BY DAVID DOWNS | August 27 | SAN FRANCISCO
Good afternoon, Fire Followers,
It’s starting to smell like fall in The City—that combination of coolness, humidity, and breeze. All the male plants are busting. The gals all have white pistils sticking straight up like ’80s Dolly Parton hairdos. You can just imagine all the countless millions of seeds forming across North America—all tiger-striped and full of potential. … What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Welcome to David Downs’ Fire Follower: Your weekly must-read for the best seeds and clones in the game. Publishing every Wednesday with market-moving, brand-making, actionable genetics intelligence from me, David Downs, based on 17 years on the weed beat, including seven at Leafly.
We trawl all the important socials, seed banks, web pages, and Discords—so you don’t have to. Please email me your upcoming drop news.
In this week’s newsletter free excerpt:
Insanely hot breeder Fiya Farmer details his surprise drop and what’s to come.
The Culture Cup winners point to a prime time for lime terps.
Top seed drops from Umami, Big Buddha, and Masonic.
As always, the first hit is free, then I’ll see you in the PRO version. Assuming you got $25 on it. Save 85% when you subscribe to 52 issues.
THREE-ALARM FIYA: California-based leading terp architect Fiya Farmer surprise-announced this week three new strains available in clone form only direct through his website. It followed a long period of quiet where the mysterious breeder’s work did the talking, scoring trophies for growers from New York, Michigan, Oklahoma, California and beyond.
Doja Pak, Backpack Boyz, Wizard Trees, Connected, Alien Labs and Preferred Gardens have all done well with the solo entrepreneur’s work. Many nurseries offer Fiya Farmer cuts without permission and sometimes without credit.
“That’s part of the game,” Fiya Farmer told me in a rare interview. “You can’t get mad at that. You just have to stay ahead of the curve by always creating.”
Here’s an excerpt of our Q&A, edited for clarity and concision. The full interview is in this week’s Fire Follower PRO, which you can purchase here for $25. Save 85% off the cover price when you subscribe to a year’s worth of PRO editions.
David Downs: Where does this fit into your drops this year? It feels like I watch your website every week, and this is pretty new.
Fiya Farmer: I’ve been kind of stocking up. In the past, as I’ve created new genetics, I’ve dropped them right away. I’m learning from not only what doesn’t work, but also what has worked in the past. Right now, we’re in a time where it feels like everybody’s attention span is so short.
It’s like the TikTok generation. Everybody wants to swipe to the next new thing, so it’s hard to keep up with that as a breeder. Creating something special takes a lot of time, and it’s hard to find something that’s really worthwhile.
Instead of just dropping something and then not coming back for another year or so, I tried to stock up and really build up the flavor portfolio. These two are going to kick off what I’m hoping will be consistent drops every three months or so.
Instead of dropping four strains at once and then not being heard from for a year, hopefully I can spread it out and drop one every three months so my name stays fresh. Then I can give each strain the push that it deserves.
I feel like sometimes some of my best strains kind of fall by the wayside because I’m pushing several strains at once. Long answer short, I hope this is the start of consistent drops from here on out.
David Downs: Great. I see Zangster, FunDip, and Candifornia. It sounds like FunDip might be the third, but you mentioned this is a two-strain drop and there are three. FunDip might have been around for a minute.
Fiya Farmer: FunDip has been out. I’ve had some exclusive deals with Doja Pak on FunDip. I don’t know if you’re aware of how genetics works, but once they leave your hands, they never really stay where they should be in most cases.
Although FunDip was under exclusive arrangements, I know people outside of the facility have gotten it, so I’m not calling that one a new drop. It’s new for me. I’m just launching it officially for the first time, but it’s winning competitions in Michigan with people I never partnered with. It’s out there.
David Downs: Let’s dig into the two present strains. Zangster is Zangria and Blue Lobster crossed to Z Money, and Z Money is Zkittlez times Fortune, which was a sister of Zangria. That sees you playing in the Z house but also bringing in some of the bling—the Eye Candy and Facade. Is that correct?
Fiya Farmer: Yep. I’ve been working with Zkittlez for eight years now, it seems. Quite a while.
Zkittlez provides a lot of good when you cross it with things, but it also brings some bad to the table in the looks and vigor departments. Where I’m at with my Zkittlez projects now is several generations down the line. In this example, I’m not just crossing it to Zkittlez. I’m crossing it to something that has been crossed to Zkittlez. The Fortune-Zkittlez cross, which is Z Money, adds some of the good of Zkittlez but takes away some of the bad.
I’m still dipping into that Zkittlez bag that everybody wants, but doing it in a way that I think is more beneficial to the overall goal: having some bag appeal, having some vigor most importantly, but still giving that taste everybody is looking for.
David Downs: You strike me as a breeder who really breeds for flavor translation, which is very 2026. Is that a correct assessment?
Fiya Farmer: Of course. It’s become really popular, and it’s become a priority in 2026. But I feel like, for a connoisseur, this has been popular for as long as I’ve been smoking. In the late ’90s and early 2000s, it was always about, “What is the loudest bag in the pile?”
My favorite weed delivers what I call “the high before the high.” If you get some really good weed, before you smoke it and get high, there’s the high of just looking at it, smelling it and having it. That’s like a high in itself for me.
When I started breeding, I naturally wanted to find that kind of weed. Unfortunately, when you pheno-hunt, you’ll notice that the biggest-producing pheno is never the loudest smelling or the best tasting. So when you say I breed for flavor, yes, absolutely, because that’s the weed I want to smoke. It’s been that way from the beginning.
David Downs: It’s almost like role-playing games, where you have to choose your character attributes and you have a limited number of points. If you give them all to size, they’re just not going to be there on flavor, unfortunately.
Fiya Farmer: You can’t create a super character with weed strains either. I wish you could, but it doesn’t work that way in nature.
David Downs: Then we have Runtz times FunDip times Z Money. This is Candifornia. There’s that Z Money again: Zkittlez and Fortune, and Zangria. It seems like you are giving the audience what they want here, but maybe refining it—finding a better version of Candy Z for people.
Fiya Farmer: Yes, a little twist. I’ve stayed away from candy up until this point. A lot of people were asking me for a candy drop. They’ve been asking me for years.
What I did is cross something I have—Z Money and FunDip—and hit it to Runtz. I named it Candifornia because Zkittlez is from Northern California, Runtz is from Central California, and my FunDip is from Southern California. It’s a little candy cut for all regions of California. The name Candifornia came from that premise.
David Downs: Totally. I know that one is going to bang out. You have great videos on the site, which is great to see in a world where so many seed packs are just an AI-generated image now. Thank you for those. Can you talk a little bit about the business model? …
Read the full Fiya Farmer interview in Fire Follower PRO today. Subscribe to 52 issues and save 85% off the cover price.
LIME TIME: Over the weekend, THE CULTURE CUP wrapped up in Maine, with the latest winners in the influential hash world. A Gary Payton, Champaya, and Triple Burger took top spots for rosin. Lemon Royale, Lime Burst, and Lime BPPZ won for melt. Those are victories for breeders Powerzzzup, Symbiotic Genetics, and California Seed Bank, plus Talking Trees. Lemon Royale will be at Clonetopia Sept. 19-20.
CUTTING THE (DIS)CORD: In other genetics news, ROYAL QUEEN SEEDS is having Discord trouble—the latest breeder to do so since Discord started cracking down on its servers. Better start the evacuation.
DOOMSDAY MARKETING: Lastly, several breeders and seed banks have started DOOMSDAY CLEARANCE SALES in response to the recriminalization of seeds, which kicks in Nov. 12. Seeds Here Now is running an inventory clearance sale and has set a timer for the “Federal Seed Ban” as a sitewide stripe. Skunktek is also advising that heads stock-up.
3 TOP SEED DROPS
This week, we’d recommend:
Umami Seeds keeps their audience aloft with Next Day Air (Payzos x Zeclair) 6 fems for $120. Smells like “Cookie dough, vanilla cream, citrus, caramelized lemon, and fuel.”
The Original Big Buddha Family Farms has launched Original Cheese (Cheese Clone Only 04/05 x Original Cheese (Cheese Bx3). £40.00 for 6 fems.
And Masonic dropped a Stargod (Starburst F1 #4 x Tropicanna F2) for $80 per pack which immediately went ‘Out of stock.’ It’s a testament to the power of that Starburst. Consolation packs this week include Mase and the Giant Peach (Peach Limeade x Tropicanna F2) for $30 per pack. OZK x Trop for $80. And Akatamanegi (GMO x Tropicanna) plus poster for $100.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Canna Country Selections comes to SF for a pheno tasting of eight sister selections of CC #36 x CC #37 sisters. Come pick the next wave of Canna Country. Tickets are $25.
Reminders
CLONETOPIA II: More world-class genetics will be on tap September 19-20 at Clonetopia II, over at 7 Stars Richmond. The pre-order form is live. Just 40 Toad Venoms left. Clone purchase required to enter the nursery party.
TERPNAMI 2026 ALERT: Our two-day seed rave in the Bay will include Exotic Genetix, plus Grove Bags, Maine Trees, Voyage Bloom (the Michigan brand behind Slumrz), Equilibrium Genetics, Alpine Seed Group featuring Mountaintop Seeds, Zeed Vault, Grandiflora and many more. We’ll be doing 100 VIP boxes of curated gifts from the brands. RSVP today.
In this week’s Fire Follower PRO for $25
More top seed drops from Bodhi, Cannarado, Capulator and more.
Where to get the latest Fiya Farmer clones.
New Autos of note.
Essential buys from Huckleberry Hill, Wizard Trees, and Relentless.
Access to back issues of Fire Follower PRO, featuring dozens more stellar additions for your grow.
Genetics release and awards Event Calendar.
Fire Follower saves you over 400 hours per year keeping up with genetics news, and you never miss a big drop. It’s for commercial breeders, growers, store buyers, PR people, executives, and pro-am aficionados. Buy this week’s issue for $25. Subscribe to 52 issues and save 85%. (I email you the full genetics intelligence report when you pay.)
I’ll see you in the PRO edition.
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