Original source seeds from the 70's: Yes I have some

[RobMorris]

Big Sur,
Thanks for the post(s). Glad to hear the seeds can last so long. I have some Hawaiian, and Afgan skunk I bought in 1985 from Amsterdam. I've kept seeds in the freezer since around then and have just started out growing some of them to replenish the stock. I geminate with the paper towel, but keep them flat in a baggie, in the bathroom sink cabinet. I figure more humidity. I check every day or two, open up the paper towel and let in air. I think there is some gas buildup during the process. I had about a 60%-80% germination rate. I grow in potting soil (fell like I have more control). After transplanting, my final growing container is a 1/2 gal. plastic milk container (with the top, but not handle, cut off) and painted black. No drainage. To keep from root rot, I water by weight. (I have a reference container - dry). I weigh each container and add only enough water to bring the plant up to about 4-6 oz of water by weight. If I see any wilting, I add water. I keep a journal of what's going on and what I did. I do cuttings, but I put them in brown root beer bottles with an aquarium air bubbler to keep oxygen in the water. Takes about a month and need to add water to keep the level to the top (it evaporates) This past round I had about 30 cuttings and lost 4. Each cutting tends to have a mass of roots when I transplant to soil. I seeded all of my females and am in the process of harvesting the seeds. I bought "seed" saver jars with a desiccant pack to soak up the moisture and will put them in the freezer too. I "farm" with 2 24"x18"x6' plywood chambers. One for growing/one for flowering. For the growing chamber I have a 2 slotted shelf rails with a plywood base to move up and down. Up near the MH when young and drop as they get older/taller. I have muffin fans to cool the chamber. Until I stumbled on this site a couple of months ago, I just been managing figuring it out step by step, and trial and error. So thanks for the thread. Hope you don't mind me sharing.

 

[Big Sur]

You know, I have to say yet again how cool it is that you have saved those seeds. Amazing to be able to recreate the bud you smoked 4 decades ago. Like everyone else, I was playing a lazy version of Johnny CannabisSeed and travelling the world tossing them out left and right. Germination rate zero I'm sure. I will be forever haunted by that one particular batch I bought one day in a village in Thailand. It was the best Thai I ever smoked and like everything else, it was full of seeds. Sigh...

Thanks. I do also feel your pain! I did not save any seeds from my favorite Mexican weed that I bought a half pound of in '75. It was top notch loose Guererran colas. I planted a lot of them and those plants got ripped off or pulled up by a ranch foreman. I could have saved hundreds of the seeds though! That was the second best weed I ever smoked, actually. Memorable stuff. Landrace lost. I did not save any Cambodian Red seeds either, or Ganja or Maui seeds. More memorable stuff.

 

[Big Sur]

Welcome to the site! I have zero issues with your posting this here. I am honored that this was your first post on the 420 forum, actually. I used to grow like you do in California in the 70s, in small indoor areas. Now in Oregon it is legal, and that is why I came out of the growing closet and started posting here. I do most of my growing outdoors, except seed sprouting and cloning, as well as over-wintering indoors under the lights. I may do commercial growing here as I have the land for it, but the laws here are still being hashed out. The devil will be in the details. I would like to team up with a guy I met and just do cloning, and supply rec sales stores in Oregon with clones. Again, we shall see what shakes out.

