Buy Santa Marta Colombian Gold Seeds
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Well lets start at the beginning.
I grew my first Santa Marta Colombian Gold cannabis plant in 1969. I got the seeds from a kilo of ‘redbud’ that I had procured. Cannabis was generally fully seeded and fully mature in those days. No one here in the USA grew cannabis to speak of…..Certainly none was grown for bud to sell. And no one grew indoors either.
I lived in Southern Oregon at the time at nearly 4500 ft. above sea level. Needless to say, not the latitude one could successfully grow a long season tropical Sativa like plant like the Colombian Gold.
The growing season there was about 31/2 months. The Santa Marta Gold plants I grew got to about 6 ft. tall, and were very bushy, as they were about 6 ft. in diameter as well.
As fall approached the plants just barely began to flower, then the first frost brought an end to the grow. We didn’t know any better so we smoked the leaves, and basically got a sore throat.
I remember the plants were big, robust, healthy, and impressive. Thin Sativa like leaves, and very slow to flower, just what you would expect from a tropical Sativa.
Fast forward to today….
I have made it my passion to bring back some of those ‘old school’ cannabis strains of yesterday. So the pheno hunt has begun! I have grown Santa Marta seeds several times now, and can seed several distinct pheno-types. Some have asked how….if this is a Landrace Sativa strain…there can be ANY different pheno-types?? Well, what has happened is the Colombia Gold has been crossed….there in Colombia! The actual pure Santa Marta Colombian Gold of days gone by may be gone forever.
I can however try to isolate a pheno-type that is as close as I can get to the original genetics…..just like the plants I grew so long ago. And I am having some success…..
I found several pheno-types while growing out many of these plants….one has large leaves like an Indica dominate plant, and one is short and stocky. Both of these pheno-types are quick to flower, and are basically almost ready to harvest before my chosen pheno-type has gotten into full flower!
The pheno-type I have chosen is very Sativa dominate, and takes a long time to flower just as it should. These plants are very tall, slender, and have the thinner Sativa like leaves. I think this plant is close to the original.
I am propagating it as we speak. I have just one female, and one male….once their seed is mature I will produce enough to sell on this site. These will be F2’s and I will see if they breed true….if so, I think I will be close, and satisfied I have achieved my goal.
Then I will move on to my next project….Panama Red….
Here is the legend to help with the pic in the next comment…
Colombian Gold, as we oldtimers know it, holds a special place in my heart. When I started toking in ’74, my older stepbrother gave me seeds from ’72. I will be running those again in the next year or two. Like you, I live in the mountains of Colorado, around 7000′. So, yes I do understand the short season.. My solution is to start indoors around Feb 1, under 20/4 or 18/6, depending on the plant. Depending on the weather I move them outside around the 2nd-3rd week of May… Out every morning at 8 am and into my dark room at 7pm, again depending on the plant. Roller bases help. I know this ritual is rough and mistakes are costly with sativas, Herms if you aren’t regular or mess up the timing… This gives me peak summer sun for 3-4 months of flowering. I always have to finish in the greenhouse with lights to obtain a solid finish… It might not help in your neck of the woods, but you never know. I think you don’t get much sun.
Just wondering about something… You said Red Bud was your source… that is Punto Rojo, not Santa Marta. unless you are sun-curing, the color probably remains green. Only my Llanera, Colombian Black, shows color during growth… Looks pretty much like my Vietnamese Black and my Congo Black, just not quite as strong. However, there seem to be Purple phenos in Mango Biche and Punto Rojo. The Purple Highlands pheno from Punto Rojo is the mother of Purple Haze crossed with Old Timers Haze… This is another I will grow out soon.
In answer to the question of Landraces having Phenos, I don’t know of any that do not. 6-8 phenos are common in many Indicas a sativas alike. If a grower want to keep this diversity in their seeds, it requires large grows 25-50 plants. By the time mutants are thinned and some die, I am usually around the 20-25 zone. I have to thin to 24 anyway to fit my licensed count.
