I am probably biased towards the oldschool names as well. I always figure if they have been around that long, they must be doing something right.
However I tend to gather my opinions for myself through first hand experience because I feel that is the best way.
I read a lot of the same threads you mention when I was in the market for some Barney’s gear a few months ago. I knew the name from way back, and noticed they had a lot of hate. I took my chances and am currently running some Barney’s LSD. All germed fine. All are truly pest and disease resistant as they claimed. And I could not be more happy. IMO I would use them again in a heartbeat.
But like others have said, you will always run the chance to get a dud, or a bad pheno. I would venture to say that there are more people who go online to bash a company after 3 of their 5 seeds dont germ, than the contrary. The best way to know for sure is to run it yourself and see what happens haha.
I strongly suspect many small labs who just make money testing weed are fudging the percentages a bit so breeders can advertise higher numbers. Some guy on IG posted his “39% THC bud” the other day…big grain of salt. Further, who cares about a few percentage points if all you care about is potency just dab instead of smoking flower. I don’t drink Everclear lol.
Precisely my opinion on the matter. If 15% isn’t doing it for you, then smoke concentrates.
There’s not nearly enough really good WEAK strains around, IMO. You know, terpine bombs with 3-6% THC. Tons of folks I know who used to smoke back in the 80s won’t even try weed these days because “the last time I tried that shit I was way beyond high.”
Not everyone is a kronik stoner who wants 30% + THC, but somehow the market keeps going that way.
It’ll get there. I really don’t see a need for anything over 25%, hell 15-20% should be plenty for anyone. If you still ain’t getting high, you need to smoke less weed lol.
I used to get absolutely blitzed from 5-6 good rips of brown import, it’s got so much more to do with tolerance. I used to dab exclusively, people would hand me a joint and I’d just say don’t waste it on me I’m not gonna feel anything.
I mostly smoke high CBD stuff myself, but one of my favourite non-CBD strains I have ever smoked is the Cali-O x Durban (x Thai High Flyer). It foxtailed like nothing I have ever seen before, was mostly hair, and had hardly any trichomes. It is probably under 3% THC. If I smoke a standard joint of that I giggle like a school girl for about 20 minutes and then remain smiley as fuck for a good hour or so. I have never even come close to feeling uneasy/anxious/shitty.
Best part is, it smells exactly like a freshly-opened box of fruit loops, smokes super-smoothly, and fills the air with a classic “weed” smell. When I first grew it, I thought “fuck this weird plant”. Now I have plans to try to make more seeds (I think I only have 3 left) or maybe cross it with something else really weak.
I guess what I am saying is that I wish “old school” was “really, really old school”. The stuff that you could enjoy a whole joint and it just put a smile on your face.
We used to judge alot of the bags by the smell right? So teros are obviously important. That’s just one of the reasons organic attracted me, the terp profile. With so much to learn about them still, it can’t be all about the high thc. I’m not a big dabber, it doesn’t get much better than a super smooth and tasty bowl.
I’m looking forward to experimenting more, but yall make a helluva case for old-school genetics as long as the company is up and up.
Yeah and I can totally understand that. Even still, I feel it’s important to be upfront about it. Gray-area small businesses really rely on the trust of their buyers, in the absence of any certifications or standards. Also, I just don’t have that much sympathy for breeders who make their name on a strain and had no plan beyond keeping a mother running indefinitely.
I mean yeah it sucks, but if that’s your bread and butter, you couldn’t find the time inside a decade or two to at least run some backcrosses? That’s not even breeding that requires any kind of numbers.
Easy to critique i suppose. My only real point is that buyers have expectations, and whether you’re new or old, if you made money off folks while not living up to their expectations, it’s reasonable to expect complaints. We can all look back fondly on how things were, but at the same time, we also gotta decide what to grow right now.
Anyway— I don’t hardly ever run “new stuff”. I’ve just run into enough people saying that strain X isn’t the same as it used to be. Or so and so lost Y and now it doesn’t really seem like the same strain. If it’s different, then it’s not really “old school” anymore.
There is a lot more of this than most people think. I know of a couple of people, typically in far north regions that require indoor ops, that have hoarded genetics for decades.
I think the argument that all the Dutch operations lost all their good plants in the 90’s raids is erroneous, or at least, only partially true. Most of the popular Dutch mother clones are still around. C5, A5, Amnesia, Jack, NL5, etc. are still around. They are easily acquired in the grow scene in Europe. While maybe their males were destroyed, there’s nothing stopping them from finding new ones. They have the seeds. I think a big factor too is the massive push for feminized/selfed and autoflowering genetics most of the Dutch banks push now. Regular beans are available of course, but it’s definitely not the focus anymore.
Good points. I don’t remember Green House doing many crosses until recently and they don’t seem to have inbred lines of the old stuff. Now that I think of it, a lot of the old companies really don’t do much development and concentrate on marketing. I guess the US has always contributed the majority of great genetics around the world. NL-Seattle? Haze-California? G13-Tennessee Mex/Colombian/Panama-through California Trainwreck-Ca Purple Kush/Mendo Purps/GDP-Ca Bubblegum-Indiana, so many more I don’t know exact origin. At the Cannalympics we got the gold.
Most of that “old school” is now mass produced in Spain without the original parents of the strain. In Amsterdam it was always difficult to keep parental stock with the illegality of growing. It was once good now it is garbage.
Grew a greenhouse SLH pack a cpl years ago, one plant was a top ten fave. Beautiful Flavour, top shelf stone seriously great smoke with an average output, easy to grow. Before the Spain shift, I found that Barneys and Greenhouse and other euro breeders had less phenotype variation than say Subcool seeds at the time.