Big Sur,
Thanks for the post(s). Glad to hear the seeds can last so long. I have some Hawaiian, and Afgan skunk I bought in 1985 from Amsterdam. I've kept seeds in the freezer since around then and have just started out growing some of them to replenish the stock. I geminate with the paper towel, but keep them flat in a baggie, in the bathroom sink cabinet. I figure more humidity. I check every day or two, open up the paper towel and let in air. I think there is some gas buildup during the process. I had about a 60%-80% germination rate. I grow in potting soil (fell like I have more control). After transplanting, my final growing container is a 1/2 gal. plastic milk container (with the top, but not handle, cut off) and painted black. No drainage. To keep from root rot, I water by weight. (I have a reference container - dry). I weigh each container and add only enough water to bring the plant up to about 4-6 oz of water by weight. If I see any wilting, I add water. I keep a journal of what's going on and what I did. I do cuttings, but I put them in brown root beer bottles with an aquarium air bubbler to keep oxygen in the water. Takes about a month and need to add water to keep the level to the top (it evaporates) This past round I had about 30 cuttings and lost 4. Each cutting tends to have a mass of roots when I transplant to soil. I seeded all of my females and am in the process of harvesting the seeds. I bought "seed" saver jars with a desiccant pack to soak up the moisture and will put them in the freezer too. I "farm" with 2 24"x18"x6' plywood chambers. One for growing/one for flowering. For the growing chamber I have a 2 slotted shelf rails with a plywood base to move up and down. Up near the MH when young and drop as they get older/taller. I have muffin fans to cool the chamber. Until I stumbled on this site a couple of months ago, I just been managing figuring it out step by step, and trial and error. So thanks for the thread. Hope you don't mind me sharing.

 

[Big Sur]

My landrace/heirloom MJ seed catalog (cont.):

Seed pack #7
B+ 4 stars
Standard Oaxacan
Oaxaca, Mexico
December, 1977
$35/oz.
Typical Oaxacan from Mexico at that time. Good middle of the road weed. Seedy (apx. 50 seeds/oz).

Green tops with red hairs. Grew in 1984. Resulted in good crop of colas, but they had a strong minty taste that for me overpowered the weed (sort of like smoking menthol cigarettes). Read in several older MJ books that the mint taste is very typical of Oaxacan weed.

 

[Big Sur]

My landrace/heirloom MJ seed catalog (cont.):

Seed pack #8
Primo 5 stars
Near Sinsemillia
Mexico (Likely from El Altiplano Central)
April, 1979
$100/oz.; $290 for 1/4 lb.
The Mexican answer to Paraquat and early US bud growing. Good strong sativa high. Few seeds (apx. 25 seeds/oz). Some of the best Mexican weed I ever bought. Note the price hike by 1979...

And so ends my Mexican landrace collection. Next up will be my Colombian landrace collection.

 

[Big Sur]

My landrace/heirloom MJ seed catalog (cont.):

Seed pack #9
A+ 5 stars
Psycho Weed
Colombia
July, 1977
$45/oz.
This stuff is seriously strong weed. It will hit you over the head and knock your socks off. Smoke a half joint for a rush and a half. Share a joint with a WARNING! to others before smoking. Seedy, 100+ seeds per oz.

Gold with green shading tops. Likely the same as what Michael Starks calls Whacky Weed -a special kind of Colombian- in his book, Marijuana Potency (And/or Press, 1977).

 

[Big Sur]

My landrace/heirloom MJ seed catalog (cont.):

Seed pack #10
A- 3 stars
Bricked Gold
Colombia, likely from the lowlands
August, 1977
$45/oz.
The standard in narcotic bricked/sweat cured brown-gold lowland Colombian weed. Full of seeds, over 200 per oz.

Very downy narcotic buzz to this stuff. Whacky and stony, very high in couch lock, makes you want to slide onto the floor and pass out.

 

[PurpleGunRack]

Awesome reading

Sadly I've actually had a few seeds from different kinds of handrub hash, but that was way before I got into growing, so I just threw them out...
And since the police has been increasing their effort against cannabis the past 10 years, I very rarely come across handrub and when I do it's too expensive to buy in bulk.

 

[tucker99]

Cheez, good to hear from the old-farts. Growing up on the East Coast, we use to say all those West Coast pussies smoked Mexican cause that's all they could get. Us East Coast guys in the hood got all the good stuff from South America. We did home-grown occasionally under fluorescent lights, stuff was terrible. When you could get good weed for $35/bag, nobody messed with growing much. What kind of lights did successful indoor growers use on the West Coast back then?