Just the Colombian sisters alone have Lowland and Highland phenos with some additional ones in the mix. Punto Rojo has at least three. Purple Highlands, El Dorado and the Red Bud. Like many Afghans, Pakistanis, and Indian strains, there are CBD phenos to be found in a huge percentage of landrace strains. BTW the highland phenos are usually the stronger and the lowland phenos are usually where you find CBD phenos and the calmer high. Seems like higher altitudes enhance the psychedelic and Clarity of mind… I will let you know when I run Santa Marta again… I have her from multiple sources, but most will not pass examination. Those that do will be manually pollinated branch by branch. I only expect my pre-’72s to win out and my seeds are never mixed upon harvest. Any newly sourced are kept separate, even if they do pass examination… Testing will show the strains in common
I will attach a test strip pic so you can look at my last run of an afghan from the Balkh province. Two on the left card tested very impressive CBD/THC levels. The top row is CBD.
You obviously have alot of knowledge concerning breeding cannabis, and the breeds that are out there, and I appreciate your imput. I basically buy seeds and produce seeds from those, I try to assure he seeds are what they are suppose to be (I have testers grow them out), but that of course can be difficult. I have been accused of being a pollen chucker, and I suppose that is true to a point, I simply do not have the time nor resources to really get into the breeding end of things, I simply want to produce, and sell seeds that produce quality plants for my customers. That is my mission.
We are acquainted, as we had a conversation a few years back. I have felt a kindred spirit in you and what you just said rings so true. I have hundreds of strains in the freezer. Well over 100 Landrace strains. Some extremely rare with age in the ’70s and late ’60s. Unfortunately, more recent acquisitions still have issues from the Hippy Trails that spread hybrid contamination throughout the world of cannabis. I traveled the world twice between 1979 and 1984. I obtained seeds in almost every port… Many of the African strains, Afghanis, Pakistani, even Sri Lanka ( Sinbands Isle of jewels) . My older Asian strains were brought home from Nam and Thailand in the early ’70s.
I can give you a story for every strain, but that is not for this conversation..
Jerry, I’m over 60 now and the realization is really hitting me. I will never have enough time to grow out even half of the landraces in my freezer. Colorado has cracked down on 99-count growers. I now pay around $500 to get a 48 count. and that may drop to 28 soon. At 99, I could grow out 4 strains at a time, after thinning to 25.
I have been trying to build a coalition to work my strains… As I said earlier and as you well know, it takes 4-8 generations to purify a contaminated strain… I am really sad That I don’t have enough years left to complete this mission.
I need a small army of devoted apprentices to make this dream come true, a dream I shared with my best friend as a teen. He has been gone for years and every year I know less and less people. I wrote about that dream a little here. You can also look at the Balkhi grow if you search it. I think you might have seen this one already…
https://www.seedsman.com/us-en/blog/confessions-of-a-cannabis-growing-preacher
So, my friend, Hold on to that dream because it is a good dream. I have picked up a few of those strains you are proud of and I hope to get the chance to see them finish out… They are kind of like an old Dutch strain I procured a few years back when the seed vault released them for a short while… A really old IBL called the Viking,. Probably a nice strain but insignificant compared to 2 of my 5 Thai Stick strains from the Issan District and the Burmese Thai Stick grown in the same region but just across the Mekong. Thai In Issan was almost wiped out by the government purge. But the same strain was being grown across the river where the government never intervened… Two beautiful strains but one is more pure because of a border… My list of strains grows faster than I can keep up with.
Some would call it an obsession to have ALL the Colombian sisters in their freezer. including phenos Like Purple Highlands or the rarely heard of sister Corinto… Do you stop preserving just because you’ll never live long enough to see them all in their full glory? No, you keep collecting and saving for the future… My kid shows an interest, so maybe I will be blessed to pass on the dream to her.
I think you get the idea, Just do your best and forget the rest…
Live Free
Johnny THCeeds
Good stuff Johnny, I love passion! Everybody should be passionate about something! Life is too short to not have something that excites to to wake up to in the mornings! Ahhh, to travel like you have in search of landrace cannabis strains! I have only made a few trips abroad, and was able to get my hands on some seeds, but sadly was disappointed with the outcome.
If you would like to share some more of that passion, you could have a platform on my blog if you wish.
