[Seeker]

Anyone grown Amsterdam Mist from TFD?

I´m vegging one at the moment and it´s growing like hell!
Its really bushy with wide leaves so far, so it looks more like an indica.

Anyone have an idea on the indica/sativa percentage on this strain?

I´m guessing 60-80% sativa from looking at the genetic lineup, but not sure how accurate one can count the percentages from the genetic lineup?

[limegreenlimey]

Yes, I have just finished a grow with AM feminised seeds. 3 survivors from 5 seeds. I think the strain is somewhat unstable as I grew out 3 phenos (admittedly, 2 of them are very similar)

1. Indica leaning (I guess) pheno. Green. Very dense buds, very dense resin. Leaves did show some sativa heritage though. Resembled Indian Himalayan sativa rather than a tropical sativa. I tied down at the switch to 12/12 and I'm not sure this really improved yields though it's hard to tell ; suspect that like most NL crosses, this pheno should not be topped.

2. As above but with purple fringes. Slightly less dense but essentially the same looking. The colour variation could be related to heat and cold but seems odd that plants in the same grow tent would differ in this way.

3. A strongly sativa pheno which is slightly hermaphroditic. Very branchy. Small sativa-like leaves. Very sparse buds running along the long branches. If I am being kind, I would say this pheno represents the keralan side of the strain but it may just be a weird runt. I cut this before completion because of the hermi-ness.

I have cloned pheno 1 ; it's still rooting.

Will it be good? (still drying). My bet: yes. The plants are very resinous indeed, they smell great and the buds are very dense. Knowing how it turns out, if the clones take, I will grow it much bigger before the switch-over next time- I flowered these at about 25cm ; I reckon I could push them to nearly 50cm and still fit them in the grow tent I have. I will also try tying down at the first sign of branching, I guess about 10cm, as per the LST method and do the long veg from there, to produce 3 or 4 large stalks before flowering.

Only disappointment I have is that I wasn't sure before the grow if this is a Haze Mist x NL or a (NL5xHaze)xKerala. I was hoping for the latter but am pretty sure it is the former Haze Mist x NL because of the more indica profile (I guess 20-40% sativa and 60-80% indica, depending on howmuch sativa you believe is in the NL5xHaze parent). Potentially a great mix of sensi seeds and FD genetics. Will be interesting to smoke it!

[limegreenlimey]

Here you are then: one purple indica pheno Amsterdam mist. Sweet.

[Seeker]

All right, so this pheno that I have not only looks like Indica dominant?
Well it´s not a big dissapointment since I really needed an indica in my meny

But I bought this strain straight from the Red Light District shop as a recommendent sativa, so that feels very strange.

I must say though that im really impressed by the growth and the smell!
and I don´t know if sativas can smell like this, really sweet-skunky-afghani.

Nice colors on your buds! what´s your setup?

[limegreenlimey]

400wHPS with a diamond reflector. A 70cmx70cm bud box with a small fan for circulation and an extractor. Soil grow (good compost, nothing fussy). 12L pots though these probably in 8L of soil. Biobizz grow, bloom and top max. No nutes in the last 3 weeks, just water.

There's no way this strain could ever be fully sativa: NL is 100% indica ; Haze (the version in the Netherlands) is probably 50% indica (look up the Haze story here https://www.*****.com/boards/index.php?showtopic=188559 - a good read) and the kerala is possibly 100% sativa. As I put above, I'm sure this is a Haze Mist x NL which means it must be mostly indica.

If you want a pure sativa, you have to try something like golden tiger.

If you check my gallery, you'll see my mostly sativa Safari by Mandala - quite different looking to this Amsterdam Mist.

I have to be honest though: I don't really care what people say about sativa vs indica. I have grown pure indicas that are clean and uplifting and sativas that are all dopey couchlock. Don't believe the hype: grow what works for you.

[Seeker]

Yeah it´s at least a Indica-dominant pheno.

Have you smoked any of your phenos yet?

I have a Purple Haze growing next to the AM, witch is 70/30 sativa, and I´ve grown it before so I know the high from it.

The PH is sativa-dominant in it´s appearance also, with light-green color and much more narrow leaves.

I don´t completly agree with what you are saying about the Dutch Haze, but I will check out your link.

The 2 phenos of NL that I´ve tryed was something like 65/35 indica, but theres over 10 phenos of the NL, so maybe the NL*5 is 100% indica? Ok I´ve now read from 2 different threads that it is in fact a pure indica

[limegreenlimey]

Nope. It's still drying. I have tried one small head that was cut early due to mold (you can see the bare stalk in the photo) and smoked that but its not a sample really to judge on. Seemed very nice though!

Yep, NL5 is definitely 100% indica. Some of the Stateside NL had a thai constituent but this is absent form the the European versions, which are pure afghan indica.

Purple haze: usually a latin american sativa crossed with a dutch afghan/skunk cross. Like Skunk #1, PH should be about 25% indica.

With apologies for the off-topic nature of this (I am happy to remove it of you like), here's an explanation of my views on the sativa/indica argument which I wrote for another website:

All cannabis is sativa.

Most biologists/taxonomists would say that although there is fantastic variation visible within cannabis plants, everything "we" smoke is sativa and there is no indica, afghanica, etc

The strongest candidate for a different classification is probably ruderalis because of naturally occuring autoflowering property, which some say is significantly different from other cannabis types. The counter argument is that ruderalis x sativa plants are still fertile and can be cross bred again, so is ruderalis really all that different? Mostly likely, I think, we have enormous heterogeneity within c.sativa because cannabis is a very old, very widespread plant that has evolved and been bred into many different forms in different environments. Like dogs: which come in all shapes and sizes but are all subspecies of canis lupus - the wolf - canis lupus familiaris ;c.sativa comes in all shapes and sizes but is still the same specie.

