Jamaican Ganja
The cultural lines lie deep in this Island that is a historic center of cannabis use. Again thanks Motaco and Reefer
Jamaica is well known for ganja, and for good reason. Supposedly the Jamaican weed growing culture started when escaped slaves ran so far into the mountains that they could no be pursued and lived an isolated existence; growing African and Indian sativas and living off the land.
Regardless of it's origin the popularity in Jamaica is undeniable and far older and more intrisic than most other cultures on this side of the world. In the fifties and even earlier Jamaica was one of very few suppliers of marijuana to the US. During the 60s Jamaican was one of few exotics available along with Acapulco Gold. Since it is an island and thus fairly easy to control around '73 it was used as a test for marijuana eradication and was very successful. Mass crops were targeted and hit hard, and the genes to the famous Lambs Bread or Kali weed was hit hard. Throughout much of the 70's and 80's Jamaican "semi sensi" was an extra exotic on the market, but made no substantial contribution to the total of pot America smoked. Noted more for the size of it's buds than for it's potency in the later years. However in it's heyday the Jamaican sativa was an energetic and spicy smoke. A neon green poker straight plant 3-9 feet high, with light branching towards the top. The smoke was energetic and upbeat, powerfully contemplative, with very little body stone or sedation to it. Supposedly a breed of Indian and African sativas.
Due to its year round photoperiod Jamaica has 3 harvest seasons per year. Two short and one long. It's worth mentioning that if you are going to jamaica in search of sativas. Don't go in winter as you would expect like at a higher latitude. That is actually their conclusion to the shortest season and is full of immature 50 day flowered from seed lolly pop indica buds. the nugs are 5 inches long with a gram on the end of half leaf and you can see the roots at the bottom of the stem. If you want sativas you should go around april when plants have had 4 months to cycle instead of a month and a half. This is the season they grow their larger higher yielding plants that can have a veg cycle. In winter they grow mini super fast indicas to get a quick harvest, but it sucks...
JAMAICAN STRAINS. NOW AND THEN.
In Jamaica when you flower sativas from seed they grow one main cola, and minimal side branching. Jamaicas grow climate causes this to happen naturally. Plants flower at or almost immediately after sprouting. So its no surprise acclimated Jamaican ganja looks like this. Pictures of jamaican patches often look like a little outdoor SOG. Stony weed was referred to as Kali herb (goddess of destruction), and other terms such as "lambs bread" or "breath" (depending who you ask) were also common terms. A common myth is that Jamaican strains smell and taste earthy and smoky. This is not true at all it simply has to do with primitive curing procedures which we'll get into later. Fresh native ganja is usually very sweet, fruity and floral. It should be, because it is mainly from the same dutch stock we are all familiar with.
Today native Jamaicans are harder and harder to find. In the 80's visitors continually brought over dutch genes which were faster and stonier. Since they stay short and are harder to see from helicopters, and finish so quick these small hybrids yielding a few grams to an ounce became what makes up the mainstay of Jamaican ganja today.
The nations growers have simple breeding techniques and accidental open pollination occurs often. It is hard for growers to keep lines pure. Jamaicans were used to 90-120 day sativas that grew tall, were heat and pest resistant, and didn't need much ferts, and yielded 1-4 ounces a piece. Todays average Jam ganja grows between 2-4ft, and flowers for about 70 days, and yields about 1/2-2 ounces. They are much more prone to mold, and require more tending. Although it is not likely to change the market many growers plea for tourists to bring sativa genes back to them. African, South American, etc. Really just any good sativas, they don't care if its kali mist of good mexican bagseed. Common dutch genes they received include several repeating names, such as ice, afghani, northern lights, and purple star, and skunk are common in gardens and replaced sativas. During the one long growing season sativas are better suited but many growers have lost their old lines. The more sativa looking lines left on the island appear to be mostly Colombian in origin according to recent visitors. Today the dealers call weed whatever is selling to tourists best. Even Diesel or Trainwreck although that is not what it is. However a handful of strains are there and are sold by name. Blue mountain sativa and a handful of other natives are still kept pure by some rastas supposedly. Although sativas are missed, the growers do appreciate the short, and fast turnover and increased number of harvest the indicas offer and they will now always make up a substantial part of the harvest. At any rate pay attention to the bud, not what it is being called....
