Who sells the best Durban!!

[Raco]

Thanks for the excellent info, Sam

 

[XyZ]

well said Raco ...this is great info from a professional

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the info sam! I have just germed four of your sa durban x skunk1. I have just germed 5 african seeds swazi rooibart too, chocolate pheno eh? guess i might drop the other 5 i have i plan on making f2's!

 

[muddy waters]

i wonder why sam went to the trouble of breeding the durban poison but never worked with (to my knowledge) other african varieties like swazi, malawi, etc. was there something superior about the durban--truer breeding, more potent, earlier, better for crosses in some way?

also, the original power plant is said to contain 100% south african genetics. does anyone know what/where it actually comes from? i think i heard it was a newly collected (90s) line from durban as well.

 

[XyZ]

so far i know the power plant is just durban/skunk

 

[muddy waters]

really XyZ? i think the nirvana ppp that i grew out is probably the dutch passion pp crossed with the nirvana skunk male. but DP claims they sourced new genetics and never hybridized to create their power plant. i would be surprised if they merely were making selections from sam's original stock. why wouldn't they retain the durban name, it's pretty marketable seems to me.

has anyone tried hybridizing the different african strains with others? malawi x durban, swazi x ethiopia. it seems one could create a new "african haze" just crossing the different sativas from the continent and selecting for potency etc. no one's ever attempted this?

 

[Raco]

I´ve read that the Nirvana´s PPP is Durban x White Widow?

 

[XyZ]

muddy watter, read careful the description from dutchpassion :wink:

Powerplant (mostly Sativa) was developed by us in 1997 from new South African genetics. This strain has been inbred only, never hybridised. Very rich in THC. It is a strain with an enormous grow potential. Indoor as well as in a greenhouse the plants have an enormous yield. Indoors flowering starts already one week after turning back the lightcycle to 12 hours. Outdoor, flowering starts late, but the plants ripen very fast. This variety is very uniform. Strong “up high”, very soft smoke.


-first of all, i would say there is no "mostly sativas" in africa.
i know that Henk (owner from dutchpassion) is sure not a breeder, rather more like a strain collector with a few crosses to make a bigger list on his seedbank. i think the durban was the only south african which came to his hands (& for the dutch ...this genetics were new
i'm not certain ...just looking from an other point... seems like they developed durban/skunk aka power plant, which is mostly sativa. also the huge grow potential somehow indicates the added skunk vigor. This new strain (power plant) was maybe inbred ...but who knows really about dutchpassion

 

[muddy waters]

good analysis XyZ, thanks a lot. the "mostly sativa" is the obvious clue.

then you have nirvana including "pure power plant" in their "white family", which i think means it can belong to a country club... or they crossed it with white widow as raco suggested... or a white rhino... i spent the last 8 months growing it out and saw a bit of variation with my nirvana ppp, maybe they are F2s or F3s of the dp pp / ww cross?

i think we can assume though that the dp powerplant is not from the same durban that sam brought to holland, right? fwiw i had fruity and citrusy and even a bit of indica garlic smell, but nothing anise/licorice

 

[1TWISTEDTRUCKER]

Thanks for the info sam! I have just germed four of your sa durban x skunk1. I have just germed 5 african seeds swazi rooibart too, chocolate pheno eh? guess i might drop the other 5 i have i plan on making f2's!

Your gonna love the sadpxsk#1,This along with nirvanas Nl. were my 1st attempt at growing,I didnt mannage to kill them,so they must be easy to grow
The yield was low,but i'm sure that could be improved upon with better treatment.
I'm sad to say that i've mannaged to loose my last clone.
I had to shutdown in a hurry this winter,& i lost them to the cold during the move to a safe house(part of the MJ protection program)lol.
While Sam is in the house,is there any more of the SADPxSK#1 to be had,and ifso where can i find them.
I found a mentor,& i'm sure i'll do them justice next time.


PEACE;1TT

 

[ngakpa]

thing is there's a vast array of possible origins for ganja in Natal - Arab, Indian, SE Asian etc.

granted that Sam is saying his Durban Poison line started as a pure sativa

but is there not a chance that there have been some indica genes floating around in Natal over the past century and more - given all that has been said about the huge population there from the Indian subcontinent (which prior to Partition included what are now Bangladesh and Pakistan)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asians_in_South_Africa


"Indians in South Africa are descended from indentured labourers who were brought by the British from India in the 19th century, mostly to work in sugar plantations or mines (especially, coal) in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) and later also from trades men who emigrated to South Africa. Indian South Africans form the largest group in the world of people of Indian descent born outside India, ie:born in South Africa, not having migrated there. This contrasts with the position in the U.S where, although there is a large population of Indians, most were not born in the U.S but migrated from India."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_South_Africans

"Indian South African is a compromise term for non-Europeans who arrived in South Africa from colonial India.

