You’ve noticed that Growing Marijuana Perfectly recommends marijuana seeds from only a few of the hundreds of marijuana seeds companies that sell cannabis seeds, and you wonder why.

Some people wonder if we’re like all the other marijuana magazines–they’re bribed by advertising to say good things about marijuana seeds and grow gear.

We don’t accept bribes or advertising. Our recommendations are solely based on breeder research and strain grow testing. We’re the only marijuana magazine that’s a consortium of real growers just like you.

Our motivation for doing this magazine is to make your marijuana growing as fun, rewarding, and profitable as possible.

We know what it feels like to buy marijuana seeds and discover they’re hermies, or otherwise inferior. What a waste of time, electricity, water, nutrients, risk, and effort!

When we warn that most marijuana seeds companies aren’t worth your money, we have evidence. For one thing, we’ve test-grown hundreds of strains.

We constantly study seed company websites, online reviews and discussion forums. If a seed company appears to be selling superior genetics, we contact them with these questions:

  • Are your seeds available worldwide?
  • Do you do your own breeding?
  • If you don’t do your own breeding, how do you control and ensure the quality and professionalism of your breeders?
  • How do you know for sure your seeds are fantastic and grow out to be what you say they are?
  • If you sell autoflowering and/or feminized marijuana strains, what process do you use to create the feminized or autoflowering trait?
  • How do you test your seeds to ensure 100% germination rate, freshness, and phenotype consistency?
  • Are you making knockoff strains or are you doing original breeding so no other breeder has the strains you have?
  • Are you buying any of your seeds bulk from Spain, the UK or other low-end industrial seed sellers?
  • Do your strains ever go hermie and if so, under what conditions?
  • What details can you provide us about yourself and your company so growers have faith that your seeds are worth the money and they should grow your strains instead of those from other breeders?

These questions are ones to ask any seed breeder before you give them your money. You can tell from the response (or non-response) to these questions whether a breeder is legit enough to take the time to grow their seeds.

Legit cannabis seeds breeders quickly respond to queries and provide documentary information proving they do their own breeding of reliable, exceptionally high-quality connoisseur seeds and strains.

Legit seed breeders are grateful for media exposure; bad seed sellers don’t want us looking at what they’re doing. When we repeatedly contact a breeder and they don’t get back to us, or get back with pathetically weak information and refuse to send test seeds, we can be almost certain they’re scammers.

Because the simple fact is, if they are proud of their strains, they’d be happy to share info and sample seeds.

We’ve contacted hundreds of seed companies and breeders. We rarely get a response. This includes so-called connoisseur companies like North Atlantic Seed Company, Great Lakes Genetics, Archive Seed Bank, D.C. Seed Exchange, Mosca Seeds, High End Seed Company, and most other marijuana seeds sellers in North America and Europe. The following complaint about North Atlantic Seed Company is typical of what growers experience:

“I purchased seeds from this company two different times. In every instance, the seeds had mold, I used three different types of sprouting techniques during germination- I germinated in water, paper towels, and then starter pods and none of the seeds worked. I have been growing weed for over 25 years but this is the first time I’ve purchased from this company…. when I wrote the company to tell them about my experience in detail they told me that they would take care of the problem. Unfortunately, in the end they only offered me a 10% coupon to buy more seeds because I live in Texas…. they said they couldn’t ship more seeds to me, even though they shipped the seeds to me in Texas initially. I consider this absolutely ridiculous. I want other enthusiasts to be aware of the quality of their product and customer service.”

Another example: we contacted seed company Ethos because it brags about elite strains. They refused to answer questions, which was no surprise, given that they’ve been called out as scammers repeatedly.

And when we spoke direct to several breeders from allegedly elite marijuana seeds sites, their answers about how or even if they assure their seeds have 100% germination rate, no hermies, phenotype consistency, rare genetics and potent highs were so incoherent that it was obvious these greedy, lying clowns aren’t intelligent enough to breed professional marijuana seeds and strains.

We also notice that these seed sellers spend a lot of time on marketing hype, relying on sock puppets in grow forums to say how great they are and attack anyone who posts a negative review.

Sad to say, the level of evasion, dishonesty and scamming in the marijuana seeds industry has never been higher than right now.

You see Instagrams, YouTube videos, websites from “breeders,” but their hype claims of gooey buds and tasty strains unravel when they can’t explain how they bred the strain or how to grow it.

Seed companies show seductively gorgeous bud photos for strains in their promotions, but when we ask for alternative photos or grew the pictured strains ourselves, the flowers weren’t anywhere near as attractive and in some cases look nothing like the photos! Our photo editor looked at the coded digitalized photo information for a breeder’s website photo that was supposedly a “Haze” strain– the photo was actually of a completely different strain, not Haze.

