Seed Bank Zambeza Seeds

[vill]

i have 1/1 germ until now...!in 30 hours.but no free seeds...

 

[Dr Fluff]

Zamnesia the head shop owns Zambeza which is in turn is owned by Royal Queen Seeds.
When We interviewed Mitch from Mephisto in AW's, I asked Mitch what was the the etiquette with using a companies strains to breed with.
Mitch's reply was you buy the seed you own the seed and you can do with it what you will.
If you trade mark the variety, then the name is protected.
I have some Betty Boo regs and now you can not buy them for love or money due to them no longer being produced as they were discontinued.
So anyone who wants this strain can no longer buy it, is it then morally wrong of me to do a seed run and sell them to other people?
Personally I just want to use them a breeding stock for micro stealth plants.
I also wonder why people are buying skunk or northern lights etc etc from companies that just reproduce classic strains.
Is it because they are cheap?
There are so many excellent new strains coming out all the time from establish seed houses.
Are people so skint they can't afford some decent seeds?? I know what it is like to not have money but buying good seeds is once every 8 - 12 weeks.
Put away £5 a week will sort out the next batch of seeds and growing your own will save you much more than £5 a week unless you smoke virtually nothing.
Also consider this, Cheese came from a select Skunk [HASHTAG]#1[/HASHTAG] from Sensi Seeds this cutting only strain was consistantlly grown by Wing commander Blue, who noticed over the years the strain got really smelly.

The true origin of UK Cheese

I recently went on holiday to the Canary Islands, a friend of mine gave me a copy of Weed World magazine to read while I was there (issue 56). To my surprise, was the article by Big Buddha Cheese? On reading this I decide to tell the story from the beginning.

Back in the late 80’s early 90’s, a friend-of-a-friend of mine came back from the Sensi Seed Bank in Amsterdam with some seeds.

Most of the plants were males but 4 of them were girls – 3 of the 4 were wankers and one was kind of OK. This plant was cloned and passed on to 3 or 4 different people who grew it alongside some Northern Lights and Silver Pearl plants in their well built grow rooms.

I am 45 years old now and have been growing my own weed for about 25 years, 10 of them outside in the wild.

My best friend and I decided that we would build ourselves our own grow rooms but didn’t see the need for getting too technical so, we made them out of anything we could lay our hands on – we called them “orange crates” coz that’s what they looked like.

As for lighting, we went on a commando raid to a local disused cement factory and helped ourselves to some Sodium and Metal Halide 400’s. We made our own shades from some aluminium sheeting from a local scrap yard.

Now all we needed was some nice cuttings. I managed to get some N/L and S/P plants and also one of the Skunks. Most of the other growers concentrated on the N/L and S/P because they are good all rounders.

I think one of the Skunks went to Crewe and another to Cornwall. I quite liked the Skunk so I kept it going. Now over the next 7 or 8 years of constant cloning, the Skunk started changing – don’t know why – it just did. It started to get really smelly – I mean really stink. The smell would get everywhere and I was often creosoting the fence to try and mask the smell (a little tip there for Cheese farmers, creosote or burnt toast). Cropping was a nightmare and I wouldn’t even go out because people would often say “you stink”.

I was giving some of this weed to my close friends and they all loved it and, as the taste was changing it seemed the strength was too. This weed had become so strong and so smelly that it reminded me of something I had smelt before, but I couldn’t think what it was. Then one day the penny dropped.

When I was 17 or 18 and living at home with my parents, I would go out a lot with a friend who worked in a food essence factory. Some days I would see him and he would stink of all different kind of things: fish, beef, vanilla etc. He would bring me small test tubes of concentrated liquids home and use them in my fishing bait (the carp loved the vanilla). One day he put one under my nose and said “smell this one, its called blue cheese, and it’s a real minger”.

This was the smell I had been trying to remember. The weed smelt just like it and so she was born. I gave the weed the name “Cheese”.

The only cuttings I let out were to people who were incapable of doing their own cloning and only wanted a plant for their own garden in the summer months.