"The broader term "Asians" became rather imprecise in a polyglot, immigration-defined nation like South Africa. Sometimes "Indian" included peoples from present-day Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. At other times the aforementioned groups were subsumed in the broader geographical category "Asians," when it included persons originating in present-day Iran, Parsis or Zoroastrians, other Muslims and the small Chinese community."


just to be clear - Durban is the largest city in Natal - KZN

I am still casting my mind back to the comment an SA friend made whose dad would have been growing good ganja back in Natal in the '70s - and said to his son that the defining feature of good Durban ganja then was a distinctive leaf shape at the apex of the buds... wish he had elaborated more, but this friend of mine was open to the possibility of indica genetics being in Natal for a while ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_South_Africa

Sam, I'm not clear on whether you are saying you coined the name "Durban Poison", or not? The distinct impression I got from conversation with SA friends is that the name "Durban Poison" has been used by South Africans for good ganja from Natal right back to the '60s. I didn't ask them to clarify that though. Thanks for the other info, cheers

 

[muddy waters]

ngakpa, what would be interesting to see is from which regions the British were drawing their indentured laborers. that would probably reveal whether indica genetics could've traveled to s.a. with them.

i was similarly curious about the indian laborers who came to california in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and became landowners and agricultural producers in the central valley over the past 100 years. there are historic sources for "hindus" smoking ganja or hashish in san francisco only a decade or two removed from the gold rush of 1849. but these "hindus" were actually mostly sikhs. i don't know enough about the sikh culture to surmise whether they would have brought cannabis genetics to california. but that is a mystery i would love to one day solve.

 

[RAGGA MON]

muddy the possibilities are countless. if ever someone ran the spice trade route europe to asia and so forth, you had to cross paths with south africa and most ships docked in the cape or natal area. so the possibilities are endless...then in the 60's and on, there is a large hippie'sh community and trend in south africa..attracting many eclectic and free sprits that had a fondness for ganja(dagga).
being an almost perfect climate and enviromet the grass spread WELL.
natives were the probible(99%) carriers of the pure landraces ..so im sure this is the point where hybredizing started to take off. over the last few years jst like anyone and anywhere else the quest for the grail, is an ambition for the african grower too.
the most common indica few years back that everyone was using was northern lights.....the first major rounds of crossing where spawned with the lights, and now you have every possible indica there is..grown in SA.
sorry for the ramble....just enjoy the topic and wanted to share my theory.
one
Ragga Mon

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

No I did not make up the name Durban Poison, that was the name of the Buds and seeds I got in the 70's from South Africa. As for Indica genes being in South African weed, it is possible but remember that Indica is not from India, rather it is from Afghanistan, North Pakistan, not Bangladesh or India. I don't think any Pakistanis from the Northern Tribal areas were used as workers in South Africa, so the odds of Indica seeds being taken to South Africa were slim.
-SamS

 

[ngakpa]

yeh, I agree it seems unlikely that any significant number of labourers would have been taken from the NWFP or Afghanistan. That said, bear in mind that Pashtun communities can be found in places like Guyana (South America), highly improbable though that might seem http://afghanland.com/culture/guyana.html... again, as a direct consequence of British colonialism... in fact if you look at how the Pashtuns ended up in Guyana, it was often via Uttar Pradesh and other areas of North India, especially following the British led conflicts in Afghanistan etc., and over a period in which colonials would have been taking labouers for the colonies in Natal:

[Little is known about the Afghan Muslims of Guyana, in fact, some may be amazed to learn that Afghans made their way to Guyana among the Indian Muslims. Many people of Afghan origin (Pathan) also migrated to Suriname. When Indian indentured labourers began arriving in Guyana in 1838, Pathans were already settled all over northern India. The modern districts of Bareilly, Muradabad and Badaun had strong Afghan Township where over 9,000 Afghans settled. Some Pathans migrated from Rohilkhand. Bareilly was a ruined city crowded with unemployed, restless Rohilla Pathans. Most importantly, after the Anglo/ Afghan Wars, the British drew the Durand Line (border) between British India and Afghanistan which sliced through Afghan territory.

