Where are we going with seeds? F1's only and search for pheno ... feminized ...stable

I see many great companies coming out and taking over the seed / bean market. TGA Subcool has done an excellent job of marketing and promoting. With his team he has been able to spread across the U.S. like wild fire. But his seeds are mostly crosses of (one of) two of his best males, crossed to some amazing female. The problem is that you often get bad genetics and Hermies ... but you also may find some that could be better than their parents. You'd have just as good of luck with some AMAZING bag seed. Like the seeds that came out of the bottom of a bag and created the Chemdog and Diesel lines. I love bag seed for crossing with my other plants. Put some vigour back in and then start stabilizing it and picking your traits.

So what do you guys think. Should seed companies stabilize their strains before release? Or would you rather do the work and search for an awesome strain out of ... a 5 pack ... which might produce 5 (for $100-$50 depending on breeder), or even zero females. Not much to select from. I myself enjoy the hunt. It's like an expensive lottery ticket. I invest my time (2-3 months for finish ... not including getting it to the point to where you can get and save a cutting for a mother)

$50 for 5 seeds. I love your strains TGA, and I love the hunt. But if you are a beginner and want something stable ... who are the best breeders and lines to choose from? For stability.

Mr. Diamond

Mr. Diamond said:

I see many great companies coming out and taking over the seed / bean market. TGA Subcool has done an excellent job of marketing and promoting. With his team he has been able to spread across the U.S. like wild fire. But his seeds are mostly crosses of (one of) two of his best males, crossed to some amazing female. The problem is that you often get bad genetics and Hermies ... but you also may find some that could be better than their parents. You'd have just as good of luck with some AMAZING bag seed. Like the seeds that came out of the bottom of a bag and created the Chemdog and Diesel lines. I love bag seed for crossing with my other plants. Put some vigour back in and then start stabilizing it and picking your traits.

So what do you guys think. Should seed companies stabilize their strains before release? Or would you rather do the work and search for an awesome strain out of ... a 5 pack ... which might produce 5 (for $100-$50 depending on breeder), or even zero females. Not much to select from. I myself enjoy the hunt. It's like an expensive lottery ticket. I invest my time (2-3 months for finish ... not including getting it to the point to where you can get and save a cutting for a mother)

$50 for 5 seeds. I love your strains TGA, and I love the hunt. But if you are a beginner and want something stable ... who are the best breeders and lines to choose from? For stability.

Mr. Diamond

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Look, its simple, if you want worked lines, look for something F3 or later, there are actually a lot of companies that have 1 or 2 worked lines. Anything properly worked past F3 will have 3 or less distinct phenotypes, if that is the goal of the breeder. Personally, I enjoy a couple phenotypes in a strain, I just expect all of them to be high quality.

I've been growing for over twenty years. I've grown both "bag seed" and "store bought". In my experience good bag seed from the west coast of the United States is always far superior to store bought seed.
I got about 300 good seeds handed down to me on a trip to California in 2006, 150 SensiStar and about 150 seeds from the Mendo Purps cross that produced Purple Urkle. Out of those 300 seeds I got maybe ten males. I have not really cloned much over the last 6 years. Now, I'm not only running low on seeds now but they are getting a little old and losing vigor, so I bought some Ken's GPD seeds from Sea of Seeds. I cracked 5 Ken's GDP one keeled over and died and the other four have all turned out male. But since, rumor has it that, the kens GDP is purple urkle crossed with big bud I'm going to pick one of my mendo purp/urkle girls that is most like the Purple Urkle pheno and cross them. My guess is that those seeds will be choice.
But the point is that the free seeds are great but the ones I paid $10 a bean for are all males. I brought some Pot'O Gold seeds back from Amsterdam and 8 out of ten were male. So at this point I'm done paying $10 a bean for males especially when there are plenty of free seeds out there. I'll be giving away a bunch of the GDP/Urkle cross seeds.

