Strain Review: Sour Banana Sherbet

In the past few years, Sour Banana Sherbet has picked up major hype in Oregon. We reached out to Benjamin Nadolny of Fox Hollow Flora to get the story on their popular version of DNA Genetics and Crockett Farms’ new heavy hitter.

To understand the quality of what Nadolny was working with, you have to understand what’s generally coming out of Crockett Farms — a third generation farm made up of some of the best cannabis breeders California cannabis has to offer. When it comes to heavy hitters, Crockett Farms stands alongside folks like the Cookie Fam and perennial Emerald Cup contenders 3rd Gen Fam.

In 2016 Crockett Farms’ famous Tangie — a cut they’ve been growing for a decade — blew up on the West Coast scene, where everyone and their brother grew it last season. The resulting flowers and concentrates were a pleasure to enjoy through the fall and spring this year.

With their Sour Banana Sherbet, you’re dealing with equally exciting genetics — and you can expect to see the strain on Best of the West Coast lists. It’s a pairing of the long-renowned AJ’s Sour Diesel cut and Banana Sherbet.

AJ’s Diesel cut had found its way through many cannabis breeding tales over the years. Some say it’s what Headband and Sour OG actually are, predating the two strains by quite a few years.

In 2010, JJ from Top Dawg Seeds, one of the East Coast’s long-respected outfits before the cannabis progress of the last decade, said that AJ’s Sour Diesel was, in fact, the original. With the way the timelines coincide, there is also a chance the ultra-high-end Sour Diesel that hit Mendocino and Humboldt at the turn of the millennium was, in fact, AJ’s.

“The Sour D was from AJ at Top Dawg,” Crockett of Crockett Farms told Cannabis Now. “We worked with The Cookie Fam about four years ago and were gifted Sherbet, Cookies and Y-life pollen.”

Crockett pollinated a multitude of females and made an array of possibilities choosing the (Banana OG x Sherbet) male to cross with the Sour D female creating the Sour Banana Sherbet. The Banana OG used was created by crossing Banana Kush x OG Kush.

As for the version now gaining steam in Oregon, Nadolny and the Fox Hollow team did get a bit lucky. Many folks will pop hundreds of seeds in search for the best phenotype of a strain, but they were able to find this cut of Sour Banana Sherbet with just a couple packs of seeds! They definitely hit the genetic lottery from the look of it.

But did they know they had a winner immediately?

“I got the winner off the bat, but it wasn’t the winner right away,” Nadolny said. “When I started flowering it wasn’t that strong, I ended up letting it go 11 weeks. The result, for myself, was a flower where — after I smoked it — I would end up scrubbing my entire kitchen. I started using it to do tasks around the house.”

When the cut got into the hands of Fox Hollow’s patients, the results were immediate.

“One of our PTSD patients said it was the reason they were able to get out of the house,” he said.

They also received word from others experiencing the racy-yet-functional high. Those patients’ experiences made Nadolny decide to hold on to the cut. He had always based his cuts off what patients were digging on, but he has never received this type of positive feedback for any one cut before.

“It’s not a huge yielder and it takes a long time to to finish,” Nadolny said, adding that was the patient response that encouraged him to keep growing the strain.

He went on to note that one can expect a lot of lateral branching while growing this strain. This made for some fantastically productive mother plants, with Nadolny saying he was able to score almost 200 clones off just two plants recently.

The heavy branching does lead to quite a bit of clean up and they’ve experimented heavily on the best approach for it. Nadolny suggests folks get down to just a few colas up top because the heavy branching, in this case, can lead to a lot of garbage popcorn buds down south on the plant. You’re better keeping super clean for that final push after the stretch.

“I’ve finished it in so many rooms now in 25-, 10-, and 5-gallon pots said Nadolny. “I would definitely have to say the 5-gallon pots were the most gorgeous.”

The last round cultivated in the greenhouse was able to get up to 30 percent THC, the indoor version that dropped after made it to 25 percent.

Nadolny closed with a warning on the high. It comes on slow and lasts, which many people find enjoyable, but if you’re prone to things like panic attacks, don’t overdo it.

Linage: Sour D (AJ’s Cut) X Banana Sherbet
Profile: 50% Sativa 50% Indica
Flowering Time: 8-9 weeks

Originally published in the print edition of Cannabis Now. LEARN MORE

TELL US, have you ever smoked Sour Banana Sherbet? What did you think?