The Story so Far for Alba Automatics and the release of Dakar Haze F4

Dakar Haze F4 Feminized (Marathon OG F3 x Zamaldelica Express F3)

Dakar Haze is my first successful long term breeding project, releasing under Alba Automatics. Alba being Gaelic for Scotland. I have been dabbling in making my own seeds since 2022, not long after I won a huge giveaway from Stoned Ninja, which really changed everything for me. Ignoring the amazing prizes, I made some genuine friendships from it. Growmies (stealtheseseeds & HomeGrownTwinkie) sent pollen but it wasn’t until HGT sent me some Zamaldelica Express pollen that I had some success getting pollen to take.

As usual I had a Marathon OG Auto flourishing and decided to dust a couple branches. As I was still figuring out basics, I had pollenated quite late. A couple weeks after this, Daz of Nightowl Seeds announced his newest drop that would include some F1 regular (male and female) seeds that he decided to not take further forward. Lo and behold, it was the cross I’d just done myself. Daz named it Dakar Haze and I learned a valuable lesson, that I won’t run someone else work against another of their cultivars again. Even though I hadn’t thought of doing a seed release at that time, I still wanted to create something unique. We ended up smoking the late pollinated Marathon OG and grabbing two packs from Daz. They had 4 seeds in each pack! I ended up with 5 males and 3 females. I narrowed down my males to my favourite two and open pollinated the 3 females.

It was wild how much pollen was flying about in that 2x4 tent. Took me forever to clean it down after. I’ve been fascinated with seeing the male flowers since. They are just so different to the females. When I was smelling flowers, I kept leaning towards this red kola flavour with darker, purple flowers and ultimately chose the F2 seeds from that mum to pop first.

Thanks as always to my ever suffering wife, she allowed me to erect another 2x4 for more plant fun and I immediately started using it for this breeding project. I was hooked.

In November of 2023 I took a quick jaunt to Maine to meet up GettingHighWithCats to talk cannabis activism and then the next day to meet up with Daz. He welcomed me into his home and when I arrived Daz and his girlfriend were wearing my DARE T shirts he’d bought from me. It was super sweet. We had a great day together where we waxed lyrical and shared stories, smoke and food. They both showed me some fantastic hospitality and I got to have a ruffle in Daz’s seed collection and see where he does all his work. It was a special moment as we were both nuked off of Judy Gemstone that I had grown. I was rummaging through his many totes and stumbled upon a plastic baggie with a very faint “Tyrone Stomper F1” written in faded sharpie. Not an hour before I had the newly released F7 in my hands in all its fancy packaging glory.

It was a real moment for me.

It was at that moment I realised neither of us had talked in some time. And so I thought I should start making a move, Daz was super apologetic and admitted to also been wrecked from partying with Judy!

I gifted Daz some of the F2s that I’d been playing with but he was incredibly encouraging of me to keep working the line and see where it takes me. We both have an incredible amount of passion for this plant, especially of the autoflower variety, but was funny to connect over so many other things too.

The F2 run was fascinating. I decided to just go for it and I think I popped at least 60 something seeds. As these were regulars roughly half were male, which I eventually whittled down to 1. A stunning purple male that had an OG funk that was very loud. Again, pollen all up in that tent.

I pollinated my favourite females. I chose mum plants based on size, symmetrical structure, vigor, frostiness, loudness.

The remaining female plants were either culled, gifted and grown out in various pot sizes, indoors, outdoors, under different kinds of lights. A significant amount of them were showing deep colours of purple, sticky, tacky flowers. Riddled in trichomes.

It was this point I put up an additional 8x4 to work with for breeding.

The F3s I continued to play about with in a variety of conditions and stresses. I started them in 1/4 gal and 1/2 gal and then transplanted them into various pot sizes. This is when I ran them in autopots for the first time and they were MASSIVE. I could not get over how frosty they were. My phone would get covered in sticky goodness from my rubbing lowers and taking photos!

I went ahead and popped 55 seeds of the F3 regs. Once I’d weeded out the males, I ended up keeping 5 females to reverse. Shout out to Alebrije Genetics for sending me ingredients and recipe for STS spray, Fullduplex for answering reversal questions when I didn’t want to bug Alebrije more.

I successfully reversed all 5 and around day 25 I sent another 50odd seeds for a wee dook. Removed the males and the made my selections. This was then narrowed down to 9 and then 7.

I was able to utilise my extra space and pollinate different mums with different pollen donors. Matching similarities to increase the chance of seeing these traits, I was able to make more nuanced selections pairing parents.

I grew the 7 out, but decided to only process 3. I chose #1, #4, #6

Summer of 2024, I planted each of the phenotypes in different sized pots of soil  and in November, I began harvesting some of these testers.

Having now vaped and smoked these plants(see separate smoke report), I am now ecstatic to share them with you. You’ll find some wonderful therapeutic effects as well as a tasty inhale. My reaction to it has been very cerebral but my body is melted. I’ll be sitting watching TV with my mouth wide open, catching flies!

I would be honoured for my plants to appear in your garden and I hope they bring you as much joy and excitement as they have brought me!

I feel so much gratitude for the support from our community that I have decided that I will donate 30 minutes of volunteer hours for every order. This may be volunteering my time to teach kids how to grow plants and mushrooms at the local school, walking dogs from the local shelter or whatever I feel like at the time. I’ll make sure to post updates of how many hours completed and what I’ve been up to!

Slánte Mhòr!

Flamm

🔥 🐮