insights into
- Backstory on how he got into breeding
- Living Library of Cannabis Genetics
- His most famous seed
- His run-in with the Pope
- Wine and Cannabis similarities
“If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”
Guests Links:
Follow Breeder Steve
https://breedersteve.com/
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Thanks for the thread bump, @jessethestoner !
Reminds me to dump some links this afternoon:
Koots/@Kootenay Q&A thread about SoL seeds:
https://www.icmag.com/threads/spice-of-life-seeds.140757/
2012 public letter from Steve about “where am I now?”:
"I decided to write this letter in response to the growing number of inquiries regarding my whereabouts, and the whereabouts of my seeds. Nobody can tell you I got tired of breeding cannabis, I got sick of the business.
The only people that truly understand the dedication and expense of conscientiously growing for seed are people that have done it. Selections require a lot of space, both indoor and out. Certainly the selection process is what I enjoy most about cultivation. Most growers consider such crops a luxury, or at least a necessary evil. The average grower is working for max yield of sinsemilla that is where the money is. This is achieved through systematically replanting identical clones from a high-yielding selection.
Luckily for most growers they will probably get clones from someone who has already discovered it while growing a selection from seed. The grower is rewarded for providing other people with what they don’t provide for themselves.
That’s cool, not every puffer is a gardener, for whatever reason. I never dreamed of producing mass quantities and raking in a bundle, just to grow my own and share it, as I like.
Factory-like repetition may be the rule of production, for this is how things get built; just consider laying bricks, or weaving a basket. When personal stash is the motivating factor for a grower yield concerns are secondary to quality concerns.
Prior to the retail revolution in cannabis seeds in the Canadian market, many growers gladly traded seeds and clones from their travels and selections. No one had a proprietary interest in “guarding” his or her genetics, every good specimen was proudly shared among all brave enough to continue the age-old act of cultivating good grass.
Distinguished London, Ontario cannabis activist Chris Clay was the first in repressive Canada to stand up for our rights as growers and smokers and openly sold both clones and seeds in Canada’s first hemp store.
The Great Canadian Hemporium. Chris always had the tasty as well. Around the time the cops and courts shut him down Marc Emery was taking up the flag in Vancouver. Marc was no stranger to controversy and courts, as an alternative bookstore owner also from Konservative London Ontario
Marc supported banned publications and free speech such as a banned album from the infamous “2 Live Crew”. Marc published an alternative paper and wrote most of it. Being high in high school at the time I thought he was pretty cool talking about the evils of The People’s Institute of Education and so on.
Soon he would sell High Times and The Emperor Wears No Clothes. After boring of London Politics Marc and family did a stint in Southeast Asia where they eventually got a not-so-boring taste of Indonesian Politics. Returned to Vancouver practically destitute. Made his start selling High Times door to door. Then he was able to continue to sell the controversy around hemp and highness at Hemp BC.
In Vancouver, Marc’s boundless energy and enthusiasm for cannabis was fuel for an already largely hip populace. That dude sold a lot of bongs, and his seed catalogue progressed from one, then two, then three strains to probably more than three hundred.
After Marc was busted for the first time selling seeds, I wanted to do something for him. I went downtown Vancouver and I told him, “I have no pictures or samples but here is a film canister of one of my seeds in the spirit of donation if you have the heart to continue selling seeds.” He took off the lid and looked at those big fat dark coconuts and told me excitedly, "Make all the seed you can!
Marc gave me some of the seeds that he was selling. The germination rates were low and the finished product of those that did grow did not impress me enough to keep clones. I knew I was the pickiest of puffers and so began the beginning of my seedy career. For five years I had been saving seed of every favourite before I moved to BC.
I grew outdoors mainly until then. There I moved indoors for five years after experiencing the cunning ruthlessness of the prevailing herb pirates. Up until my first fall in BC I had never lost plants to humans. I still don’t really think of herb thieves as human and treat them accordingly. People that try and take from you what is rightfully yours are the most contemptible beings on the planets, whether it is your work, your freedom, your loved ones, or your life. Your nightmares will come true when WE get back at YOU.
As far as why Spice of Life Seeds have been unavailable for over a year and a half, it is because I had become simply too hot to continue growing. After Marc lost a huge consignment of Spice Seeds (that were not to be stored in the store, by agreement!), I had to tell my satellite growers, five houses and five strains, that they should plant their next crop for sinse. I had to do crazy things to keep up my payment schedule to them as a point of pride. I never want it said I left someone hanging. To Marc’s credit he did an admirable job of keeping the business together through those turbulent times.
