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why is watering down sativas still a thing?

nepalnt21

nepalnt21

FRRRRRResh!
Veteran
i get the 80s and 90s where people were needing to cut flowering times and stretching for clandestine grows, but nowadays where many places are decriminalized (no places on earth are truly legal, afaik, but still...)

like this chem t haze strain where they mixed chem and haze and then crossed that to a cookies strain? like wtf? why even waste the haze in that one, might as well have just grew the cookies.

and then i saw a sales page for chasca where the seller nonchalantly says to select for small internode distance and short flowering times... like obviously i'd do what i want, but why even put that out there? what a silly thing to recommend to potential customers who are likely there looking for effect, and if they aren't, they can figure it out themselves.

i know i'm just being a cantankerous old man shaking my fist at the wind, but i'm really tired of the dispensaries in my area being saturated with commercial hybrids and LITERALLY ZERO real sativas, and then to see these attitudes from a bygone era still muddying the overton window when it comes to cannabis.

i'm really glad to see so many booming sativa threads on icmag, but when will the market finally settle on the correct answers on diversity?

caffeine comedown induced rant?

over.
 
J

JockBudman

Well-known member
I don't live in a legal jurisdiction but I do grow pure sativas and I would likely still have to keep doing so under legalisation. The simple truth is that they can take twice as long, or more, under lights and most places can't finish them outdoors.
Then, at the end, you get loose buds and a lower yield meaning you'd need to charge so much more per gram that the average consumer wouldn't bother. They want dense nugs and a powerful scent and most have never had a pure sativa so don't get the appeal.

I do think there could be a connoisseur market like with fine wines, but it'll be small and local and you'll never get rich doing it.
Otherwise we need the origin countries to legalise so they can export their traditional bud, but then there will be shipping costs, environmental costs, taxes and probably exploitation.

Grow your own, that's the only way for sativa heads, legalisation or not.
 
Grapefruitroop

Grapefruitroop

Active member
True landrace sativas are a pain in the ass to grow no matter your jurisdiction....they stretch a lot and they can take forever to finish.
I grew a canary island landrace sativa outdoor that after 5 months of flowering was still not really ripe....
Plus they are not even near the amount of frost that new polyhybrids can reach...
Not sayn they are not worth growing, but i think thats the main reason why they are not mainstream nowadays....
 
ojd

ojd

CONNOISSEUR GENETICS
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The mas market is starting to ask for some Sativa/Haze in there hybrids , but still to scared to really jump onto a 80% plus Sativa .

But once they tried that special 80% Sativa/Haze we slowly converting them to the Haze/Sativa ⛪️.

We need more advice for people on how to grow them so it's not such a wild ride , a huge tip is to ( if growing from seed) start topping very early on( 3rd node) to control/manage stretch which is half of the hard part when growing heavy Haze/Sativa's( other half is to keep lush n healthy all the way to 12-16 weeks depending how wild a ride your taking)
I top from 3rd node and again every 7-10 days once grown back enough to clip again , and again and again with a short bush with 8 tops that have barely grown back from there last topping then flower and you end up with perfect uniform 1-2 foot colas or 2-3 depending how wild they are.

Also super cropping or known as snapping necks is also your friend with wild Sativa's that I use with above if they still try to stretch out of control after you shaped to 8-16 tops , snap main tops weekly until stretch has fully stopped ( 2-4 weeks into flowering depending how wild your Haze/Sativa strain is.

Also these clips called Bendz are really good if your not comfortable with Super cropping/snapping necks, a plastic clip you put the main top shoot in to have it stop vertical growth and promote side shoots and branches below to become the main growing shoot.

Also if growing like mentioned above or trained right the Haze/Sativa's normally yield great which alot of people don't realise
 
Dime

Dime

Well-known member
nepalnt21 said:
i get the 80s and 90s where people were needing to cut flowering times and stretching for clandestine grows, but nowadays where many places are decriminalized (no places on earth are truly legal, afaik, but still...)

like this chem t haze strain where they mixed chem and haze and then crossed that to a cookies strain? like wtf? why even waste the haze in that one, might as well have just grew the cookies.

and then i saw a sales page for chasca where the seller nonchalantly says to select for small internode distance and short flowering times... like obviously i'd do what i want, but why even put that out there? what a silly thing to recommend to potential customers who are likely there looking for effect, and if they aren't, they can figure it out themselves.

i know i'm just being a cantankerous old man shaking my fist at the wind, but i'm really tired of the dispensaries in my area being saturated with commercial hybrids and LITERALLY ZERO real sativas, and then to see these attitudes from a bygone era still muddying the overton window when it comes to cannabis.

i'm really glad to see so many booming sativa threads on icmag, but when will the market finally settle on the correct answers on diversity?

caffeine comedown induced rant?

over.
Click to expand...
Some Sativas are constrictors with not very appealing effects for many,I don't smoke them either and am particular about effects. The older I get the less WBD appeals to me and bag appeal is not on my list . I consider most Indica ornamentals but the odd one can make good crosses to cut the jitters and anxiety. I get winded after a nap so the last thing I need is to ingest something that makes me droggy and lazy.
 