I don't mind searching for good phenos as long as the cross was made with good genetics and the price is reasonable but when you have pollen chuckers selling f1s for hundreds of dollars which I find ridiculous but to each is own..

first off, i'd rather get an f1 cross for the hybrid vigor even if it expressed a million phenos in a back cross. hybrid vigor is just that extra bit of nice you lose when you stabilize and inbreed until you get weed that's the equivalent of pasty faced inbred royalty with bad teeth. LOL

second, i love TGA's gear! i've only grown out jack's cleaner 2 so far, and it is CLEARLY the best overall strain i've grown so far. maybe malawi gold is better, but it's a slower lower yielding strain. TGA isn't just some "new kid on the block" either. i clearly remembering THEM (not just one breeder) getting nothing but love as early as 2004 when i started frequenting forums and was wondering what the fuck everyone was raving about with all those no name strains i'd never heard of before.

i think stabilization is overrated. if you bottleneck a strain long enough, just like keeping a mother plant alive 20 years or taking clones of clones, eventually you rin into genetic waning. that's the entire god given purpose of sexual reproduction... mixing genes up... and in our case, having fun hopefully too. f1s will exhibit some variation, but if both parents are exceptional, the offspring should be just as good and possibly better. i liked my own pollen chucked super cali haze much better than the C99 that knocked it up any day. it was beefier, stickier and fruitier. i only had one gal to test too.

what's best or not depends on your personal preferences. if you're an uptight control freak who can't abide by any deviation from your expectations, then yeah, a little variability can be a cause to go into therapy, but if you like surprises and letting nature do it's own thing, a little bit of variation is welcomed.

so far, i've seen some pheno variation mostly in my black label seeds' masterkush autos in color with one large blonde 3rd pheno and short and tall phenos of joey weed C99, but all of those were so similar smoking without doing side by side analysis that i just don't sweat variation. it's more important to me to start with the best parents available than to try and micromanage schwag. if you start with awesome strains to begin with, the offspring can do no wrong and will have a hybrid vigor freebie too where it's an uphill battle to select a keeper with crappy parents.

to me, all the stabilize it mofo sentiment is just uppity control freak insanity. almost EVERY awesome strain out now got it's start from rare and totally random variation! nothing you smoke blazes like wild hemp. that's a good thing. let the growers select the phenos they want, just don't start with bargain basement schwag.

i like a more natural variety i guess.

In my experience good bag seed from the west coast of the United States is always far superior to store bought seed.

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oh yeah!!!!!!! tell it like it really is! there's NOTHING wrong with great bagseed! OK, the worst stomped on bottom of the pile mexican brick smokes like weak shit, but grow that shit out with love, and it's a TOTALLY different story! me? i despise getting stoned so i'd rather smoke brick than dank every fucking time to begin with, but the simple LEAFLET trim i took from my 20+ varieties of bagseed from one straight up skunk indica to a few favorite mexcoms literally took a fucking dump on EVERY motherfucking same old same old nothing but stone afghani dom i've wasted money on over 25 years! that is the truth, and if you say otherwise, fuck you bitch! i got that idea from jorge cervantes and for a long time, it prevented me from budding because i'd get so happy off my leaf that beat the shit out of every loser fuck's afghanicrap no matter how sticky it is and couldn't resist the lure of what they REFUSE to offer. cash crapping losers like to try and use that TRUTH to discredit me, but fuck 'em... lying sacks of shit they are!

i WISH i still had my crushed red pepper just like kali mist flavored mexcoms i named spicy. i only had 2 beans of that, but it was CLEARLY better than anything i'd wasted money on in 10 years even in brick form. that, and my purple (haze), (panama) red and columbian (gold) sourced mecican commercials, named by the color of the $5 & $10 ghetto sacks i scored them in and saved them in were some awesome genes for sure and the ENTIRE mutt collection i saved from every fucking seed i could lay my hands on smoked better in leaflet (because leaf stars are more potent than full sized fan leaves... FOR REAL BITCH!) form than all of the fucking afghanicrap beasters i'd love to eradicate forever in kmart bought hyponex under $20 shoplights.

i have to laugh at every fool who disses bagseed because they think crappy fermented pressure cooked mexican commercial is the best the genes in them beans is capable of. chances are, if you get bagseed, the grower was sloppy and not letting the gear reach it's true potential.

i really wish i had my top 4 mexican bagseed strains right now. even in brick form, that shit was no worse than durban poison. there's ANOTHER truth protectors of the bag appeal myth try to protect! i feel ya bagseeder! bagseed kicks fucking ass! that's one of the reasons i've always open pollinated so far, but i don't grow them in clay or let my gals pile up & ferment. nah uh... i love my plants.

