New v Old

Hey,
So tell me this, given as time passes, some new offerings get better, and make actual improvements to what came before, why the sudden rush to what is now old?
So many people chasing genetics from the 90s are coming to light at the moment, it just makes me wonder why.
Do the people chasing the past not believe any breeder has been making improvements?

True but as the genepool is flooded with og,chem, diesel, hybrids (, etc,)
The only way forward is to go (back)and find some new landraces to look for new flavours/highs
Or other distinctive traits which can used as your platform to move on.

Weather it actually makes it better is a moot point cause,
My own seeds made from hybrids of hybrids seem to have
More of what I want compared to any (supposed) great landrace.
Also the dreaded s1 tech also seems to be of great benefit, contrary to old er thoughts.

I personally think there are a ton of old farts like me who would love to smoke some of the golden oldies. Also exploring the different highs of these breeds is an awesome experience.

I have nothing against new crosses and they are also exciting to me.

Plenty of time to grow a bunch of different stuff.

I have grown some Panama and it's the balls!
The Chem Dog is badass. Tangie was silly good.

To each his pwn

Damn, good weed is good

As far as breeding goes, why not??
I remember being told a Russian scientist figured out by now humans have combined all the notes in music in all their possibe combinations already. No new music any more......

I don't believe that for a second.

True. Prefer the strains earlier....but it's like craft beer....always striving for the next taste/brew batch.
I'll take a pilsner, amber or a stout and JH, Haze, NL anyday! ;o)

Reason #1 has to be nostalgia...
Reason #2 has got to be the number of breeders making these varieties available to the public now a days.
Reason #3 There are ever more people joining the forums & recounting their past & hearing, for the first time, how the seed game works then refering to reason #1.

I don't see breeders in mass returning to landrace genetics & I dont see breeders attempting to recreate what once was. A couple here & there is no indicator to me as these forums are a huge minority of the growing grower population. Also, those of us on these forums seem to be a bit more up to date with what's happening in the breeding world.

Forgot to mention uneducated hacks that haven't a clue other that varietal names & think they can get Sk#1 by tossing any ol pollen at any ol plant(s) from within those landrace pools. (This is not a dig at anybody on these forums... Just an observation of newb growers that think they can breed plants they've barely learned how to grow)

Female seed has set the industry back by several years, its contaminated the breeding pool and the plants have gotten weaker because of it. Cubing genetic pools is very important, Mendel's Law/Theory anything that can happen will happen.

GrowDoc

GMT said:

Hey,
So tell me this, given as time passes, some new offerings get better, and make actual improvements to what came before, why the sudden rush to what is now old?
So many people chasing genetics from the 90s are coming to light at the moment, it just makes me wonder why.
Do the people chasing the past not believe any breeder has been making improvements?

Click to expand...

For me it is about having the basic building blocks and the ability to make my own selections.

M.

I personally find many nuances to every strains buzz above and beyond all other factors

some of the 90s strains had characteristics that are rare today

soaring high being one of them

gets deeper but I don't want to get tangential

As a long time smoker, nostalgia plays a big part of it. You were smoking a certain strain when something that you remember fondly happened. Smell is a very powerful memory trigger. Getting a whiff of that certain strain triggers a trip down memory lane. It takes you back in time.

Trust me, I'd love to get a whiff of some good Acapulco Gold, or Colombian Gold, or the good Redbud I once took for granted. Those strains are associated with good times with good friends. And they were not only tasty, but they were friggin great.

Love my hashberry, also loved my lapis mtn indica. Scored some red kilimanjaro and red snow from #oldmangreen of old school genetics. Love the old school stuff.

Seems like everyone wants to get back what they once took for granted eh?

Never took good weed for granted!

Colombian Rojo Haze pheno fried found is as close to old school Red bud since the day..........

ganj on..........

The canna world is dominated by cuts saved from the 90's for very good reasons that have nothing to do with weed magically turning good in the 2000's. OG Kush, Pre 98 Bubba, 91 Chem, ECSD, C5, SSH/Amnesia, Cheese, Trainwreck, on and on and on... All clones preserved by growers in the 1990's. Also what almost all of today's "modern and improved" lines are made out of.

So a few history lessons for the kiddos.

