A few years ago, we heard a surreal story from the rugged wilderness coastline comprising northwestern California’s famed Emerald Triangle cannabis-growing region.

Where Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity counties intersect, folks sitting around campfires, surfers waiting for towering waves, hikers and others spoke of encountering a friendly gentleman built like the trunk of one of the region’s iconic redwood trees.

He was accompanied by his beautiful daughter on dangerous journeys up the region’s pristine rivers, doing projects to save salmon and native habitat from logging companies and other enemies of life on earth.

They accessed remote reaches of this secretive landscape and were befriended by furtive hermits, horticultural geniuses, Dutch fugitives, retired college professors, and enviro-hippies who’d been growing rare marijuana in Triangle wilderness for generations.

These old growers had spent decades creating absolutely fire marijuana strains using landrace genetics from 1960s and 70s Colombian,  Panamanian, Thai, Mexican, Afghani, African, Indian and Jamaican imports, along with the earliest pure Dutch Haze and Skunk strains.

The father and daughter in these legendary stories actually exist as Nat and Halle Pennington, who lead Humboldt Seed Company (HSC). Because they got rare genetics from isolated growers, HSC now possesses the most diverse, unicorn, deep menu of original cannabis strains of any marijuana seeds company in the known universe, including their Poddy Mouth strain.

Female Flowers, Female Leadership

The first time I talked to Nat Pennington, he emphasized the important leadership role of his daughter Halle, who even at a young age was already integral to his company’s success.

The legacy marijuana industry until recently was dominated by black market outlaw predators. Women were relegated to being bud trimmers, grow wives, eye candy, barely-clad hostesses at cannabis events.

At early High Times Cannabis Cup events in Amsterdam, female hostesses walked around totally nude, wearing only pot leaf body paint.

In contrast, Halle is not a show pony. It’s not a case of a dad having a beautiful daughter, using her as the very attractive face of a company, he said.

Here’s one reason I trust the Penningtons’ integrity…  

A big-money marketing consortium saw photos of Halle. One of the consortium’s rich dudes knew I was scheduled to interview Halle. He begged me to tell her his consortium wanted to make her into a rich YouTube influencer, High Times cover star, brand icon. I told her, and she said:

“Humboldt Seed Company isn’t focused on ego, bling, or fame. We’re all about preserving, enhancing, crafting the rarest cannabis genotypes and phenotypes, and making them available to growers worldwide.”

Today, Humboldt Seed Company is the world leader in dessert strains with genetics, terp suites, looks, scents, highs nobody else has.

Halle is the company’s “products executive,” directing operations at the company’s seed distribution hub, handling dispensary and licensed farm orders, overseeing seed-to-sale traceability systems, designing the company’s artful seed catalogs.

Cake + Mint = Delicious + Powerful

When I interviewed Halle recently, she unpacked the massive effort that goes into creating one of HSC’s most potent feminized photoperiod strains, Poddy Mouth.

The strain’s origins start 25 years ago when Nat first hunted rare cannabis genetics in the Triangle.

Poddy Mouth is a cross of two  of two heritage strains: Humboldt Pound Cake and Mountaintop Mint.

Humboldt Pound Cake is a Wedding Cake cross with formative genetics including Sour Diesel, Northern Lights, White Moonshine, Master Kush, Girl Scout Cookies, and Fire OG. It includes HSC’s Notorious THC strain, which tested as high as 35% THC and comes with a potency warning for novice users.

Notorious THC’s genetics include Ghost of Von Humboldt OG, Caramel Cream, Old School Cookies, Early Girl OG, Trainwreck, and Durban Poison.

And that’s just one half of Poddy Mouth’s parent genetics! The other half is Mountaintop Mint, another HSC heritage strain, which includes Alien Cookies, Humboldt Frost, and Gelato genetics.

Halle, Nat and their team are the only people in the marijuana seeds world who examine tens of thousands of marijuana plants every year during their annual “phenotype hunt.”

Imagine visiting indoor, outdoor, and greenhouse marijuana farms across the Emerald Triangle, strolling down row after row of cannabis plants.

The pheno Poddy Mouth is based on comes from a plant with exceptionally large bracts covered in resins.  What’s a cannabis bract and why are humongous, resinous bracts so rare and desirable? Bracts are a form of protective leafy capsule, shaped like a pod. They enclose and protect ovules. Fertilized ovules become seeds.

Bracts have the highest density of stalked resin glands of any cannabis plant part, and these glands are the most productive factory for cannabinoids and terpenoids.

“We rarely select a pheno based solely on appearance,” Halle recalls, “but this original pheno had such beautiful, unusual buds. People would walk up to it and be immediately startled by the huge bracts.”

Collaborating With Award-Winning Grower

Beginning in 2020, HSC collaborated with Jason Gellman of the Triangle’s Ridgeline Farms to work with this novel pheno.

Jason is an esteemed professional marijuana grower and breeder who has won the prestigious Emerald Cup and was the first craft cannabis grower honored by the Southern Humboldt Chamber of Commerce.

He grew up in Humboldt before legalization, cultivated his first cannabis crop at age 14, and recalls brutal raids and other drug war insanity associated with the region’s black market outlaw cannabis industry.

His licensed, 10,000-square foot family cannabis farm has been featured in High Times, the New Yorker, and other media.

