Erdbeer History and defunct seed banks
Back in the long long ago we received a pack off the bay as a freebie known as “Very Berry Surprise”. I searched and searched and search to try to find out the lineage of that strain. In my search I realized this was another set of maybe lost genetics with a story that isn’t well told. Below are the stories I was able to find about the history of the swiss side of the genetics that I’ll be using in this project. Some stories don’t match up, some likely aren’t true but I’m including them all here.
First the seedfinder copy and paste
“The Erdbeer is a clone-only genetic since about 1994, based in Switzerland, where it was once very common. The basic genetics are unknown. It is likely to be a sativa with Afghani genes.
The strawberry clones were used for some crosses. The version of the Green Hornet is probably the best known and is the closest clone. A Swiss farmer phoned the breeder and said he had found in a field full of strawberry plants a single male cannabis plant full of pollen sacs. He dusted the "Original Swiss Strawberry" to breed. Most likely this male plant was but another unknown species.
Also Herbaria has worked with the original strawberry clones, like BlueHemp. Herbaria passed a clone of BlueHemp to Alpine-Seeds, then genetics went to Denmark, then to Zenseeds.”
Now for a deeper dive into the chaos from knospe (not the dead german grower but the overgrow user). Now known as “KnosPe” on ICmag
“the Erdbeer is an industrial strain bread to flower quickly be moldresistant and machine harvestable (hance the literaly rock hard buds). It is said to be bread as a school project at a swiss university to create the perfect swiss industrial ganja. Some seeds somehow got lost. "
i first came across this strain in 1999, ever since it was always available as clone only,
i was very impressed about their perormance, tried to gather info from the guys who sold the clones. nobody could tell me anything precise about the lineage or breeder.
there remains 1 most stubborn rumor that a hempfreak living with many squatters in a big factorycomplex in zürich, made the original seeds. probably it was never his intention to sell seeds. the squat was shot down by the police. erdbeer was available at a few cloneproducers in the züricharea. erdbeer slowly spread troughout all switzerland beeing available at most hempshops, as clone & dried flower.
"in 2001 i grew a few 100 erdbeers, 1 of them grew out a single male branch pollinating the" freakhermie "and a few other erdbeers. i was lucky enough to harvest these seeds. from these i started my erdbeer crossings.
in 2003 i was testing several diff strains, also planted alot of those "erdbeer # erdbeer"
, they performed way better than the original clone. there was some slight variation, but in general very uniform and no hermies. the very best ones "erdbeer # erdbeer" from seed i pollinated with 3 diff males: purpurea, liztiskunk1 and 2.
(btw, the same purpurea male was used in the same year for magic bud # purp.)
with all crosses i made with original erdbeers, i noticed that the erdbeer genes are very dominant. erdbeer is a small round bush with rockhardnuggets. "
it won several swiss competitions over the years. purpurea ticinensis is felix from owls productions creation. it has a funny little story to:
"This plant has been selectively cultivated and bred by Felix of Owl Productions since 1988. He acquired the parental stock back then from some old Swiss German ladies in a mountain village that had grown it in their gardens for decades decoratively (so they say). Felix was amazed at the seeds performance. A very early strain in that all are finished by the middle of September. The plants all exhibit extremely purple branches with green / purple buds. It is the most acclimatized Swiss strain that Breeder Steve ran into, " fantastic commercial outdoor "he says. It is a very hardy plant"
i know pt is felix and knospes favorite breeder plant. i tried the pure erdbeer here but it was unfortunally to late so i tried the cross with pt and became very happy with it. its colors are elexent from red to black and silver and the smoked is good and heavy indica with earth and forest taste. many of the new crosses i did with it are showing big erdpurt dominans and i hope some of them will be bigger yielders than erdpurt itsself.”
So there is some of the crazy history of the fabled Erdbeer. I was lucky enough in my years to come across some Erdbeer f2s, Purpurea Ticinensis original and f2s. To complicate matters another strain by the same name was created since then. Very Berry is a strawberry cough X Super Silver haze and while I was able to grow some of it and it was wonderful, it was not at all related to the Very Berry Surprise I knew and loved. I did, after years of searching, get directed to a (maybe defunct) seed breeder known as Green Hornet seeds from Canada. He created a strain called Very Berry and from what I can tell without growing it personally it seems like the mother or father of the strain I used for production. His genetics were Blueberry (DJ?) X Strawberry (Erdbeer). I tried and tried to track down some of the original seeds without success. Now I think I’m going to try and recreate it with slightly different genetics.
