thenotsoesoteric
Well-Known Member
Interesting article.
Exchanged a few emails with SpeesCees last week and I look forward to making my 1st order with him.18 years ago, shortly after I quit at a coffeeshop and the menu rarely changed, a friend I used to hang with in coffeeshops bought Afghani in another city. It smelled extremely fuel-like, not everyone actually liked it. Apart from haze and orange there wasn't a whole lot of variation taste-wise so it was a weird one. It left a strong taste on my lips. We smoked that for about half a year till it was no longer available. Afghani was, but not that pheno. "Afghaan" was (still is in many shops) the blackest darkest soft hash available, cheap stuff that smokes like tar. Hash you don't heat up before crumbling but role into thin threads. Many shops then never sold afghani so thought we were idiots/trolls for asking for afghani 'weed', instead of hash...
Anyway, I found out recently it was likely a skunk x afghani cross and not a pure afghani. Which...... makes me wonder if I could recreate it. That would be like time traveling. I can buy afghani seeds, but would still have to hunt and have a shit load of luck to find a similar pheno, if even possible.
Afghani also happens to be one of the few strains people grow outdoors in NL, because of it's short flowering time, but also because it despite our crappy outdoor season creates fairly dense buds. Afghani is in fact for many many crosses, hybrids, strains and pollen chucks out there the strain that sourced chunky calyxes. It's like the opposite of haze, short flowering, not a lot of taste, indica, chunky calyxes.
Tried to fix this HPS shot a little (sensi's afghani grown by someone 5 years ago). Beautiful calyx to leaf ratio.
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The largest dutch grow forum goes back 11 years, going through some old grow journals... Couple of other popular oldies I surprisingly didn't encounter in my lineage research earlier.
NLX = clone only (chuck) from Northern Light x White Widow.
K2 = White Widow x Hindu Kush (nirvana, easy big yielder for beginners).
Santa Maria = (SM clone x (Silver Pearl x Mex Haze). From No Mercy (the name makes so much sense now... took me only 8 years to figure that one out....). Now at F8 (it's actually a back cross), 13 times cup winner.
The SM clone:
"Santa Maria is a variety of marijuana stemming from the Brazilian Amazon where it has been used in a spiritual context. The distribution in Holland of the real Santa Maria clones was done by the former Highlife-magazine chief editor, Bernt Gundersen, because he was bringing his new `found` clones of a strain that is worldwide known by now... to No Mercy Supply... to Cees."
And look at this.... SpeesCees is apparently one of the few breeders who 'gets' F1 hybrids.
"Don't make a mistake about a well grown F1 hybrid. Often those are the plants with exceptional vigor, the positive result of a cross of two heavily inbred and selected varieties. In other words: F6 x F6 = F1 hybrid.
Sometimes it seems like they received a blood transfusion. There's a good reason why so many F1 hybrids are sold in the commercial flower and vegetable seed business. Double inbreeding, selecting and then crossing after 6-7 generations remains the most succesful formula up to this day. Naturally the parents of that F1 seed remain in the seed bank because breeding from F1 hybrid seed creates a mixture of all kind of things; they are not stable and all sorts of progenitors may show up. From which a seed bank would benefit of course."
I may have mentioned this before, SpeesCees is a bit unnuanced sometimes. That F6 can be F4 or F8 as well, depends on what was crossed initially and the genetic make up of the selected plants. Either way, it's 'naturally" impossible to release dozens of quality hybrids per year... unless you "borrow" someone else stable lines, or just screw the quality part and chuck together unstable lines.
Silver Pearl... now there's a name I haven't heard for a while. Early Pearl x Skunk #1 x Northern Lights, by Sensi. Silver Pearl is a parent of another well known coffeeshop classic bred by Speescees, called Snow White.
The main reason No Mercy isn't that well known and as popular as some others is cause, ironically, he's a real breeder, not in it for the money. He's also one of THE pioneers when it comes to feminized seeds and is the 12/12-from-seed-evangelist.
"We don't have big glossy brochures, we don't wear company clothing, we hardly give away anything for free, we don't drive flashy cars... but we are the cheapest, hand out reliable information and guarantee our quality."
None of the above are recommendations... just contemplating my next project, looking for unspoiled germplasm. And no that won't be from speescees gear even though he does have some nice stuff.
