Disagree about the big seedbanks. They got to be big by producing quality product.
Most, if not all, are started by people who really love their marijuana.
Because they're big, they can breed with huge numbers of samples,
thus finding very rare and beautiful specimens to breed with.
Plus they have serious expertise. Can't do that so well with a few plants here and there.
it really depends on the breeder I think.
for indoors I wouldn't stay away from big seedbanks, but from all the reports I've seen online, I don't even look at big seedbanks for outdoor. can't compare it myself(I've always grown strains from smaller breeders), but from growreports I've seen the best outdoorplants are more often from smaller, outdoordedicated breeders than from big seedbanks.
it's not that I think it's because of the scale though, just a corelation that exists.
but it's because the big seedbanks are usually mostly focussed on indoor. that's where the demand is, and that's where the most money is to be made.
and then the outdoorsection on their sites are much smaller, , and you notice their focus is less on it.
but there are some breeders where the focus is the other way around, or they don't even breed indoor, but usually they're not that big since the market is much smaller(especially since an outdoorplant for spain is not the same as an outdoorplant for denmark, there also is a reputation to outdoor for being less potent so most people don't bother growing outdoor, and now with autoflowers taking over the market you can just grow an indoor-bred autoflower and let it finish in summer, so breeders don't even need to do seperate breeding for outdoor anymore, but that also means the strains sold get adapted to indoor first, and traits more important for outdoor come second). so while their numbers are better, and they can select better, their direction of selection is different.
and since there are so many breeders, and even more strains(and often I have to go crawling trough multiple 20-page growreports to find out more about the strain, or I can't even find anyone who grew it in a similar climate as mine and finished his growreport), I find it easier to just skip over the big breeders so I don't have to research every single strain to find the few that do well outdoor, I just go straight to the outdoorfocussed breeders where every strain does well outdoor. and often since those strains are specifically bred for outdoor in a similar climate, all growreports I'll find are usefull, instead of having to seperate out all the indoorreports and reports from more southern countries.
not to say nothing good can come from big indoorfocussed seedbanks, it's just harder to find I think. and I think it's easier to find good outdoortraits when a strain has a long history/linage outdoor, while with strains who have a lineage consisting of plant grown indoors for generations it's more random wether the genes that are beneficial outdoors, but not indoors, are preserved.
I think we may see some nice things come out of canada though, there are already some good outdoorstrains that oroginated there(like guerilla gold), combine that with being able to grow big numbers due to legalisation, and we may see an outdoorfocussed breeder with the plantnumbers and quality of selection of a big breeder.
another factor, but that's just for me personally, is that I prefer sativas. most breeders already work more with hybrids, but especially outdoor when you need something that finishes early enough, it's easiest to work with an indica. that's also why I started breeding my own, and I work from some danish strains, where there are a few mostly sativastrains that are adapted to outdoor in denmark, that I think are a good basis to work from. but they're less comercially interesting, there are a few heirloom/ibl like strains(royal dane for example) that are a bit more leafy and looser buds, and not as potent as most people would want. and there are some strains from for example hfh that have more potent pheno's, but are less stabilized, and you'll also find more leafy plants.
so it's much easier to take something like guerilla gold which has nicer buds, but I don't care as much about bag appeal, I want something that motivates and activates me, that makes me think and focus, and not locks me to a couch or makes me fall asleep. I also accept lower potency if the kind of high is better.
so naturally if my taste doesn't allign with the majority of the market, I'll have to look further than the big players in the market to find what I seek.