1. First before the 90's very few individuals had the knowledge or equipment to grow indoors. Even fewer had the correct environment to grow properly. Very few nutrient companies had decent products for indoor growing. Zero of them had the quality of products now being offered. Practically nobody in the 80's or before where saving mother plants as the knowledge was not widespread. Things like double ended bulbs, and functional LED panels, improved nutrients are the new improvements that where made not the DNA of the plants themselves. This is the science. Stick a badass cut of any strain under shit lights, shit nutrients, shit ventilation, shit cure job and what do you think you will end up smoking? Yup shit! Take a cut of garbage genetics and grow it under the perfect conditions and you will still get shit. Now grow a proper drug variety under the perfect circumstances and you get the beautiful herb we see today.

2. People where not ordering high quality seeds until around the late 80's just another factor. Most of the people that were lucky enough to score genetics worth saving didn't save seeds and the ones that did save seed did not have the proper knowledge or environmental factors to grow them to full potential. And once again nobody was saving clones.

3. Something else the kids and new comers seem to not know about nor understand is that back in 90's the Dutch breeders where systematically busted and most of them lost their parental seed making cuts. Before this a lot of them where doing selection in massive greenhouses. Once they lost that parent stock most of the Dutch companies like Sensi Seeds, Greenhouse, Sag, MNS, Dutch Passion, Paradise lied about the entire ordeal and started selling inferior F2s of their old lines or changing them completely hoping that their customers would never notice. But we did. This is why we want the old seeds and clones. Because they are the real deal. What those companies are selling now is a shadow of the quality they offered before the bust. Same reason they pay companies like Dinafem to mass produce there products in Spain. They still feel the sting from the busts!

4. Laws changed and the Information Age went into effect to allow an enormous amount of new growers to come comfortably onto the scene. Just the sheer amount of people putting in work improved the herb quality as a whole. But I don't see the genetics being improved so much as the knowledge of how the craft works and accessibility to proper seeds and cuts.

5) paraquat!!!! This chemical destroyed a ton of great genetics!!! Look it up.

Just a few quick ramblings on the subject but you get the idea. Besides who doesn't want to try new and exciting stuff? Only way to make new exciting combinations of herb is mixing up new combos with the old. GSC, Cherry Pie, and GG4 are perfect examples.

Some great responses to a basic question there, thankyou guys.

For me, I've recently discovered that my absolute favorites are pure sativa or heavily sativa-dominant strains. I've been smoking indica-dom stuff for thirty-plus years, and now I am pretty enthusiastic about trying as many of the new and old-school sativas as I can get my grubby little hands on, the purer the better. As a general rule the older the genetics, the less likely it is to be simply the same tired bunch of "elites" combined in various ratios to create the latest flavor of the week.

There's plenty of newer stuff that I do like, but for the most part I have little to no interest in the OG, chem, diesel, gsc, etc. ad nauseum, that make up the majority of contemporary offerings.

i think there is often a tendency to chase what is new, in fashion, and try to acquire what everyone is talking about, and there is always the 'new cuts on the block' that only a few peeps have and so everyone wants them so they can say they've got them.
i guess potency seems to get higher and for folks that have limited money to spend on weed then that is desirable.
quite a few of the cuts that get hyped for a year or two tend to fall out of favour and get forgotten about after a few years.

personally i am always more interested in the cuts that have been around for a long time, cos those are the ones that have stood the test of time and have remained on the radar from actually being great or unique in some way, they have to be the sh1t to stick around for that long. i find the ones i personally keep around are the older ones and the when it comes to reducing the amount of mother plants it is the newer ones that get dropped.

so yeah, give me the cuts that have been around for 15-20 years!
that said, very high potency isnt really something im that bothered about because i have more than enough weed to smoke

ive been lucky enough to come by a lot of the cuts going around (in the UK at least) and the ones ive kept are all old-school - pre-98 bubba, amnesia, and Chem D - except that i lost my chem D mother plant a few weeks ago and i'm GUTTED about that ..

VG

VerdantGreen said:

except that i lost my chem D mother plant a few weeks ago and i'm GUTTED about that ..

VG

Click to expand...

Sorry to hear this.
I hope you have the means to re-acquire this cut.

The question that still stands is why the old only exists as elite cuts. Peeps seem to want to not only get the cuts, the best of a strain, but get seed stock from their parentage. If the general population of the parents was up to scratch, why did the breeders stop selling them?
Yes there were busts, but all of a sudden, last two years, all anyone seems to talk about are cuts of twenty years ago and how to get their seeds, and latest fad cuttings. No one seems interested in what anyone is actually producing these days that's new.
Since rez dogs marketing days, no one is making anything new that generates any interest unless its cut x cut.