 

[Big Sur]

Cheez, good to hear from the old-farts. Growing up on the East Coast, we use to say all those West Coast pussies smoked Mexican cause that's all they could get. Us East Coast guys in the hood got all the good stuff from South America. We did home-grown occasionally under fluorescent lights, stuff was terrible. When you could get good weed for $35/bag, nobody messed with growing much. What kind of lights did successful indoor growers use on the West Coast back then?

I was back east for trips in the late 70s (New York mostly) and the weed we had in CA was way better than they had there. The selection in CA was insane: Thai, Cambodian, hashish from {Nepal, Afghan, Morocco, Hawaii and Lebanon}, Hawaiian Maui Waui and Kona Gold, South Indian Ganja, Jamaican, African, multiple strains of Colombian, Panamanian, different types from central and southern Mexico from just about every state there, and local California stuff.

In the 70's I was one of the few that grew anything indoors under floros, but I was ripped off one year by idiots so I moved to growing in greenhouses and outdoors. You can get 10x the weed goring outdoors. Most grew outdoors in the 1970s. No one really knew how to grow potent weed until 1977 though, when the books came out about growing sinsemillia and marijuana potency. At that time the later Mexican and local California stuff became a lot stronger. Big Sur sinsemillia was cheap ($80-100/oz) and readily available, especially this time of year (after harvest). Indoor growing did not take off until the 1980s under HID lights after the DEA began outdoor cultivation raids. During the 1980s genetic crossing went into high gear and growing indoors went literally underground in Mendocino and Humboldt County. At that time the Emerald Triangle took over as far as potency, strains and black market supply. The price had gone way up though, with demand from the Midwest and east coast. Then in the early 90's MMJ became legal in California under the MMP, and weed growing evolved into what it is today. Now that it has become legal in 4 states and DC, it will likely evolve again.

 

[tucker99]

What made the Emerald Triangle such a great growing area? I actually thought the climate was a bit harsh. How long is their growing season? I've read that it's the best growing climate in the country even including tropical areas.

 

[Big Sur]

The Emerald Triangle I am referring to is Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity Counties. What I (and many other local Californians) refer to as the Lost Coast. The climate there is quite mild, actually, and rarely freezes except in the mountains. The summers are warm to hot when you go inland as well as long and the winters are wet (Mediterranean climate). While some grow outdoors there in remote areas protected with wire fences and bear traps and the like, the DEA and CAMP raids there regularly and so the bulk of the weed grown there is and has been grown either indoors, or underground. Earlier on they would cover over in-ground pools, bury buses, or dig pits and line them with concrete and cover them over. In more recent years they have taken to renting or buying houses and covering up the windows and creating giant grow houses filled with light systems and growing weed. That way they get a consistent crop and get top dollar year round, especially in the late summer before the outdoor crops are harvested and hit the black market. That time was brutal in NorCal every year, and pot was always scarce and expensive before the new harvest came in. I usually bought hash to carry me through the dry spell, or bought old weed, or sometimes Thai sticks. It varied from year to year.

As to why the Lost Coast became the Emerald Triangle? The area is remote with smaller tighter knit communities. Unemployment was also usually high there, and the population was mainly young people. It also used to be cheap. Big Sur became overrun with Yuppies and money, and so prices were too high to grow weed there. Some weed was and is still is grown in Big Sur and the Santa Cruz Mountains, but not in anything near the amounts that are grown up in the Lost Coast area. Grow houses are so common in the Emerald Triangle now that real estate prices (rents and buying) has gone sky high, forcing a lot of people out of that area (similar effect as what happened to Big Sur, but for different reasons). For that reason I am all for legalizing weed in California in order to stabilize real estate there, never mind just legalizing weed because it should be and always should have been legal. Many houses down there (and even around here) have been destroyed by the humidity from growing weed in them. The sheetrock rots and then mold and mildew set into the walls, and they become useless for living in. People will do anything for money.