As my life has come to a major turn, I have begun to work towards this dream. I have been a preacher in one of the strictest fundamental Churches for almost 30 years. When God made it clear to me that I was not offending Him with cannabis, but I was breaking man’s law at that time and that was an offence. I stopped growing until the law changed. However, God never hindered my ability to find and preserve the rapidly vanishing Landraces that fire my passion. Poly-hybridism was rapidly overwhelming the country. Every wannabe grower was trying to create some new superstrain, by mixing some other poly-hybrids together.
I know that by now you know that high THC does not equate to Higher High… In fact, it seems to have created a very low ceiling to the high… Many just give you lockjaw and paranoia…
When researching the best way to run Thai and Vietnamese strains, a few years back, I ran across an old DEA record that showed seizure reports on (Issan)Thai Stick. At its highest point in 1977, it tested in at a whopping 12% THC… Considering that the majority of Colombians were around 6% and good old Mexican weed topped out at 3%, I remember that year well. It was the last time I got my grubbies on a Thai Stick. We used to think it was soaked in opium but later knowledge proved otherwise, It was just awesome weed. We only rolled pinners that would get 3 guys a couple of hits… We were in for the night. The first time I grew out one of Afghans from one of my journeys… I was hooked for life.
An old friend came by not long after that harvest and I gave him a nice bong hit and put it away… Being used to Cartel weed he was bummed that I only gave him one hit… Despite my warning, I gave in and gave him a second hit, he headed home before it fully hit (15-20 minutes of creeper).(A 15 minute walk in our small town). The next day he was at my door early… His story has been a point of humor for years… He got lost on his walk home and his 15-minute walk turned into a 5-hour journey of just plain old forgetting where he was going and being distracted by flowers and nature.
These younger generations have never experienced the purity and power of these Old School, lower THC Landraces. This might be the old preacher coming out, but I think God knew what he was doing when he made the originals. No hybrid has ever impressed me like that. With my PTSD, most just make me want to dig a hole and bury myself to get away from whatever I am terrified of. (paranoia will destroy ya!!!)
I will write for you because I believe you see what I see. Maybe, like me, you are through with the ‘Dirty High’ from these ‘Motor Head’ poly-hybrids. Even those you do have appear to be headed towards IBL status… Stable Chemistry = Stable High. It took my MIT Botanist buddy to explain why the unstable chemistry of Hybrids makes a ‘dirty high’ filled with paranoia and panic. Plus it takes about 7+ generations to stabilize chemistry enough to be seen as an IBL. Fortunately, some very smart farmers have realized their mistake and have set up preservation collectives all over the world. They have set up rigid controls in their fields to weed out the bad weed…lol. Still a ways to go but it’s working.
As I get my new greenhouse constructed this year I will document that process for an article… Or series…(slowing down in my old age…lol ) Anything of yours I grow will be documented for an article you can use… I do not wish to use any article with more than one platform so I will try to get you something once or twice a year… As to a DEAR Johnny THCeeds Blog… I’m sure we can collaborate on the advice aspect… There are few mistakes I haven’t made and if I don’t have the answer, I probably know someone who might…
COVID ended my Church 3 years ago, and in a couple of days, I will sign the papers that will let that building and life pass on… I will become a virtual preacher and the head of a small nonprofit that will use the proceeds from my building to help the surviving families weather the storms of a single-income family with a double-income life.
To be honest, I often avoid responding on blogs because I get inundated with responses and get involved with the community. I get a mixed response… Some absorb information like a sponge and others troll through with adverse remarks instead of useful critique… I’m smart enough, at this point, to know I don’t have every answer… I can only speak to my failures and help others to avoid those paths… But I also want to encourage an information exchange that will help all who participate… even when it proves me wrong… I live for critique and welcome any. Maybe that will work for you.
I am a bit wordy… if you couldn’t tell. But I’m a storyteller and that makes for good reading.
Give me until mid-June to get my transition settled and we will get started with the new Greenhouse design that will include a Landrace-sized darkroom on the west end. We can work out an idea on the blog, even though it will probably take on a life of its own. My Email box is flooded daily but I will watch for your mail and do a search for your mail every couple of days, in case I miss something. No rush… for now.
