Original source seeds from the 70's: Yes I have some

[Big Sur]

What kind of ties are we talking about? Alleged or proven?

Proven. Look on Phylos Galaxy, and you will see a lot of strains provided by Watson there. Also Clarke is on their science advisory board. Connect the dots... HortaPharm was founded by Clarke and Watson. HortaPharm has a partnership with GW Pharma. GW Pharma has lots of ties to Bayer. Look at the Phylos board of director page, and it is all BIG business.

 

[Weaselcracker]

And Bayer was bought by Monsanto... blech.

 

[Conradino23]

Proven. Look on Phylos Galaxy, and you will see a lot of strains provided by Watson there. Also Clarke is on their science advisory board. Connect the dots... HortaPharm was founded by Clarke and Watson. HortaPharm has a partnership with GW Pharma. GW Pharma has lots of ties to Bayer. Look at the Phylos board of director page, and it is all BIG business.

I know that Watson has been providing genetic material to sequence for Phylos. Well he has a large library. I'm not surprised that Clarke collaborates with them too. They're both known names. Bayer in fact distributes Sativex in UK and GW Pharma is about to get Epidiolex patented in US and EU. Well it's a growing company as are many other ones that use cannabis in this or other form. I mean corporations are slowly taking over, cause they have the resources and political influence and there's not much you can do about it unless you want to fight them on both fields. Now the right for everybody to grow cannabis is a different story and we have to fight for it and if I can't grow it legally due to prohibition and they can, that's fucked up. And that's how it is in EU really. But Phylos does hell of a research work and the info is open source, so you can't patent it from the genetic side. And cause they work with anyone who pays, which I think is normal, doesn't make them evil in my eyes. There's a lot of money to be made on cannabis and the quickest and smartest will take the most of it. And after all Phylos is just a company, that shows how science can be applied to this field, and as long as they make the information publicly available, they're benefitting everybody. If they don't do it then somebody else will and how they do it is absolutely up to them and they'll end up working with someone who can use the research anyway... this is how market works. We're talking about something that's been in the underground for so long that when benefits were finally proven it raised a lot of business interest. But it's gonna be hard for the BIG players to completely take over, cause they still lack the knowledge and they can't openly corrupt every politician. They can buy the expertise though and that's what they're doing. And people who have it sell it for the right price. It's unstoppable IMO. But gmo weed is pointless at this point, so I wouldn't worry about that at least.

 

[Tomster420]

GMO shouldn't be a worry with the amount of seeds us growers purchase We are all little warriors in our own right in a way

 

[Conradino23]

Yeah but also with CRISPR making headways transgenic editing seems like a stone age

 

[Big Sur]

Phylos patenting (correction: plant registration in the public domain) is a joke. At least in the US it is. Plant patents here are only good for CLONES and GMO seeds. Every seed has its own DNA, so you can make a cross of two strains and every seed will have a different DNA sequence. Only when you clone one of the seedlings can you get a patent for it. But if someone selfs that plant, or makes another cross using it, the patent does not apply as the DNA will be different. Plus the patent is only enforced when selling plants, in which case you get royalties for 20 years from people selling your patented clones here. Then the patent expires and they become public domain. They do this with grafted roses and fruit trees here, but they are mass market items. Also since weed is still not legal at the federal level in the US, none of the plant patents are legal or binding, nor are they applicable at this time.

As for big business taking over, that is happening fast here, as predicted. Half the commercial rec grow licenses that have been issued in Oregon have been sold to large interests now. Wall Street is getting involved in a big way. In about a dozen states now, they are building indoor grow centers on a MASSIVE scale. Yuge! Margins are also getting thin here so small growers are being forced out, also as predicted. It varies by state, but Oregon, Colorado, and Washington are all seeing legal weed prices crash. You can get $4 grams and $60 ozs now even w/o an OMMP card. Its gotten so cheap, why bother growing it? Just go to the store and get whatever fresh herb you want to smoke. Personally though, I like Durban Poison and Lebanese, and they typically sell out of Durban here fast, and I have never seen any Lebanese sold here.