P

Prs2xs

Active member
The effect I like from sativa is the lysergic type effect, with no raciness. I am old and don't like the rapid heartbeat thing anymore. I have grown some nice sativa varieties that accomplished this, but as mentioned earlier, the time required to grow them and the size constraints make me only want to run something like that if I have a good supply of bud to get me through!
Sometimes the right hybrid can give a somewhat similar buzz if you harvest a bit early, but I notice it doesn't have the legs of the properly grown sativa.
I wish I lived in a climate where a true sat could grow and finish-it would be all that I grow! I guess the goal of decreasing the flowering time and size of the sats is the reason for a lot of the hybrids these days, but something is lost in doing so, not to mention the tendency of people to rate the quality of the bud by how many trichomes they can see.. Hemp has lots of trichs, but no high, so go figure??
 
Lester Beans

Lester Beans

Frequent Flyer
Veteran
I'm a fan of adding any amount of sativa into anything. It's a step in the right direction. The kids will learn once they get done completely inbreeding the cookies.

Also the majority of smokers have never tried a mostly sativa. If you were born 1990 or after you weren't being exposed to anything but OG/Glue/Cookies.

19 year olds I was talking to said they were smoking Haze. I said no shit let me see that please. It was larf loose buds of who knows. I said it is not haze. They replied well it isn't dense. So any bud that isn't rock hard they call haze. Wtf.

And the dense buds are called gas.

So yeah good luck getting them to pay extra for loose grassy looking buds of 16 week Sativa's. They won't even try smoking it. Well I guess that's because it's not liquid going into into their douche flutes.

Rant over, back to sativa's..

20230815_173540.jpg
 
Ca++

Ca++

Well-known member
After taking twice as long, to get less yield, I would struggle to sell it. It's just not economically viable. Sometimes we know the truth should be told, but finding anyone that will listen isn't happening.

It just falls down on bag appeal. I'm not even that interested in it myself tbh. It reminds me of the 90s, when everything wasn't as amazing as peoples memories suggest. It's on coffee shop menu's around Amsterdam though, as that place has heritage. Still.. I just haven't been impressed. It's just the 90s all over again. Nice to try it again, but developments in that area have been stagnant. All people really want to do, is bring these traits worth having, into faster lineage. Perhaps that could be seen as watering down, but I wish the breeders doing this, good luck.
 
nepalnt21

nepalnt21

FRRRRRResh!
Veteran
i like what i see happening in RUST, the haze hybrids thread, the search for trip weed, etc... all threads on icmag where it isn't about commerce, it's about the weed.

no offense.. i'm not saying you don't like weed and only like money, js... there are TONS of commercial strains, we need more modern commercial hybrids like we all need another hole in our heads.
 
ninox33

ninox33

Active member
✓
Sadly cannabis is devolving in the same direction as modern agriculture. Luckily in select pockets around the globe, sativas are still stretching lazily into low latitude sun space.
 
Ca++

Ca++

Well-known member
Jesus. Some of that needs to go in the bin. Literally no market here for it. It's not the breeders feeding the consumer what they want to breed. It's the consumer tells the breeder what they will buy. A long time smoker might appreciate such a thing, but to the buying public, they are bits you don't bother to trim. A crop of that, would be a disaster. As it was 30 years ago.

I agree it's time will come, when it can be grown outside in the 3rd world, and shipped to us. Though I also wonder how much is left, as the true home of these things has been powdered with pollen from all over the world now. These 3rd world growers have a choice of growing their landraces, or what has been selling in the shops. As they do now, they will embrace the money, and more hybrid pollen will be flying about.

If Monsanto could create not just female seeds, but also infertile, then this problem would be greatly suppressed. No boys, and no girls that can get pregnant. That is how we farm cannabis in the open, where lights are not needed, and the sun can do it's thing. With no fear of hybridising everything. Just seeds with no future, except being bud. As a full scale grower, you could have fields of different canna crops, with no need to hunt the stray male. Which isn't an effective enough approach to stop gradual hybridisation anyway. Like it or not, there is no better way of getting fields of anything out there, and keeping them from ruining their surroundings. With plants that then ruin their surroundings. Who ruin their surroundings. With pollen that can drift many miles, in the dust storm of mechanical harvesting.

I think the sun is a big part of getting a Sat, to the point we can call it truly special. I take the same plants and do them in & out, and while the out can look little better than the pics above, the change in the weeds effect, is heading in the right direction. I'm only in the UK, so just don't have the weather for a really strong responce from my plants, but still I prefer the outdoor. Though many are not interested in trying it, for free.

It's very trendy to talk about wanting to get high, and getting stoned is frowned upon. Yet in my experience, people want to get stoned, and are not happy until they are. It's the final icing on the cake. They will say otherwise, but I know what I see. The shops see it to, and the industry supplying them.

Oh shit... how much of this can I delete. I had things to do. I should stop getting stoned lol
 
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