Sent pic of Johnny THCeeds
Live free
Johnny
Let’s collaborate some, I think you have alot of knowledge to share, I would agree about the old school landraces, I too have experience with all the strains around in the 60’s, 70’s until now. Grew my first Colombia Gold, and Panama Red in 1968, I was 16. Both would just start to flower by the time winter would arrive at 4500 ft above sea level where I lived. Thai stick was always a favorite. The very first weed I ever bought was from a friend who shipped it back from Vietnam…5 lbs of bud ready to roll joints with. He sold us 3ozs (we weighed it later) for 10 bucks. I laughed so hard on that pot I would nearly pull a stomach muscle! Those were the days my friend…
if you ever need an apprentice iwould be willing to take that on if youll have me
Hey Jerry, It’s me again…after a lot of trial and error, I’ve come across what I think to be the ultimate strain (variety) for me…it’s the green pheno of Panama Red. I believe the link I provided is for the green pheno…because the red pheno is Myrcene dominant. My question…how are you doing on your Panama Red…??? Bloom time 12-16 weeks ??? Impossible to isolate green pheno without cloning ?
I have just grown out those seeds once Barney. I noticed some of the flowers had pink hairs and some white, is this what you are referring to? I had a customer send me images of some flowers he grew out the had alot of pink in the hairs. That sounds right for the flowering time. And you could isolate certain characteristics of a strain by selective breeding, the best way to do that would be to grow out 100’s of plants, unfortunately I can only grow 15 here where I live so that makes it more difficult.
I just purchased a couple of these seed packs. I’m working on a new/larger tent setup for these long flowering/tall sativas. Can’t wait for that experience! Feedback will be left when it happens. On a side note, have you had any luck isolating any good Panama Red phenos? I’d definitely pick up a bunch of “The Real Panama Red?”
I have only grown those seeds out once, and all the plants were very similar. Tall, nice tight nugs, bigger leaves then I would have thought, but def nice plants.
Hey Jerry, hope this finds you, it’s 2 years old…everything you just wrote above here rang my bells…I’m currently in seedling stage of my Santa Marta Gold (World of Seeds) , because why would I grow what I can buy in the dispensaries..??? You had me at that…now you’re heading to Panama…please email me back…it’ll be worth your time…
Ok, Barney, email is sent…
God speed Jerry! You have given me hope. My ‘Lumbo Gold memories began in ’74 and lasted until ’81. The memories are sharp to this day, of the joy this weed gave me. It was a pure treasure to behold, even before lighting one up. I’ve only begun my quest, and someday hope to get some seeds again!
I hope my seeds measure up to your memories Fred!I will continue to try to isolate prototypes that are consistent with our memories. And will likely buy seeds from other seed banks to look at those genetics as well.
I’m curious the Real Santa Marta Gold. At the point of flowering does the buds have a gold color ? To them
I don’t know that they do Tori, I think it might be more in reference to the finished product….back in the day it was sold in fully seeded kilos. I first grew this plant in 1968, it was a very long season tropical Sativa, so that is what I am shooting for on this pheno hunt. I will be growing F3’s this next time around, and these are the epitome of that long season Sativa.
Sorry to get into this so far after the beginning. You will not know the true color until you cure the finished buds. HOWEVER, even then it depends on the cure… In our day the weed was cut in the fields by the whole plant and then piled in huge piles exposed to the sun that were constantly rotated to get an even cure… The color came as a result of chlorophyll evaporating as the plants steam dried… With the ‘green’ evaporated the true colors would come out. Ranging from a lighter green to reds, golds, blacks, and purples.
To be honest, black and red can show during growth… I have a black strain that is quite striking with its dark black buds and bright green foliage… I might have some pics, but not sure…
Purple will result in many strains with cold weather and now with new Quantum LED tech. I attached a photo that shows the LED effect.
I have spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how to sun-cure small quantities… Not like I have a field full to try it with…lol Still haven’t figured it out with my smaller trials. Some Troll might tell you that it wastes THC by the same heat/evaporation and that is true… But it is insignificant compared to the resulting connoisseur-grade smoke… We are talking about a stash you want to bury your head in, not to mention flavor and aroma that you will NEVER find in a dispensary where the weed smells like gasoline and burns your eyes… I think I spent more time with my nose in the bag than I ever did smoking the stash… I am sure Jerry can tell you about those memories… With the Colombian government getting on board with growing programs, who knows, it might just happen again…
Till then…
Live Free
Johnny