 

[Big Sur]

GMO shouldn't be a worry with the amount of seeds us growers purchase We are all little warriors in our own right in a way

The issue with GMO weed is the same as with corn though. It gets in the wind with male pollen and thus into females that are not intended to be pollinated. According to the USDA, 93% of all corn crops planted in the United States contained some amount of GMO in 2014. 93%!!!!! *cough*

Roundup ready Cannabis? You betcha! Certainly coming for growing large fields of hemp. Hemp ~is~ Cannabis and it will pollinate your ladies, like it or not.

 

[Conradino23]

Phylos patenting is a joke. At least in the US it is.

They're not patenting anything. That's what I wrote basically, so any panic is unnecessary IMO.

 

[Big Sur]

At least I can grow here, legally. With an OMMP card and someone else living at your residence in Oregon, you can grow 6 + 4 mature plants, and 12 non-flowering plants of any size, indoors or outdoors. With 2 OMMP cards you can grow 12 mature plants and 24 non-flowering plants of any size in or out. That is the limit with OMMP cards, unless you want to get involved with commercial OLCC requirements and pay for an inventory and ID tagging system and send reports to the state every month. Living alone with an OMMP card you can grow 6 mature plants and 12 non-flowering plants in or out. Without an OMMP card, anyone can grow 4 plants here of any size per single address, indoors or outdoors. All legal at the state and local level. It is still not legal at the federal level here. So we are all still outlaws here.

 

[Big Sur]

29 states, DC and Puerto Rico now have legal medical marijuana, and 9 states and DC have legal recreational marijuana. 8 states have pending marijuana initiatives on the ballot this year, 4 of which already have some form of legal medical marijuana. Hemp is also likely to be legalized at the federal level soon. Marijuana may be reclassified as a schedule II drug at the federal level as well, which would allow banks to do business with the marijuana industry (at this time its an all cash business).

 

[Big Sur]

They're not patenting anything. That's what I wrote basically, so any panic is unnecessary IMO.

Sorry, what I meant was patent blocking by registering in the public domain. They were offering a registry into the public domain, to keep other people from patenting your strains. IMO that is useless. I do not see that on their site any more. Now they offer a certification program for validating genetics. I see no value in that either, as no one is going to look on a label to see if your strain of Blue Dream is ~THE~ strain of Blue Dream. And what is ~the~ strain of Blue Dream anyway? What they say it is? I have issues with what genetics they are using as benchmarks. These strains are (or were) all black market at one time and there have been so many variables that there is no single genetic baseline for most named strains.

 

[Tomster420]

GMO cannabis would be a major issue i agree. The US is pretty far from Australia so i don't think i'd have to worry about US GMO cannabis (if it happens) pollinating any of my plants. I hope for yours and your seed banks sake it doesn't happen at all

 

[Big Sur]

Well, never say never. If hemp takes off like they want it to and takes a bite out of the cotton industry (cotton growers have been lobbying for maintaining the ban on hemp to maintain dominance in the textile industry), then it will become a globally grown crop again. If we start growing hemp on an industrial scale, others will want to compete for market share. Oz seems poised to make a stab at global dominance in the medical Cannabis market. If CBD then becomes a commodity, then hemp growing will become more common in Oz for CBD rather than in fiber. But who knows... I would have never beleived that we would be this far in Mj legalization even 10 years ago.

 

[Big Sur]

So this year my brother is growing my 1978 Mr GreenGenes (RIP) Maui Wauis (AKA: Cherry Bomb) and one of his has bright red-purple stems. All of the others are green stemmed. I am going to clone and breed the red-purple stemmed one with one Cherry Bomb male that I retained. My brother loves the smell of that plant. He says the red stem one smells better as well. Says it reminds him of living on Maui.

Put on the Hawaiian luau music and hand out the leis, bury a whole pig and roast it all afternoon, and lets smoke some Maui Waui! And my heart goes out to all the folks on the Big Island dealing with the Kilauea lava flows. I watch fissure #8 every night on YouTube. The lava fountain and lava river flowing to the sea is an amazing spectacle. But the losses are also terrible, as is the VOG and LAZE. 30 BILLION gallons of lava are estimated to have poured out of fissure #8.