I know all the new breeders puting out 5+ crosses a year are just rediculous look at rare dankness they have well over 20 I almost think it was around 40 strains on their site. but I just don't buy seed from these new companies their are plenty of breeders that put time paitients into their seeds and actually have goals in thier work. the new guys get a good f1 hybrid and cross to another f1 hybrid of course they get good seeds cause they use good genes but they have a lot more variation. but the problem when they create a good stable IBL is their work can be stolen real easy just look how many breeders carry skunk #1. not to mention tom hill's deep chunk is used in a lot of hybrids. even mr. nice sells mostly f1 hybrids mostly cause its harder to copy an f1 but also f1's have more vigour and for the most part produce better plants but their are some great IBL's out their.

I can say one thing about rare dankness.. Thier f1s are producing some lovely plants so I will venture off into their 40+ strains same with a lot of breeders gear I grew and got good results.

Awesome thread. What Clankie said...

bluntmassa1 said:

I know all the new breeders puting out 5+ crosses a year are just rediculous look at rare dankness they have well over 20 I almost think it was around 40 strains on their site. but I just don't buy seed from these new companies their are plenty of breeders that put time paitients into their seeds and actually have goals in thier work. the new guys get a good f1 hybrid and cross to another f1 hybrid of course they get good seeds cause they use good genes but they have a lot more variation. but the problem when they create a good stable IBL is their work can be stolen real easy just look how many breeders carry skunk #1. not to mention tom hill's deep chunk is used in a lot of hybrids. even mr. nice sells mostly f1 hybrids mostly cause its harder to copy an f1 but also f1's have more vigour and for the most part produce better plants but their are some great IBL's out their.

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There is no problem with a company putting out 20 strains cuz if you are breeding with a proven stable male , then you take that male cross him with 20 elite clones then you have 20 strain that should grow out to be potent bud,seed companies like Cali Connection and Rare Dankness both have been doing this for years

I learned most of what I know and now have ... some experience in breeding plants ... by breeding dogs. You can take 2 amazing looking dogs and have 12 ugly deformed adult dogs. It is not true that two great pheno's will produce great offspring, or better. There could be a recessive trait in one of the parents that messes the whole thing up. Two short people can have a child that grows up to be Shaq. My only complaint about f1 crosses is THE VARIATION. I'm looking for specific traits to use to cross with my females so I can create the best medicine for my patients and myself.

I'm a Washington State 69.51a certified MMJ patient ... by the way.

I want to know what the mother or father breeds true for. I'm looking to create specific traits in my crosses and then have the ability to backcross, inbreed it, line breed it until we have control of the direction the line takes. I want to know when I buy seeds for $10 or more each ... that I'm not just buying lottery tickets.

However ... lol I grow tons of TGA gear and have most of their strains including unreleased test strains. I AM a fan of F1's ... it just doesn't fit my goals as a breeder, my time and the amount of space I have to work with. Our Co-op is only allowed to grow 45 plants as a group. Testing takes a long time. Finding an awesome F1 strain doesn't mean it's not a great pheno ... but it's also VERY unstable. High chances of hermies in some lines. dadadada I've met many of the TGA Green Avengers. They have great crosses. If you're a breeder and you want to use their f1's ... chances are you will have to spend a lot more time to invest in finding the best pheno's for breeding purposes. I don't recommend crossing two f1's. Could turn out great ... but every time you do that, you are moving away from the drug traits Subcool talks about and you are headed towards more of a hemp product.

It's the same with dog breeds. ALL ... let me repeat that ... ALL ... breeds of dog came from the Grey Wolf and were selected and bred for their traits until they became the breeds they are today. You would call a mixed dog ... a Mut. You would call a dog bred along the same lineage and for specific traits ... purebred. Many lines are very stable and to get to this, inbreeding and linebreeding are the common practice. This is how you breed true traits. If you keep mixing muts ... you will eventually have a Grey Wolf again.

