Creating Green Cheese Hokkaido
In the beginning of my journey, I was gifted seeds from a friend who is a skilled Living Organic Soil (LOS) grower and novice breeder, let’s call him Mr. Twisty… The male used in his breeding project was dubbed “Cheese Train Haze” or CTH for short. The male was a cross between the famous Exodus Cheese and a more modern Ghost Train Haze by Rare Dankness. The outcrosses of this breeding project included:
Grape Spree - the only information I received was that this came from a shanty town in Jamaica. I have my suspicions that this is Jamaican Grape from Secret Valley Seeds. I would love to get a hold of some Jamaican Grape seeds to verify this… Wink. Wink.
LSD - a classic from the stable of Barney’s Farm: Skunk #1 x Mazar i Sharif. I still have Mr. Twisty’s mother. Out of everything, I’ve held her the longest, and for good reason… She is incredibly resistant to Powdery Mildew. Also, her terpene profile is still one of my favorites - microbial funk, piney citrus, and skunk no. 1 all in harmony. Sadly, I ran all of these seeds and wasn’t able to back anything up. As far as I know, this outcross was lost to time.
ChemD - Not sure which “Chem” was used as the breeding stock, there are so many now a day, and I never actually saw the mother used in this breeding project. The one plant I grew from this lot was short and vine-like, but had a lovely sweet, floral, and chem-y thing going on. My favorite thing about this plant was that it would go from smelling like latex and rubber in veg, to a sweet, floral, and gas smell during mid-flower. My first experience growing something related to Chemdawg.
Green Crack - Okay, so I had the original mom at one point, but the funny thing about accepting clones from your friends is that sometimes they come ripe with an internal Powdery Mildew infection that jumps off to everything in your stable, because you were under-prepared and forgot to quarantine an unknown plant before bringing it in with the other ladies. It’s okay, these things happen. That’s what IPM is for, am I right? Needless to say, I ended up culling this one, even though GC is one of my all-time favorite strains. I’ve always enjoyed that cerebral, yet functional high. The kind you can write blogs or research papers to…
I am planning to work forward Grape Spree x Cheese Train Haze as I have F2s and the #5 pheno was absolutely delicious. She smelled very true to the original Grape Spree, very much like the candy - sweet and chalky with a strong artificial grape smell. Looking forward to a follow-up spotlight on what comes out of that project. Currently looking for testers…
Grape Spree x Cheese Train Haze “Pheno #5”
Anyway, back to the spotlight on Green Cheese Hokkaido:
The point of describing all of those outcrosses is to note how the male carries forward its expression into its progeny. When breeding with a single male (often the case with most modern cannabis breeders), the male can contribute traits that either dominates the gene pool or are subtle enough to blend well and compliment what the female has to offer (take note, gentlemen). In some cases, Cheese Train Haze seemed to contribute a smell of drier sheets, sharp cheese, and fruit loops cereal, at other times it seemed to take more of a back seat and contribute more towards structure and physical morphology in general. Hokkaido #3 (P4 gen) definitely was the latter, it seems to compliment whatever it’s crossed to. Oh yeah, where was I? This GCH got me ramblin’.
Big Girl in the corner is Green Cheese. She did great that run without any real training.