Part of Afghanistan where the Pashtun dominate went to India. It must be said also that during the 1880's revolution against the British which started in Meerut, the British rounded up the "trouble makers" and sent them to the "kalla-paanie". A lot of Thakkurs and Pushtuns (Pathans) were flushed out to Guyana and Suriname.

Many cities in Uttar Pradesh were experiencing economic stagnation and poverty. Naturally, this led to heavy migration overseas. Immigration records indicate that the majority of Muslims who migrated to Guyana and Suriname came from the urban centres of Uttar Pradesh: Agra, Ahllahbad, Bahraich, Fyzabad, Gonda, Gorakpur, Ghazipur, Kanpur, Lucknow, Muradabad, Rae- Bareilly, Rampur, and Sultanpur. Small batches also came from Karachi in Sind, Lahore, Multan and Rawalpindi in the Punjab, Hyderabad, in the Deccan, Srinagar in Kashmir, and Peshawar and Mardan in the Northwest Frontier (Afghan areas). ]




http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:...ndentured+labourers"&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk

The history of the Indian Diaspora in South Africa is a fascinating saga of suffering and triumph, alternately following each other over the last hundred and forty years. As long ago as 1904, while
the indenture system of importing Indian labour on a contractual basis was nearing the end of its
turbulent course, the then Governor of the British Colony of Natal, Lord Milner, thought it right to
describe the Indians as ‘strangers, forcing themselves upon a community reluctant to receive
them.’ The irony of this statement would be apparent if juxtaposed against the persistent demand,
in earlier years, of the British settlers in Natal for large-scale imports of cheap labour from India
to shore up their sinking economy. And then again, many years later, in 1948, even before the
architect of apartheid, D. .. Malan, came to power in a self-governing British dominion called the
Union of South Africa, his Afrikaner National Party had already made its policy towards the
Indian migrants crystal clear. It had declared in its election manifesto that ‘Indians are a foreign
and outlandish element which is inassimilable’. Continuing in the same vein, the manifesto had
proclaimed the party’s determination to repatriate as many Indians as possible! To what extent, if
at all, were such statements warranted, or were they merely expressions of a racist attitude
against the Indian settlers – both under Britain’s Crown Colony of Natal and also subsequently
under the Boer regime that followed it in South Africa?

Early History of Migration of Indians to South Africa 7.2.

Contrary to the common belief that Indians had first gone to South Africa as indentured labourers
in 1860, they had in fact already arrived there much earlier, in 1653. Dutch merchants, returning
home from their voyages to India and the East Indies, had taken them to the then Dutch Cape
Colony and sold them as slaves to the early Dutch settlers. There they were made to work as
domestic servants, or to join the African slaves who were already toiling on the newly established
farms. Between 1653 and the early 19
th
century, there were already as many as 1,195 Indians in
the Cape, forming 36.40% of the slave population imported into the colony.

7.3.

Most of these Indian slaves had been shipped from Bengal or the Coromandal coast. They were
unable to preserve their distinct identity in the Cape as ‘Indians’. They married slaves from East
Asia, other parts of Africa, or from the indigenous Khoikhoi and San inhabitants. Their progeny
subsequently became known as ‘Malays’. This term was, in time, loosely applied to all the Muslims
in the Cape, irrespective of their geographic origin. Later on, however, in apartheid’s four-fold
classification of South Africa’s population, they came under the appellation of ‘Coloureds’. Naturally,
therefore, the chapter of the Indian slaves, and that also of the Indian servants who accompanied
British officers on vacation in the Cape after it had become a British colony in the 19th century,
does not find its way into the general history of Indian migration to South Africa.

7.4.

On the other hand, the Indian presence in that country owes its origin to the British Parliament’s
passing the Act of Abolition in 1833, whereupon slavery was banned throughout the British
Empire. The immediate consequence of this was that the African slaves of British settlers in the
Natal Colony decided to desert their former masters en masse. Their erstwhile tormentors began
to feel the pinch of having to bend their own backs to manual labour! After considerable efforts
to persuade the reluctant British authorities in India to replicate in South Africa the system of
indentured labour that was already being implemented in Mauritius, the colonists finally succeeded
in their endeavour. Thereupon, a group of Indian ‘coolies’, comprising 342 men, women and
children arrived at the port city of Durban on board the S. S. Truro on 16 November 1860. They
were the first of 384 such arrivals of ‘human cargo’ containing as many as 152,184 unfortunate
persons that were going to be shipped to South Africa over the next 51 years. Of them, 62% were
men, 25% women and 13% children. According to a 1985 report of Dr. .rene Ginwala, who is
currently Speaker of South Africa’s Parliament, two thirds of these emigrants were Tamil and
Telugu speaking Hindus from the then Madras Presidency, a predominance that has persisted in
subsequent years, as well as from Mysore and surrounding areas. The rest of the migrants had
gone mainly from what are now Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. If the vast majority
of the indentured labourers were Hindus, less than 12% were Muslims, while some 2% were
Christians. Most of them were illiterate, but they all carried with them memories of their traditions,
customs and rituals - which they then strove to preserve as best as they could. They spoke a
variety of languages - Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Urdu, as well as dialects from Bihar and UP which
would later merge to become a sort of local version of Bhojpuri, very different from what is found
in Mauritius with its distinctly French and Creole influence.

7.5.

The initial purpose of importing the Indians had been to tend the sugarcane and sisal plantations
of the British settlers. The indentured labourers were bound by contract for 5 years. A carrot was
held out to them in the form of a second contract for a further 5 years, with the offer after that of
a free return passage to India, or grant of some land. The land grant was eventually dropped in
1891. The standard practice in the plantations was to work the labour from dawn to sunset,
Sundays included. After providing them with meagre rations and the barest accommodation in
crowded barracks, the planters were insensitive to all their other needs. Their main concern was
to economise costs. They saved on rations by reducing them on the slightest pretext. They refused
the workers permission to leave their estates, especially to complain to the authorities about their
ill treatment. They grudged them even their meagre wages and often found ingenious excuses to
minimise them. Arbitrary “justice” was often meted out to them in the form of fines or whipping.
In brief, the conditions under which the indentured labourers worked were inhuman and akin to slavery. This was one of the main reasons for the high number of suicides among them. Nevertheless,
the majority of these Indians remained in South Africa, as they had practically banished themselves
from their own country by going abroad when crossing the seas (kalapani) was taboo and attracted
severe prayaschit.

7.6.

Their hard labour in the plantations lead to a miraculous transformation of the Natal Colony’s
faltering economy. This was recognised by the Wragg Commission, which had been appointed in
1885 to enquire into the general condition of the Indian population of Natal. It affirmed in its
report that ‘the stay of Indians in Natal was, in fact, a great boon to the colony’. Nevertheless, the
white settlers continued to treat them as mere ‘units of labour’. So inhuman and degrading was
the treatment meted out to them by the unsympathetic colonists that Henry Polak described the
Indian emigrants as ‘helots of the Empire’, while Hugh Tinker rightly termed the system of their
indentured labour in his monumental book about them as ‘a new system of slavery’. In 1911,
Gopal Krishna Gokhale declared in the Legislative Council in Delhi that the indentured recruitment
of Indians for work in South Africa was ‘a monstrous system, iniquitous in itself, based on fraud
and maintained by force’.

7.7.

While their initial recruitment had been for work in the plantations, Indian labour was also later
distributed to the railways, dockyards, coal mines, municipal services and domestic employment.
Even though they were not happy with the racist laws and taxes, only about 23% of Natal Indians
had returned to India by 1911, when the much abused indenture system was finally terminated.
Most of them had stayed on in Natal and only a few thousands had moved to the Transvaal (now
called the Guateng Province) before the imposition of a total ban on such internal migrations.
Meanwhile, many of the erstwhile ‘coolies’ had acquired little plots of land and become kitchen
gardeners and hawkers, retailing their produce in headloads to the grateful housewives of the
White community. Gradually they had practically monopolised the supply of maize, tobacco and
garden produce in the coastal belt.

7.8.

Their success had prompted the entry into the colony of ‘free passenger Indians’– so called,
because they had paid for their fares as passengers on board a steamship bound for South Africa.
The new immigrants were a community of traders, both Hindu and Muslim, who hailed mainly
from Gujarat. They set up retail shops and started to compete effectively with the much more
expensive stores run by the white settlers In course of time, they constituted around 10% of
Indian immigrants. Much later, teachers, accountants, priests, lawyers and other professionals
arrived, also mostly from Gujarat. These developments lead to much recrimination and jealousy
against the Indians – all of whom were unceremoniously labelled as ‘coolies’. This resulted in
referring to leading members of the community in derogatory terms such as ‘coolie merchant’,
‘coolie doctor’, ‘coolie barrister’ and the like.