Worse yet, the photo has been pirated. We also discovered that scammers are using Instagram to run their scams. For example, Instagram scammers cloned and slightly altered the authentic logo and other features of one of the world’s best cannabis seed breeders, Humboldt Seed Company, to sell bogus seeds via Instagram.

Because Humboldt Seed Company is making unique and tasty strains in North America, a scam company calling themselves Humboldt Seed Organization was created to poach some of their popularity.

Further, new marijuana seeds companies are springing up like weeds. They’re buying junk seeds bulk from companies like Seedsman and Tiger One, and then repackaging the seeds with new names. You notice those sites never explain how they bred their strains.

Many of these clowns don’t even grow marijuana. They’re just scammers trying to get rich off of marijuana growers.

Death of the Dutch Marijuana Seeds Industry

Decades ago, there were only a couple dozen commercial marijuana seed breeders worldwide, all based in The Netherlands.

Some of these seed banks were run by cannabis revolutionaries who risked prison to ship heritage strains worldwide at a time when marijuana growing and seeds were nowhere legal.

Guys like Neville, the famous Haze man who started the earliest by-mail cannabis seeds bank–he was relentlessly hunted down by a worldwide police conspiracy for the “crime” of selling mail order cannabis seeds to grateful buyers. During this gilded era when the Dutch government welcomed billions of cannabis tourism dollars per year, legendary Dutch seed breeders made their own seeds in Holland.

Growers worldwide traveled to Amsterdam to buy cannabis seeds and risked federal prison bringing them back home with us.

Dutch companies competed in the vaunted High Times Amsterdam Cannabis Cup, and although favoritism and backroom deals corrupted the event, Dutch seed companies had enough pride, professionalism, and competitive spirit that they worked hard to maintain and improve legendary strains such as Bubble Gum, AK-47, Northern Lights, Durban Poison and other famous strains.

Unfortunately, the Dutch government turned against cannabis starting in 2001 and has viciously attacked the legal cannabis coffee shop industry, as well as Dutch domestic marijuana growers.

Some conservative members of the Amsterdam city government, for example, want to eliminate all cannabis cafes or make it so only Dutch citizens can buy weed at them.

Ignoring the fact that alcohol bars are the main cause of social decay, sexual assault, violence, vandalism and other criminality in the city’s tourist districts, braindead Dutch officials falsely claim marijuana tourism has a negative impact on Amsterdam.

Government hostility forced almost all Dutch cannabis seeds companies to move production to Spain. This is depressing, because most Spanish breeders are just profiteers lacking passionate dedication to fine, connoisseur cannabis.

Many of the bulk seed farms are outdoor operations, which means cannabis pests, viruses and diseases are easily transferred into seeds and will contaminate your grow op too.

We see seed companies openly admitting to buying bulk seeds from Spain. They even admit these seeds aren’t so good, and advises growers of a lengthy refund or replacement process when seeds go hermaphrodite, won’t germinate, or are otherwise defective.

It gives us no pleasure to say this, but growers should be aware that the majority of the most famous Dutch seed companies, including ones that have won numerous awards, are now selling compromised genetics.

We feel especially obligated to call out Sensi Seeds, which used to be top-rank when its innovative, heroic founder Ben Dronkers was personally in charge of daily operations.

Now Ben is retired, and Sensi is selling blanks, charging way too much per seed, living off of their distant past reputation.

We spent a lot of money recently on some of their most-famous strains, and were hugely disappointed. Not just because their strains were mediocre at best, but because they refuse to answer customer queries. They just don’t care anymore.

The following is one of many reviews irate growers have posted about Sensi Seeds:

“Sensi Seeds used to be the only source of old school strains, but looks like now they f’d it up! We tried several Sensi Seeds strains in recent years and their quality is not there anymore! Super Skunk was years ago a super stinky strain with fat chunky buds; now it’s a shame, tastes like hemp, not much resin & has airy buds. Skunk #1 was exact the same shit. Mother’s Finest was absolute disappointment–no Haze smell or taste, no resin, to many leaves. Juicy Fruit was not fruity or juicy. It was like hemp.”

The ONE Dutch seed company still making impressive new strains, and using honesty and transparency in its marketing and customer service policies, is Dutch Passion.

Cannabis Seed Scammers Are Clever

The marijuana seeds industry is plagued by people we call “pollen-chuckers.” Unlike bulk seed resellers, the pollen chuckers attempt to make their own crosses by buying what they think are legit, non-fem versions of famous strains and pollinating a few females.