The only thing besides my loved ones and my ganja that seemed a worthy expenditure of my valuable energy was to promote economical and environmentally friendly ways of producing gourmet vegetables and fruits. I was actually compelled to start keeping a line of broccoli and a few of tomatoes that were happiest in my bioponic system and really I knew all of that time that all I wanted to do was to start doing selections of cannabis again, to straighten out some current favourites to the point that they could be my finest work. I was elated when I got a phone call inviting me to breed cannabis legally in Europe.
I had pretty much sworn off the business due to the prevalence of knockoffs. It was easy for them, I gave anybody clones of my favourite plants and likely still will. I firmly believe that there will never be too much high quality cannabis in this world, and that there is already way too much shit.
I told Marc after numerous business ethical conflicts, e.g. Say “Sold Out” when a popular seed is unavailable; do not advertise to sell what you don’t have. People were ordering Spice and receiving replacements, or deceived, not cool. I was and am still friends with many of Marc’s employees and was often shocked at what goes on. Still am. I put together and made popular a brand name Shishkeberry, which achieved much acclaim.
One of Marc’s ex-employees that came to work for one of my businesses actually stole two shipments of my seeds before he quit the shop and now kicks back making a tidy living as Cash Crop Ken. He wrote up what he thinks he knows about them, and together with his fence, Marc Emery, exploit the name Shishkeberry that I developed and popularised. In a civilized country I could successfully sue them, but in the cesspool of Marc Emery’s current seed scene acts like this are everyday business.
Take for instance some of his employees working for shit wages and growing some good grass in their basement, thanks to clones from me they finally could actually get high from what they grew. These desperate boys are calling themselves Federation Seed Co. Let me set the record straight: Cotton Candy = Sweet Tooth, Island Sweet Skunk = Sweet Skunk, Mikado = Sweet Pink Grapefruit.
These are popular clones I’ve named and let loose. They claim to have developed them “over the years”. Flash-in-the-pan seed company might have been a more appropriate name; they’ve already crumbled due to a combination of incompetence and shame. Just having my clones does not mean they know how to produce accurate seeds of them when they attempt to reproduce them “over the years” I had long ago told Marc when he asked, that I was not interested in doing knockoffs of others’ work, in name or substance.
I claim what the heritage is of my seeds, to give respect and credit to our predecessors, but I develop something original. Marc was also fairly informed that if he began selling knockoffs of my work I would never, ever, ever sell him seeds again. I laugh at him now when he says, “Well, not everyone wants the knockoffs. Sell me more seeds, I’ll pay cash.” The last deal we made was I erase his crushing debt and he gives Spice of Life free ads for life. He has cancelled that deal as well, but I don’t feel too bad writing it off anyway because it’s for the cause.
When I was shutting down seed ops for non-payment of seed, Marc was off to Cuba with his new girlfriend. I was Breeder Dave at one time until “a typo” changed that. Cannabis Canada published my home number and therefore address eventually. I have been arrested partially with his help, and contrary to my wishes. While Marc has pled guilty for the cause I have been fighting in court for a head’s innocence.
Laughing Moon launched themselves with a tidy purchase of Spice but that was a long time ago now they are selling their versions of my strains as my strains. Impostors such as Dubious David “Freedom” of I-don’t-know-what-the-fuck-he-calls-it-now.com who never paid for his small order should be avoided, as should Derek the dongblaster who never even had any Spice but claimed to be the exclusive distributor.
The Amsterdam Café owners, on the other hand, are always fair and honest to deal with, my regards ladies, kudos to you. They are roses amidst the snakes in the grass. Marc was so pissed I won’t ever sell him seeds again that he screamed at me, “I made you, you would be nothing without me!” I earned my reputation with quality. Marc had it in for me since the time about two years ago when he asked me to run the Seed Desk at Hemp BC. The offer was generous enough but a desk is not my cup of tea. Smelling the roses is. He asked ten times and then became rude. He couldn’t stand that I wouldn’t work for him.
To avoid confusion, until further notice, doubt the authenticity of anyone selling Spice of Life Strains except the Amsterdam Café, legendsseeds.com, and seedbank.to. We appreciate it when you bring fraudulent seed dealers to our attention. The Spice of Life name has been synonymous with quality for the last five years and I will not abide its abuse by poseurs. I’m very happy to be back at work now and look forward to bringing you the best I can. As for the price increase the truth is that the cost (and scope) of my experiments have grown incredibly, believe me when I tell you that up until now and still I have not made any money in breeding, it has been an expensive hobby.
However it is my passion and I do what I have to do to afford it. Lots of people aren’t in it for the money and I can appreciate that, however I would love to be able to spend ten million on a state of the art facility, a monument to cannabis in a stable country. It would be a dream playground for the committed into the future, don’t you think? Working to improve plants by cultivating and collecting plants from seed is a noble calling, greetings to all who ever did so with integrity.
Sinserely Steve"
Grow reports from OG 1.0
https://web.archive.org/web/20070522122024/http://www.spiceoflifeseeds.com/spice-of-life-cannabis-seeds-grow-reports.php
2006 SoL strain list:
"Big Treat:
Fathered by Sensi Seeds Big Skunk '95 with a Dutch Treat mother. The Dutch mother finished flowering in six weeks with heavy, easy trimming bud. Great resin count, no odour! A producer’s dream bud, and it smokes very smooth with a respectable buzz. The father gave this little bush a dominant cola, and another two weeks. Inside or out, quality production. Back by popular demand.
Height: 18 inches to 5 feet
Harvest: Indoors 8 weeks
Yield: Up there
Generation: F2
Domino:
Tangy indica, wicked crystal, y’all fall down. July 1997 High Times Centerfold.
Height: Short, will grow wide with veg
Harvest: Outside early October
Yield: Average
Generation: F2
Flowering: 6 weeks
Shishkeberry:
The berry’s on the beef. These plants are the heavy early. Mothered by two Afghani hybrid cousins, the red and yellow. These were selected for yield and resin productivity respectively. The father was the most incredibly resinous. Blueberry Male from DJ Short Collection. This male had tight stamen formation. Solid purple male clusters as firm as then flower. You will have a high yield of very large buds and few to no branches. The buds are exceptionally frosty with some purpling. A tangy and tastier aroma than other big yielders. The gland production will amaze you as you screen your trimmings. Also very potent and easy to trim. Besides the intense blueberry jam aroma of the father, the most distinctive aspect of the plant was its chromatic resin. The top male bud was cured, burnt, and passed the test. The thickest male from the Shishkeberry Red line was backcrossed to the original Yellow to complete this amalgamation of yield, flavour and power.
Height: 6 - 7 feet outdoors
Harvest: Indoors, 6 weeks flowering
Yeild: Huge (up to 3 lbs per light)
Generation: F1 to Shishke mother backcross
Sea of Green: 12 - 24 inches single colas
Strawberry Blonde:
Strong, mostly Sativa hybrid. Heart racing paranoid cannabinoid profile. Toasted oats. Tight little strawberry shaped bud. The edges of the sugary leaves curl with crystal! The golden stems are the blondes. Wicked personal.
Height: Will stretch, flower short (2 feet) finishes at 4-5 feet
Harvest: Indoors, 10 weeks flowering
Yield: Average
Generation: F2
Sea of Green: Tight
Sweet Tooth:
Sweet Pink Grapefruit x Resinous Blueberry Male x Grapefruit - very sweet. Mostly indica. Fruity, frosty, and fairly fat. Mostly lime green bud with royal purple accents. Outdoors the calyxes are prone to purpling completely. The sugar taste is almost sickly sweet. Keeps us giddy and foolish all day long. You’re going to grow it again and again.
Height: Squat bush indoors, 5 feet max. Xmas tree/shrub outdoors.
Yeild: Above average, i.e. good.
Generation: F1 backcross to mother
Sea of Green: Plump (thick)
Flowering period: 7-8 weeks
Sweet Skunk:
Nice perfume. Like Likem’ Sticks or Baby Aspirin
9 weeks"
2007 SoL strains:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070509144947/http://www.spiceoflifeseeds.com/spice-of-life-cannabis-seeds.php
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Havent checked whats steve is up to in a bit. He is at the forefront of what I am sure is the biggest thing in cannabis since cloning or indoor lighting. Seedless cannabis, no more worries about outdoor grows getting random pollen, worrying about hermaphroditic plants, with the added bonus of greater rooting vigour. I know there will be many who see this as a sacrilegious thing, but I see it as cannabis finally getting the benefit of modern agricultural science which is truly great. exciting times to say the least.
https://mobile.twitter.com/breeder_steve/status/1642298574506708992
I would like to extend a service to every single Legal Producer of cannabis anywhere. I just drafted the contract in the last 2 hours. I will license my treatment for your use with any cultivar to induce obligate parthenocopy and permit the use of associated branding.
Never have another seed in your crop. Not even a little white pip, such as those associated w/stenocarpic plants. Obligate parthenocarpic plants reject pollen. The former, like seedless grapes & watermelons, abort young seeds, while the latter rejects pollination 100%.