GROWING AND STORING METHODS
Jamaica has the same kinda helicopter patrols and snitches like the states. For growers to combat this they have done the same thing they do in NorCal. Very few big patches. It's an army of dedicated small growers spread out everywhere and they can't be stopped. When its all put together it makes their country full of weed.
Jamaican growers have resorted to lugging thousands of lbs of soil through jungles and swamps, building raised soil beds in marshes, or planting on steep rocky cliffs with dams under the plants to catch water. Rarely are patches larger than 2 acres, with most of them being about a half an acre. An area is chosen and usually burned of vegetation and stumps, this is in part a problem of the islands deforestation. only 30% of the island is forested now and that is in part due to slash and burn techniques.
The rocky shallow soil is pick axed into holes and amended with quality soil and ferts. Then they build something to collect and store rainwater. Not an easy task and once its done they usually stay at the same spot for many years. Jamaicans are big on organic ferts and frequently use bat guano, blood, various different types of shit and anything else you can imagine.
jamaican admiring his work on a steep hill
Unfortunately despite being adept at grow techniques drying and curing is still a very primitive process for most jamaican growers. Probably less than 1/4 of the growers know how to properly dry and store weed for their climate conditions. This is what attributes to a lot of the negative stereotypes about Jamaican weed. Many of the growers simply machete chop the stem at the base above the soil line and just hang upside down. With no leaves removed, full stem and stalk, and the plants hanging closely next to one another in the high humidity it takes FOREVER for plants to dry like this and much is lost to mold. Some noticed they dried faster and without mold if they hung them in open sun, which deteriorates trichomes quickly and turns buds brown, others started drying in sheet metal shacks in the sun which are like an oven. Then they simply store it in bags. Another common technique is to hang buds close to an open fire which is a quick way of drying and attributes to many of the "smoky" sterotypes of Jamaican herb smells.
But there are wise growers in the woods that learned and have great kind bud and know how to properly dry and store it in the humid climate. To do so they trim buds into small branches, split the stems for drying, and remove all large leaves. Left in open breezy shady areas the weed dries just fine. After being trimmed to their liking they store by burying in water proof containers like buckets or ice chests. Weed will stay perfect like this well past the next harvest. Many growers live year round with their plants and tend them everyday, but it doesn't stop the quick deterioration rates of weed in heat, and the ignorance that comes with failed infrastructure, and lack of electricity for anything including AC. So it is no surprise there are alot of dealers looking to sell the cheap over abundant schwag to someone dumb enough to take it. So make sure you choose wisely. Dank is certainly available to be had when a proper grower produced it.
COMMERCIAL JAMAICAN
Unlike the situation in Mexico the Jamaican weed is usually not brought in by cartels. Or if it is they operate under enough privacy that they don't make waves. Jamaican weed import is a tiny fraction of what it once was. the distance and no border makes it alot harder to get shipments in. Entrepreneurs in speed boats, as well as smugglers lining the bottoms of boxes in fishing boats, and shipping containers, usually are freelancing it. Buying it with their own money and smuggling it at their own risk to private markets. They usually choose the weed they want from several growers, whittle it off the giant stems they sell it on, brick it and ship it. I understand that now in the dragging on of the Iraq war and the low troop levels many resources have been allocated to other places. The US government knows there is no real terrorist threat so they took many of the people and agencies who were riding around primarily for show in the gulf and put them in the OTHER gulf. With less people doing drug interdiction activities I hear brave souls in speed boats have regained some popularity. But it simply can't come through in the amounts without the organization and dedication of a large cartel.
The entire Caribbean shares most of the same strains and the best spot for collecting Caribbean bagseed in the US would have to be south florida hands down.