Another close friend of mine, known as “Of the Hill”, came to me one day and asked me if I would do him 21 cuttings as he was building a big lab for the Exodus people in Luton. I was a bit unsure of this as I didn’t know ay of these people but, I did it for him because he is a good egg and has dug me out of plenty of holes over the years. Anyway, off he went with his cuttings and I didn’t here too much more about it, other than a good harvest festival was had.

“Of the Hill” arranged for a cutting to make it’s way to a coffee shop in Amsterdam in 2003 (Home Grown Fantasy). It was cloned and put on the menu as ‘Cheese’ and went on to claim 3rd place in the cannabis cup in 2004.

I recently met an American at a Hawkwind gig in London who had heard of the Cheese in Washington. He had come to the UK to see Hawkwind and smoke Cheese. His face lit up when I pulled a big fat Cheese straw out of my pocket!

It’s kind of annoying really – I wish I could have put a patent on the word “Cheese” in the context of marijuana but, it’s kind of difficult when things are illegal.

All over the place now I hear people calling all sorts of weed “Cheese” and I say to them “no mate, this is Cheese”.

As for Mr Big Buddha? I have plenty of respect for him, but the Cheese is not yours no matter what you call it and, as for crossing her? She does need help –over the years she has started to show signs of stress.

Growers will notice that some plants get brown spotty leaves during growing & flowering that results I leaf drop. I don’t know what the cause is, it’s not the soil, the water, the food, or the air quality (possibly a virus of some kind), so I suppose a cross of some kind to introduce some new vigour to her would be a good thing so, like I said, respect to Big Buddha for trying.

So for nearly 14 years, the Cheese was living at only a couple of places but now it seems to be everywhere for people to enjoy.

I don’t know what she has become – some sort of mutant freak, but she sure hits the spot and everyone who smokes her loves her to pieces.

So there you have it – the truth about the origin of Cheese. You can all rejoice that I kept her going for all these years and now you all know how it came about its name.

In the grand scheme of things it’s not very much, but I wanted to set the record straight.

Wing Commander Blue

WeedWorld Magazine

Should big buddha get the credit for stabilizing it and making it available as a seed strain and not just a cutting pheno?
Should Sensi seeds get the credit as they sold the Skunk [HASHTAG]#1[/HASHTAG] seeds the cheese came from.
Or should it go to Jingles
Or should it go to the group of growers who developed the unstable cross that Jingles stabilized
or, or, or, or,

Read on for the full story of where Skunk [HASHTAG]#1[/HASHTAG] came from

(I found this online posted by Outkast seeds)
Skunk#1 was the result of a communal breeding effort by a small clique of breeders who worked the coastal hills surounding the Bay Area. The first "skunk" plant (C.Gold x AFG unstable) was not discovered by this group but, Jingles who cut the unstable line, but kept this one special plant for his personal garden. This was around '69 or so. anyway, the clone made its way round the club and soon this Bay Area group decided to adopt it as a project.
With the C.Gold mom used by Jingles as well as the Haze Bros they set about trying to create a stable version of Jingles "skunk". The result would be known as Skunk#1. Columbian Gold x Acapulco Gold/Afgani There are better people around here to tell you the exact details, not the least whom is Sam_Skunkman over @ TFD. Yes it's him.

My understanding of the SK#1 breeding group is that it started very small and grew as time went by. SkMan starting out as a Jr grower in the late 60's and rising to the level of chief breeder and seedmaker for the seed co.
in the late 70's/early 80's. It was supposed to have been very difficult to join this group and a prospect would first have to be sponsered by a member of the inner circle then be required to breed out a certain number of versions of Sk#1 from both clones provided by the club as well as genetics they provided themselves. This way they assured quality control and widened the gene pool at the same time. The original unstable "model skunk"plant was a direct cross of C.Gold x Afg. But the Bay Area people soon found out how difficult it was going to be to cross a C.Gold to anything. So it was found that it was easier to cross these difficult plants to a plant that was already hybribized. Hence the Introduction of A.Gold into the mix. This also apparently added two other favorable traits. In addition to making crosses easier, high GCA has been stated by Clark as one of the goals of the breeders, the A.Gold also marginaly reduced flower time but most importent was its addition to calyx/leaf ratio. If you turn to P 248 of Mels Dlx you will find a pic of four mexican colas. Notice the two shots on the bottom are taken against the backround of Sandy W's barn. I'm almost 100% sure the plant on the lower right is A.Gold and about 90% that it's the primary A.Gold mom in Sk#1. Notice the foxtail style buds and hi C/L. Now imagine this crossed to an afgani, starting to get the picture? By the way most but not all of the Afganis were from MLW.

