Methodology
How Lockbox Seeds evaluates strains
Most strain reference sites are scraped catalogues — one feed in, one feed out, with no editor reading the copy. Lockbox runs the other way. Every entry in the library is walked through a fixed set of checks by a human editor before it goes live, and re-walked on a rolling schedule after that. This page is the long version of that process. It explains exactly what we look at, what we accept as evidence, where the numbers on a strain page actually come from, and what kinds of claims we refuse to publish at all.
Three-step verification
Our editorial standards page summarizes three checks every strain entry has to pass. This is the deeper version of those three checks. The first is documented breeder of record. A documented breeder, in our usage, is a working seed program that maintains an active catalogue with direct pages for the strains it sells — not a Linktree, not a single Instagram post, not a defunct site preserved on the Wayback Machine. We need a live breeder catalogue page that names the strain, names the parents, and lists at least one of flowering window or yield. Anonymous bag seed, mystery clones passed around a forum, and “heritage” cuts with no breeder of record do not clear this step and stay out of the library.
The second check is cross-referencing parent strains against an independent registry. We use seedfinder.eu as the primary registry because its lineage trees are community-curated and the entries cite the breeders they were drawn from. We also consult leafly for consumer-facing notes and strain-database.com when the parentage is contested or pre-2010. If the breeder claims a cross of two parents and the registry tree shows a different second parent, that conflict goes into the entry as a note and the breeder claim is held until we can resolve it. We do not silently pick a side.
The third check is at least one matching grow report. A grow report counts when it is a forum thread with dated photos of the actual grow, a licensed lab report covering a specific harvest of that strain, or a breeder grow guide written for that release. We weight scale-referenced bud photos, trichome close-ups, and clear flowering-week timestamps; we discount marketing photography, AI imagery, and reports that omit feed schedule or light hours. One solid report can carry an entry. Two contradictory reports become an explicit range on the page.
How we set yield and flowering ranges
Lockbox publishes ranges, not single numbers. A strain page that says “flowering: 9 weeks” is lying about a plant; a real range across phenotypes, light setups, and grower experience is closer to 8 to 10. We arrive at the published range by triangulating between two sources that pull in opposite directions. Breeder figures lean optimistic — they reflect the best phenotype, expert grower, ideal environment, and often a clipped definition of “harvest day.” Grower reports lean realistic, sometimes pessimistic, because they include first-time growers and constrained tents. We publish what the median home grower can actually hit with reasonable care, not what the breeder’s lead pheno hit under perfect lights.
For indoor yield we cite grams per square meter under a 600 to 1000 watt equivalent canopy. For outdoor yield we cite grams per plant for a full-season grow at a temperate latitude. For flowering window we publish the photoperiod week count from the start of 12/12 to the day most growers report cutting. When the breeder claim and the report median disagree by more than twenty percent, we say so on the page rather than averaging the gap away.
How we choose affiliate partners
Lockbox runs a single affiliate relationship, with I Love Growing Marijuana. We chose ILGM for four reasons: it ships to all fifty US states without a workaround, it carries a germination guarantee on its catalogue, the catalogue is deep enough that we can match most of our library entries to a real product, and it accepts the payment methods US home growers actually have access to. We would drop ILGM and either find a replacement or run with no affiliate at all if any of the following happened: the germination guarantee was quietly removed, ship-to-state restrictions tightened in a way we could not flag clearly, catalogue accuracy slipped to where listed strains were not what arrived, or the brand started running the kind of misleading discount mechanics that home growers complain about on the forums we read.
What we do not publish
We do not publish dosing advice. We do not publish medical recommendations of any kind, including for anxiety, sleep, or pain, regardless of how common those use cases are in the consumer literature. We do not publish legal guidance — cannabis seed law in the United States varies state by state and we are not equipped to keep that current for every reader. We do not run pages aimed at users in states where cannabis seed sale is criminalized, and we do not list seed banks that ship into those states. When a topic crosses any of these lines, we leave it off the page entirely rather than hedge it with a disclaimer.
Reviewed 2026-05-23