**************************************************************
Refers post about Jamaican Lamb's Bread:
Another of the fabled, almost lost cannabis strains is Jamaican Lamb's Bread (often confused with Jamaican Lamb's Breath). Jamaican Lamb's Bread is getting increasingly difficult to find in Jamaica or anywhere else on earth, due to the influx, popularity and profitability of the modern feminized cannabis strains which are mostly hybrid sativa/indica crosses from Dutch growers. Rumor has it that serious medicinal marijuana growers from Hawaii have kept the strain pure and very much alive but the thing is that it takes longer to grow, often produces less than the modern cannabis strains and it's not a common name in the marketplace. Except for real weed connoisseurs, Rastafarian's and some Jamaican's this magnificent strain is all but lost.
My own experience with Lamb's Bread goes way, way back to when I was in Port Antonio in Jamaica, once made famous by Errol Flynn and his Hollywood friends. I was staying at at an old hotel up on the hill overlooking the town, where at the time, even the bar staff would bring you good weed but if it weren't for a local that I befriended I may have never heard of Lamb's Bread, however to this day I can remember that the characteristics of this fabulous weed were far and away above the common grade of grass that could be bought just about anywhere at anytime. Bright green and sticky, as soon as you saw it you knew there was something special about this legendary herb. There's even a strain of similar origin called "Bob Marley's Lamb's Bread" but I suspect it's the same genealogy and just named as such for his famous quote:
De ability what de herb 'ave ya call lamb's bread. Some a dem ya call Bethlehem's bread. ~ Bob Marley
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following is not just textual info its based on my own (jspun's) trip to the region in ''06
Carribean
Went on a cruise to the carribean in the fall of 2006. Went to St. Thomas, Antigua, St Maarten/St Martin, Barbados, and, one of the British Virgin Islands, I think it was Virgin Gorda or Tortola. Scored in St. Thomas from a white expat from the US Mailand with blond dreads. He was a roadie for a local regae band. The bud was a good sack of bud that was brown with yellow golden hairs. I remember the carribean buds on this trip all had a similar spicy taste in common in addition to the other characteritics in their tasting profile which made them unique. In the case of the St. Thomas bud there was a well defined spicyness which also tasted like cedar and leather with sweet almost tropical flowery undertones. Good solid tropical high. Next was in Antigua from a taxi cab driver at the suggestion of my mother and father-in-law. They got married there on their previous trip and had a good experience with their previous cab driver. This guy we had was a rip off artist. He drove to some dodgy area and scored buds. They were seeded and of poor quality. He insisted on rooling joints and smoking with us- and on holding the sack. Poor quality, lots and lots of seeds. Commercial Jamaican? Back at the ship we were out of papers and didn’t have a pipe. My father in law made an improvised pipe that wasted what little we had left. This stuff tasted harsh as shit and was green brown . The next port of call was St Martin/Maarten, the island spilt politically between the dutch and french. We ended up getting some on the french side from a French man. Found some at on one of the nude beaches (without saying which one). The French guy who took us back behind a little grove of trees and showed us a sack. My wife's step dad was reluctant to go there in the first place- he was weirded out by the whole nude beach thing but I figured that people tend to be more tolerant in a place like that. Not only were we able to score we scored dank! It was golden brown/coffee brown whith some crystals. He let me smell it and it smelled fresh and sweet, almost rich like tropical flowers and coffee. The sack was expensive and had the dubious distinction of being the only one that we didn’t pay for in $ (used euros). Not sure about weight but it was probably between an eighth and quarter oz. It came as a stem with small 1-2 inch buds with distance between the nodes. The rest of the bag was the buds. The taste of the bud was a little hard to explaine- it had a spicy taste to it and tasted like hibiscus, honey, maybe cantolope or molasses. The high was laid back but energetic and real stoney. I remember smoking it in a pipe a purchased in an outdoor market/bazarre behind the beach. High really went with the tropical island vibe and this stuff gave me a super case of the munchies- luckily I was on a cruise ship. It was prety stoney stuff. The sack lasted 2 prety heavy smokers ( my father-in-law and I) and 2 minor smokers (my wife and her mom) for 3 days. The high was mind expanding and multidemensional. At that beach I was the highest I had been in months. Went to Barbados but didn’t need to score and I seem to remember something about them having super strict drugs laws regarding canabis but we still smoked a couple times on the island and went snorkeling, ate well, and toured the island. Last stop was in the British Virgin Islands. I think it was in Tortola but can’t remember- which is strange because I am something of a geography nut especially concerning current and former island possessions of colonial powers. Anyway at this beach we went to on the other side of the island we aquired some bud quite easily from a local kid that was probably between 14-16 years old. Decent stuff, dark green buds. Had the ubiquitos taste of spice that other buds from the carribean we smoked shared. It smelled fresh, almost flowery or piney. The taste was also evokative of plums, licorice, and port wine. Before this trip I had learned the techniques of wine appreciation so was able to apply these principles to tasting gange, I wrote tasting notes somewhere where I need to dig them up. As far as landrace goes- I can’t say for sure whether or not these are landrace, and to which particular strain they belong but it would appear the St Martin bud was landrace (from jamaica originally?). The USVI bud was probably a hybrid by the looks of it, the BVI bud could have gone either way as could the one from Antigua- poor shity yielding Jamaican landrace? But all buds from there had a distinctive spicy taste in common.
