The return of the Night Queen, Already 30 years ago, in the early days of his breeder career, Dutch Passion founder Henk van Dalen did create Night Queen, a broad leafed indica strain with an excellent outdoor performance.
The first Dutch Passion catalogue from 1987 reported that Night Queen used to be very popular amongst “hardcore stoners”, due to her intense body stone. In 1997, the Night Queen strain was revised a bit, but a few years later, because of considerably decreased sales figures, she shared the fate of a couple of other old classic strains on the market, giving way to newly bred and released strains.
Night Queen, the Queen of the Night, vanished from the scene. That dismissal was done by Dutch Passion much to their regret, as those guys were still fully convinced of Night Queen’s qualities, lovingly having fostered and nourished this highly special aficionado outdoor strain for decades.
So it was with much delight when Dutch Passion received more and more inquiries in the past years whether that legendary Night Queen strain could be re-released by the company. At a certain point, the Dutch Passion breeding team got the green light for starting to work on the Night Queen re-release project.
Dutch Passion reports: “Their goal was to re-create an Indica which would meet the world class standards achieved by our multiple award winning Mazar. The outcome was a crystal covered, fast early flowering and typically indica variety which is easy to grow and resistant to pests and fungus. The new Night Queen (95% Indica, 5% Sativa) is forgiving and very easy to take cuttings from, a perfect mother plant. She is short and will suit indoor growers looking at SOG/SCROG techniques. High THC (18-20%) and CBD levels will appeal to medical growers, as will the very generous yields of over 500 grams/m² under good conditions.
Night Queen is one of those rare genuine hash-plant smokes, a rich Afghani Indica heritage producing highly potent resin-frosted bud. She is a heavy yielder with all the earthy aromas you hope for in a top quality marijuana strain with the addition of some spicy flavours that the old-timers and connoisseurs will savour. The top class body stone remains a key feature of Night Queen, this is a second chance to get the best ever version of a 1980’s classic.”
With a flowering time of 8.5 weeks, the new Night Queen is not a super fast indica strain, but 8.5 weeks still are very comfortable of course from a general point of view.
She is expected to resemble the original Night Queen of the early 80s very much in terms of growth, flowering, flavour and high. Also, according to Dutch Passion, most of the plants are developing a dark green, almost black green leaf colour, just as the original Night Queen which had been named after that special colouration. A major difference to the original Night Queen outdoor strain is, however, that the new Night Queen is basically meant as an indoor and greenhouse strain.
When he heard about the re-release of Night Queen (only available in the form of feminised seeds), The Doc almost got teary-eyed, caught by nostalgic memories – He, a true grow veteran, had alreay cultivated the original Night Queen strain in the early 80s, he even actually started his whole grower career with that very special strain! She brought him oustanding success in terms of yield, potency, aroma and taste, and ever since then, he has loved this strain, with the fondest of memories.
He wasn’t one of those inquirers having asked for a Night Queen re-release though, so he was all surprised and excited when at the end of last year that news struck him like lightning, his longing for the Return of the Queen, for over a decade deeply rooted in his heart, had finally come to an end.
But since there were already plants of other two strains growing in his room (two weeks old), space was an issue so that The Doc could only add two Night Queen plants. The seeds quickly germinated without any problems and were cultivated in a separate small grow box the first two weeks under two 75 W Secret Jardin High Efficiency CFL lamps.
Then The Doc moved them to the main grow room that was illuminated by two 600 W Planta Star HPS lamps. The two Night Queen seedlings were about 15 cm tall at that point of time and very compact, with broad dark green leaves and many side branch onsets, exhibiting a typical indica growth pattern. One week later, he installed another 600 W HPS in the room, resulting in a light output of about 600 W/m2.
Three weeks after germination, The Doc induced flowering by cutting down the daily light cycle from 18/6 to 12/12, replacing the three Planta Stars with three 600 W Osram Son-T Plus lamps. He normally grows bigger plants than average and would have kept the two Night Queens in the vegetative stage for about five weeks, but due to the fact the other plants in the room were two weeks ahead, he had to go by these. It was remarkable how absolutely identical the two Night Queen plants looked, one could almost have believed they were cuttings, not grown from seed.
9-10 days after the light regimen had been shortened, they showed the first female preflowers, and after two weeks into flowering, The Doc reported: “They are doing great, having caught up with the other plants a bit and are about 45 cm tall now, with many beautiful strong side branches. The actual start of vivid flower production seems to take a while, the plants have not yet formed those little “rose” flower clusters on top of the branches.” Two weeks later, however, that had changed – “All over the plants, compact flower clusters are about to develop that are raising the hope of a fat harvest.
