Breeding with Ditch Weed

I wanted to know if anyone has tried to do the following with some ditch weed. Do you think this would work?


I plan on planting a few bagseeds hoping to get a male (among some females) and breed the male with the Ditch Weed females, instead of letting the Ditch Weed males pollinate them. I wont kill the Ditch Weed males so they will still have a chance to pollinate the females as well so there will be a variance in the next crop. The following years I will do the same thing until I turn the ditch weed into the "good shit". I could possibly make a somkeable strain more resistant to the climate(bugs,weather etc.) In theory it sounds like a good idea but I wonder if it would actually work? If no one has tried this I guess I will be the Guinea pig.

fyi I'm not talking about a huge field or anything, a total of no more than about 30 plants grows faithfully every year.

Here is a big ass female that was probably flowering for a week or two at the most judging by the pistil size. I took the picture July 17 so that gives me a flowering timeline. That's a standard size round hay bale behind her.



Here is a picture I took a few years ago. Yes its seeded like a mfer!

I think you would lose potency by a lot, but if this plant that you're breeding with naturally grows in your climate then your theory could very well be true.
You would have to breed the children it produces with more resinous plants while searching for phenotypes you liked in the land race (like thicker stems, bug resistance, whatever.).
I think it would be cool, maybe not worth the trouble all the time but cool nonetheless.
Also having some weed that just grows naturally and is potent in your backyard sounds like a good idea..

it will take years and years and years. but if you got some spare time sure why not.

i say toss the Ditch WEED.. and just start breeding 1 nice male.. with a couple nicce females that do well outdoors in ur area.. and then just plant those seeds EVERYWERE to REPLACE DITCH WEED..

over grow the FEDS by planting ur seeds everywere lol.. this is wat a video on youtube has said i cant remember which but.. it was like saying if we all just even planted r bag seed everywere that we could do it .l but i say dedicate a spot outside to breeding some seeds to toss everywere lol.

and thats pretty much wat people did with RUDERALIS.. by the way.. auto flower.. plants are crossed to get potency.. because ruderalis i believe isnot potent..

Nolan said:

I think you would lose potency by a lot, but if this plant that you're breeding with naturally grows in your climate then your theory could very well be true.
You would have to breed the children it produces with more resinous plants while searching for phenotypes you liked in the land race (like thicker stems, bug resistance, whatever.).
I think it would be cool, maybe not worth the trouble all the time but cool nonetheless.
Also having some weed that just grows naturally and is potent in your backyard sounds like a good idea..

Click to expand...

I read in an article that the first breeding with the ditch weed would cut the potency in half. Yeah it would be nice to have annual potent plants. I don't thinkit would be too troublesome. , all I would be doing is picking the best bagseed Mae and rubbing him on the females. I would worry about the phenotypes until I got the potency back. I wont be caring for the much so only the strong will survive and breed. Later down the road I may buy some seeds and x-breed with those.

darkdestruction420 said:

it will take years and years and years. but if you got some spare time sure why not.

Click to expand...

It would be hard work I will just plant them and let nature do the rest, except for the pollination. I live in the Midwest so the soil is fertile and I plan on growing on top of an old chicken coop.

LIVE2GRO said:

i say toss the Ditch WEED.. and just start breeding 1 nice male.. with a couple nicce females that do well outdoors in ur area.. and then just plant those seeds EVERYWERE to REPLACE DITCH WEED..

Click to expand...

If I did that I would loose all of the traits that makes this weed so resistant to my area. Its left over from the ww2 era so it has had a long to evolve and adapt to the enviorment.

LIVE2GRO said:

and thats pretty much wat people did with RUDERALIS.. by the way.. auto flower.. plants are crossed to get potency.. because ruderalis i believe isnot potent..

Click to expand...

Yeah that is exactly what I plan on doing. I saw that video you are talking about. Johnny Weedseed.

My question would be .... why bother? Just buy some quality genetics, grow it and toke it ... and if you have to play home breeder, work with it rather than with ditch weed.

You can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit no matter how much mayonnaise you add.

Brick Top said:

My question would be .... why bother? Just buy some quality genetics, grow it and toke it ... and if you have to play home breeder, work with it rather than with ditch weed.

You can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit no matter how much mayonnaise you add.

Click to expand...

Why? Because it will be fun to see the transformation and it will be FREE. I want to breed with the ditch weed because it already evolved into a plant that is resistant to the bugs, temp, humidity, Ph of the soil and water, and etc. of this area. It also finishes before the cold temperature kills it. Why ditch over over 70 years of evolution?