Green Crack x Cheese Train Haze (aka Green Cheese) was born, although I have over a dozen seeds remaining, the first seed I popped was this amazing female that ended up being the mother of this project. She was absolutely massive - grown in living soil in a 25 Gallon Smart Pot, earthworms, and red clover added. I topped her once to clone and started bending her down before topping twice more, keeping the apical meristem chopped back like an angry Hydra. Carefully woven into trellis, she was spread out under two HLG QB 96s with a ViparSpectra P1000 nestled in between. Just under 300 watts out of the wall, not much, but enough to let this beautiful lady explode with growth and vigor. 10 weeks later and she was ready, lime-green, massive colas (my biggest at the time), very heavy yielding overall and damn was she rank! Brand new carbon filter didn’t do shit! Green Crack’s rotten mango stank with some added cracked black peppercorn, cheese, and a skunky-funky finish. The kind of bud that makes me go back for a second smell every single time. Unfortunately, I would have to dive deep into the photo archives for a picture of her. Something I just might do if there’s enough interest. I did go back to this original seed lot in hopes of finding a male, TBC…
The second time I grew GC x CTH was around the time I discovered the Hokkaido Male (Hokk3), I mistook him for a female at first, because he was so late to show sex. Tall and robust in structure, he had narrow fan leaves and a very medicinal camphor/menthol smelling stem rub. I would later come to associate this smell with potentially higher CBG expression, I believe the related terpene is in the same family as Geranyl as the most common description of Hokkaido Hemp is that of spicy geraniums. Anyway, what else can I say? Between the more subtle male expression, interesting terpene profile, remarkable vigor/structure, and the fact that this may be the only time in my life that I have access to pollen from a Japanese Landrace, all of it inspired me to sacrifice what was supposed to be a sensimilla crop. I positioned the Hokkaido male in the center of the tent and waited for him to start dumping, and boy did he dump! Hump. De. Bump.
Green Cheese Hokkaido was in turn born, out of the 6 tested, a strong smelling male was selected for breeding and the best smelling female was tested for her potential. F2s were made while small clones were healthy and available. The F1 female was tested several ways, small 6 x 6 in plastic containers, a 5 gallon fabric pot, and finally twice in a 2 x 4 ft GrassRoots fabric bed. The raised bed is my absolute preferred method of growing!
GCH BX1 - GCH male that was the brother to the GCH pitcured in this blog, taken back to Hokkaido #2 (P4 gen). Thickest stems I have ever seen. Taller, more Sativa-like plant (NLDT) compared to GCH. I think I’m going to call the BX1 “Green Cheese Super Hokkaido”. As you can see, she handles stress very well.
Quick side tangent - I made the bed with hydroton (or gravel and sand would work as well) in the bottom few inches, above that I added about 5 inches of locally acquired super soil, on top of that my own blend of amendments into expanded coconut coir. I prefer using a coco heavy blend as my media because I can feed more frequently that way without over saturating the root zone. During those thirsty weeks, I am feeding daily or every other day during flower. I use NFTG Herculean Harvest, with a cold processed fish emulsion, a healthy dose of Roots Organics HPK, plus a small amount of humic/fulvic acid and Fermented Plant Extract. At the very end, when I know my pH is between 5.8-6.4, I add in a revolving door of microbes (I usually alternate every feeding: Mammoth P, King Crab, Photo Plus, LABs, Fish Sh!t, etc.) on occasion I will use Roots Organics Terp Tea for Grow or Bloom depending on where I’m at in the process.
Green Cheese Hokkaido exceeded all expectations. I mean, considering this plant has 50% landrace ‘hemp’ genetics, the terpene expression and vigor is greatly improved compared to its parents. While the nose is very similar to GC x CTH, there is an added complexity that is true to pure Hokkaido. I will include Purpl Pro test results for the tested flower, but it was definitely not a hemp cultivar. Very large, showy flowers that are spun out and lanky. I realized after a couple runs that if I pulled back the leader colas later in flower (like week 4 or 5 even) I could cause a hormonal shift in bud morphology. My most recent pictures show what I mean. Instead of large, singular spun out main colas, I was able to get the plant to express more dense, compacted buds. This was observed only in the upper leader that were bent down and not observed in lower branches that were left to their own devices.
My plan is to submit this cultivar to a cup in VA this year! Hands down one of my favorites, I am beginning the process of deep diving into breeding with this landrace hybrid. I am also in the first steps of testing a back cross to the original Hokkaido #2 mother. It has been very remarkable seeing these two closely related plants grow side-by-side. One has 75% Hokkaido genetics, the other 50%, both are truly stunning to behold. If you have any interest in this project, please reach out to me. Your collective interest will direct which aspects of these projects I choose to deep dive into, as I’m happy to share my findings.
~Judo
RedOxLabs@protonmail.com