Kali Mist Strain Created by Serious Seeds

Kali Mist: Still a superior player in the sativa champions league

Words and Pics: Green Born Identity – G.B.I.

Since the year of 1996, when, on occasion of the Amsterdam Cannabis Street Festival, I happened to enjoy the merits of Kali Mist weed for the first time, I have fallen in love with this unique sativa strain. The legendary Eagle Bill (who unfortunately died last year) had a booth at this festival and, amongst other strains, offered free Kali Mist vaporizer hits to the people. I will never forget this awesome experience: Kali Mist immediately extremely quickened both body and soul, caused a feeling of sanguine mental easiness, having the effect of a long lasting energy injection. Two years later, I was sitting in the “Grey Area” coffeeshop in Amsterdam with two friends, being totally smoked to the bone and almost unable to move. But we still had to walk several kilometres to the Highlife Cup that took place in suburban Amsterdam, far away from the centre! Then we bought some Kali Mist and after having smoked a little bit, we promptly got on our feet again, like robots under a marching order, it was just impossible to sit still any longer. There it was again, this prickling energetic feeling that directly captures body and mind. Kali Mist has this special rare ability of cutting through a dissipating high from a previous smoke. It cuts through your fatigue and fog, scaring away those gloomy ghosts of passive stonedness. A perfect party weed that makes you move your ass, dance like a dervish and communicate vividly with other guests. It`s the exact opposite to a couch-lock Indica that makes you introverted, passive and sleepy.

Kali Mist was bred by Simon, the breeder and owner of Serious Seeds, in 1993. Shortly after its initial appearance in the cannabis scene in 1994, Kali Mist won a first harvest festival award when being elected best hydro weed at the High Times Cannabis Cup 1995 in Amsterdam. But the years went by and to my great surprise, Kali Mist did not score any other price at the annual Cannabis Cup. Then it was the ladies who finally brought about the breakthrough again: At the High Times Cup 2000, the celebrity judges responsible for the sativa category were exclusively women, and these prominent cannabis ladies came to an unanimous decision: Kali Mist was the strain with the most uplifting high, the most attractive look and the best aroma. What an awesome comeback: Five years after its first Cannabis Cup success, Kali Mist finally became the world`s official sativa champion, a victory that really had been overdue, after years of permanent boring Haze dominance. Simon confirms that Kali Mist is very popular amongst women in general: “Next to the sheer pleasure of smoking it, we received several reports that it works great against menstrual cramps.” In 2004, Kali mist won a 3rd price in the hash category of the High Life Cup Spain, awarded on occasion of the High Life Fair in Barcelona 2004. This Kali Mist hash had been produced from Spanish outdoor plants.

Many people have speculated about Kali Mist`s genetics, often claiming it also contains original Haze genetics (that`s wrong!), as Simon has not precisely revealed its pedigree. But even if he wanted to, he just would not be able: Simon had received Kali Mist`s ancestors from different growers who for the most part didn`t know themselves where they exactly originated from. Nevertheless, certain details are for sure. The wellknown author Mel Frank reported in 1996 that “Kali Mist appears to have much Southeast Asian character” and that he “grew Kali Mist ancestral stock in the early `80s in Oakland, California”. Well, we do not know whether there randomly was a direct connection between the stock Mel Frank grew back then and the material Simon used for breeding Kali Mist, but we know at least that Mel Frank guessed right – Kali Mist, indeed, has a strong Southeast Asian background, namely Cambodian genes which constitute a major influence in Kali Mist. And Simon reports that before he started working with the Kali Mist genetics, different US growers had already cultivated its ancestors, but not used it as breeding stock. The other ancestor that is definitely known is an Afghani indica, and Simon revealed that the breeding pattern consists of two sativa dominant hybrids. Furthermore he assumes that there are also Colombian and Thai genetics in Kali Mist`s ancestors.

So what is for sure at least is the fact that the Kali Mist gene pool partly traces back to Cambodian and Afghani heritage and that its ancestral stock had previously been cultivated in the States. Interestingly, Simon made a trip to Cambodia in the past, trying to find high-grade landraces for refreshing and further advancing his Kali Mist, but wasn`t successful - he couldn`t find anything that was comparable to the Cambodian dominant lines he already had.