“After we make a pheno discovery and do an initial evaluation, we look for a professional grower to help us with research and development,” Halle says. “We talked with Jason at Ridgeline. He is a very special grower who has special magic with his sungrown plants. We monitored his progress with Poddy Mouth, and the plants were mind-blowing.”

Gellman spent more than a year working with the original Poddy Mouth phenotype. As he refined and stabilized the strain, HSC tested it in all kinds of indoor and outdoor growing situations.

“We have the good fortune to study test plants to keep a close eye on their development,” Halle recalls. “We knew early on this was one to watch. The buds were dense and frosty with hardly any leaves. Poddy Mouth exceeded our expectations. It’s beautiful, has great bag appeal, and is very potent.”

Halle explains that when a strain has been bred to stability and is being considered for commercial release, a group of cannabis aficionados test its growing traits and psychoactive and medical effects.

“Everybody agreed this is a visually beautiful strain, very potent with a wonderful high, and easy to grow,” Halle said.

Potency claims from most seed sellers are little more than hype, but HSC goes beyond subjective evaluations and proves its claims. Halle says HSC has its own liquid chromatograph, a scientific device that precisely measures cannabinoid and terpenoid percentages. HSC also sends sample buds to a third-party laboratory for even more detailed analysis.

Halle provided me with offsite lab analysis documenting Poddy Mouth has at least 34% THC, a relatively high amount of THCVa, and almost no trace of CBD. Other tests showed 35% THC!

Growing Poddy Mouth

After HSC strains have been grown by multiple testers, lab-verified, and released to the marketplace to great acclaim, Halle says, “we continue to work the strains and upgrade them.”

“Selecting phenos for breeding is a group decision involving our extended cannabis family, including award-winning growers and cannabis aficionados. We have thousands of plants to choose from. Every year we narrow that down to maybe 20 phenotypes. Then we do the rigorous breeding, refining, testing. We might release 2-4 new strains a year. We only release the very best,” Halles says.

“We won’t release a strain unless it’s amazing, but we never rest on our achievements either,” she explains. “We pay attention to grower feedback, and work with our team to improve strains that are already excellent. The core traits of a strain won’t change over the course of different seed years, but a seed strain from past years may be available in an even better version this year.”

The current version of Poddy Mouth is fire. The high immediately elevates mood, providing a euphoric jolt modulated by body relaxation and centered calmness.

The large, glistening buds express fuel, sweet fruit, mint, and other mouthwatering terpene scents and tastes—definitely high in “bag appeal.”

Growers who process strains into cannabis concentrates such as terp sauce, bubblehash, and dry sift especially love Poddy Mouth because its massive swollen bracts provide an unusually high percentage of resin glands.

“Poddy Mouth shows resistance to gray mold and powdery mildew,” Halle reports. “Very easy to grow indoors or outdoors. You only need an average 55-60 days for indoor bloom phase. The plants are top-heavy with dense, large-bract, chunky buds dripping with resins. Buds have very low leaf percentage, so manicuring is easy and fast.”

In my grow room, Poddy Mouth has good growth rate, early flowering, and a fascinating scent. Properly topped and shaped, one Poddy Mouth plant can fill a 5 x 5 grow tent in a 20-gallon pot. Be aware that the strain has displayed weak limbs, and may need support.

One important note regarding harvest timing: Poddy Mouth resin glands may go cloudy early. Significant percentage of cloudy or amber resin glands are often a sign that buds are ready to harvest, but not with Poddy Mouth. Unless your resin glands are totally cloudy and also collapsing, rely on the breeder’s 55-60 day bloom phase estimate.

Poddy Mouth requires high-level skill to grow. It doesn’t like being flipped from 18-hour grow phase light to 12-hour bloom phase light overnight. It’s best to reduce light from 18 to 12 in two-hour increments.

Spider mites love the plant, so check leaves early and often, and use the least harsh intervention, such as manually removing mites by crushing them, or spraying small doses of herbal miticide or Azamax. I’ve never seen it develop gray mold.

Sadly, Poddy Mouth has a tendency to develop hermie flowers, even under ideal conditions and a gradual transition from grow phase light hours to bloom phase light hours. It takes about 30 minutes per day for a full room in the first 3-4 weeks of bloom phase to examine each plant for hermie clusters and remove them. After 3-4 weeks, no new hermies develop.

Unfortunately, even with the most rigorous hermie removal protocols, a few buds do manage to get self-pollinated and have seeds. I have asked HSC to breed out the hermie trait, and I hope they do.

Poddy Mouth high is intense, comes on fast, and is a perfect 50-50 balance between Sativa and Indica effects, but this is not a couch lock strain. It’s a very functional high, despite its intensity.

There are two things to remember buying seeds from Halle and Nat.

The first thing is a warning: do not confuse Humboldt Seed Company with a shady company that calls itself Humboldt Seed Organization (HSO). This company is based in Spain, but falsely claims to be based in the Emerald Triangle, and does not care about grower satisfaction or ethical customer service.

They’re a total ripoff. We tested HSO seeds and were bitterly disappointed due to massive hermies, male plants from feminized seeds, low-potency garbage strains.

So it’s a great that buying HSC seeds supports a civic-minded family business network. Nat and Halle lead a non-profit environmental/social justice organization. They provide cannabis industry jobs and are a role model for business ethics, while giving us incredible new strains like Poddy Mouth.