With the advent of the internet, and a recent push back indoors due to shelter in place orders in almost every state, many growers are returning to a long forgotten hobby. Participating in online forums and connecting with a community from their past.
In the early days of online communities and message boards there were really two sites that stood head and shoulders above the rest in the cannabis community, GrassCity and THCFarmer. While TokeCity was also a highly popular forum, it is much more focused on connecting glass artists with glass collectors and not on cultivating cannabis.
With the rise in popularity of these forums many breeders saw an opportunity to capitalize on the audience and moved to be an online presence, which did include showing off their wears. As a result many growers were able to connect with seed banks, breeders, and other ground growers to source genetics that they wouldn’t have normally had access to in their circle. This helped not only build a greater sense of community, but also helped progress the genetics of cannabis to what they are today. This also had an unintended, but still positive, effect on the community. It allowed people to build new memories with the plant.
Fast forward almost 2 decades to 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. The war on drugs has raged on for cannabis farms the entire time, in some form or fashion, and many people lost genetics that they once loved to grow. Whether they were lost from the hubris of age, the war on drugs, or unforeseen catastrophes, is irrelevant, but what is relevant are the memories. With growers returning to online forums and reconnecting with a community once thought lost there seems to be a resurgence of looking for those strains and cuts from their golden years in cannabis.
Two strains that always seem to echo through the chambers of online forums are NL #5 (Northern Lights #5) and Skunk #1. Everyone that was around U.S. grown cannabis in the 90’s and 00’s has a story about one or both strains it seems, and unsurprisingly everyone that grew back then had the best cut around (insert Uncle Rico joke here). While it’s undeniable that both strains played a prolific role in what many people consider quality cannabis genetics today, there is one aspect that is equally as undeniable when talking about these two strains. That aspect is that time makes fools of us all.
As growers acquire cuts and seeds of strains long lost, like NL #5 and Skunk #1, with plans and aspirations of running them in their facility it’s important to remember that sometimes the past comes with a rose colored lens. Some growers from that time period may remember the Skunk #1 as combination of hot rubber and burning tennis ball funk that could choke a skunk, but is that really Skunk #1? An equal number of growers will turn around and say “no, no, no, Skunk #1 had a heavy floral almost rotten fruit smell to it.” However, when it comes to dollars and cents it’s important to know if the legends from the past are as good as once thought.
With Viridian Science’s crop cycle management tool it is easy to know if they are performing to the standard. With crop cycle management you are able to track not only the amount of nutrients, man power, and resources it takes to produce a particular strain. With this and Viridian’s robust analytics you will be able to compare the performance of beloved strains from days past against new poly-hybrid strains that have taken the market place by storm.
