Jogro
Well-Known Member
Why would you doubt this? I'd say it depends on what you mean by "suck".
First of all, for most North American growers (indoors or outdoors), just the very fact that the strain takes 16 weeks to finish all by itself "sucks". Add in the necessary time to go from seed to sexually mature plant, plus drying and curing time after harvest, and you're potentially looking at a fully six month project to go from seed to smoke.
Sure, if you can get past the long flowering times, stretchiness, tendency to make male flowers, and low yields, then *usually* the quality of the final product will be good. But each one of those things is a significant hurdle that can't just be written off without consideration. I also don't think its safe to assume that any long-flowering strain is necessarily going to be good smoke JUST because it takes a long time to mature. Hemp is still hemp, and not every long flowering strain is necessarily great!
I love pineapples, though I know that trying to grow them in my backyard "probably" won't turn out too well.
As you say, its not like you HAVE to grow these sorts of strains in pure form.
Lots of work has been done over the last 40 years to try and capture the best qualities of the equatorial sativas and try to put them into hybrid strains that are much more grow-friendly for your typical North American home grower.
EG the Jack Herer-like strains (including Super Silver Haze, etc) were specifically bred to try and take the flavor and high charcteristics of the Haze plants, but give higher yields, less stretchiness, and shorter flowering times. And even those plants aren't the easiest to grow, either.