One week ago I removed some of those big fan leaves to bring more light to the medium and lower branches, that seems to pay off. Also, the plants are already beautifully glistening now, as they’ve meanwhile produced a good bunch of resin glands.”
After five weeks of flowering, the two Night Queens were massively blooming, with the plants still being compact and bushy, due to their 95% indica nature, the stretching effect during flowering was expectedly little. At the end of the sixth week of flowering, The Doc noted “They are about building a lot of weight, the buds are getting thicker and denser all the time, beset with copious amounts of resin that are spreading a spicy-sweet hashy odour which already now reminds me very much of the aroma of the original Night Queen plants I had grown in the early 1980s, causing a most pleasant nostalgic feeling. Extremely promising so far!”
When seven weeks of flowering had passed, the first flower hairs had turned brownish. The two Night Queens still were absolutely uniform, two gorgeous indica bushes laden with fat buds. “Most obviously a very stable strain!” The Doc lauded the new Night Queen.
The only difference to the original Night Queen was the fact that his two new Night Queen plants hadn’t produced those super dark green leaves, exhibiting a regular deep green indica colour instead. At the beginning of the nineth week of flowering, The Doc reported: “Resin production is immense, these plants are true gold pieces.
I guess it will take approximately one week until they can be harvested. And so it was, after nine weeks of flowering, the two Night Queens had gotten fully ripe, a few days after the harvest window stated by Dutch Passion though, but having achieved an amazingly identical height of both precisely 92 cm! The Doc could not detect any male flower on his two feminised Night Queen plants, they had both become 100% female, indeed.
“The buds are thick, very hard and densely littered with very aromatic resin glands, she definitely is a classic hash plant”, he reported, “and the calyx-to-leaf ratio is very high for an indica strain.” Which helped him finish the harvest work in a fast manner.
The Doc looked forward to weighing the dried buds, and after about 3.5 weeks, he put the thoroughly dried and slightly fermented end products on the scales, the outcome of which was a total of 206 grams, both plants had made it over the 100 g mark which was excellent, especially in view of the fairly low height of the plants.
With a longer vegetative period, the plants would have become bigger and yielded respectively more, but The Doc was impressed nevertheless by the big harvest potential of the new Night Queen. Of course he was very curious how much the smoked buds would further increase his strong nostalgic feelings, whether the big visual resemblance to the original Night Queen would also find expression in the taste and turn. Indeed, already the first toke brought back that familiar spicy-sweet old school flavour, The Doc felt like travelling back in time, and that strong indica turn massively swelling in his body and mind heavily added to this of course.
The Doc: “The new Night Queen, just like the old one, provides a pretty damn heavy body stone and tremendous stonedness in the head, this effect is deeply relaxing and lasts unusually long, at least two hours when having smoked a fattie. She undoubtfully has a big deal of medical potency as well and could serve as a very effective soporific in the evening, you can throw those sleeping pills away.”
The Doc concluded: “This is it! The new version of Night Queen has preserved all the key properties of the original strain and impressively catapulted it back into the future. For me, she is one of the best indica strains there are, and then as now one of my most beloved varieties. Hey Dutch Passion, thanks so much for the Return of the Queen!”
Cultivation data:
Genetics | Night Queen (95% Indica, 5% Sativa) |
Vegetative growth | Here: 3 weeks (after germination) |
Flowering | Here: 9 weeks, 8.5 weeks in general |
Medium | Plagron Grow Mix with 5% expanded clay and horn chippings, 11 litre pots, 11 litre pots |
pH | 6.2–6.8 |
EC | Vegetative stage: 1.6–2.0 mS
Flowering: 1.8 mS |
Light | First two weeks of vegetative growth: 2x 75 W CFL
Rest of vegetative growth: 3x Planta Star 600 W Flowering: 3x Osram Son T Plus 600 W |
Temperature | 24-28°C (day)
18-19°C (night) |
Air humidity | Vegetative stage: 40–60%
Flowering: max. 50% |
Watering | By hand |
Fertilisation | HeSi Blühkomplex, HeSi Phosphor Plus from the 4th week of flowering |
Additives/stimulants | Agrom Medical Boost, Hesi Power Zyme |
Height | Both 92 cm |
Yield | 206 grams (total yield) |
Written and Published by GBI Green Born Identity – G.B.I. – Dutch Passion in Weed World Magazine Issue 100