The history of Chemdawg

Timeline

1. Jun 1991At the Grateful Dead’s shows at Deer Creek Music Center in Noblesville, Indiana, a young Deadhead later known as Chemdog buys bud called Dogbud from two sellers known as Joe B. and P-Bud; Leaf Magazines dates the meeting to June 6.^1,2
2. Aug–Dec 1991An ounce mailed to Massachusetts holds 13 seeds. Four are popped: a male (discarded) and three females, later called Chem 91, Chem’s Sister and Chem B. Chemdog says his first run began in August and finished in December.^1,2,3,5
3. 1992At a Phish show at New York’s Roseland Ballroom, Chemdog meets the grower Weasel; cuttings change hands and Chem 91 goes to Staten Island.¹
4. Late 1994Per High Times, AJ names an accidental cross of Chem 91 and an unknown hermaphrodite in Weasel’s grow room “Diesel”; it becomes Sour Diesel, selling for $800 to $1,000 an ounce to Wall Street buyers in the late 1990s.¹
5. 1995Skunk VA gets a Chem 91 cut from a grower nicknamed “Staten Island”; Weedmaps treats this SkVA cut as the preserved original.^6,7
6. 2001Three more seeds are popped (C, D and E); the keeper becomes Chem D. Around 2000–2001, Top Dawg Seeds trades Sour Diesel to Chemdog for Chem D.^1,8,9
7. 2006Four more seeds go to Joe B. (Weedmaps News says P-Bud); the fourth one popped becomes Chem 4, the Chem parent of Stardawg.^1,6,8,10
8. 2011Leaf Magazines reports that the last two original seeds were lost when a seed collection was confiscated.²
9. Oct 2014High Times publishes its 25 greatest strains of all time; in the current version, updated in November 2025, Chem Dog is #5, behind OG Kush (#1) and Sour Diesel (#3).¹¹
10. 2015A Chem Dog entry from Next Harvest tests at 32.13% THC at the Denver Cannabis Cup, the highest result recorded at a High Times Cup at the time.¹²
11. May 2018A University of Northern Colorado study finds its seven Colorado “Chemdawg” samples genetically consistent and suggests the named variants could be seeds of the same plant.¹³
12. 2019–2020Mickey Hart’s brand Mind Your Head launches in May 2019 with Chemdog pre-rolls; the Garcia family’s Garcia Hand Picked launches in California in November 2020, and Leaf Magazines says both chose Chemdog for their first offerings.^{2,14,15,16,17}
13. 2023–2024Chem D is Massachusetts’ Budtenders’ Choice strain two years running; in 2024 Chemdog’s Smash Hits is also named the state’s best flower brand.^18,19
14. Fall 2025Chemdog and five other legacy breeders launch Arcana, a heritage-genetics collective at a facility in Shelton, Washington, with Chem91 among its first releases.^2,20

Why it spread

It travelled as cuttings through the Dead and Phish scene. Chem 91 reached New York in 1992, where the Diesel line grew out of it and, by High Times’ account, sold for $800 to $1,000 an ounce by the late 1990s.¹ Later it travelled as seed: Top Dawg Seeds built Tres Dawg and Stardawg on Chem D and Chem 4, Reservoir Seeds backcrossed Chem D, and Humboldt Seed Organization bred a feminized line from the Chem 91 clone.^9,21,22

Its children carried the name further than the strain itself: GG4, bred from Chem’s Sister by accident, won the 2014 Michigan and Los Angeles Cannabis Cups and the 2015 World Cup in Jamaica, GMO Cookies came from a Chemdawg cross, and High Times credits Chem Dog with more Cup-winning descendants than any other strain this century.^11,23,24,25

The breeder is still growing it. Chemdog became Director of Cultivation at Canna Provisions in Massachusetts, where Smash Hits grows Chem 91 from his original mother plant, and in 2025 he joined five other legacy breeders in the Arcana collective.^3,20,26

The disputed parts of the story

• Which show: most accounts say Deer Creek, Indiana; Leafly says the bud came via a Colorado Grateful Dead concert, and Barney’s Farm notes that retellings disagree on who supplied the seeds and which month of 1991 the first grow began.^1,2,4,27
• How much and what it cost: $500 for an ounce (High Times, SeedFinder, Weedmaps News), $125 for a quarter-ounce at the show (Leaf Magazines), or a pound of Colorado bud (High Times’ 25 greatest list, Smash Hits).^{1,2,6,8,11,26}
• Where the seeds were: most accounts say they arrived in bud mailed later; Canna Provisions’ own telling says they were found in the bag.^1,2,3,28
• Dates for the cuts: Chem D in 2001 (High Times, SeedFinder) or 2000 (Smash Hits); Chem’s Sister in 1991 (High Times) or 1996 (Leafly); the 2006 seeds to Joe B. (High Times, SeedFinder) or P-Bud (Weedmaps News).^1,6,8,29,30
• Sour Diesel’s other parent: an unknown hermaphrodite (High Times) or Super Skunk (Leafly, Weedmaps News), and whether “Diesel” first named the cross or, as Top Dawg Seeds says, the Chem 91 cut itself.^1,6,9,31
• OG Kush: Leafly describes an early-1990s Florida cross with Chemdawg, High Times a legend involving a Chem 91 seed, and Chemdog denies OG Kush is Chemdog’s offspring while believing the two are related.^1,2,32