Thanks for the kind words Ray. Pure Equatorial sativas, Central America, Thai, African, Mexican are indeed challenging to grow in most regions North of latitude 32. I live at 35° 16’ 58" N / 120° 39’ 31" W. In my region I have a self contained Solexx greenhouse that I can grow all year round in. SO I can pull off Sativas which can take over 20+ weeks to finish. Here is my first growing lesson: When the Humboldt region was kicking off in the in the sixties and early seventies a group of us, whose families owned property in the region tried to grow sativas. I was a wee one as were my SoCal buddies who journeyed off one Summer to try our hand at growing weed on Mom and Dad’s 100 acres in Salmon Creek, Humboldt. So, in hand we have a few thousands Mexican, Colombian Gold, and Oaxaca seeds. We thought we were going to be heroes when all arrived back home to SoCal with our bounty of weed. Not the case, we found out that by the time September came around there were no flowers to be seen on our giant sativas some were reaching 20ft! So we had to leave to go back to school and left our monster sativas to rot in the soil. We found out the hard way, when we arrived back to SoCal we conducted more research on the “why” our plants wouldn’t flower, remember now the oldest in our group was 16, I was 13 in 1968, so we had no fucking idea what we were doing!. As you know sativas will flower just need a lot of time and consistent sun and weather conditions to ripen. To make a very long story shorter, we acquired Afghani and paki seeds from a fellow we knew in the military. We took the time to cross our prized sativas with our newly acquired indica, which we had no idea if it would work! Just that our military buddy said the stuff was growing all over the place in Afghanistan and Pakistan and it was a short plant that was “strong as hell.” We go back up to Salmon Creek 2 years later armed with our hybrids and bada bing buds all over the place in late July and early august, the rest his history. We start sharing beans with the locals and “we think” that our bean may have been some of the first hybrids grown in the region. Phew…
I loose something… Im northern than ya n all longer landraces sativas germinated in April/May starting flower here between September or Otober here…Ok, with longers maybe arrives Cristmas n ya are still waiting to cropped it… But we can grow n Crop most of Mexican landraces without GreenHouse…
You’re lucky mig I’ve not been so lucky. That may be true for you, but the weather in Humboldt region in late October, November, and December it’s very rainy and cold and with snow accumulation. Sativas will not grow and finish in those conditions. My expirence in the central coast as well, once November sets in and the rain starts and temps hit high 30’s, sativas, at least for me will not finish in those conditions. You are very lucky, how do you finish sativas in cold rainy weather with limited sun?
Ok, now I understand ya: your tropical sativas started to florewin fine but dont finish fine becouse your weather…
Sativas havent the same big problems with wet n fungus than indicas… But snow is a differents thing… I only have see a little snow here a few times in my life… My mounts arent as high ad the High Montains of Sierra Nevada…n winter could be cold but with a lot of sunny days…
Even within my region which is 100 miles South of you. I’ve had limited luck with finishing Columbian Gold, Oaxaca, and some African strains, outdoors. Best I could do, until I built my green house 15 years ago. I almost finished Colombian Gold one year when we had extended weeks of off shore winds. But I’m happy I don’t have to deal with the weather anymore and my sativas now finish with no problems. It is true mig, that sativas are more durable when it comes to mold and so on, but with consecutive days of rain and cold temps still destroy crops, at least in my experience. Those long spears don’t like rainy cold and do mold with very little dry out time. But, when I was living in SCal as a kid we did, on occasion, we did grow with success Mexicans strains just because we had great weather into December…
I found that cool night time temps made the difference indoors. I would flower my sativas during Jan. - March when temps in the grow went as low as 56 degrees F. It took me 3 cycles before I was able to flower Nevil’s Haze. With the exceptions of a 1969 era Vietnamese female a friend in Toronto was working with as well as some seeds I received from OT1 and Nevil, I had to rely on seedbanks to obtain sativas.
Uncle Ben once sent me some old Colombian seeds but I never had the space or time to properly grow them out so I gifted them to Breeder Steve for a project he was working on at the time.
