Northern Lights 5×5
(1989 NL#5 x A Special Selection Seeds’ 1989 NL#5)
A quick internet search will yield several versions of Northern Lights #5, however when we talk about lineages and ancestry, the one that undoubtedly had the largest impact on modern cannabis breeding and shaping the species as we know, was Nevil’s NL5 cut, and to a lesser degree his Bx8 seeds.
The NL#5 that we use at Deep Ellum originated from Nevil at the Seed Bank of Holland. Although our library contains a few hybrids purportedly made with the US NL5 cut, this particular offering is comprised purely of Nevil’s genetics.
Nevil’s Northern Lights #5 began innocently enough, as the other NLs began; as bag-seed from America. After purchasing the 11 bags of original Northern Lights seeds, Nevil located a standout female plant in bag #5. This amazing female quickly usurped his NL#1 male (his creation of [’81 Murphy Afghan F2 x Nevil’s ’84 Mazar]) to become his go-to plant for making hybrids.
Up until that point, he been using his NL#1 male against various females to initiate the process of making back-crossed seed, however when he discovered the female NL#5 plant, Nevil switched up his process and began using the NL#5 female against various males to make F1’s, including the legendary A5, NL5 x Sk1, C5 and later the Silver Pearl, to name a few.
About a year and half later Nevil went back to America to acquire the US NL5 cut , which according to him, didn’t compare to his NL#5 at all. That’s when he set about turning his Dutch NL#5 plant into a stabilized seed line.
Nevil crossed his #5 plant with his male Ruderalis, then spent the next four years backcrossing to his #5 plant. By 1989, Nevil had reached the 8th backcross and teased the release of NL#5 seeds in the upcoming 1990 catalog, however before he was able to realize his dream, he was raided by law enforcement. Nevil was forced to close his company and go to work for the Sensi Seed Bank and his genetics were folded into Sensi’s library. Fortunately, the NL#5 Bx8 seeds were “liberated” from Nevil’s facility before the merger and never made it to Sensi. For decades the line has been persevered in the underground by a handful of his dedicated admirers.
When Robert joined Deep Ellum Seeds as our breeder in 2014, he brought his Northern Lights lines , including the #5. At that time he decided that he didn’t want to make NL#5 seeds, and instead chose to concentrate on much more rare NL#2 that he had already worked for over a decade.
Even still, we’d receive requests for NL#5 seeds. By 2022, the demand had become too great to ignore and we began work on a NL#5 project. The plan was to first offer hybrids and then pure NL#5 seeds.
We made dozens of hybrids and worked them a few generations each and chose the standout lines. Some performed better as F1’s so we went back and made the favorites again using the same P1 plants.
In the winter of 2024, we released the first round of these seeds. They were (Silver Haze x NL5), NL 5×1, NL 1×5 and NL 1x5x5. In the summer of 2025, we released a small batch of (Silver Pearl x NL5), with plans to have pure NL#5 seeds available for the holiday season.
Now, when it came to making a pure NL#5 seeds, we chose to make a hybrid of two different NL#5’s, so there would be a bit of vigor; something that wouldn’t be present if we simply took an IBL one generation further. After trying several versions of NL#5 from other sources, we settled on the F5 male of A Special Selection Seeds’ 89NL5 reproduction, against our F20-something NL#5 mother from Dallas.
Please enjoy our interpretation of Nevil’s crowning achievement.
Indoors: 55-60 days
Outdoors: middle of September
10 Regular Seeds
