Revival of the Ultimate Sativa Thread

[Guest]

Hey ngakpa, no worries mate, it's not negative at all, discussion and debate is how we increase our knowledge and understanding of the beloved herb and the people who enjoy it, two thuings I am eager to learn as much about as I can.

I was reading a book called Pot Planet last night and the author devotes a chapter to Nepal, SE Asia, Switzeland, Holland, Australia, etc. He said only the hmong had a traditional gansa culture and he had great difficulty findind and good weed the whole time he was in SE Asia. He scored some prepackaged cigarettes that were opium laced he thought in Thailand, couldn;t score in Bangkok so headed north in Laos and Cambodia and he saw far more opium and was offer it far more than gansa which he found hard to find. Up near the Chinese border he was offered opium and showed them some weed he had bought earlier and the women grabbed it and picked the seeds out as they knew the people further south grew it and sold it to tourists, but they had no seeds and didn't traditionally use the plant themselves.

Not having been to SE Asia myself, what I wrote was based on reading this book, I will always bow to the knowledge of someone who's been there themselves. Folks said there was no good weed to be had in Cancun but when I went there I found loads of decent weed, I even found hash and bought some. When I told this American who had lived there for years I had seen hash for sale, he laughed at me, then I pulled it out of my pocket and he grabbed me by the arm and dragged me off to somewhere out of the way to smoke some, he said he hadn't smoked any hash since he moved to Mexico. God knows where it had come from, I think it might even had been produced locally by hand rubbing as it looked hand rubbed and was very fresh.

Point is, two people can go to the same place and one will score all kinds of stuff and the other will only score crap, it's the luck of the draw!

 

[cornfield]

hallo BH , thank's for advice, hope this one look better

 

[neongreen]

Pedro, I have had several sativas that gave this chear heady high with lots of giggles and silliness from inexperienced smokers. Zamalhaze can be like that but it's also complex and psychedelic, can really send lightweights off into a mad cartoon world. The clearest high I have ever experienced though is from my El Yucateca Mexican sativa, she has an extraordinarily clear, speedy, racing high, you know you are high, but there is no body stone whatsoever and the energising, clear nature of the high means you keep forgetting you're so high. this is very precious to me as I suffer from depression and having a clear speedy high that doesn't make you look outwardly high and allows you to function just as well as if you were straight (better in fact due to it's energising effects on body and brain).

Imho you just won't find highs of this nature in sativa dom hybrids, SSH, C99, Trainwreck atc. are all great highs but nowhere near the clearness of a pure sativa. I honestly think you don't find such clear highs in plants that tae less than 14 weeks to flower. El Yuc takes 14, Zamalhaze 16, Thais at least 16.

Malawi Gold, Swazi Red and Durban don;t have clear highs, they have moe rounded head/body effects, I think you need to look at equatorial pure sativas for those clear highs.

BH - what you said there struck a chord with me. I'm also in the UK, and when I first started smoking (late 80's) I remember only smoking compressed imported weed (hash too), but skunk was still fairly hard to get then. Back then, the compressed weed would give me a great high. Since then though, the only thing that has been able to give me any effect has been skunk (the exception being Blowfish which I grew outdoors a couple of years back, and it was wicked, for a near pure sat. high).

Everything else that I've tried recently didn't do anything! For instance, I scored some fairly heavily compressed Thai stick last year (a first for me), and no matter how much I smoked, it did nothing! That was after 2-3 weeks not smoking anything! I saved all the un-crushed seeds I could find anyway.

I've never really had a potent pure sat. smoke before, which is why I picked up a few strains (when I was buying seeds a few years back) that I thought might give me a chance to try one when I start growing again.

My hopes are pinned on these few strains: Acapulco Gold X Highland Nepalese, Burmese Pure, Orange Peako Cambodian, Candy Haze F2s, Viet Combo, Original Haze, Oaxacon Sativa (freebie), and Nepali (from two banks including Bluehemp). There are a few others, that are close to, but not pure!

I think my best bet out of those is going to be the AG x HN or the Nepali...