My bad mig you’re in Spain? I don’t know your latitude I was confused with another…but if your latitude is similar to Sacto it’s more like I’m 300 miles south of you in terms of growing latitude.
I’m talking about the fellow from across the pond who posted as OT1. I believe some of the seeds he sent were marked ESB. All a Hazey memory now.
In the end the Vietnamese Black was the best sativa I ever had the pleasure to grow. She came from a batch of seeds I got from Cbay a Vietnamese lady crossed with a China black mostly indica strain.
The story was that the breeder had some old seeds collected in Vietnam around 1969 and was able to find an excellent mother after he grew them out. He crossed with a strain he called China Black. I don’t recall if he provided much info on the linage of the China Black father.
I had them for about a year before I grew them out and found a keeper. In the meantime the breeder had a fire which destroyed his Vietnamese mother. Once he saw my pics and report he contacted me and explained what happened and how badly he wanted to try to recreate his lost mother. We spent a few years on the project and eventually realized neither of us had the proper space or ability to attempt to breed out the indica genes from the Vietnamese Black mother plant I had.
Anyway I guess I rambled on enough. Fun times for sure.
My apologies mig, I was confused with another region. But yes, in California, at least for me, pure sativas do struggle and often don’t finish because of weather related issues. We have 4 seasons in California, winter, spring, summer, and fall and the further one goes North the more difficult it is to finish sativas. And if one goes East which is towards the Sierra Nevada mountain range where mountains reach heights of 14,000 ft forget about growing anything but indica up in those mountains before fall hits October.
How much money can she earn trimimin? (I suppouse yare talkin USA legal cannabis grows)… I have same Spanish n Mexican friends there in same situation…
Man SLOGrown, I wish I had access to some of the landraces you have. I started a thread a while back about trying to get a landrace project(Pipe Dream) going using mainly rare landraces from around the world to come up with a few crosses, Similar to what was done with the classic “Haze” But using even more landraces such as various african landraces.
I’ve collected a few landraces so far but have a way’s to go. I just don’t have the resources that some are lucky enough to have I guess. It’s refreshing to see someone that likes growing the landraces despite the extended times involved.
I’m no breeder but I hope to get my landrace project going in the near future as I do have a few to work with now but I would love to have a selection from around the world. The possibilities would be wonderful and it would take a few years to get somewhere with it i’m sure. But I think with patience and trial and error something special could come out of it.
I’d like to check out more of your landrace grows. I also tried to get a thread going just about landraces, I bet you would have a lot to offer in such a thread!
Sounds like a great idea. Maybe next Summer I’ll start a Columbian Gold grow. CG takes such a long time to finish and takes up so much room in my greenhouse, because they get very large and I must grow other more managable strains for medical reasons. My greenhouse is 10by12 and 10ft at its peak. One CG can and does take up half of its growing space. So I don’t grow them very often. One thing I do use CG is for breeding. CG is a great starting point for creating bullet proof strains. Really the only way to create a original stable strain is with a landrace. By just crossing already created hybrids is a poor method and does very little for originality. I call this “pollen chucking” like so many seed mills out there. For example, a friend of mine from Mendicno had a great paki that he loved but it suffered from mold issue late in the growing season. He asked me to create a CG/Paki hybrid so as to breed out the budding mold issue. So I did and it fixed that Paki right up no more mold also a bigger yielding plant and the new hybrid harvested out in September like the original landrace paki.
I agree, that is why I want to work with landraces to come up with something different than what everyone else seems to want to do.
I guess most of the breeders want to work with the modern hybrids because it is easier and faster for them to get something stable out of it as far as flowering time, and certain traits have already been bred into or out of the hybrids as they each have already been worked by others such as D.J.'s blueberry and say skunk #1, They are very stable strains that have already been worked for years for indoor propagation and such.
But I for one just like you think there is something special to be found in working with landrace strains over all the hybrids out there. I think more breeders have come to realise that the landraces are where it is at and that is good. We need to preserve the rare landraces before they disappear completely.