By that logic of taxonomy, the varieties of cannabis would be something like

cannabis sativa afghanica
cannabis sativa indica
cannabis sativa ruderalis
cannabis sativa tropici
etc

then

cannabis sativa afghanica var. hindu kush
cannabis sativa afghanica var. northern lights
cannabis sativa tropici var. haze
etc

As for 'pure sativa strains' the closest you will find are:
Old haze strains (Flying Dutchman Original Haze being a good example - their Haze Mist is also essentially 100% sativa)
Landrace strains that have been made available to market (see Afropips landrace strains, for an example)
Certain versions of Durban Poison - though this is somewhat controversial.

'Modern' - i.e. 21st century - haze strains usually contain about 10%-20% indica (the greenhouse seeds varieties for example).

Strong arguments have been made by DJ Short and others that the pure sativa phenotype (phenotype = genetics + environmental conditions) is most easily coaxed out of the plant with certain growing conditions, in summary:
a short photoperiod veg cycle (lights on 14 hours, off for ten) for just a few weeks
a short photoperiod flower cycle (light on 11 hours, off for 13) for a long, slow ripening period of ten or more weeks
certain soil conditions (warm soil, low pH to start with pH 5.8-6.2)
light use of nutrients - especially low level of nitrogen in flowering period
... as these conditions replicate the equatorial environment from which 'sativas' originate.

So you can probably take a bunch of 'mostly sativa' seeds, grow them in sativa friendly conditions and select and appropriate mother plant that exhibits strong 'sativa' characteristics and work from there...

[Seeker]

Wow! you know your genetics

So you think there´s 3 phenos on this strain and only one is sativa-dominant in the high?

Nice pics btw, but I couldnt find the Safari, there´s no pic with that name maybe?

Pure sativas are definetily something witch I´m gonna get into later :P

The Purple Haze is from White label seed company, and I found some strain site where they had written 70/30 sativa/indica for it.
But white label doesn´t give any percentages on it.

Wonder why more than half (I think) of the seed companys don´t give percentages.. can´t it be counted?

[limegreenlimey]

There are at least three phenos. Remember phenotype is genotype + environment so different set ups should always produce a degree of variation. If the breeding itself is unstable (e.g an F2 cross or 3 and 4 way crosses), you'll get significant genetic variation (which I think is the case with these Amsterdam Mist).

I don't know how much variation there is in the high as I haven't smoked it yet. So, for example, I have grown some sour60 in the past, an auto strain from mdanzig. There was a great deal of variation in the look of the plants but the high was pretty much the same across the different phenos. So though the Amsterdam Mist plants may look different, they may produce the same sort of high, or not!

PH - 70/30 sounds about right.

Why don't seed companies give percentages? Because they don't know and because they are likely not being honest about their base stock. Most (not all) seed companies just recycle old strains in slightly different combinations. They take some skunk #1 and something else and they cross it and see what they come up with, then give it a fancy name and sell it. You can do this for yourself at home (I do... but I don't sell seeds) it's very easy. But it means you will always be working with weed similar to all the other weed. It can still be very good weed, it just mean's that it's not new.

There's good reasons to do this too: the "classics" (skunk #1, haze, NL, ak47, chronic, white widow etc) were all bred in the days when people could grow out 100s or even 1000s of seeds, make selections of exceptional plants, cross them and produce exceptional strains. Now that may still happen in some places (maybe they can do this again in California for the med scene) but it's no longer possible in the Netherlands - the law is too tight and anyone growing that number of plants is doing clones for commercial weed production.

A few seed banks do collect more exotic strains but they are usually pretty hard to work with and because they are unlikely to be growing out 1000s to select from, they don't make huge leaps forward in terms of producing new strains that are radical improvements on the "classics". These steps are slow and small.

Sticking my neck out a bit here but I think this is especially true because there has been little opportunity to collect new "indica" (by which I mean "afghan") parents to cross through the sativa genetics. So, you can go to SE asia and pick up a "new" sativa and after a while of growing it (which is hard) you might find one which doesn't hermi (preferably 2 or 3). That will take a while. But few people can realistically grow a true, tropical "sativa" so to make it available as seed, you have to cross it with something else. You could cross it with one of the classics or a stable indica like Hindu Kush or Afghani #1, but then, you're back to the problem of not creating something really new. So you have to find some PBI back from afghanistan with some seeds, find a father plant, and cross that in with your new SE asian sativa,and then start backcrossing and inbreeding to make it all stable and, likely, about 25% indica. It takes a long time and it's a lot of effort and it takes a lot of space and at the end of it, some fucker will probably just steal your carefully hunted and selected genetics, call it "Kurt Cobain Kush" and well, was it really worth the bother?

Thank heavens there are a dedicated few out there for whom it is worth the bother. But don't believe that many of them run seedbanks.

For all that, we are lucky. There are many amazing strains out there to be grown and enjoyed. As I keep telling people: don't believe the hype. Buy seeds. Find plants. Grow plants. Enjoy what you enjoy. Don't let other people piss on your parade ; they probably don't know what they are talking about.

[Seeker]

All right! Thanx for the long educational replys

I´ve been hearing alot of "watered down genetics" on the net, and been wondering what exactly they mean.
Because I don´t think the strains have gotten weaker since the classic strains were new -80s and -90s.

Propably alot of them don´t know what they´re talking about like you said
But if there´s something to it then it must be what you just explained. That the strains have been crossed so long with genetics that all originally comes from a few strains?

I had been planning on studying how genetics work and you certaintly gave me a good push!