There have been a few times when a freebie that showed up took the place of something I already had and was planning to drop.
I’m taking a different approach to freebies. If you start with potency tested, stable parents, the F1 generation is guaranteed to be great. The reason breeders testers suck nowadays is because they don’t breed with stable lines, and they are breeding blind without real data. Every polyhybrid seed is a roll of the multi thousand sided dice. Many of the top breeders today do not take the time required to make true F1 hybrids; their seed packs are random mixed bags of traits. This includes seed junky, who I’ve received terrible packs from lately at work. Those who are taking shortcuts and just cross as soon as they get the new clone of the week, are spitting in your face as they charge you $10-$20 per seed with random genes. They have no right to call themselves breeders, they didn’t select anything. When I stabilize a line over the course of a year, I’ll grow several generations indoor with potency testing to select the breeder cuts based on smell, potency and yield, and finally place the chosen F4/F5 (Or Bx2) breeder cuts outside to produce a huge amount of seeds. True F1 hybrids are always great if the selected parents were scientifically selected with data to be great, and inbred to mimic how cannabis adapted itself to breed over millions of years. One stable male or reversed female cut will be placed outside with the other stable ladies to produce real
f1 hybrids. During this stage, I’ll also put any newly acquired clones out for their BX1 generation to be pollinated by the lone fem/male.
With a huge amount of data driven seeds, I can give out lots of freebies you can trust. Also, the freebies I give out come with clone boxes, so the grower can send clones back in exchange for more free seeds. This way I get the best pheno hunt in F1, and the customer gets even more free seeds from proper breeding practices.
In addition, during the stabilization process (getting to F4/F5/Bx2), there will be some unique phenotypes that didn’t test over 23% THC. Unfortunately to sell more seeds in todays market, I have to focus on plants 25% or above, but personally some of my favorite strains are 10-17%. Or, sometimes I have multiple phenotypes over 25%, and for uniformity will only advance one or two of these to F4/F5/Bx2. Anyway, I know these slightly less potent or un chosen phenotypes will still be enjoyed by others. I’ll give out unselected lines averaging 18%-23% THC, and specify the phenotype’s flavor.
For example, with Apollo 13, the F2 generation had like 8 phenotypes. I selected the rare skunk phenotype, and it happens to be 27-30%. There is also a Tropical Candy Pheno (22%) and an Orange Kerosene Pheno (18%). These two can be given out for free, and I can keep enough seeds to revisit these F2 lines later if I wish to. In this way my freebies are always either true F1 hybrids or unselected F3 lines with all traits having been observed and selected by my nose, scale, and HPLC potency testing.