Mr. Diamond

I know Sub puts out some good shit, but do his nuts really need to be quite the carnival ride? Just saying, no hate or anything.

HAHAHAHAH carnival ride

RedMan420 said:

There is no problem with a company putting out 20 strains cuz if you are breeding with a proven stable male , then you take that male cross him with 20 elite clones then you have 20 strain that should grow out to be potent bud,seed companies like Cali Connection and Rare Dankness both have been doing this for years

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but they are not using stable males subcools best male is a cross of c99 x romulan I'm sure its not a bad male but its by no means stable then he crosses to a bunch of clone onlys but he is not making strains he's making crosses same as most all the new guys. but I know you can get good weed from crosses but their not stable they don't breed true for any traits so there not actually improving their lines in any way. IBL's do great also like skunk #1 and northern lights they've been around since the 80's and you can hit 20% thc with them and they yield good so theirs no reason they can not make a good IBL but it takes a lot of work.

Mr. Diamond said:

I don't recommend crossing two f1's. Could turn out great ... but every time you do that, you are moving away from the drug traits Subcool talks about and you are headed towards more of a hemp product.

It's the same with dog breeds. ALL ... let me repeat that ... ALL ... breeds of dog came from the Grey Wolf and were selected and bred for their traits until they became the breeds they are today. You would call a mixed dog ... a Mut. You would call a dog bred along the same lineage and for specific traits ... purebred. Many lines are very stable and to get to this, inbreeding and linebreeding are the common practice. This is how you breed true traits. If you keep mixing muts ... you will eventually have a Grey Wolf again.

Mr. Diamond

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did subcool really say that about crossing 2 f1's? cause if he did then thats fucking halarious cause thats just what he does.

you shouldn't even be looking at dogs just take a look at corn varieties and you will see just what prohibition has done to cannabis. you buy most any variety of corn you get a stable crop some will vary slightly but they all breed true for certain traits. as you can tell the veggie breeders put cannabis breeders to shame but they got laws and shit you can't just take someone elses variety and sell as your own like what was done with skunk#1 and white widow but cannabis is an illeagal drug so the breeders don't have to follow any rules or regulations. so our breeders are forced to keep IBL's to them self and sell f1's so that their work can't be stolen.

There work wont be stolen for the traits they selected but if people get the f1s find it goo enough to breed and select thier own traits from then they will make crosses and call that strain there's just look at everybodies description no one gives credit to no one. Very rare if they do.

Mr. Diamond said:

So what do you guys think. Should seed companies stabilize their strains before release? Or would you rather do the work and search for an awesome strain out of ... a 5 pack ... which might produce 5 (for $100-$50 depending on breeder), or even zero females.

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I think the answer is different strokes for different folks.

Yes, in some sort of non-existent perfect world, the best strains would all be inbred lines with every plant not only nearly identical to each other, but also to the ad copy, and breeders wouldn't offer unstabilized hybrids.

But the reality is, that hybrid plants offer many advantages, in terms of vigor and in many cases unique phenotypes. If you know about genetics, you'll know that certain phenotypes are associated with heterozygous genotypes, and the real world upshot of this is that certain traits simply CANNOT be stabilized into true breeding lines no matter how much inbreeding is done. The best you can do is limit the amount of phenotypes in a given generation (ie pack of se-eds) to a relatively small number with several generations of inbreeding. If you want the benefits of hybrid plants, you have to accept the liabilities, which may mean phenotypic variation and doing some selection yourself.

In contrast, there are still quite a few excellent inbred commercial lines out there to choose from, should they interest you. Also, virtually by definition, all the landrace strains are inbred lines too, so the genetics are out there if you want to find them.

My personal take on this, is that the average home/personal grower simply doesn't have the physical space or legal ability to grow out large numbers of plants to do meaningful selections. If you have to grow from seed (ie you can't maintain mother plants or clones), and you can only grow 2-3 plants at once (or less), and some of your space is even going to be used up doing GENDER selection, then the less the phenotypic variation in any pack of se-eds, the better.