 

[60's Old Timer]

Hey Bigsur so glad you are still around. Your memory is amazing and a few of your stories totally replicate many of my own late '60's adventures. Now I never traveled the Hippie trail around the world, but I have had many "world wide" experiences while tok'n with friends in Kern county. Well, great to see you here, I spent this afternoon & evening totally engrossed in this 17 page Book of Knowledge. Peace Brother.

 

[Big Sur]

Well, glad that you like my stuff and concur with my stories. Funny how fast common knowledge is lost, or replaced with BS. I never traveled the hippie trail either, with exception of Highway 1 to Big Sur, and up to SF and Berkeley a gazillion times, and down to LA and Sandy Eggo, and up to Lake Tahoe. I am not sure where the hippie epicenter was, really. There was never much in Big Sur. Eselen, Nepenthe, The River Inn, and much later in 1975 Ventana (which was built with money made from the movie, Easy Rider). The Hait in SF or Telegraph Ave in Berkeley were more central, as was Laurel Canyon in LA. I also hung out at all those places throughout the 1970s on and off again. For me the center was Telegraph Ave in Berkeley, where I bought underground comix, books on weed, and got stoned and drank coffee with friends all day at a leather sandal shop called the Achilles Heel. In the late 1960s we would drive from Monterey to Carmel Valley to play tennis (I was raised a tennis brat by my tennis junkie mother). Before the freeway was built through Monterey, we would drive up Munras Ave over Forest Hill and down Highway 1 past Carmel, and there would be 200-300 hippies all lined up thumbing rides to Big Sur, or LA, or back up to SF. It was an amazing spectacle. We were at the epicenter of the hippie movement, especially in the summer of 1967, at the Monterey Pop Festival. A one time only gig. That was a mob scene. We lived a few miles from the Monterey Fairgrounds and I heard the entire concert from my bedroom. All I had to do was open my window and Janis was screaming at me, loudly. Jimmy Hendrix was even louder. We were spoiled rotten on rock and roll, weed, and life was good and cheap in California then. I remember going to the emergency room at Community Hospital for a knee injury, and I had an x-ray, saw a doctor, got an Rx filled, and the bill? It was 13 dollars. $13 clams! Now? Sheez, it would be $400 and change. My brother and I paid $175 a month for a 1 BR apartment on the beach in North Monterey. Later we paid $400 a month for a 2 BR house out at Asilomar in Pacific Grove. Now? That house rents for $2800 a month! I cannot go back, as I cannot afford it. I was only making $6 an hour then, but we lived like kings. Gas was what, 45 cents a gallon? I cold drive to Berkeley and back for $5 in my Chevy Malibu. Rent was month to month. Jobs were easy to get. Taxes were low. Weed was everywhere. And it was cheap. Good weed was a little more, but still dirt cheap. $20-40 a lid? And women were easy. I dated lots and lots of women. Hot tub parties were common. Parties with restaurant people were almost an every day affair. We went to lots of local rock concerts. We went to Disneyland. We went to the Golden Gate. We got stoned and went to Big Sur a lot. One time I went to Big Sur on my motorcycle (Suzuki GS 750) and I stopped at Nepenthe for a Tequila Sunset drink. Lo, they were having a zodiac party, and I ran into a hot blonde woman I knew. She asked me to dance, and one thing led to another, and I stayed with her at her place on Partington Ridge for about a month. Her place overlooked the ocean and I would sit on her deck and watch the ships sail up and down the coast. We partied all over Big Sur with friends. Finally my brother called and asked if I was still alive. I said yes. He said the owner of Rocky Point wanted me to work for him up the coast between Big Sur and Monterey. I knew the owner, and so I went to work there for a while. It was one of a dozen restaurants that I worked at as a chef.

Ah, my well spent youth. Reminds me of the song by Leon Russel, 'Back to the Island' on the Will of the Wisp album:

Well I hope you understand I just had to go back to the island
And watch the sun go down (sit and watch the sun go down)
Hear the sea roll in (listen to the sea roll in)
But I'll be thinking of you (yes, and I'll be thinking of you)
And how it might have been (thinking how it might have been)

 

[Jax Rider]

I was in Monterrey, big Sur, Carmel, etc. either the summer of 1966 or 1967 visiting friends. I had smoked my first joint in 66 and haven't stopped since. If memory serves at that time, it was $10 a lid. Mostly brick weed, but occasionally we would get some green home grown. 1967 is when we decided to plant pot in a 5 acre corn field, we didn't get to harvest because someone snitched and cops came. They couldn't prove who lived on property and just pulled up the plants and went away.

Much better pot these days but I love my old memories of a lifetime with this marvelous plant.

 

[Big Sur]

I dunno about better weed these days. I got an eighth from a guy about a month ago that grew some nice Colombian Punto Rojo and that stuff is dakine. Short zippy sativa high, just like I remember it. Some very potent stuff comes from my seeds from the late 1970s. In the late 1970s I supplied a friend of a friend in Carmel Valley with some beans, and he grew some top grade sinsemillia. He gave me an oz of his best buds as a 'thank you' for the seeds. I got the band Crazy Horse sh*t face stoned on that stuff in Santa Cruz one night with my brother, and that was one pinner among 8 people. They were too stoned to play very well after that. Now, I generally bought better than average weed through contacts and it was mostly loose tops and not brick. Mostly what I grow now are landraces, and I get super stoned on one hit on most of this stuff. Just this morning I took one hit of a Durban landrace that I grew last year, and holy crap. I had to take a hit of high CBD Sour Tsunami to level out, because I had to get stuff done today.

Several of my weed plantings outdoors in the 1970s in California were popped or ripped off. One large planting in Carmel Valley was discovered by the ranch foreman, and he pulled them all up. The owner of the ranch notified the authorities but no one was implicated. When I was living in Gilroy in the middle of a sugar beet field, some Mexican field workers ripped us off. They pulled the plants and fled. In Monterey one apartment that I was living in got broken into when I was at work. They cut every leaf off my plants growing indoors under lights. One of my ex's admitted to 'harvesting' some of my outdoor buds before they were ready, but that was only a few ozs and she was a heavy duty stoner. I grew more than enough to cover her habit.

 

[Big Sur]

So my gals are blooming nicely now. The summer has been hot so I moved them outside for most of the summer this year. Otherwise they get too stretched from the higher heat inside the GH. I had to move them back into the GHs yesterday as it started raining and is supposed to rain for several days now. No need to invite botrytis mold. The Maui is blooming pink after I light dep forced her to bloom earlier, and she has purple stripes on the stems. I bred her earlier on the week with a brother of hers. Incest is best for Puna IBL! My brother has a couple more sister Maui's. One is all green, and the other has solid purple stems. They are both blooming pink. My Durban cross last year with the Dutch Durban (with some skunk) x Landrace Durban male is motoring along. I have a group of them blooming now, and they started blooming late like my brother's Maui sisters. They have long skinny colas, like the original Durban. I bred the best smelling one with a brother, but they are dialed in and I have sibling seeds from last year, so they are not really breeders at this point. Just test grows. I also have several Mel Frank Durban 'A cut' gals and one male blooming. One of them has pink blooms as well. So there is maybe some Malawi in there? Only one is pink. I bred her and a sweet smelling sister of hers. They bloomed early on their own, starting in mid August. What else do I have going now? Oh, I have some Grape Ape x Landrace Durbans going that I crossed last year as test grows, and they are doing well. They bloom later like their father did and Durban half-sisters are now. I also have some NorCal skunks growing as a test. They are old seeds and I had to use some tricks to get them to germinate, but I have some skunky gals going now. No RKS in the lot, but that was not expected. Most NorCal skunk was skunky, not knock-down paint etching stench. But I have lots more of those seeds to play with.

 

[Big Sur]

My experiments forcing later blooming strains to bloom earlier have gone well this year. So next year it will be VietNam Black, Kerala ganja and likely a Big Sur Holy/Zacatecas Purple in the winter/spring. Then for the summer/fall run I will be growing more Lebanese to make homemade hashish with. I made a DIY hash sift tumbler and I can reduce my bud down a lot with that, as well as toss in the trim leaves. Hashishene terpene! My niece is also making skin creams and salves with my excess trim and popcorn buds steeping it in shea butter, coconut oil, cocoa butter and bees wax. That stuff is a hit with all the skin cancer in the family (including me). I can grow 10 blooming plants now under the revised local laws, as well as 12 non-blooming plants of any size, and 36 clones. So it is easy for me to do 2 runs a year now here, legally.