@LimeGreen with the example you gave, well both, those are great! to tell the customers ahead of time that to me shows integrity . And the lady with only 2 phenos wow, one brand of seed i have first time i ran them i ran 6 they are fem seeds i had 6 diff phenos none of which were the one they tell you about, i have run more of those since still dont have the plant that they say. I asked one breeder a cple basic questions and they blew me off…like its below them or something. So I applaud alot of breeders here, there more then willing to tell you about there gear, there actually proud of it! to me that is a big point, like the pro player who still loves the game.The price in 1989 i can actually see being higher then today, it was almost totally illegal black market then, sometimes with more medival punishment.
Thanks for your input, very informative and concise
Until I joined up here, I haven’t heard of most of the strains that have come up in the last 12 years. Roadkill skunk and cat piss made me shake my head a bit, but I can totally imagine a plant that deserves such names.
Catpiss can’t even hold a candle to legit Skunk, but is highly desirous in its own right. I’d much rather smoke Catpiss than modern Fruitpunchbubblecookiecake.
Unfortunately at dispensaries and delivery services, that’s all I can ever find too. I’ve never seen any of the old school strains. Also finding out that it’s kind of like commercial beer vs home/micro brew. you’ll have strains that are in the shops, and sometimes all over the place. then you’ll have strains that only people who grow for themselves will see. Either way they most seem to be just like you said, a cool name, that then gets used in a spin the bottle of crosses or just playing with names. Though that is kind of the fun part of growing your own. Granted, this whole medical/legalization scene is what’s fueling it, shouldn’t complaint too much when we’ve spent most of our lives saying legalize it! Too bad it’s part of the fluff from the snowflake generator.
There’s some really great aspects to legalization for sure. The degradation of the gene pool, and commercialization of everything cannabis are just some hits caused by our advances forward. Seems like a few years back as I recall, there was an old San Diego Catpiss clone being circulated.
This whole thing with cut only strains, elite cuts, etc is kind of what the agriculture industry loves. Patent it and sell cuttings. Otherwise it takes longer to develop and test a line for a pack of seeds. At the same time, our current elite/cut only scene is kind of a sign of how unstable the strains being used are, or just poor tracking of lineage and proper breeding to stabilize it into seed form… which I guess is the original point of this topic lol.
omg I just realized, I’m sitting here Sipping on single malt scotch, saying stuff about How things were “better“ years ago, complaining about the people (kids) these days. At 36 I’m a grumpy old man!
Also, yes, this same label of scotch was also better 10 years ago 
. With higher demand, the quality can be lowered, and prices increased. This same bottle was better and $20 cheaper 10 years ago.
Sorry, I’m getting way off topic… I blame my friend mendos breath and glenmorangie
is my music to loud?
@Seamonkey84. It gets worse the older you get!! I am 50 and catch myself saying the same shit my grandpa said when I was a kid!!
yep. im 50 in 5 months. it really sucks when your kids point it out!
I’m the cranky almost 52 year old curmudgeon that started the “they don’t make things like they used to” thread. Grandpa was right!
To jump in I’ll be 50 in a few months but only grew my first run last summer and am on the home stretch of try 2 now.
I found this thread right away and came to ask about strain hardiness and regions. I’m in Michigan staying legal and all but have just finished early chopping about 5 pounds of Kosher Kush, of which 3 pounds are now in the compost pile with bud rot. My grow is going into distillate so curb appeal isn’t important. I’m curious because I have 3 other plants in my garden at the moment trying to hold out for hard freeze time. One of them is a super glue that came from bag seed and had nugs as hard as rocks. Smells great and looks good, less yield but they came to my living soil in early Aug as my cousin needed to prune down to 12 and I had room.
To make a short story long, the kosher got creamed by rot and a few cbd autos I tried got over run with aphids. These two afterthoughts from bag seed are now thriving and fattening in 40 degree soggy weather without a care in the world. I’m running full notill organic with some co crops and dry toppings but otherwise just water and some worm food each week and I’m dumbfounded by the differences in genetics. A freebie seed that came with the kosher kush seeds (dresden green diamond) is thriving along with the rescued super glue and the only difference is genetics. I’m sitting on a few boutique seeds I impulse bought on IG to play with indoor over the winter but now I’m wondering what to look for to run outside next summer? Is there a specific strain, breeder etc for our awful fall weather to avoid this or is it simply trial and error phenotyping and keeping mothers alive as long as possible?
Thanks for an insightful read. To chime in my memories of 90’s weed at Purdue usually looked like it was smuggled in a very sweaty ass crack on it’s way to Indiana.
If you can find someone breeding outdoors in your climate, that’s the best scenario. Another thing you can do is just try and work it out yourself. Collect a bunch of pollen indoors, dust a lower branch of everything and keep seeds from your best mom or moms for next year. That’s how the old timers up in the mountains here have been doing it for years. Every few years, plan to grow a couple males for pollen, and make some more. Adaptation and selection will set you right.
Hybrid vigor is a possibility too. With people growing multiple strains at a time, with many having hermi traits, most bags seeds are now “feminized” hybrids. While a strain that has been around for a while and worked for generations, may be stable as a strain, but have been inbred and became weak. But that vigor doesn’t always mean the same, as crosses of already inbred lines may be lacking the genes needed to be resilient to pests/disease.