As i said earlier most of the Sacred Seeds breeding groups suffered disasters of one sort or another in the early days and in the case of Sk#1 it was the dreaded botritis cinerea, grey mold. Introduced by some of the early afgani crosses it kicked of a massive afgan genetics hunt/torture test. And while the late great Maple Leaf Wilson provided most of the genes they scowered every nook and cranny for an Afgani ;0. Many non Skunk#1 members of the Sacred Seeds who were also working on their own projects got involved.

I already spoke about Sandy W's involment and there were apparently others though the only one I am reasonably sure of was an East Bay biker/Vietnam Vet who went by the handle "Mendacino Joe", who as you can probably guess by his name he was supposed to have been one of the founders of the Trinity grow scene. Joe was working on a grape/pepper flavored mostly afgani hybrid not related to Sk#1, but he had a large collection of genetics and was a good grower and so he was included in the torture tests. The ultimate result of these tests was a special line called Skunk#18.2 (Sk#1 x Afg bx-1). It is a line that inparts incredible hardiness and pest/disease resistance on its offspring.

The Skunkman brought several kilos of these seeds with him along with his other stuff when he moved to holland in '82 in the wake of his release from prison.As far as I know he has only given these seeds to Nevil, Shanti, and Wernhard from Positronics. (ever wonder why Shiva Skunk {NL#5 x SK#1) is so resistant to spider mites?)

In the wake of the Sacred Seeds bust in '82, "Mendacino Joe" moved to the Vancouver islands and changing his handle to "Romulan" Joe bringing with him some early Sk#1s or deriviteves, a line of Central Ithsmus lowland Thai that may have been purchased from the Haze Bros and of course his grape/pepper flovored indica strain, Romulan. Soon to be a BC classic. It was these lines that Pr. Ziggy @ Federation seeds in BC was supposed to have purchased from old Joe shorly before his death, and are offered as Island Sweet Skunk, Golden Triangle Thai, and Romulan. Torture tests and "inoculations" were mostly done outdoors with special patches of extra clones in an isolated area, which were then diliberatly infected. Deseased and pest riddled local plants would be transplanted into these special gardens and then the plants were tested to destruction while the growers watched and made note of the strongest individauls. Sacred Seeds was all about division of labor.It's one of the ways they accomplished so much in so little time and they used natural selection to work in their favor. Skunk#1 first went on sale in '78 or '79. As far as I know it was the only strain that Sacred Seeds didn't give a discount on orders over 1k seeds. Seeds were 2$ a peice and people bitched about prices even back then. Especialy that no discount thing But like the Hazes (which could sellout a year ahead) SK#1 sold out every year. The seeds were sold as F1's made if I recall with a F ? fillial plant backcrossed to one of the original parents. Due to the communal nature of the project,there were many parents as each breeder included his own varietion, Skunk#1s bred from the same P1 stock but often getting to the goal a different way, for instance some variations used C.Gold on the male side. With tight control over the P1s the breeders could assure their stated goal of making true breeding stock but with the widest possible gene pool they could also be sure to achieve both high SCA and GCA. also stated goals of the project.

Now I can tell you from personal experience that exactly what constituted a "skunk" was a matter of just a little debate but they basically came down into camps which actually carried forward into the Dutch world. The "Sweet Skunk" camp, which including the SkMan, and the "Stinky Skunk" camp. In terms of modern Sk#1 the CC/TFD Skunkman bred "the Pure" is bred for more consistant plants and towards the SkMans ideal Sk#1. While the stinky side of the house would be best represented by the SeedBank/Mr Nice skunks which also have more variation in types like the earlier California skunks. I must state here that there is no right answer, its a matter of taste and a debate thats been going for on about 30 years. In '82 I came home one night and turned on the TV. Just as they went to commercial the news bimbo teased the story, "comin right up after this" police official say they got the source of the skunk. Yeah right I thought, we'd heard these claims before, always to be followed by shot of some deputies pulling three scragly plants from some poor sucker's patch. This time it was different, this time they were standing in front of a warehouse.