 

[ngakpa]

I was reading a book called Pot Planet last night and the author devotes a chapter to Nepal, SE Asia, Switzeland, Holland, Australia, etc. He said only the hmong had a traditional gansa culture and he had great difficulty findind and good weed the whole time he was in SE Asia. He scored some prepackaged cigarettes that were opium laced he thought in Thailand, couldn;t score in Bangkok so headed north in Laos and Cambodia and he saw far more opium and was offer it far more than gansa which he found hard to find. Up near the Chinese border he was offered opium and showed them some weed he had bought earlier and the women grabbed it and picked the seeds out as they knew the people further south grew it and sold it to tourists, but they had no seeds and didn't traditionally use the plant themselves.

Not having been to SE Asia myself, what I wrote was based on reading this book, I will always bow to the knowledge of someone who's been there themselves. Folks said there was no good weed to be had in Cancun but when I went there I found loads of decent weed, I even found hash and bought some. When I told this American who had lived there for years I had seen hash for sale, he laughed at me, then I pulled it out of my pocket and he grabbed me by the arm and dragged me off to somewhere out of the way to smoke some, he said he hadn't smoked any hash since he moved to Mexico. God knows where it had come from, I think it might even had been produced locally by hand rubbing as it looked hand rubbed and was very fresh.

Point is, two people can go to the same place and one will score all kinds of stuff and the other will only score crap, it's the luck of the draw!

hey BH - thanks for reference -

btw I just remembered that the Shan are ethnically Tai - in Thailand the Thais refer to them as "Thai Yai"... until a couple of years ago Thai Yai were allowed to keep a couple of ganja plants for use in curries

that's pretty bad luck for Brian Preston to have got round SE Asia and never found any good weed

thing is with SE Asia (I mean more Indochina when I say SE Asia btw) is it is a very closed culture - people are not quick to trust outsiders, and they have a lot to loose by selling to foreigners, and not that much to gain relative to the harshness of penalties... when I say the culture is closed I do not mean people are unfriendly, indeed people are very courteous and warm, except in places where there is a booming tourist trade

I would not expect people to get very far on a first time visit unless they are very lucky without at least some basic Thai or some good contacts who have lived there for a good few years

btw re. the sativas being up and cerebral thing, I did find the Highland Thai type high to be very up clear cerebral etc.

but bascially the only ethnic groups present in Indochina which to my knowledge don't use ganja traditionally are the "Sinitic" ones - i.e. Han Chinese, Hakka (a migrant mercantile group) and a few others originating within China itself

the Lao themselves are I am 99.99% certain a ganja using group

anyway, basically the fact that this guy couldn't score ganja in Bangkok seriously makes me well - mildy scornful lets say...

a key of brick in BKK goes for about 17,000 baht, so about $600... I don't think the price in Thailand itself goes below about $200 these days, though if you read Thai academic papers on addiction and drug use from a decade or more ago you will see the price given as about 3000 to 4000 baht, so as little as $100 per k

if you search for kratom and ganja you might find the paper I am remembering

there is also that '70s book about cannabis cultures which has an academic paper on cannabis in Cambodia - it even details strain types too (short wide leafed and larger narrow leafed, memory says one was refered to as a male strain the other female, this being something distinct from m and f sex of course)

anyway, as I say as far as I know all Tai ethnic groups (which includes the Lao) and the Khmer are traditionally cannabis cultures - and I think for example the cultivation of cannabis in much of Burma and NE India such as Assam would also support that... Shan influence stretches westwards right into Assam

what happened to you in Cancun I can fully identify with - believe me, I have driven past some of the largest growing areas in Thailand several times over thinking I was in the middle of somewhere that was utterly bereft of cannabis, only to find myself a few days later virtually rolling in the stuff

likewise, I have visited Saivite towns in India with very ancient cannabis cultures where a tourist would be very unlikely to be ablle to buy charas despite the fact many people use it there religiously, and where if people were to walk a day or two deeper into the mountains they would find some of the nicest charas I know of

 

[Guest]

Hiya cornfield, the first one looks fine, I've grown many sativas with curly leaves that tasted great and blew my head off, they still flower fine, often they are just being prima donnas. it's just a little tip I've learnt to bear in mind in future. Pure sativas really don't need much feeding in the last phase of flowering in my experience, they seem to stop eating when they are ripening. The second one looks better, love those huge long calyxes, definitely looks like a pure sativa to me, and I always think that is a good thing as it means a interestingly heady high is awaiting you when the buds are cut and dried.