 

[Banes]

BigSur,
Great to hear that someone was a little more on the ball than I was...yes I am guilty of throwing away so many pesky seeds in the past. And that Magic 8 Ball never gave me any clues as to the future of Marijuana or my situation. As I have a passion for Indicas finding landrace seeds would be a dream - Guess I need to go through all those storage boxes I have stacked up in the garage, and maybe luck into an old baggie, but sure the rodents would have taken them by now.
Do keep us posted on what you are learning about your seeds and what cultivates from your supply.
Banes.

 

[lazyfish]

Sweet, thank you for this. +++++

 

[Big Sur]

My landrace/heirloom MJ seed catalog (cont.):

Seed pack #11
A++ 4 stars
Dark gold
Colombia
August, 1978
$150/quarter lb.
Loose top Colombian sativa, dark gold in color. Light on seeds, about 50 per oz.

Good high for Colombian, not the couch lock narcotic stuff. Grew in NorCal in 1980, grew naturally gold in color. Very late to bloom (took forever), gave up on it and moved it to an abandoned house on the property. Lesbian neighbors found it, cut it up, dried and smoked it, and they said (after they found out it was mine and I had abandoned it), "That smoked up real good!" It was just leaf and a few tiny buds.

 

[Big Sur]

My landrace/heirloom MJ seed catalog (cont.):

Seed pack #12
A+ 4 stars
Light gold brick
Colombia
August, 1978
$45/oz.
Bricked Colombian sativa, light amber-gold in color. Very seedy, over 200 per oz.

No notes on quality of this weed, other than it being A+/4 stars on my stoner scale at the time. There as so much Colombian weed around NorCal at that time it was hard to keep track.

 

[Big Sur]

My landrace/heirloom MJ seed catalog (cont.):

Seed pack #13
B++ 4 stars
Light Green
Colombia, likely highlands
September, 1977
$50/oz.
Loose top Colombian sativa, bright and light green in color. Moderately heavy on seeds seeds, about 100 per oz.

I thought this was Mexican because it was not gold, but the source who was from Zacatecas, Mexico said it was defiantly from Colombia. It had a good high to it, and was more expensive than other Colombian golds around at the time. This is likely Colombian highland weed and may well be the famous Punto Rojo (AKA: Punta Roja), but I will not know for sure until I grow it.

 

[Big Sur]

From Strain Hunters web site:

Punto Rojo is considered the highest grade cannabis in the country, a slim sativa that grows above 800 meters on the sea level, and up to 2000 meters. The plants are tall, slender, with long branches growing almost horizontally, parallel to the ground. The internode is long and stretchy, but stalks are thick and capable of supporting heavy weights. The leaves are lime-green, with long non-overlapping leaflets and very sharp edges. The flowering time is quite long, but the tropical location allows multiple crops per year. Buds start forming as the plants reach the meter of size, and continue to develop and ripe for 10-12 weeks. The resin is produced in large amounts and has a typical thickness, forming a uniform coating all over the buds. The Punto Rojo smells fruity, like lime and mango, and has a very distinct woody background like most highland sativas from the south American continent. Smoking the Punto Rojo is a unique experience, even for the experienced stoner. Already at the second or third puff the creeping effect starts, delivering a powerful psychedelic high, fast hitting and long-lasting. It is a rush-high that has a very social side to it, stimulating and very funny. It is considered unrivalled in quality by many artists and by more mature smokers.

 

[Conradino23]

I second that description, also smell produced in flowering.

 

[Big Sur]

My landrace/heirloom MJ seed catalog (cont.):

Seed pack #14
B- to A++ 4-5 stars
Assorted types and colors
Colombia
September, 1978
$550/lb.
This is an assortment of Colombian seeds from a friend that lived near Santa Cruz, CA. He had bought a bunch of different pounds of Colombian pot that year, including gold, red, and brown, both loose tops and bricks. He tossed the seeds from the pot that he smoked from those pounds into a baggie and gave it to me, knowing that I had started saving (and freezing) seeds. I have about 500 of those seeds left. I gave out a lot of these seeds to people growing weed in California in the late 70s and early 80s, and again later in Oregon in the mid 00s. They seem to produce good (and varied) results.