I don't know Florian. Pretty sure Cees is Cees, or at least Kees. Speaking of dutch origins ( ) it's the possible source of "Yankees". Yankee is Jan Kees, which are two of the most common dutch names combined. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee#Dutch_originsExchanged a few emails with SpeesCees last week and I look forward to making my 1st order with him.
Correction: It was Florian that I spoke with. Same person?
I told Florian everything I'm doing and what I'm wanting to do and he said he thought that each strain they have would be fine but to start with No Mercy Special. I think I'm just going to order all of them. I have a new setup I'm building I'll probably unveil in my journal soon. It's something I thought of myself but then discovered that Heath Robinson invented the basic premise. Either way I'm stoked to be building it and will share more details soon. And btw Sat, my Arduino Mega 2560 board as well as whole bunch of other goodies came today which will become an integral part of the new setup.Fun fact addendum to above post, that fuel afghani was from this coffeeshop - notice the name...
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Still exists, but now a sandwich/coffeeshop... it's on the other side of the country, don't know if they actually sell mj still, don't think so, considering selling food in a coffeeshop is not allowed. It's from the time I travelled the country for 'parties', this particular shop was open till late in the night, closed for only a couple of hours, and then opened again for the 'gabbers' (ravers) who were still awake on Sunday morning.
I don't know Florian. Pretty sure Cees is Cees, or at least Kees. Speaking of dutch origins ( ) it's the possible source of "Yankees". Yankee is Jan Kees, which are two of the most common dutch names combined. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee#Dutch_origins
Anyway, that's great, which one are you going to order? The SM? I read he renamed it out of respect for the original SM. I would love to see some more of his strains being grown. The local forum is owned by Sannie and while not necessarily intentional that does create a bias.
I initially learned a lot from reading posts from a guy, atmo(sphere) (which could be Florian irl, although florian isn't a dutch name..., maybe and english representative), who helped speescees with his forum when they sort of left the main local forum. The first seeds I bought are from Speescees, his Desert Queen. One of the reason I like bringing him up (when relevant of course ) is that I personally had some bad influence on the popularity of that strain. I was one of the first to grow it in the local forums, and got hermies... I clearly stated I didn't blame him or the strain and was likely from nurture (although the healthiest plants I've grown in soil period) but hermaphobia is widely spread here so it obviously didn't help the rep of the strain
Desert queen:
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The hermie at the bottom left I lollipopped (the bottom had hermie/male flowers) and flowered out to become a lovely cola with zero nanners, which in hindsight (8 years ago...) shows again it was likely nurture and not nature.
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Desert Queen is based on the silver pearl, NLX, K2 I mentioned above, Mindbender (KC 2 x KC 30 x Afghani) and Sudden Death. Which probably means little to nothing to most people here, which is exactly why some may find his strains very interesting. I can't recommend the strain, not because of the hermies, but because it just didn't taste as good as I like mj to.
I picked up those seeds at his home and he showed me some of his grow op. Has tons of stories, didn't stop talking till he spent at least 10 minutes on selecting the seeds for me, with a loupe...
Sounds great man. Heath is one of the two persons that brought me to reading threads at RIU (other being Earl). I got an arduino for about a year now but never ended up using it for anything more than temp and humidity. Goal was to at least use those sonar sensors to measure the level of the nutrient solution in a rez (by pointing it at a small floating surface around a small tube/cylinder to prevent it from floating away). I look forward to seeing your new setup, especially with multiple no mercy strains. I'm curious to see how, or if, they can measure up to some of the popular hybrids today.I have a new setup I'm building I'll probably unveil in my journal soon. It's something I thought of myself but then discovered that Heath Robinson invented the basic premise. Either way I'm stoked to be building it and will share more details soon. And btw Sat, my Arduino Mega 2560 board as well as whole bunch of other goodies came today which will become an integral part of the new setup.
I don't think so...we were discussing it but I don't recall any pics.@Hot Diggity Sog: Did I not post a pic of SM the previous time we talked about it? I remember buying some but don't know if I posted a pic.
Actually... I need to some new rolling paper, back in 30 min, going to buy some classics...
dont we all? >View attachment 3390400 View attachment 3390391
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. wish I had way more space.
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I'm rather surprised with their uniformity so far honestly, which is why I don't want to move forward to F4 without growing more F3. There's some variation between the lines but I think a beginner would - at this point - only recognize two 'phenos'. Too soon to tell of course but I'm genuinely surprised.how is the uniformity of the F3 compared to the F2? still pretty variable?