breakwater PREMIUM FLOWER
Breakwater Premium Flower is expertly grown, trimmed, and packaged to be the most effective flower you’ve ever used. Our distinctive Breakwater Blue packaging seals tightly and keeps out visible and UV light so your cannabis will stay fresh and potent even over long periods of time. Learn more about our strain collection here. Check out what we have in stock today.
OUR STRAIN SELECTION PROCESS
At Breakwater, our focus has always been to produce extremely high quality cannabis. Moreover, we strive to put our own original stamp on the cultivars we bring to our patients. While clones / cuttings are an increasingly popular way to procure genetics, they also bring with them an array of potential complications. Pest and pathogenic issues are major ones. In addition, procuring clones results in a lack of distinctiveness since other growers can also obtain that particular cultivar. This lack of distinctiveness can only be addressed by putting in the hard work and resources to hunt for your own unique phenotype, which is what we do. While occasionally a heavily publicized cutting is worth it, many times it is an overhyped variety that a large portion of the market is producing or will soon be producing en masse. Here at Breakwater, we pride ourselves on bringing exclusive selections to our patients through rigorous pheno-hunting.
Here is a little insight into our process…
Seed Selection (through Germination)
When we select seeds, we first determine what we are looking for. Plants can be long flowering or short flowering. Flavor profiles can run the gamut of orange, lemon, lime, berry, grape, pine, earth, hash, sweet, nutty, pepper, chemical, gas, leather, cake/pie/dough, and so on. Cannabinoid profiles, or chemotypes, also come into consideration. These chemotypes come in four main categories: THC dominant (type 1), 1:1 THC:CBD (type 2), CBD dominant (type 3), and even CBG dominant (type 4).
After determining what we are looking for, we source and acquire our seeds from reputable breeders. Now the fun begins. With seeds in hand, we carefully germinate them and move the seedlings to small containers with soilless media and a unique tag number.
Replication of Genetics
Once the seedlings have taken root and are large enough, we take cuttings off each seedling for propagation. This step ensures that we have genetic material of each seedling for future propagation. To understand why having genetic copies of each seedling is important, let’s break it down further. For instance, if we have 50 seeds of a single strain / cultivar, the mature plants that result from those seeds can vary widely. That is, each seed produces a different phenotype. Think of it like a group of children from the same parents: the group has the same genetic starting material and they share many similarities, but they also have many differences in genetic expression that result in different traits and characteristics. Similarly, each individual seedling is unique when compared to the next. So, as we let each seedling mature, it’s important we have genetic copies of every one. If we select one in the final stage, we will have genetically identical material for future propagation.
Plant Evaluation
As the seedlings mature, we evaluate every plant every day. Some of the critical characteristics we observe initially include vigor, height, leaf shape, branching pattern, stem scent, and node spacing.
When the plant begins to mature in the flowering stage, we can better assess what our final flower will end up looking like. We make additional observations by asking ourselves a set of questions about the flower: How have the buds filled out? What size and shape are they? Are they tight and dense or loose and wispy? Do the plants form full colas or do they have a more individual bud layout? Do they have foxtails? What colors are present and are they unique? Do the stigmas have any distinctive qualities?
Aroma is an essential factor of evaluation. As the flower matures and gets closer to being harvested, we take a closer look at aroma. We ask questions like: what aromas are present? Is the aroma strong or underwhelming? Is the aroma unique?
Final Evaluation
After the flower is dried, trimmed, and cured, we finally get to look at the finished product for the first time. We reassess the size, shape, density, trichome coverage, and overall appearance of the flower. Aroma becomes an essential observation at this point since cured flower can smell dramatically different than a live plant in a grow room. Yield is accounted for, but is never the primary factor when making our selections. We also review in-house cannabinoid assays, which offer insight into each phenotype’s possible effects.
We analyze all the data we’ve collected and select a handful of the best phenotypes to run a second time. This run tests their viability for full-scale production and further acquaints us with each phenotype. After the second run, we make our final selection. At this point, if we feel something is ready, we will do a production run that may be released to the public. Best case scenario, it can take up to a year to fully vet and release a new strain.
Selecting a new strain is an involved, lengthy process. But it yields unique, exclusive selections for our patients and is worth all of the effort. We hope this helps you understand our process better and in the future we look forward to sharing more about how we provide the best cannabis and cannabis products to the patients of New Jersey.