Typical is the breeder we interviewed who admits to placing female plants from several strains in one grow room with a pollen-heavy male plant, blasting all the females with pollen, then creating fake strain names and descriptions for the resultant seeds.

Sketchy breeders utilize crude techniques (such as using pollen from hermie plants) to create so-called “feminized” strains. Many supposedly feminized strains themselves grow out as hermies, or male plants develop from seeds that are supposed to be feminized.

Some cannabis seeds scammers are very creative in their deviousness. For example, Humboldt Seed Organization uses its name to steal some of the business of an amazing seed company that we highly recommend called Humboldt Seed Company.

The spam company has its misleading name, and claims to be based in Humboldt County, California. But when you look at Humboldt Seed Organization’s website “About Us,” you find only a generic cut-and-paste essay about Humboldt County, not about the seed company, which appears to be based in Spain or the UK.

We’ve tested some of their strains and they are all garbage.

Aware of all these pitfalls and challenges, we go to great lengths to discover the best seed companies.

When we’ve sent a seed company our initial questionnaire, and gotten intelligent answers, we ask for tester seeds. Only by growing the seeds can we be sure a strain is worth growing.

Seeds cost seed companies a few pennies each, if that much. So when they refuse to send tester seeds, we know they lack confidence in their strains–and they’re greedy, cheap bastards who don’t recognize the massive value of having their strains written about.

When someone refuses to send testers, we cross them off our list.

Can You Even Get Incredible Cannabis Seeds & Strains?

If you’re fortunate enough to live in California, Colorado or the few other legalized marijuana states that allow seed companies to sell seeds at licensed dispensaries and/or ship them intrastate, or where you can legally buy clones direct from clone nurseries, you might have access to legit new strains from often-obscure professional breeders.

I realize it sounds “judgmental” and harsh to say that 97% of seed companies are rippers, but that’s what our investigations show.

You may have grown some decent bud from inferior strains and seeds, but you can grow a lot better when you buy from legit companies.

You might find a marijuana seeds company that has attractive marketing, fire strain names, a charismatic dude as their front man. They might even have won a Cannabis Cup, Emerald Cup or other award. They might have a nice Instagram or website, gnarly dreads, and talk the right talk.

But that doesn’t prove anything–here’s an extreme example of the bullshit we encounter when we try to get information and test seeds so we help you find the best strains for your grow op:

We’ve been looking into origins and recent incarnations of Gorilla Glue #4 for an article about the best strains that include GG4.

We were hopeful about a seeds website that listed several GG variations. Note: it wasn’t the website of the late Joesy Whales, or his associates, who are said to be the originators of the Gorilla Glue strain.

We sent our list of questions direct to the breeder.

This breeder presents himself online as an absolute genius who uses “colloidal silver” and other weird methods to allegedly create feminized seed strains that he told us are “beyond amazing.”

We asked about his strain origins and breeding program, especially how did he get an authentic GG4 cut and the other strains he claims to have bred it with.

We also asked for third-party test data on his strains’ genetics and cannabinoid/terpenoid percentages. He said he had all that info and would happily send it to us right away. Two weeks later, we had received nothing from the guy.

And in the interim, we’d heard from other breeders and growers that this guy is a notorious asshole and scammer. We called him about the criticism, asked why he hadn’t sent us the follow-up information he’d promised to send.

He responded with evasion, profanity, and threats.

“Listen, haters gonna hate, and most growers don’t give a flying fuck if my strains are the best, they just want to grow something other than bag seed,” he shouted. “If you say anything bad about my company, I know people in Vegas, and you’ll end up buried in the desert.”

Unfortunately, that kind of gangsterish approach is common in the marijuana seeds industry, which includes Nazis and other white supremacists, motorcycle gangs, child molesters, people who’ve done time for manslaughter, and other nefarious criminals who got into the marijuana seeds black market as an easy way to make a quick buck from people who won’t file a consumer complaint.

We even encountered a seed company named after the most dangerous political fraudster, traitor, and liar of our time: Trump Seeds.

There’s a kind of trust in a seed buyer/seed seller relationship that isn’t found in other business transactions. When you order seeds online, the seller has your real name and address. If the seeds suck or they don’t arrive at all, and you ask for a refund or replacement, the seller can nark you. We’ve had threats like that; one of our team members had to move because of it.

Another problem: some cannabis seeds sites aren’t cybersecure—you start seeing credit card fraud or other financial hits soon after giving your payment info to a seeds seller.

The sad fact is it’s getting harder and harder to find banger strains and reliable marijuana seeds from legit breeders. But we’ll keep testing strains and telling you about the best ones! At present, the only seed companies making new, fire, reliable strains with unique genetics are Humboldt Seed Company and Dutch Passion!