Sacred Seeds was busted in '82. The Skunkman was arrested and the cops were in possetion of the groups main seedmaking op. But this bunch was savey and had pre-paid bailbonds/lawyers on retainer and so SkMan was out in a matter of hours. And so began one of the greatest capers in Sacred Seeds history.

An event I will call "the great rootball rescue". Skunkman, out on bail and eager to find out the condition of his grow rooms stakes out the grow to make sure the cops aren't waiting there for him. After sitting for hours he finally gets over his paranoia and makes a cursery recon and can't believe what he finds, the cops in either there arrogance or ignorance have left the place secured with only police tape. checking the grow as well as the dumpster out back the found many plants cut well above the the first node and some that had been simply pulled from their containers and tossed whole. the dumpster was also full of seeds and it was obvious that the cops had broken many seed containers but because there were so many eventually just started throwing jars out whole. the cops had left all the stuff there until morning when they could properly catolog it, including all the grow equip. Skunkman sprang into action, called a number of the un-busted members of the club and the "great rootball rescue" was under way. His friends showed up and they litteraly stripped the place of every thing usefull. Lights were sold to pay legal fees, the rootballs, including the Haze mom SkMan has to this day were nursed back to health by the people who escaped prosicution and the police were left with a distinct lack of evidence. Causing some of the cases to collapse entirly and some, like SkMan to serve greatly reduced sentances. If they'de gotten him on everything they wanted him for he'd still be there. Instead, He served less than a year and on his release he collected up his strains from his friends, including Sk#18.2 rescued from the dumpster and made his way to amsterdam were he founded Cultivators Choice seed co, named after the top award at the annual Sacred Seeds harvest fests held in Nor Cal from 67-83. A year later Skunkmans new friend aqquire a second batch of Sacred Seeds Sk#1 seeds. When Cultivators Choice went out of biz a few year later Nevil bought most of their stock. While both worked from the same set of Sk#1 females each has there own males (breeders never give up a male) selected from the only two importations of authentic Sk#1 into Holland.

The Cultivators Choice variation is the one offered by TFD as "the Pure" The SeedBank version is @ Mr Nice, Shanti's Shit is his Sk#1/Afg variation with "Pure Shit" aka pure Sk#1 upcoming.


People take genetics breed by other people and create new strains, who owns what and deserves the credit is not always so easy to work out!

It is the same with veg seeds that I buy I can get Nantes II carrot seeds from many, many suppliers and they are cheep as chips.
If I want to buy some new F1 variety of carrot that won't breed true if I try to save the seeds, i pay a premium and I can only buy from the supplier who created it until it eventually gets made in to seeds by other companies.
Then the price drops.
In the end someone will stabilize the variety and it then it becomes ubiquitous and the seed can be saved and sown again next yer and any tom dick or harry can reproduce it but by this point it has lost it's intrinsic value that it had, when it was only available from the original F1 seed producer.
Price drops again.
The company that made the original cross has made it's money and charged a premium for it when it was released.
They will have been working on new lines to sell at a premium, that's how they make their money.
I realize this can be an ethical mine field but humans have always replicated that which is popular and it can also be seen as a mark of respect that some thing created by one person is replicated by another.
Copyrights, patents, trademarks are all way of protecting you rights but even these run out in time.
If you don't protect what you create no one is to blame but you.
If we hadn't borrowed ideas, methods & technologies, we would all be living in the dark ages.