In contrast, if you have the ability and desire to run out 10-15+ plants at once and do selections for "keeper" plants that meet your specific needs, then unstable hybrids can be great.

My Co-Op can have 45 plants and we put a few plants aside for breeding purposes to find new medicines that are designed specifically to our patients. We give the seeds to our patients for free and let them give us feedback on how that cross went. It's very easy to test and stabilize a strain on the West Coast ... which is where I'm from .. and many of these F1 breeders are from. In some places you can have up to 99 plants in California ... aaaaannd they can't stabilize a strain? Laziness. Greedy. We care about our patients ... and one day when it's legal ... I'll have some amazing NW strains that are completely stable. And free seeds for all our patients. I really can't understand how a seed can be $10 or more for an F1. Would you pay more for a mixed breed dog than a purebred dog?


If you go to the pound you will see mostly mixed breed dogs. People who care about what they are producing stick to purebred lines that are 100% inbred. Since ALL dogs started from the Grey Wolf ... it's easy to use dogs as an example of something we can compare it to in most homes of dog owners. You have a purebred dog lets say. And you breed it to another purebred dog with similar attributes/traits. The chances are their babies will breed true for many of the traits characteristic to the parents and the bloodline.

I guess we are just lucky we can kill all the F1's that produce hermies and substandard traits. I'm sick of buying $300 in seeds, going through the time to grow and sex them and then going through the process to find out if they are hermie or if they even produce a keeper female. Every breeder brags that they get like 4 females out of 5 seeds, or that you will always get a keeper in every 10 pack. I went to college for advertising, and that ... in the real world would, be called false advertising and you would be sued. I wonder how much of my life I will spend looking for F1's that are suitable candidates for breeding ... not much I hope. That's why I'm only going to purchase stable genetics from now on. No more wasted time with F1's i've learned my lesson.

I have bought too many F1's, which are a lot of fun to use for pheno hunting ... but I've spent a lot more than I should have when I could have bought a stable line that I know is going to produce well as stated in their descriptions and reviews. I can get 10 Skunk #1's for like $30 and know exactly what to expect from the seeds or I can buy an F1 breeders seeds ... or worse yet ... the new breeders that are taking unstable F1's and crossing them with another unstable F1 ... like it's even BETTER. haha You gotta be kidding me. Just because the two plants are nice does not mean the recessive genes in them will not destroy their offspring or just create low THC garbage.

An F1 crossed with an F1 generally in would be a horrible selection fro breeding. Unless you plan to work that line and stabilize it. This has been tested on dogs and animals of every sort. And was the main practice of royal families in the era of Empires and Dynasties. Lots of inbreeding and line breeding. Then it stopped and we all started crossing traits and races ... which will eventually result in a very stable strain of human ... because eventually we will all become line bred ... as many of us already are.

In my experience F1's have many problems and are not worth my time or the amount of money I've wasted so far. F1's are unstable, often cause hermie plants and if you plan to breed with them ... breeding F1's to F1's brings you closer to Hemp and you lose many of the qualities you were looking for. Just like dogs. If you keep mixing the breeds ... they'll eventually convert back to Wolves.

Mr. Diamond
I love seeds.

In the dog world ... If you have an amazing stud dog .. you charge a lot to breed with it. You get to charge a lot because you took him to dog shows and he won ribbons (or with herb you go to the Cannabis Cup and win awards). You then as a seed company get to breed and cross breed your bloodline until you come up with the perfect dog that breeds true for specific traits. When you get a dog that has proven to produce offspring that breed true for specific traits ... your off spring and awards are your proof and ability to charge a higher price.

When you have a puppy from that production ... you are not stealing anything. You paid a crap load for that dog. My dog was $10,000 (I got him for $3,500 and a special deal .. but). The same should be done with seeds. F1's / mutts, should be dirt cheap and stable IBL's should be priced accordingly.

But marketing has got all these people believing there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow with these F1's. Basically they are buying lottery tickets that take 2-4 months to find out if you won.

My point, I'm not stealing anything I paid for. They should price prize genetics accordingly and promote the benefits.

Mr. Diamond
I love seeds.