Malana Cream RSC grow report

There doesn't seem to be too many in depth grow reports on malana cream, especially outdoors, so here's a new thread! Feel free to post pics or share your experience with this heirloom strain! You can easily google search the absolutely intriguing history and fame behind this heirloom variety, so this thread will be mainly focused on cultivation and observations on the various phenotypes.

APPEARANCE: Like many of the Himalayan strains, malana cream has very wide leaf dominant fan leaves, but once you get into the flowering mode, the leaves become a little more narrow leaf dominant. A few individuals are more narrow leaf dominant than others. In their native region of origin, plants are often time grown very close to one another in dense fields, which results in extremely tall "sticks" with buds on top and nothing near the bottom.

Flower-structure-wise, some individuals have a very high calyx to leaf ratio, likely due to many generations of selective pressure. If given space and proper pinching, it can likely form a gigantic bush, but plants here were grown close to each other to emulate how they are produced in their native home. Arms have little popcorn buds at each node and end with a decent sized terminal inflorescence.

Some individuals appear more frosty than others, but this strain isn't exactly very greasy so far....however, they still have several weeks to go, so we'll see what happens.

YIELD: Yields appear to range from horrifying to okay. Since most were runts, the average yield overall from the sample grown is very poor, but with a large population, I suspect you can find a few individuals that will give decent yields. If you grown them spaced out, of course you can expect a larger yield, but compared to modern varieties, you should expect below average production.

VIGOR: the vast majority of these plants from this sample are runts or low vigor individuals. One individual grew much taller and had way more vigor than the rest! This was a bit disappointing but not unexpected with landraces.


FEEDING : These plants tolerate relatively little fertility in the soil. They were all grown organically and they sulked even with the addition of organic fertilizers, so they were rarely given any supplemental nutrients.

AROMA: When sniffing the buds overall, they have a really hazy, maybe minty-sweet scent- hard to pinpoint what that is. Right when the resin glands start producing some grease, they smell sweet and slightly minty, but as the resin glands mature, I have also detected a wonderful berry aroma on one individual. All individuals have a similar sweet smell to them, but every last plant smells slightly different in one way or another. The smell overall isn't very strong (relatively speaking) and it's not going to stink up the whole neighborhood.

TEMPERATURE: Even when using 19ppm clear water and no addition of fertilizers for several weeks, these plants seem to wilt when the temps go above 29C (approx. 85F). This might also have something to do with our low humidity during the day. No other variety in the same exact conditions wilted, so I think these plants might be specifically adapted to either cooler temperatures or higher humidity.

DAYS TO MATURITY:didn't grow these indoors, so I don't have the exact number of days. However, based on their level of maturity, it appears they won't be ready until the end of October at the earliest and mid November at the latest. They're very fast flowering for a pure sativa.

FIRST IMPRESSION: no idea how strong this strain will be, but just like RSC's Lebanese, I'm not counting on many of them having much potency. The high calyx to leaf ratio individuals, ability to tolerate cooler temperatures and higher humidity, along with being a very fast flowering strain for a sativa gives them good breeding potential. Disease tolerance has not been observed yet but I wouldn't be surprised if they can take the cold. High intensity light is a must for proper bud formation.

Some pictures of malana cream!


Here's a side branch:



Individual with relatively high calyx to leaf ratio. This is also one of the most "terpiest" aka stinkiest individuals:



the biggest individual. more leafy, but higher yield and larger buds than the rest of the plants:




The terpiest plant, photo taken earlier in development:



another shot:

Picture of the plants showing heat stress. Leaves not wilting, but less turgid and hanging downwards. Sorry for the poor pic:


few of the popcorn buds were pollinated:



Overview of the malana cream plants to give you an idea of their overall structure. Ignore the cookies kush plant to the left (started the exact same day as the malana cream plants), the malana cream plants are the individuals to the right:



Will keep this thread updated and add a smoke report once they are bioassayed. Again, feel free to post pics or share your experience with this strain!

Looks like you got some seeds

Nice report, they look great!

But do they were in soil? They seem short for what they could give.. My cousin notice me than he had 2 meters monsters in soil when he try em out a few years ago, at 48N lat.

niiice.......appreciate ya sharing.......look forward to cure/smoke........

ganj on........

Looking good, keep us updated. These Himalayans are highly intresting. Make sure to pollinate a few more branches, hehe

thanks for the comments everyone!

misterD said:

Nice report, they look great!

But do they were in soil? They seem short for what they could give.. My cousin notice me than he had 2 meters monsters in soil when he try em out a few years ago, at 48N lat.

Click to expand...

They were purposely started late in the season to keep them on the smaller side. The soil is close to a meter deep with amended organic compost. The goal of this grow was merely to explore the diversity and get little samples to see what the strain is like.

Nanda devi and Kumaoni, planted on the same exact day as the malana cream and grown in the exact same environment, are about 3 meters tall, grew much faster, and have incredibly high vigor in comparison. They're monsters, even though they were started late and and were densely planted (ie. not given much space like the malanas)!!!! However, they started flowering much later (end of September) so they had more veg time I suppose compared to the malana cream.


