Dirty Bird Genetics, led by North Atlantic Seed Co owner Beth Mathieu, with the help of head breeder Ben Morris and the Maine Clone Co team, is the culmination of a lifelong passion for genetics and devotion to the development of the grassroots cannabis industry in the US. Dirty Bird is a woman-owned crew of family and friends that set out over a decade ago to carve a space for women in the cannabis industry in Maine and beyond. A collector of many things, Beth began pheno-hunting and collecting genetics back in 2012 when she first entered the industry as a medical caregiver, but like all great things, it took tremendous patience, time and hard work to bring to fruition. Beth and the Maine Clone Co team have spent nearly a decade growing and culling the genetics collection that we work with today. We are so proud to announce that the Dirty Bird Genetics seed line officially launched in October of 2023. We are still offering some of our favorite genetics and breeder cuts in clone form through our sister company, Maine Clone Co, which are available for medical marijuana patients and caregivers.
Our Breeding Practices:
When we began our breeding journey, we sought to create some phenomenal F1’s that we could pheno-hunt, adopt selections of, and eventually breed to IBL status. That was the seed of our vision, per se; however, we were so impressed by some of our F1 cultivars that we knew they had a place in our line up in their own right, and we ultimately decided to preserve those and feminize them for release after experimenting and testing their progeny. Our Peanut Butter Breath x Mimosa, aka The Brunch, was the first F1 that blew us away with its vigor, coloring and morphology, and as we worked it into s1 reversals and backcrosses, it shone even brighter, yielding us The Brunch s1 and Dirty Mimosa strains that you’ll find on our menu today.
In our time in the cannabis industry, we have grown and pheno-hunted hundreds of strains. Our goal is only to release genetics that meet our high standards as growers and industry professionals. The genetics must be phenomenal in some way to make the cut; we must see something truly exceptional in them. For that reason, you will never see us releasing drops with the same parental lineage multiplied between dozens of strains. We may pollinate a room of a dozen mothers with the pollen of one donor, but it would be abnormal to find more than a couple of keepers among them after testing the progeny. Quality, consistency, and stability are what we are after, and we tend to prioritize good terpenes, medium-to-high yields, dense bud structure, and high calyx-to-leaf ratios above anything else. In addition to these things, we are always working on specialized projects such as breeding strong outdoor genetics for the northeastern climate. We test every project that we run for cannabinoids, terpenes, and viruses, and we aim to be as transparent as possible with our experience and knowledge of these plants.
Meet the Crew:
Beth
Ben
Siobhann
Sarah
Devin
Joe
Dandelion Prince