Hiya neongreen. Sounds like you have some good genes there to look for what you're after. It's all a mater of taste I think, once you find the right sativa with the high you are looking for, clone the hell out of it. I've been lucky I think and found a few over the years that I enjoyed a lot, but the search for new, more intriguing highs goes on!

I started smoking in northern England in 92, hash was the big thing, lots of decent hash to be had if you knew the right people and sometimes imported weed. Although I loved the stony hash it was the highs I got from some of the imported Jamaican, African and Thai weeds that I really enjoyed. I first went to Amsterdam in 95 and although I was impressed with the strength of the buds they had then like Power Plant and Superskunk, the wipeout high wasn't to my liking, staring into space like a moron is fine for when you feel like doing nothing else, but not for me that often. I didn't think much of the heavy indicas like Afghan #1 and Northern Lights, if I want to get stoned, I'd rather smoke some good hash, I saw Amsterdam as a place to go to buy good hash and sample the imported Thais and Jamaicans and the occasionaly Africans like Nigerian and Swazi you sometimes saw, sometimes they were pretty poor, other times really good.

It wasn't until 97 when I managed to grow my first near-pure sativa (after 5 years of trying from bagseed and producing mostly hemp! lol) in a plastic greenhouse in a friend's garden, it was some sort of African and I can remember the feeling in my head after the first huge bong hit I took as soon as it was dry, it was the same lovely heady high that I loved the imported weeds for, but rather than having to smoke loads of dry dark, improrted weed to get that effect, I only needed one fat bowl.

Then in 98 we had an exceptional summer, I remember it was over 30 degrees for a full month and I got bad sunburn at glastonbury that year - the Red Cross ran out of suncream and some people had bad burns, no-one expected to need suncream in England! I'd finally ponied up the money to aquire some proper seeds (I was a piss poor student) and took the ferry ride to the Dam and went to see Wernard at the Positronics shop and bought some Swazi x Skunk #1, Durban Poison x Skunk #1 and NL5 x Haze seeds. He told me I'd be lucky if I got them to flower outdoors and sugegsted some Hollands Hope as a backup, so I got some of those too. Well, the exceptional summer and good autumn did the trick and I had some awesome outdoor Swazi and Durban that year, the NL5 x Haze were put in a drawer and lost, sadly and the Hollands Hope produced huge colas but I had more Swazi and Durban than I could smoke so gave all the HH away or flogged it as I didn't like it at all. I got 10oz off one Durban I planted in a 3ft diameter, 3 foot deep hole I filled with rabbit droppings and a couple of grow bags.

Since then I've carried on trying to grow ever more pure sativa genes and I've found the purer the sativa the more i enjoy the smoke, although I tend to grow more near pure sativas than pure ones these days as they perform a lot better indoors under lights by and large. My dream is to move to Spain so I can grow all the outdoor sativas I want as to me, an outdoor sativa bud grown well to full maturity is the finest smoke there is. I'll grow a few indicas to make some hash from, and some Nepalese sativas to make my own Temple Balls, but it's the full blooded sativa buds I really dream about. Everytime I harvest one of my indoor tiny sativas I look at the plant and think 'I wonder how good this would be if I grew it outdoors in Spain?'

 

[ngakpa]

Just to add, I think it might be a good idea to draw up a list of regions around the world, with the regions that are most at risk of loosing their land races at the top of the list... a bit like the endangered species lists that nature conservation organizations have.