7.9.

The colonial administration sought to curb the activities of the Indians by enacting a whole
compendium of discriminatory laws against them, with a view to boxing them in and curbing
their enterprise and economic progress. The Transvaal, for instance, subjected their trade to a Report of the High Level Committee on the Indian Diaspora
registration fee of 25 rands; prohibited them from becoming licence holders in any enterprise
connected with mining; restricted their property rights to segregated wards; subjected them to
the carrying of passes; and forbade them from walking on the pavements. The Orange Free State
excluded them altogether by a law in 1895, while the Cape subjected their immigration into that
province to an education test. Nevertheless, by June 1886, there were already more ‘free’ Indians
in the Natal Colony than indentured Indians. They were free from their contracts, but not free to
join the political process, or to vote as equal citizens of their adopted country.

 

[ngakpa]

i was similarly curious about the indian laborers who came to california in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and became landowners and agricultural producers in the central valley over the past 100 years. there are historic sources for "hindus" smoking ganja or hashish in san francisco only a decade or two removed from the gold rush of 1849. but these "hindus" were actually mostly sikhs. i don't know enough about the sikh culture to surmise whether they would have brought cannabis genetics to california. but that is a mystery i would love to one day solve.

Sikhs preparing cannabis as part of Sikhi - Amritsar, India
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSn05JHYjYI

loaded Nihang
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eql4EG0hOJ

thing I would say is, in village India folk from any religious or ethnic group could be ganja smokers or eaters - Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist etc. etc. ... same goes in the towns and cities particularly with the poorer "lower status" folk

so my guess is the labourers brought to California back then would have been using ganja because it was part of their way of life irrespective of whether it was an explicitly or esoterically accepted part of whatever religions they were affiliated with

I have never visited what is now called Punjab - Indian or Pakistani - but it's a safe bet plenty of ganja is consumed there ... though have been to Himachal Pradesh which was once part of the old Punjab

 

[muddy waters]

great info, ngakpa. now the question remains, did those punjabis in the western u.s. at the turn of the (19th) century bring seeds with them, or were they bringing hashish/getting it imported only?

around the same time frame you have mexicans in mostly southern california, definitely smoking and probably growing, not a hashish culture.

it's assumed here that the first cannabis breeding in california was done by people like the brotherhood and haze bros and similar hippies, using imported stock. is there any possibility that indian or mexican immigrants cultivated cannabis on californian soil and seed was distributed? could these genes be the source for some of the classic old northern california lines like holy weed? i wonder if we'll ever know

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

As far as I know Big Sur Holy Weed was using Haze genes in their hybrids. It was not quite as good as Original Haze but it was grown outdoors, most Original Haze was grown in greenhouses in Santa Cruz.
-SamS

 

[zamalito]

According to Du toit aside from the introduction to the Red Sea countries, cannabis was first introduced to Africa via Arab traders from india, persia and the red sea states along the east coast of africa into both Zanzibar and the Zambezi river region in southern africa. Although the older cannabis lines of this region that I'm aware of are very extreme sativas though very unlikely it is maybe possible that these Arabic traders had come in contact with Indica genes and brought them to Africa. Although I doubt the DP catalog was refering to that, lol.

I've been trying to dig up this reference for a year now and still cannot find it and while I also don't view this is a reference to Indica I remember reading that the Zulus had split cannabis into two types. One was appreciated for its energetic/psychedelic properties and was used for celebration and preparing for battle. The other was valued for its sedating properties and was valued as medicine and possibly an anaesthetic.

 

[muddy waters]

holy weed had "haze in their hybrids" with what else? seems to defy logic that you have herb being grown and smoked in northern mexico from the turn of the last century, you have a large mexican population throughout the state of california for 200 years, and it's a fairly wide open state prior to the 1950s, and you have jazz musicians and beatniks there in los angeles the 40s and 50s smoking herb, ie mexican, black, and even some white demand existed, yet no one was growing it?

without evidence it's impossible to say but there must have been some mexican strains acclimating to california since at least pre-wwii... not saying that has anything to do with haze, just that there was probably herb being grown somewhere in california before the hippies.