If I bought seeds from a bank there would be no way of knowing how it will do in my area and I would still have to breed for the same traits I would be throwing away, which I think would be harder than breeding thc back into the ditchweed. Even if I didn't breed the bought seeds they would still get pollinated by the ditchweed so why not just use good bagseeds that are free? If the bagseeds don't do well in my area I don't loose any money. Basically whatever I grow, bought seed or bagseed, will get pollinated by the ditch weed. So why not have a side breeding project? I have nothing to loose not even time.

I think you are wrong about the chicken salad analogy. I'm essentially doing the same thing breeders did with autoflower strains. Live2gro brought up an excellent point. I completely forgot about ruderalis, which is basically ditchweed, being crossed to get the autoflower trait.

If this works I will have my own strain that will thrive in my area with little to no care and it will possibly be passed off as ditchweed.

I think this is a great idea.

I also think its crazy that you have wild cannabis growing naturally near you, never in my life have I ever come across a plant growing naturally like that.

iPot said:

I think you are wrong about the chicken salad analogy. I'm essentially doing the same thing breeders did with autoflower strains. Live2gro brought up an excellent point. I completely forgot about ruderalis, which is basically ditchweed, being crossed to get the autoflower trait.

Click to expand...

You are right about Ruderalis. Many botanists do not accept it as being categorized correctly and believe it should be categorized with industrial hemp because it's average THC percentage is similar to that of industrial hemp.

So, breeders to potent quality strains and crossed them with Ruderalis and the result was strains that are less potent than strains without Ruderalis in them, but they created strains that are not photo-period plants.

They created a lower potency gimmick. You wouldn't even get the gimmick part, the non-photo-period part.

If you want to create low quality mutts just for the fun of it, have at it. But I cannot see where that would be so much fun that it would be a better use of the same amount of time than breeding high potency strains together and attempting to increase potency.

Brick Top said:

You are right about Ruderalis. Many botanists do not accept it as being categorized correctly and believe it should be categorized with industrial hemp because it's average THC percentage is similar to that of industrial hemp.

So, breeders to potent quality strains and crossed them with Ruderalis and the result was strains that are less potent than strains without Ruderalis in them, but they created strains that are not photo-period plants.

They created a lower potency gimmick. You wouldn't even get the gimmick part, the non-photo-period part.

If you want to create low quality mutts just for the fun of it, have at it. But I cannot see where that would be so much fun that it would be a better use of the same amount of time than breeding high potency strains together and attempting to increase potency.

Click to expand...

I am gainging a gimmick. The gimmick is a strain that is tough to the Midwest climate and grows with or without my care. The people first breeding with ruderalis probally heard the samething. I read that alot of AF strains are now just as strong as regular strains.
They will be low quality at first but after 4-5 generations the potency should be back to normal. Who knows I may even cross in bought genitics.

here is what i would do cut the ditch weed males out put a good male from a very potent strain in the patch let the male seed them out then take said seeds do the same thing next year ect ect. i would say that in 3-5 years you would be surprised with the results you get. and it really isnt a waste of time just an experiment kind of like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel. i bet people said Gregor Mendel was wasting his time also.

iPot said:

I am gainging a gimmick. The gimmick is a strain that is tough to the Midwest climate and grows with or without my care. The people first breeding with ruderalis probally heard the samething. I read that alot of AF strains are now just as strong as regular strains.
They will be low quality at first but after 4-5 generations the potency should be back to normal. Who knows I may even cross in bought genitics.

Click to expand...

I say go for it. I also have ditch weed that groups regularly around me and have wondered what I could do with it.

The only problem for me is that almost all of the ditch weed seems to be hermis. I have not taken the time to look for a pure male or female one but that would be cool to find.

LIVE2GRO said:

i say toss the Ditch WEED.. and just start breeding 1 nice male.. with a couple nicce females that do well outdoors in ur area.. and then just plant those seeds EVERYWERE to REPLACE DITCH WEED..

Click to expand...

Super old thread, but you can’t just “get rid of ditch weed” these are either wild or leftover from the old time hemp farms (back when it was legal before it was illegal and then legal again) and thus has turned into a mostly wild strain by now... anyways, those wild strains thrive by producing genetic variance and then throwing out a shitload of seeds that have selectively bread based on the laws of nature turning them into a (wait what do they call this stuff?) yea, it’s not going anywhere!
And I total agree with the poster - ditch weed should be explored for vigor and pest control and flowering times and just about any of the kick ass qualities of the ditch weed while still maintaining the high cannabinoids we are all not willing to part with! If you could somehow set the evolution course to lean more towards the high cannabinoid being a factor that increases survival then maybe we could get rid of the ditchweed by a long drawn out process... but that’s a big idealistic type goal! Those rarely happen on purpose, almost always just by accident!