That way people could easily see where effort needs to be directed to save the most endangered LRs. What do you think?

ok, my tuppence, top of the list right now - Pakistani Hindu Kush, Parvati and Kullu valleys Himachal Pradesh India, arguably Jamaica depending on your perspective on what is a real Jamaican ganja strain, Kerala India (though I have never been to Kerala)

 

[ngakpa]

I'll grow a few indicas to make some hash from, and some Nepalese sativas to make my own Temple Balls, but it's the full blooded sativa buds I really dream about.

Hey, I am expecting real Nepalese plants to look more like the ones I just posted before and here, i.e. 'pure sativas' - I really doubt that old school pre-'70s Hippy Trail Nepalese plants were mostly indicas... these plants here have a wonderfully up and euphoric high, not at all like many SE Asian ganja strains I have tried... you get a rush of ideas and an overwhelming desire to talk and do things etc.

I know that it is said that sieving was introduced by American travellers to Nepal, and I strongly suspect that squat Afghani indicas were introduced at the same time - despite the fact that these regions of the Himalaya do recieve the monsoon, they are laregly dry from September onwards, making growing indicas (wide-leafed desert landrace cultivars) a real possibility

Reeferman's Nepalese which ACE have used in their cross looks to me like it has indica in it - they may fume at me saying that, but honestly I think that is so, wrong though I may be





btw I don't think the "sativas" grown in Afghanistan for charas are anything to do with the feral sativa gene pool - they take around 14 weeks to finish and are harvested in Dec/Jan as late as possible... feral sativas in NWFP will be well into flowering in May, and will already be dropping pollen when the drug cultivars have yet to even pop their heads above ground... feral sativas can be well into flowering during June and some can have already finished

 

[Raco]

Thx for the excellent posts dudes! I´ve enjoyed them a lot,great info and points
ngakpa,
allways the debate of the Highland Nepalese...sativa or indica eh??
good point!

 

[ngakpa]

In this respect, the only thing I think we can hope for is that there are big leaps in our desalination technology. If it can be done cheaply and efficiently, then I think there is hope...

there are techniques being worked on for areas such as Baluchistan and other coastal desert areas which I don't really understand yet as I was told about it during a slightly drunk conversation

but

I think they involve pumping large amounts of sea water and effectively using natural filter or something - it also involves the use of saline reistant plants and canals and stuff - feck it I can't really remember but I will try to find a link, it's all very new stuff, but it might be there is some stuff up on the web already

edit: thanks for the kind words Raco, always appreciated esp. from you man - truth is I have been lucky enough to try NepJam only a few times... I am merely judging by the breadth of the leaves and profile such as very short internodes _ I couldn't judge by the high as I don't find the sativa/indica high distinction at all useful... and as there are plenty of squat broad-leaved ganja varieties (I hear) it makes me wonder whether sativa/indica it is not a totally redundant distinction... in my head I just have the way a plant is used to categorise things - ganja plant, hand-rubbed charas plant, sieved charas plant etc.

 

[Guest]

Hiya Raco, regardless of the case, the Highland Nepalese is no doubt among the finest as many folks I respect think very highly of it.

My three most trasured plants are a Mexican I grew from bagseed, the Purple Afghan that is said to come from Afghanistan in 2005 and the Jamaican Elevator Man named Kentish Cream and came from an exceptional bud grown in rural western Jamaica (Kentish Parish). Considering I've grown Trainwreck, Sour Diesel and a load of other big name varieties recently, it really shows you what hidden gems are out there waiting to be found among seeds from exotic places. I think that this indicates that if more people were to go out and search for seeds, some really special new varietals could be introduced to the cannabis scene.

The desalination technology isn't new, they planned it all out in the 60s as part of the huge agricultural projects in the south of what was then the USSR. Because they did things with no regard for the environment and only thinking of pure yield targets, they badly screwed up - witness the reduction in size of Lake Baikal and the extensive desertification in the region.

The technology exists and has done for a long time, what is new is the knowledge tto use it effectively to inprove ennvrionmental conditions. The natural filters you refer to are probably layers of hemp, flax or jute woven material (think hessian or burlap sacking) with activated carbon layers in between. They also emply various bacteria and algae which they encourage to grow in the filters to eat certain nasties in the water. There is a lot of money to be made in genetically engineering micro organisms to enable them to process toxic substances found in water and soils into benign organic matter.

