8.8.24
Welcome to the Garden of the Unknown. It’s been a while, ICMag. What seemed like a long weekend away was actually a few years. Time can be funny like that. We all need a break sometimes. But we also need to work. Break time is over.
You look different, but yet the same. I probably do, too. A lot has changed since my last journal. Everyone has new lights. Hop latent has curb stomped most gardens. Boof boys are all growing the same shit. Cookies/gelato is crossed into everything. Prices are in the gutter. Fake cuts are proliferating at an all time high.
Strange times. The new dark ages for cannabis. The war on drugs has been a failure overall, as we all know, but one area it has had a staggering effect on has been cannabis preservation.
By limiting the act of preservation and breeding to the layman, an unfathomable amount of genetic material has been discarded in pursuit of the narrow interests of the individuals making the seeds.
In most cases the genetic material lost was unnecessary. How often have we seen a grower run a pack of seeds, select only one or two males based on a stem rub or how quickly it flowers, and trash the others?
Given the fact that none of the males have undergone any progeny testing, and assuming there’s no obvious reason to cull, reducing the population to do something like make F2s has no reasonable justification.
Such arbitrary culling unnecessarily reduces the genetic diversity of the line in question. Potentially valuable and critical genes have been lost for no other reason than faulty selection criteria and unnecessary selection pressure.
Add in the additional genetic material that has been lost due to plant counts forcing people to remove plants they may have otherwise kept. Those two factors alone have significantly diminished the modern cannabis gene pool.
Many people do not seem to realize it, but cannabis is on a dangerous trajectory. It seems otherwise, I know. More people than ever are making seeds. Accessibility is at an all high.
But that masks some of the realities of what is happening on the ground. I hope I’m wrong, but the behavior of seed makers and the buying public the last 20-25 years suggests otherwise.
Time will tell. In the meantime I’ll keep showing up to do what I do. Experiment and observe. Which leads us to the real reason we’re here…
Welcome to the Garden of the Unknown. It’s been a while, ICMag. What seemed like a long weekend away was actually a few years. Time can be funny like that. We all need a break sometimes. But we also need to work. Break time is over.
You look different, but yet the same. I probably do, too. A lot has changed since my last journal. Everyone has new lights. Hop latent has curb stomped most gardens. Boof boys are all growing the same shit. Cookies/gelato is crossed into everything. Prices are in the gutter. Fake cuts are proliferating at an all time high.
Strange times. The new dark ages for cannabis. The war on drugs has been a failure overall, as we all know, but one area it has had a staggering effect on has been cannabis preservation.
By limiting the act of preservation and breeding to the layman, an unfathomable amount of genetic material has been discarded in pursuit of the narrow interests of the individuals making the seeds.
In most cases the genetic material lost was unnecessary. How often have we seen a grower run a pack of seeds, select only one or two males based on a stem rub or how quickly it flowers, and trash the others?
Given the fact that none of the males have undergone any progeny testing, and assuming there’s no obvious reason to cull, reducing the population to do something like make F2s has no reasonable justification.
Such arbitrary culling unnecessarily reduces the genetic diversity of the line in question. Potentially valuable and critical genes have been lost for no other reason than faulty selection criteria and unnecessary selection pressure.
Add in the additional genetic material that has been lost due to plant counts forcing people to remove plants they may have otherwise kept. Those two factors alone have significantly diminished the modern cannabis gene pool.
Many people do not seem to realize it, but cannabis is on a dangerous trajectory. It seems otherwise, I know. More people than ever are making seeds. Accessibility is at an all high.
But that masks some of the realities of what is happening on the ground. I hope I’m wrong, but the behavior of seed makers and the buying public the last 20-25 years suggests otherwise.
Time will tell. In the meantime I’ll keep showing up to do what I do. Experiment and observe. Which leads us to the real reason we’re here…
Last edited:
