MORE THAN A DECADE IN THE MAKING: FULL STORY:
Island Mountain Headband, a Rebel Grown history: Headband market influence: By 2010 it was hard for many Humboldt farmers to sell anything besides OG Kush or Sour Diesel. The Purple craze was winding down and buyers from LA’s massive market only wanted OG Kush, while on the East Coast, New York buyers only wanted Sour Diesel. But OG wasn’t a vigorous plant and was challenging to get a decent yield outdoors. It didn’t have much stretch and didn’t do well in large pots or holes in the ground that were common at the time with many small farmers. Most dep was small scale back then and was almost all OG. Sour Diesel was vigorous with lots of stretch and had good mold resistance. You could grow it big, but it’s a long flowering plant, and needed to go until the first week of November to be grown to full maturity and properly develop its flavors and potency. Even when grown correctly the flower wasn’t very dense. Headband was the perfect balance between OG Kush and Sour Diesel. It was more vigorous than OG and earlier finishing than Sour. It was frosty and dense, and most importantly, gassy! It could be sold top dollar to LA buyers as OG Kush, or NY buyers as Sour Diesel, and neither could tell the difference.

My experience/early breeding selections with Headband:
The first Farm I worked on in Humboldt in 2009 was growing mostly Headband. One of my first tasks growing weed in California was staking up large outdoor Headband plants, tying up branches with string and green plant tape, and de-leafing them. Over the next few years I got to know the clone well, growing hundreds of pounds of Headband each year from 2011-2016. In 2011 in the Palo Verde on Island Mountain rd I started making seeds and breeding with the Headband clone, making several outcrosses, and was selling clones to growers in the area. I tested the new Headband seed hybrids in 2012 and was very impressed and excited about the quality and greasy gassy dominant traits in the plants.

I made notes for my breeding and future records and took photos of the Headband clones leaf and branch structure to use for comparisons on future selections. In 2013 I grew more of the F1 seeds full term and did an open pollination selecting the best males from about 50 seeds, keeping seed from only the best seeded females. The full term outdoor Headband from seed in 2013 was more impressive then the HB clone mom, and to this day some of the best weed I’ve ever grown or smoked. In 2015 I did an open pollination with new selections making F3 seed stock. When I grew out the F3 seeds I was disappointed to find that the majority of the females did not have the gassy traits that made Headband so special. The plants grew huge chunky buds and were awesome, but the terpene profile was more musky, or a mix of Pepto Bismol and oniony body odor, nice, but not Headband gas.

I wanted to fix my mistake in selections and rework the seed line to grow Headband dominant plants that Humboldt was growing tens of thousands of pounds of. Usually I do preservation breeding which keeps the diversity in a line through open pollinations. With this accomplished and the preservation work done, it was time to narrow down the traits, and create a seed line representing everything amazing about Headband, although improved and available to everyone.

New selections/breeding process:
Finally in 2020 I had the space and time to go back into the F3 seeds and reselect. I selected 3 males based on smell, and chose stretchy lankier plants over males with a stronger sturdier structure. I had about 24 females that were open pollinated. From those females there were some nice plants, but only 2 standouts that embodied what I was looking for. Both had frosty light pale green flowers, one was gassy identical to the classic headband clone, and the other was more skunky in a way that could tingle your nose. (The new f4 seeds were labeled #12**)

I grew out the F4 seeds from those 2 stand out plants in 2021. I selected 4 males from 72 seeds and open pollinated all the F4 females. From those, once again most of the plants were nice but not true Headband dominant. I only kept seeds from 2. Again, one was almost identical to the original Headband clone in every way, and the other was taller and stretchier with smaller but frostier buds, and had a super intense skunk nose, I called it skunk faced. (F5 seeds from the 2 stand out females were labeled A (headband dominant) and B (skunk faced).

In 2022 I grew 72 F5 seeds from each of the A and B plants. We did a small breeding project with several selected males and kept seeds from the best gassiest females (labeling new F6 seeds 2022**). We also grew a bunch of females full term and took clones from several dozen. Later over the winter I did a selection on them and kept 3 for further testing. After flowering the moms indoors and growing the clones outdoors in 2023 we have a keeper production/breeding mom, and a few others for ongoing testing.

Current new seeds available:
In 2023 for breeding we started seeds of the F4, the F5, and the F6 side by side. I selected 3 males from the F4s, one was identical to the Headband mom, and the other two were more vigorous with lanky branching, and great gassy smells coming from stem rubs of the stalks. Using those males we open pollinated the F4 females for a preservation run making a new f5 selection. Male selections on the F5s were also used in a separate open pollination. Each seeded female was cataloged separately with notes on the individual plant, noting nose, resin, color, vigor, resistance, etc, and rated with a three star system. Seeds are being offered from 7 standout 2 and 3 star rated plants, each with a strong gassy fuel nose, heavy resin production, and excellent resistance to pest, mold, and other environmental stresses. If it wasn’t as good or better than the original Headband clone it wasn’t kept. Tested thoroughly in 2024 around the world indoors and outdoors. With these new Island Mountain Headband seeds, I’m proud to offer a part of my journey with Headband, more than 10 years in the making, searching and selecting for some of my favorite herb to smoke and grow.