Kali Mist looks back on a very eventful breeding history, its genetic composition has been changed several times due to certain circumstances. The initial Kali version that was available until 1997 resembled, as already mentioned above, very much a Southeast Asian sativa. But while its high was superior, Simon wanted to improve its medium yield and decided to increase the Afghani indica share. Accordingly Kali Mist got a new father with more indica genes. This resulted into Kali Mist plants with higher yields and shorter flowering times, but also decreased the calyx-to-leaf ratio and interfered with that sensationally clean sativa high. Hence many Kali Mist lovers were unsatisfied with this revised version, stating that quality would be more important to them than quantity. But this was only one reason that made Simon return to a more sativa dominant pattern again in 1998. The other was that he simply was forced to recompose the Kali Mist strain anew, due to the fact that two breeding gardens of Serious Seeds had been busted at almost the same time and all specimens of Kali Mist`s male parent had been confiscated by the police. So this male parent used at that time for producing Kali Mist seeds was lost, but luckily, Simon still had closely related genetic lines at his disposal that had survived at other locations. In the aftermath of this bust, Kali Mist seeds weren`t available for one year and Simon eagerly worked on a new genetic profile. He took the chance and decided to revive its original almost pure sativa character by using a sativa dominant third father for creating the new Kali Mist version for the next millennium. And Simon`s decision to celebrate a Kali Mist sativa revival was soon rewarded by winning the sativa category of the High Times Cup 2000. Kali Mist nowadays has a sativa content of about 80-90 percent. However, since its second revision, Kali Mist has a flowering time longer than ever before, it takes 70-90 days to ripen - but that`s still short compared to a pure Haze for example. And the unique sativa high from the early days of Kali Mist has successfully been restored.

You will not be surprised that it was Mr. Power Planter again who conducted a test grow of Kali Mist. He sowed 10 seeds and nine of them sprouted. The plants were cultivated in six litre pots filled with Plagron standard soil mix, placed under a 600 W Osram Nav-T. They grew very fast, already revealing their mostly sativa character in the vegetative stage, having fairly wide internodes. Leafs were lush green and quite narrow. Two of the plants were much shorter than the rest, also having darker leafs, obviously they were determined by a stronger indica influence. 3.5 weeks after germination, Mr. Power Planter induced flowering by shortening the light cycle from 18 to 12 hours. Unfortunately, after 7-9 days, six plants turned out to be male and only three were female. Mr. Power Planter wondered whether his crop had been exposed to any kind of stress that might have caused that high maleness rate, but couldn`t find any hint for that. Then he came to the conclusion that this time he just had bad luck in the numbers game always played by mother nature when growing plants from seed. Often enough, he had been a lucky dog, getting much more females than males from a seed batch. One of the shorter Kali Mist plants had proven to be female and also in the course of flowering, it became clear that it wouldn`t stretch very much and flower faster than the other two plants that were very sativa dominant. These two ladies grew into real sativa beasts, heavily branching out and stretching a lot so that Mr. Power Planter had to bend their tops down and transplant them to larger pots with a volume of 15 litres. After 70 days of flowering, the short Kali Mist lady had ripened, featuring very dense and hairy buds that were most beautiful to look at and delicious to smell with their unusual sweet and spicy scent. The resin content was not abundant, but very decent. The other two plants proved to be real bud giants in the end, when they had matured two weeks later - after 84 days of flowering (so all of the plants were in time). They both measured 155 cm - welcome to bud jungle was the motto, huge classic sativa buds everywhere, even the lower and medium branches had produced colas of tremendous size. But these marvellous big buds also revealed some fox-tailing and a somewhat airy structure, as they consisted of numerous single flower lances, they were by far not as tight as the buds of the plant that ripened first. I think this gracile sativa cluster structure with lots of small calyxes and lances is typically Kali Mist. But the sheer mass of buds was supposed to make for an excellent harvest result nevertheless, however, at the time this article was written, buds had not yet fully dried. The smell of the classic Kali Mist sativa phenotype was the same as the other one had, very authentic and typically Kali.

Thanks to the very high calyx-to-leaf ratio, all of the three plants were quickly harvested and processed. When the smallest flower clusters had dried, it was time to fly… the sativa turn was as great as expected, very refreshing with an immediate onset, accelerating our heartbeat and speeding up our thoughts and movements. However, after a certain time, also a slight indica effect was noted, it was like slowly landing again after an intense long flight. With both the buds of phenotype 1 and 2, this type of high progression was the same. The smoke of all buds was also great, having an extraordinarily mild consistency, but at the same tasting deliciously spicy.

So Mr. Power Planter was highly satisfied with the performance of Kali Mist that immediately became one of his top three head-stash strains. And he is very confident that mother nature will serve up justice next time and provide more females to him.

Simon reports that Kali Mist also does extremely well under the Spanish sun, growing to a height of up to three metres and producing big yields, while being highly mold resistant, even in a very humid climate during maturation. A grower from Ibiza reported that his Kali Mist plants are regularly finishing already in the second half of October, although Serious Seeds generally states November as harvest date under natural light. Kali Mist is highly recommended for hydroponic cultivation and clones can be flowered directly after root formation. The effect of Kali Mist has proven very beneficial for medical users with e.g. multiple sclerosis, fatigue and chronic pain and can be used as all-day weed.

Green Born Identity – G.B.I.

All enquiries please contact Serious Seeds
UK Official Distributor
www.puresativa.com

Tele No: 020 8964 1717
It is illegal to germinate seeds in the UK

Cultivation data: