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dogznova unfortunately, no – but I have smoked some pretty amazing blueberry that came out of Oregon – or so I thought in the 90s.
And just as a notation because I know you are all so keen on the details – the cover of my book is actually a Train Wreck cross from Northern California and not OG.
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MrBelvedere - thank you for the breakdown!
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sanvanalona - yes – I smoke a lot actually, I really enjoyed the taste and scent of fresh or I should say, perfectly cured Cannabis every morning. I find it to be a nice way to wake up in comparison to going straight to dabs - which often happens. Although, I had a realization with much of the "dabs" that are generally available, are narcotic because they are made with varieties which are quick flowering: which was similar to the realization I had when I got to Amsterdam in 94, and realized HAZE would wake me up like a morning coffee, as up to the point I only had access to seeds from bags of (supposedly) greenhouse grown buds from Vermont in the early 80s - I spent the 80s growing something that resembles the stink of a skunk.
And of course I know Renée - she was like the opposite of Dave Richards, she wouldn't cooperate and faced prison as opposed to being part of the prosecution against me and Peter. I cannot speak about any of the strains in Vancouver during the years that she was up there, which is 98 on - I was living in California and fighting the prosecution, I self surrendered to prison January 3, 2000, and was only in touch with my friends mostly through mail, although obviously some did visit.
I would also like to point out that the Skunk is a North American animal and not native to the Netherlands - which is probably why the variety of Cannabis that they call "Skunk", smells sweet and so unlike the varieties that we call skunk in North America, which are more putrid and skunk-like. If you're reading this and you have lived in North America, then the chances are you know what it smells like to smell a skunk, it is very difficult to describe, but it is also very reminiscent to certain North American strains of Cannabis.
@soopy - I have grown
Chemdog 91 and it is close to OG and I have always thought the were related somewhere along the line: and although Chem has a better yield, OG is brighter in scent and when smoking, and also has better resin development. I get bored of toking Chem and would rather have OG. Attached is a photo of Chem that I took and grew from a cutting going around California.
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MrBelvedere I have grown the Hindu Kush from Sensi Seeds as we had a nice sample at Positronics, although I only watched it flower through 2 or 3 cycles. I was fortunate enough to grow a lot of the Dutch varieties when I was there in 96, as I was working at Posi that entire year with Ol' Ed Holloway (who turned 80 in 1996 - he was credited with teaching Wernard how to grow seedless back in the early 70s and came back as a guest in 96). And I would like to point out that the Hindu Kush in the Dutch gene pool shure does not smell like what we call OG Kush in California - as Hindu Kush sold in Europe often smells sweet - and not piney like the Hindu Kush samples that I have grown/seen in Mendocino in 94' - which I would like to also point out, also does not smell like what we call OG Kush.
My friend was just over visiting and I asked him to describe OG Kush, he also lived in LA in the 90's, and has smoked a lot of OG, he called the taste of OG Kush "Umami". I had to look it up, but I think he hit it dead on:
From Wikipedia:
Umami/uːˈmɑːmi/, a
savory taste, is one of the five
basic tastes (together with
sweet,
sour,
bitter and
salty).
So in my opinion:
Hindu Kush - from Amsterdam is sweet almost early Skunk #1-ish
Hindu Kush - from Mendocino, California is more Piney
OG. Kush is Umami - or like a combination of all tastes, it is thick and flavorful.
I have also moved away from describing varieties with the old taxonomy of Sativa & Indica - as Rob Clarke and Mark Merlin lay out the best argument I have read in Cannabis: Evolution and Ethnobotany, and that is that nobody smokes SATIVA - it is simply a Latin suffix used to describe useful plants, there is a
Lettuce Sativa L. and nobody smokes that either. The Latin suffix was attached to plants that they were finding most useful or using industrially, ya know - HEMP, so Sativa was describing industrial-use varieties being identified by farmers in Europe.
Whereas INDICA - simply means; of or like India, in fact, many items that originate from India are called "Indica". And because India was the - dare I say it - OG Cannabis capital the world - all of the drug varieties were Indica, in comparison to all of the industrial varieties being tagged with the suffix SATIVA.
Now what are we really trying to describe with the two words is more describable by how North or South the plant originated, such as a very Northern Afghan variety that flowers fast, we call INDICA, and rightly so, because India was once that entire area of the Hindu Kush Mountains and into what is now Pakistan. But if we travel South towards Goa and encountered varieties at the southernmost tip of India, they would have narrow leaves and flower for (one could say countless) weeks because they were equatorial - or simply put, acclimated closer to the equator. But it would all be INDICA, from the southernmost tip of India where Cannabis flowers in as long as 16 weeks (or forever if you are watching it) to the Hindu Kush Mountains where we find some of the shortest flowing varieties of Cannabis in the world. So all drug varieties are basically INDICA.
I would also make the argument that during the 50s and 60s, and much of the 70s, most of America was smoking equatorial varieties of Cannabis: Acapulco Gold, Thai Stick - Vietnam, Mexican, Hawaiian, Jamaican, - all high-energy Ganja, and then in the late 70s and 80s, when breeders started mixing Afghan into pretty much everything they could get their hands on, the Cannabis smoking experience became very (dear I say) polluted with Afghan genetics that produced narcotic like effects and "couch lock" became a term to describe how you felt when you smoked really strong herb. Why? Because growers were looking for the fastest, fattest flowers they could grow. Quick, high yield indoor Cannabis was definitely a product of prohibition, and now that we are seeing quasi-legalization, I would just like to make the argument that people should start looking at setting up perpetual flowering systems and growing flowers that take longer than 8 to 10 weeks to flower. There is a whole new world to be found in Cannabis in some of these later flowering varieties, but the market has to be open-minded and start judging Cannabis not on what it looks like, but instead on how it feels.
I also think that we should start judging cannabis more upon its cannabinoid and terpene ratios and less upon it's flowering time and yield. As some of my favorite varieties are equatorial and will never deliver the same yield of more commercial cannabis, but I really don't care either. I would rather have the high-energy, complexity of an equatorial variety than almost any Northern, quick flowering variety.
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MrBelvedere Unfortunately I have never had my Cannabis returned after a raid and sadly I have lost genetics that are irreplaceable. I will attach a before and after photo of my old mother room, it just sucks and that is why I really recommend people share their genetics with their friends so that if something bad happens to your garden, you can go back around to your friends and gather up your favorite genetics and dust yourself off and start all over.
I hope I got everybody's questions – thank you everybody for the kindness and happy gardening!
