why continually buy seeds?

i like pollen chucking its kind of fun. you can remove half the guess work by using known clone females from good lineages. then all you gotta do is find that special male, which still takes forever and the whole selection process fr the next few gens also take a long time if you want to do it correctly. if its just for fun and the weed youre growing is just personal stash i dont see why anyone wouldn't try their hand in crossing a few strains and seeing what comes up. theres not much to lose there, if you grow commercial its not a risk youd want to take unless you have extra space and time.

they dont sell pollen because it would not have a very long shelf life. seed banks would constantly need to replenish their supply. it needs to be kept refrigerated to store for longer periods of time.

Dboi87 said:

If I were to buy some seeds, let's say for instance sensi seeds jack herer, and took a male and female and bred them, wouldn't those seeds be just as good as stock bought from sensi? I don't get why people consistently go back to seed banks for the same strain. Am I missing something?

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I dont think it is common at all for people to buy the same strain from the same breeder over and over again. It isnt like alcohol or cigarettes where people choose a brand and just consume that. Judging by whats on here and the people I know locally, some may have favorite breeders and stuff but they usually check out different strains.

Dboi87 said:

I've wondered that myself.... and to the open pollination thing, that is sort of what I mean. I wasn't talking about trying to develope something new or stabilize anything but simply wondering if I took two strains from reputable breeders (my guess is all their strains are pretty decent or people would just use bagseed) and made seeds wouldn't they at least be as good as the parents if not better? I know I wouldn't be able to predict the traits but who cares? I should have good smoke

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That is pollen chucking, it is great. I am growing two plants right now that are mine and a friend's crosses.
If you take two plants that are great to begin with and cross them, it is very unlikely that you will get a crappy plant.

It is a little of a crap shoot. 50% of the plants would be a cross of the two parents, 25% would take after mom and 25% would take after dad. You will also get phenos galore.

In my opinion, the plants generally tend to take after the father or the plant that supplies the pollen.
So if you want to do some pollen chucking/crossing, have your favorite plant as the dad, or the one that supplies pollen.

I would also recommend making feminized seeds if you are not super serious about breeding etc.
I no longer produce regular seeds and have produced thousands of feminized seeds, most of the some sort of cross.

Here's two home made crosses, both from feminized seeds.




On the left is a friend's cross, a mystery indica (I think it is a Ingrid dominant cross) x Superpower.
On the right is Banana Kush x Blue Dream I have high hopes for this one. Crossing my fingers for Blue Dram type yield and Banana Kush type high/taste/smell.

What ever it turns out to be, I am sure I will like it.

I am also going to start storing feminized pollen so I can cross every plant I grow on just one bud.

I believe it all comes down to what you expect out of your grows, commercial growers certainly need a proven product they can count on. I grew the same genetics I started with for almost 40 years until they were stolen. Starting over again has been difficult and fun, but will I ever have what I had, I doubt it. I disagree that making your own crosses and breeding within a smaller genepool is bad. Yes you will make some mistakes, have some better than others that is all just part of pollen chuck'n. All I can say with certainty is that if you start with good solid genetics and strains you end with solid genetics, if you have any idea at all with what you are doing.
For me I have as much fun watching new phenos appear in second and third generations as I do growing a new strain I spent too much money for. I believe the key if you want to pollen chuck or breed on a small scale is to really research the genetics you want to combined. Their family history, how far back to similiar parents, where the plants came from. Today with the internet and seedfinders this process is easily done.
This one thing that is so great, we all have our own options and expectations in what we want to do. Hope everyone finds what they are looking for in growing this precious plant.

Dboi87 said:

If I were to buy some seeds, let's say for instance sensi seeds jack herer, and took a male and female and bred them, wouldn't those seeds be just as good as stock bought from sensi? I don't get why people consistently go back to seed banks for the same strain. Am I missing something?

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For starters you won't find a great male and female in ten beans that you would want to breed with and most are just looking for a good mother a good mom kept right should have no issue lasting over 20 years. but you'll still get great plants with f2's really your better off cause you can make better selections but a beginner is not gonna want to grow just one strain you don't really know if you want to work with g13 haze, northern lights, durban poison, etc.,etc. but once you find something you absolutely love then you'd want to work with it. But most commercial growers just want 1 girl and clone the shit out of her.

It' very easy to turn something into shit... I remember the Marc Emery/Breeder Steve argument... Steve said he was the world's greatest breeder for creating Shiskaberry, and a few other things... Emery said they were lucky crosses and couldn't be duplicated because the male that was used, was long gone...

Well, you know I wondered about what Emery said, when I heard it... But when, Steve later tried to breed the same clones with a different male. It really wasn't the same product... Even stabilized plants. Like for example T99 (Thunderstruck 99 with is the 4th back cross to the Thunderstruck clone) when I take the same male, and pollinate different T99 females. They can produce vastly different results.

That's why you see breeders often talking about holding certain males. So these lines can be produced with the same results each time...(*) The composition of the Shiskaberry as I recall was the red and yellow afghani cuttings form Texas Tom. Which was crossed with a Blueberry male which was the male in question in the Shisk equation.

open pollination is natural pollination. you would have multiple males and females int eh same location and let them do their thing without interference. youll end up with seeds of differing father genetics on a single female plant. look at gage greens 'bastards series' seeds they are open pollination seeds. some of kc brains stuff are outdoors open pollination as well.

