Say “Dutch Cheese” – and smile (for hours) Dutch cheese, the milk cheese, enjoys worldwide popularity, well-known as a superior product.

When a seed bank like Dutch Passion aims at breeding cannabis genetics that shall bear this traditional trade mark name, it faces the challenge to live up to that high standard associated with Dutch cheese, to make Dutch Cheese, the cannabis strain, a new quality standard itself. No wonder that Dutch Passion reports on the breeding process of Dutch Cheese:

“For the creation of Dutch Cheese (60% sativa, 40% indica) our breeders took the best cheese genetics and crossed them with various other strains. We were looking for the ‘perfect match’, where two stable strains can be crossed to give a new variety that improves on both of the parents.”

That ‘perfect match’ then was found in Dutch Passion’s own Euforia strain, a potent and high yielding Skunk selection that is a personal favorite of some of the Dutch Passion team. According to Dutch Passion, “the crossbreeding with Euforia has not compromised the cheesy qualities at all. But it has given improved potency and significant yield improvements, growing to a height of 60-80cm with lots of sticky side buds that show some internodal spacing that will help prevent bud rot/mould – an important feature for a heavy-yielding variety.“ Dutch Cheese is suitable for indoor and greenhouse cultivation, it finishes flowering within 8-10 weeks, under natural light ripening in the second half of October.

The famous Cheese genetics that were used by Dutch Passion for creating Dutch Cheese date back to 1988/89, it was a special genotype of Skunk #1 that had been selected by a grower in South East England. This special Skunk plant had big buds and a cheesy sweet aroma and was maintained as a clone that was called “Cheese”.

This clone was spreaded all over England in the 90ies, gaining a big deal of popularity. It was UK breeder Big Buddha who brought the Cheese genetics to worldwide prominence then in the middle of the next decade, by having bred Big Buddha Cheese which was genetically very close to the original Cheese plant, but refined with Afghan landrace genetics.

The grower “Greenhouse Joe” put a whole bag of 10 feminised Dutch Cheese seeds to the test. Contrary to what his name is associated with, he grew them indoors, under a 400 watts high pressure sodium lamp.

They had to share the growing area with six other plants grown from feminised seeds. Germination of the ten Dutch Cheese seeds was super fast, setting a new record never experienced before by Greenhouse Joe – within 48 hours, all of them had successfully sprouted! So they seemed to be extremely viable and the grower was looking forward to a great cultivation cycle. After a few days, he transplanted the young seedlings to 7.5 litre pots filled with Plagron Standard Mix soil.

They were illuminated by four 36 watts fluorescent lights – one half with cool white, the other with warm white spectrum – in the first two weeks, then Greenhouse Joe replaced them with a 400 watts high pressure sodium lamp suitable for both the vegetative and flowering stage. They spent four weeks in the vegetative stage, with a daily light period of 18 hours.

Vegetative growth was excellent, the ten Dutch Cheese plants thrived very well, turning out to be very homogeneous also. They produced indica typical dark green and quite broad leaves, but had a more open canopy (while they still were quite compact) and significantly more and longer side branches than a pure indica when flowering was induced by Greenhouse Joe after four weeks by reducing the light period to 12/12. The height of the plants was between 70 and 85 cm at that point of time. They already gave off a strong spicy smell that was omnipresent in the grow room.

In the course of flowering, certain differences in height became more noticeable, but almost all of the plants had a very similar growth and flowering pattern, producing a thick main cola surrounded by several well-developed side tops in the medium and lower zones of the plants. They had a very high calyx-to-leaf ratio for the most part, with the top colas exhibiting particularly few flower leaves. Bud formation was dense and tight, much more reminding of indica than sativa.

All the plants produced excellent or even abundant amounts of resin, while some of them were especially white and sticky. That trade mark cheesy smell was present on all of the plants and extremely powerful in the end. Also, the ten Dutch Cheese plants had proven to be 100% female, there wasn’t any male flower at all. They measured between 95 and 115 cm in height on the first harvest day, when after 56 days the first five plants were stripped down. The other five were harvested within five more days. Against the background of 8-10 flowering weeks stated by Dutch Passion, that flowering time of 8-8.5 weeks was a fast finishing flower result for Dutch Cheese.

Weighing the carefully dried Dutch Cheese buds revealed that each plant had yielded 33 grams on the average, resulting in a total of 330 grams. Together with the yield of the six plants of the other feminised strain grown on that area, the outcome was more than 500 grams from 1.2 sq metres – certainly an excellent result for plants grown from seed.

The buds had a great cheesy and skunky aroma and taste, but produced quite a mild delicious smoke. The onset of the THC effect was very quick and mighty, emerging into a long-lasting strong high that covered the whole spectrum, providing both an intense cerebral sativa flash and a certain deal of indica stonedness that was increasing in the second half of the high.

Needless to say Greenhouse Joe was very happy with the overall results of his feminised Dutch Cheese grow. With a big tupperware box full of Dutch Cheese buds in his hands, he had a broad, very “cheesy” smile on his face…

Cultivation data:

Strain	Dutch Cheese (feminised)
Pedigree	Cheese x Euforia
Genetic type	60% Sativa, 40% Indica
Vegetative stage	here: 26 days
Flowering stage	here: 56 to 61 days
Medium	Plagron Growmix Standard
pH	6.5
EC	max. 1.6 mS
Light	400 W HPS
Temperature	night: 18-20 °C day: 23-25 °C
Air humidity	about 40% during flowering
Watering	by hand
Fertilizer	Canna TerraVega / Canna TerraFlores
Stimulants	HeSi Super Vit
Height	85-105 cm
Yield	330 grams