There were a couple of NL5xHzA female cuttings I passed out to people, but #2 was the better of the two, but I'm splitting hairs. I haven't smoked the Mexican Haze from Dampkring, but it sounds alright. My preference would be to put the 5HzC to the Mex (didn't Kanga do that already?). There is no A5 Mango, it's C5.
The story with the Mexican Haze is that they obtained some old Mexican seeds and only one germed, it was a male so they hit the A5 with it. Kanga did indeed do that and I think he calls it Oaxacan Space Shuttle, I've seen the pics, it looks very nice. I'm aware of other private small scale breedings done with 5HzC, one that springs to mind is a cross to Dalat (a Vietnamese line collected a few years back in a remote northern valley).
I have a hazy memory of Soma getting those seeds from me and that he crossed it with everything. It was good stuff, I'm sure people did well with seeds from those lines.
Going from my hazy memory, I think Soma said he was given a single pack of G13Haze seeds of 1988 vintage by Ed Rosenthal and only managed to get one to germ as they were over a decade old, that one plant was the G13Haze male and it was leaning heavily to the Haze side. BTW, is it the Haze A or the Haze C in that cross, I'm guessing A? People have indeed done well with seeds from those lines, the same G13Haze male has also been used by DNA Genetics and a Dutch guy called Zeno (whose work was released by Dampkring and Barney's) to great success and is now being used by Conoisseur Genetics in the UK.
You might have been out of the scene for a while but your genes are still at the core of the breeds being done. You might have heard the story of the C5 cut being entered in the HTCC by Barney's year before last and Derry getting up on stage to get the award and giving an impassioned speech about how it was bred from new exotic landraces in a jungle in S America, he mentioned genes from Laos etc. I stood there and chuckled to myself. I forget what Derry called that entry now, Red Dragon I think, but it was just C5, he bought in a really good batch of it from some guys down in the south of Holland.
I recall that you said something about a Purple Afghan British Hempire, I'd like to know more about it. I've seen a couple of pictures of P.A., very pretty, although I could never bring myself to select for colour. Quality and yield have always outstripped other considerations. I have this sudden yearning to smoke and categorise this variety. It might make part of a killer 4 way Indica. Hmmm!
N.
I wish i could tell you I have a kilo of Purple Afghan seeds I'm going to send you but truth is I don't have any seed of it in my possession. The story of it is simple, a soldier brought seeds back and gave em to a friend of mine who grew em out (about 50 I think he said) and saw a load of variation as you would with an unworked line, some were very colourful so he took several males and females and open pollinated then gave me some of the seeds. They sat in my stash for a couple of years because he never told me anything about them, they were just one of several lines he traded with me at the time. I eventually grew em out and had four phenotypes, one was very dark purple but produced very airy buds, huge but airy; the best one was very bright purple, almost magenta, huge yield but also a bit too airy, there was a pink/green pheno and a green pheno. I took the best male and pollinated four females, one of each of the phenos. I also used pollen from that male on a bunch of females of others lines, one being a Thai, you've probably seen Snowhigh's pics of his outdoor plants from that mating.
To borrow a phrase from your good self, my life burnt down so I never much further with working the Purple Afghan line. When I first made the four batches of seed I decided to share them with four other hobby breeders around the globe, one set went to Esbe in Denmark, one to JJ-NYC in NYC, one to Alfred in the Canaries and one to Mojave Joe in Florida. Esbe grew some outdoors and got some very nice plants but I don't think he did any matings with them. JJ-NYC took the best male he could fd and crossed it to his Stardawg mother which is a breed he did using a Chemdawg cutting, he calls it Purple Stardawg and the seeds are for sale under the Topdawg Seeds banner. Mojave Joe and Alfred both did as I asked them and made more pure PA seed, Alfred spread them round people in The Canaries and Spain so there will be seeds around and about, Mojave Joe sent seeds out to a few guys, some went to Hawaii and I've seen pictures of it growing there on The Big Island, they liked it a lot there and kept cuttings so there are pure PA cuts in Hawaii.
The pure PA seeds I kept are still in existence but I don't have them, they are in the fridge of a mutual friend of ours in Amsterdam, I can't go get them cos I'm facing jail time there for a grow bust earlier this year. There are also loads of seeds of the various crosses I made. The Dutch cops burst in just after I'd planted out a load of pure PA and PA x OG Kush f2s so I lost those.
So you now know the whole story on that one. The best PA pheno had a pretty huge yield and the prettiest colouration I've seen, it lacked in only two regards - density and resin, I saw it as a very useful breeding plant to add colour and size to high quality but low yield indicas such as Bubba Kush, Deep Chunk, OG Kush etc. The PA male I chose to breed with initially turned out to have been a good selection as he made some excellent f1 hybrids, the mating with the Abusive OG Kush was particularly successful, several fantastic plants were found in the f1s, there were at least 3 that were very worthy of a place in almost anyone's garden. I chose the one that was basically a short, fat OG Kush in that it had buds that looked and smoked just like the OG but with the size of the Afghan and a 55 day finish indoors (the OG takes 75-80) and made F2s using the best male I could find, those seeds were grown out in Holland and the resultant plants impressed everyone who tried them. So I think you are correct that the PA would be an interesting plant for you to work with in a 4-way indica, everything I've seen supports that view.
I'll see what I can do to track down both pure PA and f1 hybrid seed for you, might take me a while but I'm sure they can be found. The guy in Hawaii and Mojave Joe in FL both offered to send me cuttings of the pure PA females they kept, my life burnt down before we could make that happen, but I can contact them and see if the cuttings are still available, if they are, I'm sure we can find a way to get them down under, maybe Kanga could include them in one of his outdoor grows then you can smoke them and see for yourself if it's something worth further work.
Some pics of the PA from a few years ago, grown under a 250 HPS in a cupboard. First pic is from Esbe's garden in Denmark.
You can see the original grow diary here, it has a ton of pics at various stages of development:
http://www.breedbay.co.uk/forums/strain-specific-showcase/9174-purple-afghan.html
a purple 4 way indica would be interesting to say the least