 

[Micron Creek]

Nice write up. I have been doing lineage research for quite some time. Came to the conclusion that origins can be murky to an extreme, surprisingly even to the people who make the originals. I can never know what is really in Lowryder, or LR [HASHTAG]#2[/HASHTAG], unless I have my one on one with the Joint Doctor. Reading about skunkman, whose hazy recollection, or killer flower, can have him unsure whether or not this or that clone had been a male or female. My Mr. Nice Shit is a wonderful gal either way I slice it, classic flowers do not go out of style. Cheers @arty zan

 

[trailanimal]

Zamnesia the head shop owns Zambeza which is in turn is owned by Royal Queen Seeds.
When We interviewed Mitch from Mephisto in AW's, I asked Mitch what was the the etiquette with using a companies strains to breed with.
Mitch's reply was you buy the seed you own the seed and you can do with it what you will.
If you trade mark the variety, then the name is protected.
I have some Betty Boo regs and now you can not buy them for love or money due to them no longer being produced as they were discontinued.
So anyone who wants this strain can no longer buy it, is it then morally wrong of me to do a seed run and sell them to other people?
Personally I just want to use them a breeding stock for micro stealth plants.
I also wonder why people are buying skunk or northern lights etc etc from companies that just reproduce classic strains.
Is it because they are cheap?
There are so many excellent new strains coming out all the time from establish seed houses.
Are people so skint they can't afford some decent seeds?? I know what it is like to not have money but buying good seeds is once every 8 - 12 weeks.
Put away £5 a week will sort out the next batch of seeds and growing your own will save you much more than £5 a week unless you smoke virtually nothing.
Also consider this, Cheese came from a select Skunk [HASHTAG]#1[/HASHTAG] from Sensi Seeds this cutting only strain was consistantlly grown by Wing commander Blue, who noticed over the years the strain got really smelly.

The true origin of UK Cheese

I recently went on holiday to the Canary Islands, a friend of mine gave me a copy of Weed World magazine to read while I was there (issue 56). To my surprise, was the article by Big Buddha Cheese? On reading this I decide to tell the story from the beginning.

Back in the late 80’s early 90’s, a friend-of-a-friend of mine came back from the Sensi Seed Bank in Amsterdam with some seeds.

Most of the plants were males but 4 of them were girls – 3 of the 4 were wankers and one was kind of OK. This plant was cloned and passed on to 3 or 4 different people who grew it alongside some Northern Lights and Silver Pearl plants in their well built grow rooms.

I am 45 years old now and have been growing my own weed for about 25 years, 10 of them outside in the wild.

My best friend and I decided that we would build ourselves our own grow rooms but didn’t see the need for getting too technical so, we made them out of anything we could lay our hands on – we called them “orange crates” coz that’s what they looked like.

As for lighting, we went on a commando raid to a local disused cement factory and helped ourselves to some Sodium and Metal Halide 400’s. We made our own shades from some aluminium sheeting from a local scrap yard.

Now all we needed was some nice cuttings. I managed to get some N/L and S/P plants and also one of the Skunks. Most of the other growers concentrated on the N/L and S/P because they are good all rounders.

I think one of the Skunks went to Crewe and another to Cornwall. I quite liked the Skunk so I kept it going. Now over the next 7 or 8 years of constant cloning, the Skunk started changing – don’t know why – it just did. It started to get really smelly – I mean really stink. The smell would get everywhere and I was often creosoting the fence to try and mask the smell (a little tip there for Cheese farmers, creosote or burnt toast). Cropping was a nightmare and I wouldn’t even go out because people would often say “you stink”.

I was giving some of this weed to my close friends and they all loved it and, as the taste was changing it seemed the strength was too. This weed had become so strong and so smelly that it reminded me of something I had smelt before, but I couldn’t think what it was. Then one day the penny dropped.

When I was 17 or 18 and living at home with my parents, I would go out a lot with a friend who worked in a food essence factory. Some days I would see him and he would stink of all different kind of things: fish, beef, vanilla etc. He would bring me small test tubes of concentrated liquids home and use them in my fishing bait (the carp loved the vanilla). One day he put one under my nose and said “smell this one, its called blue cheese, and it’s a real minger”.

This was the smell I had been trying to remember. The weed smelt just like it and so she was born. I gave the weed the name “Cheese”.

The only cuttings I let out were to people who were incapable of doing their own cloning and only wanted a plant for their own garden in the summer months.

Another close friend of mine, known as “Of the Hill”, came to me one day and asked me if I would do him 21 cuttings as he was building a big lab for the Exodus people in Luton. I was a bit unsure of this as I didn’t know ay of these people but, I did it for him because he is a good egg and has dug me out of plenty of holes over the years. Anyway, off he went with his cuttings and I didn’t here too much more about it, other than a good harvest festival was had.

“Of the Hill” arranged for a cutting to make it’s way to a coffee shop in Amsterdam in 2003 (Home Grown Fantasy). It was cloned and put on the menu as ‘Cheese’ and went on to claim 3rd place in the cannabis cup in 2004.

I recently met an American at a Hawkwind gig in London who had heard of the Cheese in Washington. He had come to the UK to see Hawkwind and smoke Cheese. His face lit up when I pulled a big fat Cheese straw out of my pocket!

It’s kind of annoying really – I wish I could have put a patent on the word “Cheese” in the context of marijuana but, it’s kind of difficult when things are illegal.

All over the place now I hear people calling all sorts of weed “Cheese” and I say to them “no mate, this is Cheese”.

As for Mr Big Buddha? I have plenty of respect for him, but the Cheese is not yours no matter what you call it and, as for crossing her? She does need help –over the years she has started to show signs of stress.

Growers will notice that some plants get brown spotty leaves during growing & flowering that results I leaf drop. I don’t know what the cause is, it’s not the soil, the water, the food, or the air quality (possibly a virus of some kind), so I suppose a cross of some kind to introduce some new vigour to her would be a good thing so, like I said, respect to Big Buddha for trying.

So for nearly 14 years, the Cheese was living at only a couple of places but now it seems to be everywhere for people to enjoy.

I don’t know what she has become – some sort of mutant freak, but she sure hits the spot and everyone who smokes her loves her to pieces.

So there you have it – the truth about the origin of Cheese. You can all rejoice that I kept her going for all these years and now you all know how it came about its name.

In the grand scheme of things it’s not very much, but I wanted to set the record straight.

Wing Commander Blue

WeedWorld Magazine

Should big buddha get the credit for stabilizing it and making it available as a seed strain and not just a cutting pheno?
Should Sensi seeds get the credit as they sold the Skunk [HASHTAG]#1[/HASHTAG] seeds the cheese came from.
Or should it go to Jingles
Or should it go to the group of growers who developed the unstable cross that Jingles stabilized
or, or, or, or,

Read on for the full story of where Skunk [HASHTAG]#1[/HASHTAG] came from

(I found this online posted by Outkast seeds)
Skunk#1 was the result of a communal breeding effort by a small clique of breeders who worked the coastal hills surounding the Bay Area. The first "skunk" plant (C.Gold x AFG unstable) was not discovered by this group but, Jingles who cut the unstable line, but kept this one special plant for his personal garden. This was around '69 or so. anyway, the clone made its way round the club and soon this Bay Area group decided to adopt it as a project.
With the C.Gold mom used by Jingles as well as the Haze Bros they set about trying to create a stable version of Jingles "skunk". The result would be known as Skunk#1. Columbian Gold x Acapulco Gold/Afgani There are better people around here to tell you the exact details, not the least whom is Sam_Skunkman over @ TFD. Yes it's him.

My understanding of the SK#1 breeding group is that it started very small and grew as time went by. SkMan starting out as a Jr grower in the late 60's and rising to the level of chief breeder and seedmaker for the seed co.
in the late 70's/early 80's. It was supposed to have been very difficult to join this group and a prospect would first have to be sponsered by a member of the inner circle then be required to breed out a certain number of versions of Sk#1 from both clones provided by the club as well as genetics they provided themselves. This way they assured quality control and widened the gene pool at the same time. The original unstable "model skunk"plant was a direct cross of C.Gold x Afg. But the Bay Area people soon found out how difficult it was going to be to cross a C.Gold to anything. So it was found that it was easier to cross these difficult plants to a plant that was already hybribized. Hence the Introduction of A.Gold into the mix. This also apparently added two other favorable traits. In addition to making crosses easier, high GCA has been stated by Clark as one of the goals of the breeders, the A.Gold also marginaly reduced flower time but most importent was its addition to calyx/leaf ratio. If you turn to P 248 of Mels Dlx you will find a pic of four mexican colas. Notice the two shots on the bottom are taken against the backround of Sandy W's barn. I'm almost 100% sure the plant on the lower right is A.Gold and about 90% that it's the primary A.Gold mom in Sk#1. Notice the foxtail style buds and hi C/L. Now imagine this crossed to an afgani, starting to get the picture? By the way most but not all of the Afganis were from MLW.

As i said earlier most of the Sacred Seeds breeding groups suffered disasters of one sort or another in the early days and in the case of Sk#1 it was the dreaded botritis cinerea, grey mold. Introduced by some of the early afgani crosses it kicked of a massive afgan genetics hunt/torture test. And while the late great Maple Leaf Wilson provided most of the genes they scowered every nook and cranny for an Afgani ;0. Many non Skunk#1 members of the Sacred Seeds who were also working on their own projects got involved.

I already spoke about Sandy W's involment and there were apparently others though the only one I am reasonably sure of was an East Bay biker/Vietnam Vet who went by the handle "Mendacino Joe", who as you can probably guess by his name he was supposed to have been one of the founders of the Trinity grow scene. Joe was working on a grape/pepper flavored mostly afgani hybrid not related to Sk#1, but he had a large collection of genetics and was a good grower and so he was included in the torture tests. The ultimate result of these tests was a special line called Skunk#18.2 (Sk#1 x Afg bx-1). It is a line that inparts incredible hardiness and pest/disease resistance on its offspring.

The Skunkman brought several kilos of these seeds with him along with his other stuff when he moved to holland in '82 in the wake of his release from prison.As far as I know he has only given these seeds to Nevil, Shanti, and Wernhard from Positronics. (ever wonder why Shiva Skunk {NL#5 x SK#1) is so resistant to spider mites?)

In the wake of the Sacred Seeds bust in '82, "Mendacino Joe" moved to the Vancouver islands and changing his handle to "Romulan" Joe bringing with him some early Sk#1s or deriviteves, a line of Central Ithsmus lowland Thai that may have been purchased from the Haze Bros and of course his grape/pepper flovored indica strain, Romulan. Soon to be a BC classic. It was these lines that Pr. Ziggy @ Federation seeds in BC was supposed to have purchased from old Joe shorly before his death, and are offered as Island Sweet Skunk, Golden Triangle Thai, and Romulan. Torture tests and "inoculations" were mostly done outdoors with special patches of extra clones in an isolated area, which were then diliberatly infected. Deseased and pest riddled local plants would be transplanted into these special gardens and then the plants were tested to destruction while the growers watched and made note of the strongest individauls. Sacred Seeds was all about division of labor.It's one of the ways they accomplished so much in so little time and they used natural selection to work in their favor. Skunk#1 first went on sale in '78 or '79. As far as I know it was the only strain that Sacred Seeds didn't give a discount on orders over 1k seeds. Seeds were 2$ a peice and people bitched about prices even back then. Especialy that no discount thing But like the Hazes (which could sellout a year ahead) SK#1 sold out every year. The seeds were sold as F1's made if I recall with a F ? fillial plant backcrossed to one of the original parents. Due to the communal nature of the project,there were many parents as each breeder included his own varietion, Skunk#1s bred from the same P1 stock but often getting to the goal a different way, for instance some variations used C.Gold on the male side. With tight control over the P1s the breeders could assure their stated goal of making true breeding stock but with the widest possible gene pool they could also be sure to achieve both high SCA and GCA. also stated goals of the project.