Nevertheless, this particular batch of malana cream for sure has less vigor than Nanda Devi and Kumaoni. I think each annual batch released is completed different from the previous batch: historic offerings of malana cream from RSC may have not had the lack of vigor issue.

You can't tell from this photo below, but the Kumaoni plant has been LST'ed for a while and about 2 meters of stem runs parallel with the ground. Only the top of the plant, which is where all the flowers are, has been allowed to grow upwards, and even that, the plant has to be periodically pulled down so it doesn't shade all the other plants. Here's my best female Kumaoni clone, still a long way to go:





Here's a comparison of vigor of malana versus Kumaoni. Both are densely planted and in near identical environmental conditions:



malana-notice only one plant is pretty vigorous, the rest are runty:




and here's Kumaoni, planted same day as the malanas and the pic was taken on the same day as the pic above. Notice how much taller and vigorous they are:

Both thumbs up!
Beautiful report and very nice pictures

Enjoy the smoke

Snapped a few more pics to give everyone a better feel for what malana cream looks like:



This individual is the heaviest yielding, yet it looks like it's going to really suck trimming it:



Another shot of the same plant:



The most narrow leaf dominant individual, even the veg. fan leaves were relatively thin. Yield is miserable but flower structure is fascinating and very wild-like. This one smells very spicy:



Another beautiful individual:


another super runt:

So far, based on observations of structure, aroma, and yield, there isn't a single plant in this sample that is worth cloning, but as mentioned earlier, there does seem to be a lot of unique characteristics worth breeding with. One probably has to grow out 50-100 seeds (if not more) before finding an individual worth keeping on its own. Nevertheless, the genetic diversity, unique aromas, supposed quality highs, and uncertainty of what you will get makes landraces like malana cream some of the more intriguing strains to explore:

I got 2 packs of these and it's nice to see somebody growing them.

hi meizzwang

as said in another thread where you brought this up:

landraces typically have more vigour than modern hybrids

you will find this when you get more experience growing them

it is known as heirloom vigour

it has also been demonstrated in trials comparing heirloom vegetable plants with with modern hybrid vegetables

the traditional strains outperformed the modern hybrids

about the problem with runts: this appears to have been an issue with a couple of batches of Malana seeds

however, looking at the conditions your have the plants in, I expect the fact they are sharing rootspace and are constricted by shrubs is also an issue (are some of those rhododendrons?)

Maybe others can chime in on their experience growing malana cream? I would love to hear!

Here's some more pictures of RSC's malana cream for everyone to enjoy.


My favorite phenotype: buds appear big, but they're fluffy and airy. Excellent structure for cold/mold/rain resistance. Malana cream doesn't appear very crystally, but some individuals look decent:


same plant as above:


the airy, low yield runty individual resembling more of a wild-type phenotype, spicy smell:



One of the best smelling individuals, but it also appears to be the least resinous:


same plant, shot of the main cola:

Hello. I have grown a pack of those last year, had 5 females. weak growth but big stretchers, wonderful subtle charras smells, great pest, drought, mold and frost resistance, very low yeld, potency on average going from low to very low, maybe high CBD ratio or the plant needs to grow a tree to deliver her full expressions, my biggest one was a 7ft tall lanky lady and smallest was 5 inch tall.
Made some seeds by open polination and polinated a few hybrids but I didn't use them this year.

Forgot to add that it seems there were other similar issues reported on the same batch of seeds from other growers (bought those in spring 2016) and RSC sent me some new seeds of MC later

How do these compare to the Parvarti? I have a pack of those, the Malana was sold out.

Not sure Yesum, haven't yet sampled malana cream. I'll probably run parvati next year, maybe someone else has experience comparing the two cultivars?


Regardless, given the consistent feedback that malana cream has weak potency, I'll probably end up turning all the buds into bubblehash and then making rosin from the hash if the quality isn't there. For sure, a smoke report will be added here in the future.

It's a landrace charas plant.

If you consider that typical good Himalayan charas probably ranges in the 15% - 20% range, with less strong stuff probably in the 5% - 10% range then clearly the average plant is not going to be strong when smoked as bud.

You would need time and a lot more plants to find a plant in the low teens THC. They are there, as shown by cannabinoid analyses I have seen of strong plants.

Update on the malanas: the aroma as the resin matures is becoming more and more amazing! All of the plants seem pretty greasy at this stage although one doesn't seem to have much resin production. There's a reason this line is world famous for their charas, and now I'm starting to understand why. One individual has a beautiful watermelon scent, but all of them have some amazing sweetness in their aroma profile in them that you don't smell every day, hard to compare it to anything else. I'll try to get a second opinion.

While it has been reported that hermis haven't been seen in their region of origin, I did find one hermi with my plants. To recap, all of the malana cream plants are grown in the same exact "hole" with the exact same watering, nutrients, etc. No other malana cream plant hermied in the same environmental conditions, so this suggests it's likely more genetically induced. Seems unlikely that farmers in Malana will select against a plant showing late hermis, especially since it showed up maybe a week or two before harvest. So far, it seems manageable and I'm not worried about it.



the buds on a few plants are actually surprisingly heavy and productive:


Some are so heavy that they're bending over:


This one reminds of of some Asian building structure:

Early November Kumoani