Ironically, the first application of the terraforming technologies developed as part of the space race may well be here on Earth to recover desertified regions than on Mars or the Moon. Carbon removal - getting the waste carbon out of the atmosphere to reverse the greenhouse effect is probably more important than worrying about the fresh water supply, I think current thinking lies with micro-organisms that will suck carob out of the atmosphere rather than trying to replant the lost forests as even if we returned to the number of trees we had a century ago, it would not be enough to remove enough carbon from the atmosphere.

I wonder if someone could genetically engineer a veriety of cannabis that not only scrubbed carbon from the atmosphere in large quantities but also produced loads of THC? Be hard to argue for it's illegal status then!

 

[ngakpa]

hey - the NepJam I tried had two phenos: a honey flavoured one with a more smooth expansive high, and a more earthy violet/lavender-ish flavoured pheno.... the latter one was very forceful and rushy... I personally found it had a bit of tightness to the high if I am being super-critical, and I would have liked a bit more positivity in something with that much kick... maybe I am just a bit of a wimp though... there's no doubt NepJam is a killer cross, and the pure Nepalese Highland would be a lovely plant to own

BH - about the filters - I was meaning to describe a turly vast process, using underground caverns to pump water into or something like that, and huge layers of rock... the specific process I am very vaguely describing is something new, the guy describing it to me had just taken it to the big global enviro conference in Bali last year, and he was very enthusiastic about it, I just wish he'd explained it better or at least that I could remember the damn name...

 

[neongreen]

BH - You obviously had better contacts than I

I did get some very nice hash in the early 90's, the best of which was easily the Temple balls, but stuff like that, or even close to that quality was rare. I too would love to have something like that again, hence my selections are slanted towards whatever Nepali strains I could get my hands on.

My first grow, which would have been around 91 or 92 was bagseed under fluorescent tubes turned out disappointingly. I harvested too early (as most did back then) with pure sats... one friend who never smoked said it blew him away, so it can't have been that bad, but the high was almost non existent for me. I still have some Polaroids of that grow which I'll have to convert to digital format and post here some time!

I also had dreams of moving to Spain to grow there (great minds and all that lol), but that went up in smoke, when I realized It would be impossible to live there without speaking Spanish (language was never my strength!). I'd love to get out of this country, and move somewhere tropical or semi-tropical, but without language skills, I just can't see it happening. Still, with a green house (one of my plans for the future), and a bit of initiative, I'm sure some decent pure sat. smoke should be attainable.

I'll definitely be taking your advice and cloning the hell out of whatever I grow... I learnt from my previous attempts that running each plant at least a couple of times was a good idea, and it's the only reason that I've had one grow come out right - but then I've been growing on and off (mostly off which doesn't help) since that first time in 91/92.

Nine strains tried so far (including the bag seed), but I've always kept my numbers down, after a close call in my second grow (around 95) when I bit off more than I could chew, and came close to getting busted. 44 plants including mothers if I recall correctly. Skunk and Skunk x Haze from Positronics. Had to dump them all @ 2 weeks into flower, after someone broke in and stole the lights!

Anyway, it's good to hear that you are having some success growing here in the UK. Keep up the good work mate - it's certainly inspired me to keep on trying

 

[neongreen]

I wonder if someone could genetically engineer a veriety of cannabis that not only scrubbed carbon from the atmosphere in large quantities but also produced loads of THC? Be hard to argue for it's illegal status then!

To be honest, I'm not sure that carbon dioxide in out atmosphere is the problem , even though we are being told that. If it is, then I agree growing lots of cannabis (not even genetically engineered) would probably be the way to go. I guess we are just a little biased though lol.