Hah! I had completely forgotten about this thread and it actually popped up in a Google search while searching for SSH crosses.

Update: after doing a lot of research, I've decided that the way to go for me is that I will definitely be buying seeds still and do the whole pheno hunt thing. However once I feel I've found a keeper out of that strain i'll make a large batch of selfed seeds. Years from now I'll have a pretty dope selection of fem seeds.

As of right now I have seed stock of Chocolope, Kushberry, Barney's LSD, Critical+, Girl Scout Cookies, 60day lemon auto, Frisian Dew, C99, Biddy Early, and Cotton Candy.

My prized possessions though are cuts I got from a buddy of mine. He put a lot of work into finding some real keepers. Green Crack, SSH, Bubba OG, and killing fields.

It will take me a while to make fems of all these strains and making a few crosses in between. I'm very excited for what my seeda will produce.

BTW, one of my unknown crosses yielded like crap.
The other plant, Banana Kush x Blue Dream did pretty well. They are both curing right now.

I am going to make some fem blueberry seeds once I get clones rooted. I will put a Sensi Star in there to get knocked up.
In the tent I am going with Blueberry (sativa pheno from seed), and two clones; Thai Lights and Blue Cheese.
Going for the "sure thing" this times as the Superpower x ? yield sucked. The buds look/smell great though.


When pollen chucking I would recommend using very stable strains to get more stable crosses.

Big Bud is really stable and all the crosses I have tried have been great. Trainwreck x Big Bud is amazing.
Blueberry was stabilized for something like 6 generations. Blueberry crosses really well.

Sensi Star is another one that is really stable and I have never had a bad cross.


I have come to realize that phenos are where it is at. I look forward to being able to take tissue samples from plants and save the genetics that way.

Such a great plant, I could go on and on...

Dboi87 said:

Hah! I had completely forgotten about this thread and it actually popped up in a Google search while searching for SSH crosses.

Update: after doing a lot of research, I've decided that the way to go for me is that I will definitely be buying seeds still and do the whole pheno hunt thing. However once I feel I've found a keeper out of that strain i'll make a large batch of selfed seeds. Years from now I'll have a pretty dope selection of fem seeds.

As of right now I have seed stock of Chocolope, Kushberry, Barney's LSD, Critical+, Girl Scout Cookies, 60day lemon auto, Frisian Dew, C99, Biddy Early, and Cotton Candy.

My prized possessions though are cuts I got from a buddy of mine. He put a lot of work into finding some real keepers. Green Crack, SSH, Bubba OG, and killing fields.

It will take me a while to make fems of all these strains and making a few crosses in between. I'm very excited for what my seeda will produce.

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I am also looking in to starting up a seed stock. Have you looked at seed storage? I need a great plan for storage.

Basically, I want to use my cuts to make lots of Fem seeds.. from there, I'll ditch my mothers and just grow from seed, backyard, just for personal..

Killing Fields x SSH would be killer. Sannies has it (silver fields), but, home made would be sweet.

I don't know what to say but clone shit and you can keep stuff you like and buy seeds to get more stuff you like. I cant say much more, it always gets better.

HeartlandHank said:

I am also looking in to starting up a seed stock. Have you looked at seed storage? I need a great plan for storage.

Basically, I want to use my cuts to make lots of Fem seeds.. from there, I'll ditch my mothers and just grow from seed, backyard, just for personal..

Killing Fields x SSH would be killer. Sannies has it (silver fields), but, home made would be sweet.

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Yea I saw that actually. I can't wait til I can finally grow a couple of my homemade beans out. B)

I'm trying to find somewhere online to by some of those dark brown vials they use for light sensitive chems. Not sire if they have a specific name. I'll have my beans in them with some dry rice and kept somewhere dark and cool.

...because someone always has something you don't.
...I need more seedstock.
...unique offerings.
....varied flavor.
...to make new genetic combinations for the masses.

Peace

Pollen chucking is great,I have had a few duds but also a bunch of sweet phenos......did a few Arctic Express x Blue dream crosses recently and every pheno was awesome and yielded huge nugs of some really frosty goodness.I'm about to harvest some bubba master x blue dream beans can't wait to see what comes out.

Yes!

Curing some Banana Kush x Blue Dream right now.

I want to get some gage green blue flame and chuck the crap out of that. The Starlet Kush is supposed to have all sick phenos.


I do not like Haze, but there is not one Haze cross I do not like.

This topic is very interesting to me as I am a noob grower who doesnt like to shell out money for seeds/clones and has no contacts for obtaining seeds/clones for free. I am also hoping to create my own strain by crossbreeding, with the ultimate goal of creating a plant that is as acclimated to my growing area as possible (if possible). Good stuff, now on to my noob questions.

Say I breed a male and a female, and then select males and females from the seeds from the first cross and breed those, how many times can you breed males and females together that originated from the original male/female cross? Is there a set rule, I'm guessing no, but also do the genetics really deteriorate over time, over several interbreedings. That seems to be the nature of things with inbreeding, but has anybody continually bred male and females that originated from the same m/f cross?

How do you select a "superior" male for crossing with females? What qualities do you look for?

What does IBL stand for?

ibl = inbred line = same pheno crossed with itself. should be pure.

i continuously buy seeds because i am addicted to the endless array of flavors in cannabis

The Banana Kush x Blue Dream kicked my ass yesterday. Shopping was like a dream and I forgot my list. One of the sample ladies threatened to call security.