Critical Cheese: The Triple P formula experience

Characteristics of the Critical Cheese

Its medium to large growth pattern is characterized by a conifer-style open structure with medium to wide intermodal space that promotes good air circulation through the whole crop, thus helping prevent mold infestation – which in the case of Critical Cheese is really crucial as it produces fat dense buds of enormous size, richly coated with resin and spreading an extremely strong odour hitting its peak in the last two weeks of flowering.

This plant comes with a Triple P formula: productive, piquant and potent!

So you growers are well-advised to make sure your exhaust air filters are working well! No wonder that Critical Cheese also provides an accordingly strong complex flavour, pronouncing notes of cheese, lemon pine and perfume. But not only its extraordinarily savoury scent and taste makes it a favoured grower's choice - also its very powerful psychoactive qualities (fueled by a THC content of 19%, CBD: 0.3%) are a true smasher, effecting a soaring euphoric sativa-type of buzz that lasts very long. What makes this strain botanically unusual is the presence of fairly thin, elongated sativa shade leaves in combination with chubby indica-style buds which is rarely to be found.

Within a flowering time of 55-60 days, Critical Cheese is able to produce harvests of up to 600g/m². Because it's easy to cultivate, also grow novices can achieve great results at first go. It also performs very well in a greenhouse or outdoors, ripening in late September to early October under natural light. Yields of 700-1300 grams per plant are possible.

Mr. Knolle and his box of wonders

Critical Cheese won third prize in the "Seed bank strains category" of the Secret Cup 2016 in Naples. This award was registered with special delight by a grower called Mr. Knolle as he had just started an indoor crop of Critical Cheese. He had opted for this strain because he considers himself a beginner and wanted something easy to grow but nevertheless highly productive and potent. Also his highly experienced friend The Doc recommended Critical Cheese, so Mr. Knolle got things going. He grows his plants in a self-made wooden grow closet with an area of a little less than one sq.metre, illuminated by a 400W HPS bulb.

Five feminised Critical Cheese seeds were put to germination, and all of them proved to be strong and healthy, with the seedlings showing up at the jiffy pot surface within three days. Mr. Knolle expected that five of such vigorous plants would fully occupy the cultivation area in the end, and since he wanted to avoid a dense jungle of plants, he decided to keep the vegetative stage fairly short, two and a half weeks. During this time, the five Critical Cheese plants exhibited lush growth, branching out early. When Mr. Knolle induced flowering, they were between 30-38cm tall, pretty homogeneous. And they really had those thin long sativa-style shade leaves.

Stem elongation continued until flowering week four, and that open structure described by Dinafem became evident, manifesting itself in a christmas tree-like growth pattern with remarkably long side branches in the lower part of the plants. In the course of flowering, the young flower clusters were heavily ballooning, until they had turned into amazingly bulbous and succulent XL buds that were rock-hard and even much more resinous than Mr. Knolle had pictured to himself before, looking like sprayed with millions of resin crystals. The plants' most impressive five top colas reminded of fat bull's heads, but also those numerous side branch head buds and the buds below fully convinced Mr. Knolle with their volume and density.

The scent, expectedly, was extremely intense and identical or very similar with all the five plants: sweet, savoury and cheesy, reminding Mr. Knolle of a kind of cheese that the Dutch are calling "Pikantje". The flowering stage partly lasted a bit longer than predicted by Dinafem, three of the plants reached maturity just in time after 60 days, while the other two required 63 days. With final heights of 75, 81, 84 and 2x 87cm, the Critical Cheese plants had shown a good deal of uniformity. And the blooming pattern was fairly homogeneous, too, with all the plants exhibiting a high or very high calyx-to-leaf ratio which made harvest work pleasantly easy for Mr. Knolle.

Tasting the cheese bites

After the buds had been dried, they had turned into concentrated "cheese-morsels", most beautiful silvery-green nuggets hard as a stone, the heavy piquant aroma of which could instantly be detected even from a distance of several metres after opening the storage jar. The yield per plant amounted to 65-75 grams, adding up to a total of 352 grams. Which was more than satisfying for Mr. Knolle, even quite fantastic as already with his third grow ever, he had come quite close to that magic 1g-per-watt mark.

Incredible and bulbous XL buds, hard as stones and very resinous, with a succulent flavor of cheese.

The most anticipated Critical Cheese test smoke session finally came and after two tokes from a joint filled with 0.3 grams, Mr. Knolle sensed that something really mighty was about to spread out in his head which felt like a brewing storm – a storm of euphoria that after two more tokes started to swirl through his whole body, electrifying him from head to toe. Mr. Knolle's senses were heavily stimulated by Critical Cheese and this was also true for his appetite… very soon he got the munchies and totally out of control raided the fridge. 

After about an hour, the stimulative effect started to decline and gradually gave way to a state of relaxed snugness - Mr. Knolle came to experience the indica side of Critical Cheese, in the form of a strong stone that lasted for more than another hour. When the buzz had faded away, Mr. Knolle couldn't resist grabbing another small piece of that kind of psychoactive cheese, also because it tasted so delicious - the wonderfully piquant full-bodied flavour of Critical Cheese left a lot of pleasant sweetness behind on the exhale.

Critical Cheese proved to be a perfect strain for Mr. Knolle, leaving nothing to be desired. "This sort of green Spanish cheese packs a serious punch, and it comes with a Triple P formula – productive, piquant and potent!" Because he wants to keep up with the time, Mr. Knolle will switch to LED lights before starting the next crop. So for several reasons, his next strain tests are going to be very interesting…

Cultivation data

• Genetics Critical Cheese (Critical + x Cheese)
• Vegetative stage here: 2.5 weeks
• Flowering stage 60-63 days / 55-60 days in general
• Medium Plagron Light Mix soil, 10 litre containers
• pH 6.3-6.5
• EC 1.1–1.6 mS Light 400 W HPS
• Temperature day: 26-28°C, night 16-18°C
• Air humidity 30-50%
• Watering by hand
• Fertilisation Hesi scheme
• Additives/stimulants HeSi Super Vit, Canna Flush
• Height 75, 81, 84 and 2x 87 cm
• Yield 352 g