 

[neongreen]

ok, my tuppence, top of the list right now - Pakistani Hindu Kush, Parvati and Kullu valleys Himachal Pradesh India, arguably Jamaica depending on your perspective on what is a real Jamaican ganja strain, Kerala India (though I have never been to Kerala)

Thanks for the input ngakpa - that's a great start to the list

Edit - cheers for the desalination info too. I hadn't heard of the natural filter technology, but I vaguely remember reading somewhere that other technologies were in the works. I'll have to do a little research!

I do think that our best bet would be to harness the power of nature if we can though... nature usually holds the keys to our problems.

 

[Rastatrue]

Hey Now,
"
"
"It is the shocking poverty these people who produce the crops that end up in our rich Western bloodstreams have to live in that is the root of the drug problem. Spending millions spraying glycophosphate on Colombian farmer's crops (they only hit the coca some of the time, more often the food crops get it) and billions on fake wars on terror is not gonna help fight the scourge on western society that is heroin and cocaine. If you gave the cost of just one stealth bomber to the poor farmers of Laos, Nepal, Cambodia, Colombia or any one of a dozen other places, you would do the world far more good. If these people were able to live a life with a decent standard of living and not have to worry about feeding their family and whether they have access to basic things such as clean water, electricity and healthcare, they wouldn't grow poppies, they are fully aware of the harm these drugs do and compared to many Westerners, have a strong sense of right and wrong when it comes to how they treat strangers, but poverty often gets in the way of one's morals, If you are starving and a rich westerner walks past, it must be difficult to not want to take from him what you need to survive."

Well said my friend, you nailed it right on the head. Hempire, you don't just grow,you can think/reason. Must be those pure sativa's.
One Love!

 

[Guest]

Hehe I enjoy thinking which I suppose is why i love pure sats, food for the thought process! lol

 

[charlie garcia]

very interesting approachs and info to different subjects.. nice reading folks. You maintain thread always interesting. Not many ppl growing sativas nowdays. Not even in our country spain... I know some ppl think about this is a land of sativas.. well sorry to say.. you now some of us here love sativas... but ppl grow anything and mostly dutch hybrids.. all good cuts of lines from Mr. nice, Sensi, Serious or whoever, are in fact been feminized and sold as new jobs just changing names. So ppl grow them.. just marketing... most sativa you can find is maybe Jack herer hybrids or SSH with other names.. I think a few of us maybe have contributed unintentionally to look at here in a different way than what really is. So sorry to say but idea you have of Spain is like a sativa country when in fact only a few ppl work sativas. Apart for the ones you know... you wont find a thing you can not get in Amsterdam...

For nice sativas I would always recomend to grow Columbians... there is plenty of weed there and most sativa effects, more expansive and social than heady asiatics... makes you have much more fun maybe. Some sativas can be so introspective... look better for expansive ones and avoid mellow and racy lines and you have it. Even Paruaguayas brick can contain, like mexican brick, some fine sativas inside, depending on season you get them.. closer to december always best than early fresh lots which go the the market... some friends always tell me some weeds can be too strong

best

 

[Slim Pickens]

Original Green (BSC)
about 100 day's 12/12

Hey Cornfield,

Be sure to give us an update on the Orginal Green will ya?That's one (of many) that I have been wondering about.Sure would be nice to get some first hand info.

 

[charlie garcia]

Hi SLim, nice phrase in your sign... "Do your part to preserve the genepool....Save a landrace for tomorrow".. hope our children have to chance to see some good sativas left. Up to now we as community have done very poorly saving some of the best sativas ever... and belong to history now... tales of the past

Ngapka, I can agree on Nepalese Highland not been strictly sativa or pure sativa.. Ive segregated it their most to try understand it and some phenos are not so stretchy. The ones used for NepalJam.. I saved here best sativa looking as most interesting and well flavoured to me for further use and smoke.

Some sativas dont like indoor lights at all and can twist leaves like the ones in the picture

best

 

[cornfield]

Hi SLim, nice phrase in your sign... "Do your part to preserve the genepool....Save a landrace for tomorrow".. hope our children have to chance to see some good sativas left. Up to now we as community have done very poorly saving some of the best sativas ever... and belong to history now... tales of the past


best

at least, my kid's know, what is sativa about