Golden-Goose

Damn man... I'm so involved in this thread I can't get any work done. 

Guys think about this for a second.... strains that not only survived, but achieved legendary status during the worst years of prohibition did so on merit alone. Yes, there was hype around those strains too but there was no big budget driving marketing campaigns to achieve this.

For the guys willing to invest a little time into reading some old threads. Head on over to ICmag and read some of the old threads around OG Kush, Sour Diesel and Chemdog. It makes for very interesting reading. Am I allowed to punt another forum? I'm not suggesting anyone defect. LOL! 

There is a thread posted by Good ol dog. Read that from start to finish and you might start to get an idea of why Chemdog is the legend that it is.

1 hour ago, Totemic said:

Me? One of the big boys... Heavens no. I'm a hobby breeder man, but my efforts have created a table that made 7 figures over the last year down my distribution line with 45000 seeds distributed. So does this make me part of this commercial machine? Does this make my efforts financially driven? Does this mean I have changed the way I approach my breeding over the last decade? 

I couldn't tell you how any of those real big guys run their breeding programs, nor their primary motivation. 

My primary motivation has always been driven by a deep relationship with the plant, and sharing that.

You may see totemic as just one of the brands, and while I have chosen a brand to engage the public, totemic is still rooted in the activism to free the plant. 

But anyway, I do get where you are coming from, no offense taken at all

 

Nah bud... I don't see Totemic as just another brand. You may be quite successful, but my rant is specifically aimed at mega international brands. Especially Cookies. What Berner has done is great business. I just can't fathom how strains that the cookie cutter machine stamps out on a regular basis can compare to some of the legends of the past.

This is actually a conversation that should be had in person. Too much talking past each other to make our individual points.

No hard feelings my man.

I'm confused... are you saying you're one of the big boys in the game I was referring to, or are you suggesting those guys do what you do?

Do you see the commercial machine I'm talking about, or have you allowed your personal feelings to get in the way of seeing the forest for the trees?

Also, sharing and selling is not quite the same thing man. So, do you share your gear that didn't quite hit the mark or do you sell it? If you sell it, more power to you, but do you then sell it for less than a strain you've worked for 2 years? You obviously have a routine that works for you, and helps you get the results you are looking for. Which is exactly the opposite of what I'm bitching about.

What is the point of breeding if you're not at least going to attempt to create something that's a little special or unique, or maybe you have some other agenda like the preservation of an older line. If you're not doing this to the best of your abilities, then all you're doing is dumping shit on to the market to make money. This is not aimed at you, so don't get worked up by that question/statement.

You're going to have a hard time convincing me that the big brands have any other goal than mass production and building their brands into the powerhouses you see today.

I sound like a hater, but remember how this kicked off. Old vs New. Without the old there is no new. Scratch under the surface of cookies and what do you get? What amazes me is how cookies spawned an empire. I'm a seed junky and love trying new stuff. I have yet to find a cookies variety from seed that is good enough to last more than 3 rounds in my room. That is my honest, personal opinion.

We all want to succeed, but success brings it's own problems. Can you honestly tell me that if you blew up worldwide that you would still be able to maintain the standard you do now? Or do you think maybe shit would be outsourced and automated to within an inch of it's life, while massive amounts of effort and funds get channeled into creating a fire breathing monster brand with a life of it's own.

So far so good. 

2 hours ago, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

well, a landrace and a popular old school strain is not the same thing. let's focus on the topic at hand here, popular old school strains.

I feel since that "polypolypoly hybrid smashed with a polypolypoly hybrid" thing was mentioned it kinda built a wall in this conversation that shouldn't be there,

nature would've created a polypolypoly hybrid smashed with a polypolypoly hybrid anyway, just because us humans did it selectively according to what we like and what sells best (because that's what the masses like and want) does not make them a bad thing. this is how time works, it waits for no one and it changes all the time. so I guess you're right about clinging to the past so hard in a game that's ever changing is defs gona come back and bite you in the end. 

@Golden-Goose just because you don't like the bullshit desert names being used as marketing does also not mean the weed is shit or anything worse than the stuff back in the day. because of human intervention and selective breeding we do get to choose the names of our strains we create, sadly that's just how it works and we are wasting time and energy getting upset about it.

at best it's basically the same, with the exception that GOOOOD TASTING FROSTY weed was harder to find back in the day, making it somewhat of a trophy weed, when today GOOD TASTING FROSTY weed is everywhere. to me that's a huge improvement.... just gotta allow the times to be to really appreciate it for what it is. 

But that's just the thing... how much selective breeding is actually happening when we talk about the big boys in the game? If I have a stud, and then hit every single elite cookie clone I have with the pollen. Give each strain a cool name and slap some high end packaging on it, what have I actually done? Have I bred something for a desired taste, or maybe a certain type of high? Of course not.

I have zero issues with F1's either. Even untested F1's, if the parents are stable and the breeder at least put some thought into why he/she was pairing two strains together.

What would you classify as GOOD TASTING FROSTY weed? Maybe a new thread should be created with everyone's suggestions of really good modern strains. I'm not against having my mind changed. I've grown out a few of the newer cookie hybrids, and they just haven't quite cut it in my room. I would love to find something contemporary that is good enough to last more than a few rounds. 

I have a friend that breeds with cookies strains, crossing them into OG's and Diesels. He has been doing this for a while now. Some of his gear is mind blowing, but he is also super paranoid. So I worry that his gear will never see the light of day. I'm really not against new strains that check the right boxes. People tend to gravitate towards what they're comfortable with, so I'm probably guilty of giving more time and effort to finding a good OG vs finding a good cookie representation.

Anyway... apologies to the OP. I think this thread might be derailed.