Now I can tell you from personal experience that exactly what constituted a "skunk" was a matter of just a little debate but they basically came down into camps which actually carried forward into the Dutch world. The "Sweet Skunk" camp, which including the SkMan, and the "Stinky Skunk" camp. In terms of modern Sk#1 the CC/TFD Skunkman bred "the Pure" is bred for more consistant plants and towards the SkMans ideal Sk#1. While the stinky side of the house would be best represented by the SeedBank/Mr Nice skunks which also have more variation in types like the earlier California skunks. I must state here that there is no right answer, its a matter of taste and a debate thats been going for on about 30 years. In '82 I came home one night and turned on the TV. Just as they went to commercial the news bimbo teased the story, "comin right up after this" police official say they got the source of the skunk. Yeah right I thought, we'd heard these claims before, always to be followed by shot of some deputies pulling three scragly plants from some poor sucker's patch. This time it was different, this time they were standing in front of a warehouse.

Sacred Seeds was busted in '82. The Skunkman was arrested and the cops were in possetion of the groups main seedmaking op. But this bunch was savey and had pre-paid bailbonds/lawyers on retainer and so SkMan was out in a matter of hours. And so began one of the greatest capers in Sacred Seeds history.

An event I will call "the great rootball rescue". Skunkman, out on bail and eager to find out the condition of his grow rooms stakes out the grow to make sure the cops aren't waiting there for him. After sitting for hours he finally gets over his paranoia and makes a cursery recon and can't believe what he finds, the cops in either there arrogance or ignorance have left the place secured with only police tape. checking the grow as well as the dumpster out back the found many plants cut well above the the first node and some that had been simply pulled from their containers and tossed whole. the dumpster was also full of seeds and it was obvious that the cops had broken many seed containers but because there were so many eventually just started throwing jars out whole. the cops had left all the stuff there until morning when they could properly catolog it, including all the grow equip. Skunkman sprang into action, called a number of the un-busted members of the club and the "great rootball rescue" was under way. His friends showed up and they litteraly stripped the place of every thing usefull. Lights were sold to pay legal fees, the rootballs, including the Haze mom SkMan has to this day were nursed back to health by the people who escaped prosicution and the police were left with a distinct lack of evidence. Causing some of the cases to collapse entirly and some, like SkMan to serve greatly reduced sentances. If they'de gotten him on everything they wanted him for he'd still be there. Instead, He served less than a year and on his release he collected up his strains from his friends, including Sk#18.2 rescued from the dumpster and made his way to amsterdam were he founded Cultivators Choice seed co, named after the top award at the annual Sacred Seeds harvest fests held in Nor Cal from 67-83. A year later Skunkmans new friend aqquire a second batch of Sacred Seeds Sk#1 seeds. When Cultivators Choice went out of biz a few year later Nevil bought most of their stock. While both worked from the same set of Sk#1 females each has there own males (breeders never give up a male) selected from the only two importations of authentic Sk#1 into Holland.

The Cultivators Choice variation is the one offered by TFD as "the Pure" The SeedBank version is @ Mr Nice, Shanti's Shit is his Sk#1/Afg variation with "Pure Shit" aka pure Sk#1 upcoming.


People take genetics breed by other people and create new strains, who owns what and deserves the credit is not always so easy to work out!

It is the same with veg seeds that I buy I can get Nantes II carrot seeds from many, many suppliers and they are cheep as chips.
If I want to buy some new F1 variety of carrot that won't breed true if I try to save the seeds, i pay a premium and I can only buy from the supplier who created it until it eventually gets made in to seeds by other companies.
Then the price drops.
In the end someone will stabilize the variety and it then it becomes ubiquitous and the seed can be saved and sown again next yer and any tom dick or harry can reproduce it but by this point it has lost it's intrinsic value that it had, when it was only available from the original F1 seed producer.
Price drops again.
The company that made the original cross has made it's money and charged a premium for it when it was released.
They will have been working on new lines to sell at a premium, that's how they make their money.
I realize this can be an ethical mine field but humans have always replicated that which is popular and it can also be seen as a mark of respect that some thing created by one person is replicated by another.
Copyrights, patents, trademarks are all way of protecting you rights but even these run out in time.
If you don't protect what you create no one is to blame but you.
If we hadn't borrowed ideas, methods & technologies, we would all be living in the dark ages.

thanks for the history arty!

 

[BigSm0]

5 years later