Yes, yes yes! You’re seeing firsthand what I’m talking about. This is the kind of cannabis that needs to be grown, not these little pussy plants that fall apart when the wind blows, or it gets to hot or cold, or cultivars that utterly crash if it doesn’t get bottle fed with every little nutrient in exact proportions. You’re witnessing the kind of adaptability I decided to start breeding for. I’d say in your region, September finishers are important too. Realistically, a greenhouse would be ideal for climates like yours.
My brother is in Portland, where rains are a real threat in late season as well. He just finished some F1s outdoors that I made about 4 years ago with Hashplant x my uncirculated Sinaloan heirloom Cola de Borrego male. They were literally put in soil, in 25 gallon containers, and never top dressed, and watered by his kid with a garden hose. They got rained on a time or two, and finished very strong for a September 28th harvest with no problems.
As for who or where to obtain good, hardy stock, I think it’s a crap shoot. I know there are good cultivars out there, but there is a lot more junk. I’d avoid the stuff with long term Amsterdam heritage if I were in your shoes.
I’m willing to gift some tough assed, good finishing genetics to anyone here who wants them. However, I’m overseas and can’t grow anything out at present. I would need some kind soul here to take on a project of making seeds, and distributing them to the community.
@Seamonkey84, I agree that a lot of stabilized lines lose vigor. But inbred, stabilized lines CAN be more hardy and vigorous than any old willy nilly F1 if tested for performance, and selected well. That’s where breeders fail, they don’t test in many, or any adverse conditions.
What does a breeder really know about the performance of their genetics if everything is always optimized? Most so-called breeders are growers who turned breeder. They usually have no breeding experience in other disciplines. You bring an experienced breeder in several other arenas (like me) to growing, and we come at breeding with a set of principles that demand performance. I threw out many thousands of dollars worth of clones that I didn’t even bother to flower because I could see in vegetative growth alone that they didn’t meet my standards. Many others I flowered, but then discarded all clones, because of poor performance. If I bred with a plant, its because it deserved to be bred after some pretty hard testing.
I love reading posts like this. They fill me with hope and excitement. I got into cannabis late in life, a little less than a decade ago. As I got a bit deeper in the scene and spent time talking to old timers, I immediately dismissed absolutely everything they said as just wistful nostalgia. You hear it in every hobby and industry. Each successive year I grew and smoked and stayed peripherally, I liked the new offerings less and less and could literally feel the magic, soul, and hardiness being sucked from the plant. It became very clear that the growers of old weren’t the victims of nostalgia; the almost logarithmic decline and downward trajectory of both the hardiness and character of genetic offerings could almost be mapped over time.
Seeing posts like these give me hope that the magic can be restored and even nurtured!
Here’s a shot of the heirloom Sinaloan Cola de Borrego or Jarilla de Sinaloa mentioned above. The friend of mine Arjay who gifted me the first seed collection of 25 to 40 year old seed I worked with also gifted me this cut. He acquired the seed from his neighbors, who had come to California from Sinaloa in the early 90s. I got Arjay into growing after he gave me those initial seeds and I resurrected a few. Well, his neighbors began to smell his grow, and offered him some of these old seeds they hadn’t had any luck with.
They were carefully wrapped in a little sarape type cloth, inside a native leather bag. He said the way they handled them, he could tell they were very special to them. He estimated there were about 200 plus seeds. They gave him a pinch, which turned out to be 49 seeds when he counted them. Having germinated some of his old seed myself by then, I gave him a few pointers, and he painstakingly began to try and get them to grow. Some began to tail out, but then seemed to peter out, as if they didn’t have the necessary auxins to continue growing.
Then there was this one. He grew SUPER slow for probably two months. We would talk, and he would send me photos, and the darned plant just looked stagnant. But one day, he seemed to turn a corner, and then he rapidly became the fastest grower in the room. He decided to flip him, and collected pollen for me, and mailed it. My first breedings with him were from this pollen, and I later was able to get cuts of him. I maintained him for probably 3 years. It became apparent that he was VERY dominant, and that even with his sons or daughters, I would be able to keep his best traits, while improving upon them in a few other key areas, like stronger scent.
Old will become new again my friend, we will be witnesses to it. Because honestly, I do not think the new will be able to endure over time.
Thank you for this post and for the conversation.
I recently started a related thread, specifically about shell hardness and seedling “rescue.” probably would just have commented here had I known.
Assuming Oregon and not Maine, I would like to trade with your brother.
You came to the same conclusion I did. Babying stuff along, and Molly coddling it makes me part.of the problem. I wanted to create a solution for me, and for anyone else interested.
Yep, SE side, I can definitely hook you up with some tough performing genetics. My brother is just about to resume some of my breeding work since I am overseas, and can’t grow. I have 4 years into it, but I really feel I’m right on the cusp of some even better finished product, that still performs very well.
As a matter of fact, I’ll hook any OGers up with some tough, old heirloom based seed. But, as I mentioned above, I would need someone to make a run for me, and be willing to distribute the freebies to community members.