Thanks for the kind words, british_hempire and bigherb. I was hoping to hijack this thread back from the off-topic nonsense that has begun to dominate.
Hempire, I think mine might be a bit of an early finisher compared to your Seedsman OH's! As you can see, she's starting to sex out a bit and after thirty-plus days outdoors in the greenhouse, it's about time. Our March here in the Bay Area had 21+ days of rain (and most of the rest were fairly steely & overcast), so to me it is impressive that she is so healthy and vibrant.
Bigherb, I wish I could ask Jack some questions but never had the chance. The clones were brought to my local medical cannabis dispensary by Jack on the chance that they would sell his clones on consignment. When he told the clone purchaser that they went for 20 weeks, the purchaser answered quite honestly that he wouldn't be able to sell them. Jack, disappointed by the lack of potential sale and with a long drive back to Mendo, left the tray there. The clone manager fished a few out of the garbage for me a few days later after no one else would adopt them. Needless to say, everything I know about this variety comes second-hand from the clone purchaser. The original tags said "Jack's Old-time Haze"-- my first assumption was that it was from "Old Timer's Haze" stock, but the clone purchaser said he made the name up from the scant info that Jack provided.
I'll try to drop in a few more pictures as the season progresses.
Pax!
Sorry I didn't reply to you earlier Jim, I tested out my latest batch of SSH oil and it threw me for a loop for a bit...
Thanks for the hijack, was very much needed, you sir are a gent.
I love that story of how you obtained the Haze. All my friends always take the mickey out of how I'll flower things for months on end so 20 weeks wouldn't have put me off for a heirloom Mendo Haze.
I don't know my Cali geography, is Mendo anywhere near Santa Cruz? They are both counties right, I take it both are close to the Bay area?
As a long term sativa lover, I can say for sure that for that guy to have kept it for years and it taking 20 weeks it must be pretty bloody good because I've grown a lot of long sats that were good but not so good I was prepared to keep em in rotation in my garden. For instance, I've got a Purple Thai going now that gets prettier and more colourful by the day but is already past 100 days and still pumping out new pistils even though she' had no nitrogen since day 65 and all her leaves are yellow and dropping off. So she looks like she is going to go 150 days which is a long f^&$ing time! The Thai mother was one of those that never ripened properly indoors, I took her to 24 weeks and she still wasn't done, the Purple Afghan father was from a line that took 60-70 days max so I am surprised this Purple Thai is going so long, as pretty looking as she is and as decent as the yield looks to be, I really doubt I will run her again as I could run two SSH in the time it takes to run the Purple Thai once and I have my doubts she will be twice as good as my SSH is. Growing indoors in small spaces you have to be ruthless like that, if I lived in Cali I'd just run her outdoors, not mind she took 6 months or more because I think she could produce a few pounds in good dirt and full sun.
Hey bh ,
I recall sam saying his fave of all time to toke was haze and golden thai ,
no mention of columbian or mexican .
I can see how to some everything doesnt quite add up right ,
its true we do try at times to be too "politically correct"
I would love to read any literature sam brings out ,
he has a lot to tell i should think ..
Yeah, I remember sam saying that about his faves.
I've never been politically correct and often I only open my mouth to put my foot in it byt I do care about trying to keep people honest if possible.
I'm sure Sam has a lot to tell but not all of it would paint him in a good light at all so I doubt he'll write a book, he's not the author type I don't think, RCC is the writer. He wrote Hashish sat in the GHS shop so you never know, maybe might be sat in there pen in hand again in the future.
I like the course-correction that seems to have taken effect on this thread.
Hempire, I'm not sure I agree-- in totality, at least-- with Nev's statement that
all of Sam's Hazes were crap. I've grown out a good handful of Sam's Haze/Skunk from Gypsy, and have found exceptional females each time. I recently used a male from the last few I sprouted to pollinate a G13Haze/Amnesia cutting and am very interested to see the results. I've also lately pollinated a female cutting of Sam's Haze/Skunk with an SSH male.
Here's something else I've been fooling with as of late: GHS Nev's Haze x Sensi NL5Hz. Most of the phenotypes were very NL-leaning like their mother, but this lone Haze-type has stood out as unique against her sisters. The aromas are quite similar to the Skunkman Haze/Skunk (lemongrass + compost), with a touch of rubbery NL smell. This little tester is at about 83 or so days...
I don't know that all Sam's Hazes are crap, I doubt that's true myself, just saying that you never hear em discussed online and despite being cheaply and readily available in the UK for the best art of 20 years now I don't remember ever hearing of anyone growing them more than once or any keeper cuts having been kept and circulated.
My direct experience is with Haze and HazeSkunk, did two packs of each and the Haze I never got along with. I ran 5 at a time and out of them all, they all reminded me strongly of Thai apart from two, one was shorter and bright lime green, looked like a Mexican, the other had thin, very pointy leaves and dark foliage with some purple on the petioles and leaf veins, looked very Colombian to me. That leads me to think that the Thai/South Indian parts of Sam's Haze are very dominant.
That makes sense if you think about it.
The given lineage of Haze if I remember correctly which way round the Thai and Indian go is:
((Mexican/Colombian) x Thai) x South Indian
Now, without any further linebreeding, that would seem to me to give these percentages:
12.5% Mexican
12.5% Colombian
25% Thai
50% South Indian
I'm not exactly sure what Sam's South Indian looked like, probably a lot like some types of Thai I'm familiar with. Anyways, it would seem to me that out of the dozen or so Haze females I saw, getting 1 Mexican pheno, 1 Colombian pheno and the rest Thai/Indian phenos would fit with the supposed lineage of Sam's Haze.
As I recall, the Colombian one took 70 days to show sex and was female, the Mexican one took 65 days to show sex and was male, the others hadn't shown sex by 80 days apart from two males I pulled, they eventually popped pistils around 90 days. Those first 90 days had been on 12/12 lighting under a 250w halide. I then moved them under a pair of 250w HPS hung vertically, planning to let em fill out the 6ft6 headroom. I put the HPS on 11/13 to encourage them to start flowering and they did, at about the rate of that 24 week Thai I mentioned. I forget exactly how long I let em go but I had to go to Spain and they were nowhere near so got chopped. I think I turned the lights down to 10/14 after 5-6 weeks of 11/13, I forget exactly.
This 1 in 20 being keepers ratio Sam spoke of always concerned me when I was growing his Haze, those are not good numbers for someone growing indoors in his loft space, hell, those aren't good numbers for someone legal in Mendo with a 99 plant limit!
So my theory, and it is only a theory and I'm just throwing it out there for discussion is this:
Haze, the original Cali one was f^%&ing awesome, 500 an oz in 1969 prices awesome and remember, truly golden and great Acapulco Gold was less than that an elbow.
Sam returned to Cali from the Hippie Trail in 1971 and planted Haze seeds, next two years he grew the Thai seeds he mentioned sieveing through kilos of the best sticks to find and the South Indian he collected while travelling through Kerala. He crossed the best Thai and Indian males to the Haze because in the first season he had incrossed the Haze and discovered the incross produced plants inferior to what he started with. Also, I expect he discovered other issues with the Haze, perhaps only 1 in 20 was any good and so he chose those ones to cross to his Thai and Indian males.
Over the next few years Sam tried to linebreed his Haze so that the original Haze traits he found so desirable in the first place were more common than 1 in 20, he never really succeeded in producing anything that great from it, the special Haze qualities were still there but you had to dig for them. Perhaps he found that his different linebreeding directions all eventually led to dead ends so he kept the line fairly broad and didn't inbreed it too much, instead preferring to select the best Haze females and hybridise them, hence Haze x Skunk, Haze x South Indian etc.
When Sam moved to Holland he was short of cash so he sold as many Haze seeds as he could bring himself to part with to Nevil. Included in those were the last of the 1960s Haze seeds Sam had begun his work with plus some of the earliest Haze hybrids Sam had made, perhaps Haze x Thai and (Haze x Thai) x Indian. Nevil found the gold in the pure Haze seeds rather than in Sam's hybrids and was able to capture a lot of the special Haze qualities through hybridising it to his best female indicas - e.g. NL5Haze, G13Haze, HPHaze, SPHaze etc.
Now, if you're Sam you're gonna be really annoyed at this, here you are, a guy from the heart of the Cali scene who was brought to Holland by Wernard as the Great White Hope and told everyone who'd listen how good his seeds were and charged them a fortune for them; and within 5 years of you're arrival, the name everyone associates with Haze in Holland and probably everywhere except that Cali scene you came from isn't yours, it's Nevils because Nevil has produced Haze hybrids that have been truly game changing. That's no joke, Nev's Haze work changed everything and it's still what everyone in Holland wants to grow and smoke today. The Amnesia cutting that is so widely sold and grown there is just a SSH, GHS, Soma, DNA and most of the other seed cos are just selling hacks of Nev's Hazes - Soma and DNA crossed that G13Haze to everything including Soma crossing it to SSH and calling it Amnesia Haze. All this has got to piss Sam off.
I put my theory in highlights to make it clear which bit of my post is the theory bit.
Now discuss....
But for pity's sake keep it civil....