As an added bonus you will benefit from their accelerated rooting. They root 3X faster than their fertile sisters! Ask or DM for details. I’ll add a section on my site for it, too. You will learn to perform it in house to maintain the exclusivity of your proprietary stock.
No pistils, no pollination possible. Prime example of #ObligateParthenocarpy in cannabis. Any producer would be stupid not to guarantee every crop remains 100% seedless. Just the bonus of shaving 10 days off of rooting cuts has value. Don’t be a stupid producer.
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this is from his site. https://breedersteve.com/
Often when people hear about the fabled “sterile females” they picture an abomination of a flower with little white aborted pips, useless for smoking as sinsemilla. They are picturing seedless watermelons or seedless grapes. These plants are exhibiting stenocarpy, whereby the plant receives pollen and then aborts the seed while immature. Not ideal for our purposes. That is not what we will do. Parthenocarpy is virginal. Facultative parthenocarpy describes the traditional method of sinsemilla cultivation. Growers facilitate the virginal plant by keeping them away from pollen. Clearly this doesn’t always work! Obligate parthenocarpy on the other hand is entirely different. In this case, the plant is physically incapable of receiving pollen. The plants that have been through the TrueSinse process will no longer produce pistils, or stigmas, if you prefer. The flowers are perfectly normal in every other regard. Producers who contract with me to help them convert their own cultivars using the TrueSinse protocol will be able to use the certified TrueSinse logo on their packaging, and TrueSinse will list them and their batches as certified to be 100% seedless, TrueSinse. The accelerated rooting is just a bonus. Originally I had intended to keep this for proprietary production, thinking that I would perform the process on plants for myself, and others, behind closed doors. On second thought, given the amount of red tape involved, and virtual impossibility of doing if outside the US for US clients, I decided that I could get this service into the hands of savvy producers everywhere, who may not even feel comfortable releasing a proprietary clone for a third party to work with. Empowering every producer to upgrade their favourite genetics in-house should hold a broader appeal for many.
there’s a link to his contract on that page for anyone interested in looking closer. TrueSinse Contract | Breeder Steve
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The only “danger” I see from this Parthenocarpy of Cannabis is that Governments will use this to regulate what cannabis can be legally grown.
The problem I see it that once this goes mainstream into the legal producer market, the government will make all other cannabis illegal or illicit and only this form of Cannabis will be legal to grow for the recreation or at home medical grower. It is no secret that the “track and trace” model is exactly what governments seek and are moving towards. It would be far simpler to make ONLY sterile plants availlable as Legal or Licit to the legal markets.
I get that guys like breeder steve have paid thier dues, educated themselves on thier own dime and deserve to reap the rewards in the legal market place but I fear this will doom us all in the end.
Make the method open source so “anyone” can perform the method … like what STS has become. Otherwise the creation will be used to eradicate fertile cannabis from the Legal framework.
curious to hear other’s thoughts on this
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Yeah this has always been my thought on it as well. Seedless varieties will be the(possible only) accepted norm, and the only seeds one is able to buy. Say good bye to breeding your own herb after that.
And who would want to when I can buy BigAG’s seedless seeds with 3x the rooting speed and twice the yield and whatever else they wanna tweak the plant to do. /s
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I doubt his method is actually patentable, he is just doing what is already done in other commerical food crops. Wouldn’t that mean he is just holding back his method to make cannabis parthenogenic and once it becomes widespread, anyone can do it? I am not very knowledgeable about that?
I don’t think the government would need to regulate much, every large scale producer in the world will be looking into doing some version of this soon enough. The government won’t have to regulate, it will be what everyone is doing soon anyway, unless the cannabis is inferior.
I think that the fear people have about the only type of cannabis being allowed is parthenogenic cannabis and other more controllable forms is not quite so simple. the government of Canada for instance is reversing a decades long system of prohibition and adjusting to a market that they had 0 idea of how it would operate longterm. It’s a slow process that is going to be developed into a global market, no one really knows how it is going to go.
They are losing court battles where people are fighting for their right to grow in provinces like Quebec and Manitoba. To me, it signals the changing of the tide. Whether they want to or not, government contorl will relax more and more. Fuck, how many plants did the Thai government give out when a few years before the government was at war with growers? The cat is out of the bag and honestly, i think in a few years, even die hard conservatives will not understand why it wasn’t made legal in some fashion years ago.
I think the seed market was going to be hit massively once full legalization hits many places and you can go buy clones at the store like you go buy your peppers and tomatoes.
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It would be awesome where I am surrounded by Fukin hemp
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