To try and get back on thread... I would love to pollen chuck with some malawi or rooibaard. Bring down the flower time, and improve structure (for indoor) while maintaining at least some of the unique effects and maybe get something that tastes a little different. That would be a hugely time consuming effort though.

17 hours ago, PsyCLown said:

Looks like a beautiful plant to trim! Not a lot of leaf at all  

 

We want more pics though! 

Yeah, I've been slacking in this thread. I often update my IG page. I must do the same here.

12 hours ago, GGG said:

Pragtig

Sent from my Hisense Infinity H50 using Tapatalk
 

Dankie meneer!

ODB aka Cheesy Rider is live! I have an exceptional cut of Exodus Kush, and if this is anything like that, it is going to be fire!

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm certainly not proposing guys start filling their rooms with landrace strains. For me, the magic of landrace lies in their potential for breeding. 

@PsyCLown I think you have it backwards bud. Although life is all about perspective. For me, and many others like me, the newer stuff is all about marketing/hype. Take this "elite" polypolypoly hybrid and smash it together with this other "elite" polypolypoly hybrid. Give it some bullshit desert name and then hype the hell out of it. Do this multiple times in a year, which pretty much guarantees nothing has been tested, and then sit back and watch the fanboys queue up to throw their money at you. Laugh all the way to the bank, while the market is flooded with super frosty boof that smells and tastes the same as the last super frosty boof they grew. The frostiest and possibly "prettiest" strain I've ever grown was a freak Amherst Sour Diesel. We all thought it was going to be super potent and tasty gear. It was straight rubbish. Same with a cut of DOG I had from Ripper. That one was potent as hell, but the high was muddy and although there was a hint of grape terps, there was no taste at all apart from your typical burnt hash flavour you often find on freakishly frosty gear. Are there "new school" breeders who still produce fire. Of course there are. Are they completely overshadowed by the cookie fam? In my opinion... definitely!

Think about this for a second... Golden Goose will never be one of the big banks in SA. My partner and I are well aware of this. We've even had a serious discussion about stocking things like autos and your typical hype gear to help improve sales. We haven't done it (yet) though, because then we would be completely contradicting our own mission statement. Making us hypocrites and twats. We wanted to be niche. That is probably going to bite us in the ass in the long or even medium term, as South Africa is just not a big enough market for this type of philosophy or market strategy to work. If we pack up shop, at least I will have tons of gear for my own breeding projects. That will be the silver lining I cling to. LOL!

Also, I just want to add that I doubt OSG is testing all his gear either. What I like about him, is that he is sitting on gold when it comes to hard-to-find older "elite gear". He is also an honest guy and a pleasure to work with. If you're looking for gear that has been properly tested with real fire power and that old school flavour, then look no further than Lucky Dog. Skunk VA is passionate about his chemdog genetics, and it shows. Unfortunately, his stuff is not cheap though. You pay for the work that he puts in.

Now, a logical person might surmise that progress is just that... progress. Therefore, cannabis strains in general will improve. I firmly believe that sentiment to be flawed though. Before the trend of global legalisation, or decriminalisation people had to do some serious hunting to latch on to anything special. Wether in clone form or pheno hunting through seeds. That led to it's own set of disadvantages, but one of the positives is that growers and breeders cherished what they had and the passion was real. When breeding, it was often done with clear intent on the outcome and they selectively bred towards those goals. Many of those same breeders in today's economic and social climate would probably also just smash unicorn raspberry poop to sunshine rainbow cheerio pebbles and call it a day. So it's not that their moral compass was any better. These days, demand is massive and everyone wants that new new. If you want to stay relevant, you have to pander to that demand. Making it almost impossible to breed to the standards set by the previous generation, who could afford to spend years on a breeding project to get it just right.

The Brand is the new god, and every breeder has dreams of being the next Coca-Cola.

Apologies if my post came across as hostile. I didn't read the entire thread either, so I might also be in danger of picking up stompies.

Schism is live. I ordered a few packs but only received 1. So be quick about it.

at 20 days now I think

They've just been moved under HID lighting from flourescent.

He says they are very hungry. He has just bumped up feeds to 1.1 EC and says they still want more.

We've been busy!

Lucky Dog Seed Co. - Schism : TITS (aka This Is The Shit) x Chemdog 91 BX3 - TITS is Sour Diesel x OGKB
Karma Genetics - Old Dirty Biker aka Cheesy Rider : Exodus Cheese x Biker Kush
Karma Genetics - Sweets : Gelato (guava cut) x Sour Diesel BX2

The following strains have been restocked:

Old Widow S1
White Afghan Skunk
White Bubblegum
Glueberriez
OSG Cheese
Orange Road

Old School Octane is now live

Wedding Cake x Jamaican Blueberry x Red Khyber is now live

Larry OG S1 is live (I'm still waiting for a photo)

Super Silver Haze S1 is back in stock

They look beautiful bro

Thank you for the kind words brother

Blue Cough is now live

Blue D#5 is now live

Banana & Cheese is now live

I've recently discovered that not everyone likes that intense haze buzz. Fucken pussies! 

New drop going live in the next few days. Stock has arrived, but I'm swamped at the moment, so will only be able to add to the site over the weekend. Once this has been added, there will be a spring special coming.

Here the list to wet your appetite :

Larry OG S1
Wedding cake x Jamaican Blueberry x Red Khyber
Old School Octane (Triangle Octane x Jamaican Blueberry x Red Khyber)
Blue Cough (Caramel Cough x NL#5 x Blueberry)
Blue D#5 (Josh D#1 x NL#5 x Blueberry)
Banana & Cheese (Exodus Cheese x Banana Punch)
SSH S1 - restock