Jamaica
Wish I had tried the landrace “lambsbread” and other great strains from Jamaica. Read an article in high times in the 80s that although there was a lot of schwag in the lowlands. Some buds of phenomenal quality were being grown in the highlands at that time in the Blue Mountains.
In the late 80s, used to get this bud that was indica, about 3 inches long were the whole bud was purple, even the flowers. I wonder if this was purple afghan? I would like to hear about purple panama- that’s intriguing, as are some of the other strains on the list.
Thai use to come tied to a stick- hense the term “thai stick”. This provided a mellow high. There were other types of thai as well but can’t rember the taste like thai step, but I rember 1 tasting like brown sugar or molases once, came across this taste in a bud that was supposedly grown in Bali as well- that was great strain too- brown sugar, molasses, maple syrup, and this distinctive taste other thai buds had.I remember it was something I found in the parking lot after frying hard on Acid during the dead show when it was over 100 degrees F Dominguez Hills spring 90- this help get me grounded and made me not so much like I had sunstroke anymore. Couldn’t say this was from Bali (guy said his friend just got back from Bali)- but the taste was radically different then anything else going around and tasted a lot like classic thai bud.
http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?p=7507932#post7507932
Post # 5
The cultural lines lie deep in this Island that is a historic center of cannabis use. Again thanks Motaco and Reefer
Jamaica is well known for ganja, and for good reason. Supposedly the Jamaican weed growing culture started when escaped slaves ran so far into the mountains that they could no be pursued and lived an isolated existence; growing African and Indian sativas and living off the land.
Regardless of it's origin the popularity in Jamaica is undeniable and far older and more intrisic than most other cultures on this side of the world. In the fifties and even earlier Jamaica was one of very few suppliers of marijuana to the US. During the 60s Jamaican was one of few exotics available along with Acapulco Gold. Since it is an island and thus fairly easy to control around '73 it was used as a test for marijuana eradication and was very successful. Mass crops were targeted and hit hard, and the genes to the famous Lambs Bread or Kali weed was hit hard. Throughout much of the 70's and 80's Jamaican "semi sensi" was an extra exotic on the market, but made no substantial contribution to the total of pot America smoked. Noted more for the size of it's buds than for it's potency in the later years. However in it's heyday the Jamaican sativa was an energetic and spicy smoke. A neon green poker straight plant 3-9 feet high, with light branching towards the top. The smoke was energetic and upbeat, powerfully contemplative, with very little body stone or sedation to it. Supposedly a breed of Indian and African sativas.
Due to its year round photoperiod Jamaica has 3 harvest seasons per year. Two short and one long. It's worth mentioning that if you are going to jamaica in search of sativas. Don't go in winter as you would expect like at a higher latitude. That is actually their conclusion to the shortest season and is full of immature 50 day flowered from seed lolly pop indica buds. the nugs are 5 inches long with a gram on the end of half leaf and you can see the roots at the bottom of the stem. If you want sativas you should go around april when plants have had 4 months to cycle instead of a month and a half. This is the season they grow their larger higher yielding plants that can have a veg cycle. In winter they grow mini super fast indicas to get a quick harvest, but it sucks...
JAMAICAN STRAINS. NOW AND THEN.
In Jamaica when you flower sativas from seed they grow one main cola, and minimal side branching. Jamaicas grow climate causes this to happen naturally. Plants flower at or almost immediately after sprouting. So its no surprise acclimated Jamaican ganja looks like this. Pictures of jamaican patches often look like a little outdoor SOG. Stony weed was referred to as Kali herb (goddess of destruction), and other terms such as "lambs bread" or "breath" (depending who you ask) were also common terms. A common myth is that Jamaican strains smell and taste earthy and smoky. This is not true at all it simply has to do with primitive curing procedures which we'll get into later. Fresh native ganja is usually very sweet, fruity and floral. It should be, because it is mainly from the same dutch stock we are all familiar with.
Today native Jamaicans are harder and harder to find. In the 80's visitors continually brought over dutch genes which were faster and stonier. Since they stay short and are harder to see from helicopters, and finish so quick these small hybrids yielding a few grams to an ounce became what makes up the mainstay of Jamaican ganja today.
The nations growers have simple breeding techniques and accidental open pollination occurs often. It is hard for growers to keep lines pure. Jamaicans were used to 90-120 day sativas that grew tall, were heat and pest resistant, and didn't need much ferts, and yielded 1-4 ounces a piece. Todays average Jam ganja grows between 2-4ft, and flowers for about 70 days, and yields about 1/2-2 ounces. They are much more prone to mold, and require more tending. Although it is not likely to change the market many growers plea for tourists to bring sativa genes back to them. African, South American, etc. Really just any good sativas, they don't care if its kali mist of good mexican bagseed. Common dutch genes they received include several repeating names, such as ice, afghani, northern lights, and purple star, and skunk are common in gardens and replaced sativas. During the one long growing season sativas are better suited but many growers have lost their old lines. The more sativa looking lines left on the island appear to be mostly Colombian in origin according to recent visitors. Today the dealers call weed whatever is selling to tourists best. Even Diesel or Trainwreck although that is not what it is. However a handful of strains are there and are sold by name. Blue mountain sativa and a handful of other natives are still kept pure by some rastas supposedly. Although sativas are missed, the growers do appreciate the short, and fast turnover and increased number of harvest the indicas offer and they will now always make up a substantial part of the harvest. At any rate pay attention to the bud, not what it is being called....
GROWING AND STORING METHODS
Jamaica has the same kinda helicopter patrols and snitches like the states. For growers to combat this they have done the same thing they do in NorCal. Very few big patches. It's an army of dedicated small growers spread out everywhere and they can't be stopped. When its all put together it makes their country full of weed.
Jamaican growers have resorted to lugging thousands of lbs of soil through jungles and swamps, building raised soil beds in marshes, or planting on steep rocky cliffs with dams under the plants to catch water. Rarely are patches larger than 2 acres, with most of them being about a half an acre. An area is chosen and usually burned of vegetation and stumps, this is in part a problem of the islands deforestation. only 30% of the island is forested now and that is in part due to slash and burn techniques.
The rocky shallow soil is pick axed into holes and amended with quality soil and ferts. Then they build something to collect and store rainwater. Not an easy task and once its done they usually stay at the same spot for many years. Jamaicans are big on organic ferts and frequently use bat guano, blood, various different types of shit and anything else you can imagine.
jamaican admiring his work on a steep hill
Unfortunately despite being adept at grow techniques drying and curing is still a very primitive process for most jamaican growers. Probably less than 1/4 of the growers know how to properly dry and store weed for their climate conditions. This is what attributes to a lot of the negative stereotypes about Jamaican weed. Many of the growers simply machete chop the stem at the base above the soil line and just hang upside down. With no leaves removed, full stem and stalk, and the plants hanging closely next to one another in the high humidity it takes FOREVER for plants to dry like this and much is lost to mold. Some noticed they dried faster and without mold if they hung them in open sun, which deteriorates trichomes quickly and turns buds brown, others started drying in sheet metal shacks in the sun which are like an oven. Then they simply store it in bags. Another common technique is to hang buds close to an open fire which is a quick way of drying and attributes to many of the "smoky" sterotypes of Jamaican herb smells.
But there are wise growers in the woods that learned and have great kind bud and know how to properly dry and store it in the humid climate. To do so they trim buds into small branches, split the stems for drying, and remove all large leaves. Left in open breezy shady areas the weed dries just fine. After being trimmed to their liking they store by burying in water proof containers like buckets or ice chests. Weed will stay perfect like this well past the next harvest. Many growers live year round with their plants and tend them everyday, but it doesn't stop the quick deterioration rates of weed in heat, and the ignorance that comes with failed infrastructure, and lack of electricity for anything including AC. So it is no surprise there are alot of dealers looking to sell the cheap over abundant schwag to someone dumb enough to take it. So make sure you choose wisely. Dank is certainly available to be had when a proper grower produced it.
COMMERCIAL JAMAICAN
Unlike the situation in Mexico the Jamaican weed is usually not brought in by cartels. Or if it is they operate under enough privacy that they don't make waves. Jamaican weed import is a tiny fraction of what it once was. the distance and no border makes it alot harder to get shipments in. Entrepreneurs in speed boats, as well as smugglers lining the bottoms of boxes in fishing boats, and shipping containers, usually are freelancing it. Buying it with their own money and smuggling it at their own risk to private markets. They usually choose the weed they want from several growers, whittle it off the giant stems they sell it on, brick it and ship it. I understand that now in the dragging on of the Iraq war and the low troop levels many resources have been allocated to other places. The US government knows there is no real terrorist threat so they took many of the people and agencies who were riding around primarily for show in the gulf and put them in the OTHER gulf. With less people doing drug interdiction activities I hear brave souls in speed boats have regained some popularity. But it simply can't come through in the amounts without the organization and dedication of a large cartel.
The entire Caribbean shares most of the same strains and the best spot for collecting Caribbean bagseed in the US would have to be south florida hands down.
**************************************************************
Refers post about Jamaican Lamb's Bread:
Another of the fabled, almost lost cannabis strains is Jamaican Lamb's Bread (often confused with Jamaican Lamb's Breath). Jamaican Lamb's Bread is getting increasingly difficult to find in Jamaica or anywhere else on earth, due to the influx, popularity and profitability of the modern feminized cannabis strains which are mostly hybrid sativa/indica crosses from Dutch growers. Rumor has it that serious medicinal marijuana growers from Hawaii have kept the strain pure and very much alive but the thing is that it takes longer to grow, often produces less than the modern cannabis strains and it's not a common name in the marketplace. Except for real weed connoisseurs, Rastafarian's and some Jamaican's this magnificent strain is all but lost.
My own experience with Lamb's Bread goes way, way back to when I was in Port Antonio in Jamaica, once made famous by Errol Flynn and his Hollywood friends. I was staying at at an old hotel up on the hill overlooking the town, where at the time, even the bar staff would bring you good weed but if it weren't for a local that I befriended I may have never heard of Lamb's Bread, however to this day I can remember that the characteristics of this fabulous weed were far and away above the common grade of grass that could be bought just about anywhere at anytime. Bright green and sticky, as soon as you saw it you knew there was something special about this legendary herb. There's even a strain of similar origin called "Bob Marley's Lamb's Bread" but I suspect it's the same genealogy and just named as such for his famous quote:
De ability what de herb 'ave ya call lamb's bread. Some a dem ya call Bethlehem's bread. ~ Bob Marley

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following is not just textual info its based on my own (jspun's) trip to the region in ''06
Carribean
Went on a cruise to the carribean in the fall of 2006. Went to St. Thomas, Antigua, St Maarten/St Martin, Barbados, and, one of the British Virgin Islands, I think it was Virgin Gorda or Tortola. Scored in St. Thomas from a white expat from the US Mailand with blond dreads. He was a roadie for a local regae band. The bud was a good sack of bud that was brown with yellow golden hairs. I remember the carribean buds on this trip all had a similar spicy taste in common in addition to the other characteritics in their tasting profile which made them unique. In the case of the St. Thomas bud there was a well defined spicyness which also tasted like cedar and leather with sweet almost tropical flowery undertones. Good solid tropical high. Next was in Antigua from a taxi cab driver at the suggestion of my mother and father-in-law. They got married there on their previous trip and had a good experience with their previous cab driver. This guy we had was a rip off artist. He drove to some dodgy area and scored buds. They were seeded and of poor quality. He insisted on rooling joints and smoking with us- and on holding the sack. Poor quality, lots and lots of seeds. Commercial Jamaican? Back at the ship we were out of papers and didn’t have a pipe. My father in law made an improvised pipe that wasted what little we had left. This stuff tasted harsh as shit and was green brown . The next port of call was St Martin/Maarten, the island spilt politically between the dutch and french. We ended up getting some on the french side from a French man. Found some at on one of the nude beaches (without saying which one). The French guy who took us back behind a little grove of trees and showed us a sack. My wife's step dad was reluctant to go there in the first place- he was weirded out by the whole nude beach thing but I figured that people tend to be more tolerant in a place like that. Not only were we able to score we scored dank! It was golden brown/coffee brown whith some crystals. He let me smell it and it smelled fresh and sweet, almost rich like tropical flowers and coffee. The sack was expensive and had the dubious distinction of being the only one that we didn’t pay for in $ (used euros). Not sure about weight but it was probably between an eighth and quarter oz. It came as a stem with small 1-2 inch buds with distance between the nodes. The rest of the bag was the buds. The taste of the bud was a little hard to explaine- it had a spicy taste to it and tasted like hibiscus, honey, maybe cantolope or molasses. The high was laid back but energetic and real stoney. I remember smoking it in a pipe a purchased in an outdoor market/bazarre behind the beach. High really went with the tropical island vibe and this stuff gave me a super case of the munchies- luckily I was on a cruise ship. It was prety stoney stuff. The sack lasted 2 prety heavy smokers ( my father-in-law and I) and 2 minor smokers (my wife and her mom) for 3 days. The high was mind expanding and multidemensional. At that beach I was the highest I had been in months. Went to Barbados but didn’t need to score and I seem to remember something about them having super strict drugs laws regarding canabis but we still smoked a couple times on the island and went snorkeling, ate well, and toured the island. Last stop was in the British Virgin Islands. I think it was in Tortola but can’t remember- which is strange because I am something of a geography nut especially concerning current and former island possessions of colonial powers. Anyway at this beach we went to on the other side of the island we aquired some bud quite easily from a local kid that was probably between 14-16 years old. Decent stuff, dark green buds. Had the ubiquitos taste of spice that other buds from the carribean we smoked shared. It smelled fresh, almost flowery or piney. The taste was also evokative of plums, licorice, and port wine. Before this trip I had learned the techniques of wine appreciation so was able to apply these principles to tasting gange, I wrote tasting notes somewhere where I need to dig them up. As far as landrace goes- I can’t say for sure whether or not these are landrace, and to which particular strain they belong but it would appear the St Martin bud was landrace (from jamaica originally?). The USVI bud was probably a hybrid by the looks of it, the BVI bud could have gone either way as could the one from Antigua- poor shity yielding Jamaican landrace? But all buds from there had a distinctive spicy taste in common.
Jamaica
Wish I had tried the landrace “lambsbread” and other great strains from Jamaica. Read an article in high times in the 80s that although there was a lot of schwag in the lowlands. Some buds of phenomenal quality were being grown in the highlands at that time in the Blue Mountains.
In the late 80s, used to get this bud that was indica, about 3 inches long were the whole bud was purple, even the flowers. I wonder if this was purple afghan? I would like to hear about purple panama- that’s intriguing, as are some of the other strains on the list.
Thai use to come tied to a stick- hense the term “thai stick”. This provided a mellow high. There were other types of thai as well but can’t rember the taste like thai step, but I rember 1 tasting like brown sugar or molases once, came across this taste in a bud that was supposedly grown in Bali as well- that was great strain too- brown sugar, molasses, maple syrup, and this distinctive taste other thai buds had.I remember it was something I found in the parking lot after frying hard on Acid during the dead show when it was over 100 degrees F Dominguez Hills spring 90- this help get me grounded and made me not so much like I had sunstroke anymore. Couldn’t say this was from Bali (guy said his friend just got back from Bali)- but the taste was radically different then anything else going around and tasted a lot like classic thai bud.
http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?p=7507932#post7507932
Post # 5
Last edited: