I grow Critically Smashed in my gardens & have been doing so for a little over a year now,ive completed 4 harvests so far with the strain,something i found out quickly is that there are 2 entirely different pheno types within the seeds,one type likes to grow a single cola type plant with very little side branching & the other type is short squatty fat bushy little bastards.
The buds are very dense buds,to the point they are so hard & dense they look water proof,so rock hard that they look like miniature pinneapples all over the plant,the buds are made up of mostly swollen calyx's & look absolutely awesome,the buds end up with very little leaf material sticking out of them & are super easy to trim,the easiest strain ive ever trimmed,the look of the buds is very resinous with lots of trichomes covering the bud as well as the small amounts of leaf sticking out of the buds.
The smell once they are in heavy budding is out of sight,a very intense skunk smell with a hint of citrus,kind of a lemon skunk type smell but much stronger,the smell is so strong it seems like an artificial skunk smell if that makes an sense,heavy duty air purification is needed with this strain,a grower will need to be prepared to deal with the extreme smell from these plants.
I grow using two different styles,(remember the 2 pheno types in the strain)in one half the grow i do a rotating SOG style & in the other half i grow full sized plants,in the SOG grow i take large cuttings from the mothers,allow them 10 to 12 days to build up a decent root system then straight onto flower,the plants finish out at around 2 ft high,the yeilds have leveled off at right around 3/4 ounce per cola,some hit a full ounce but most do not.
The other style i use is a little different,after taking cuttings i allow them to root for 7 days in peat plugs,after that they are allowed to veg for 30 days then are put into flowering & allowed to grow to full sized plants,no trimming or lollipopping with these plants,my yeilds are normally right around 1.5 ounces per plant.
This is not a fast finishing plant,my wife & i prefer a maximum heavy stone so i allways push my gardens until the trichomes are 60% to 70% honey colored before i chop them,my first run with this strain took right around 9 weeks to finish the way we like the buds to smoke out with a heavy couch lock, i forced sex on the first grow one month into veg,the second grow was much faster to the finish,by the time i was ready for round two my mothers had grown into monsters & had sexed themselves naturally,on every run after the first my finish time is right around 65 days give or take a few days,letting the mothers sex naturally made a difference of two full weeks in overall finish time.
Ive grown this strain using both types of HID lighting,i have ran all Metal Halide for the clone/mother/veg parts of the grow then used all High Pressure Sodium for the entire bud cycle,ive recently cut the MH lighting out of the picture & used all HPS lighting for both the veg & flower cycle which is where ive stayed at,the buds seem a little denser at finish time when i run all hps through the entire grow,however my mother plants are now being ran off of T-12 natural daylight floro tubes with great success,i have no idea how well the T-12's would flower the plants but they kick ass for vegging the mothers & work every bit as good as the Metal Halide i was running on them,there is a possibility that they even prefer the T-12 over MH because ive noticed plant health & overall look to the mothers increase since using them,keep in mind that the increased health/vigor could also come from me gaining experience with the strain & becomming much better at feeding schedules & feeding amounts from gained experience with the strain.
The taste from the buds is very strong,not harsh but a strong taste none the less,the smell is room filling,it leaves a seroius skunk smell hours after its somked,the smell also quickly permeates the bag they are in & can easily be smelled through your pocket if your carrying them on you,the smell will also fill the area you store them in if you do not have them in air tight containers,if you had a pound in a freezer bag alone it would reek the house out in a few hours it smells so strong.
I got my Critically Smashed seeds as freebies from DR Chronic & i have no real info as far as thc content but if resin content on the buds is any indicator it is very high,the buds end up very sticky all the way through,when you break open a dryed bud its easy to see the layering of the resin all through the bud, all the way to the core of the bud.
My germination rate from the freebies was 100% successfull germination,out of the 10 seeds i started with 8 were female.The strain is very easy to grow.
When comparing yeilds against extremely heavy yeilding strains like Top44 or Big Bud i would classify Critically Smashed as having a medium sized yeild in comparison.
Bag appeal is spectactular,being that the buds are so extremely dense & rock hard bags look small in comparison with Top44 or Big Bud but the appearance is much nicer to look at,taste is as good as anything else ive ever smoked with one exception & that is Sweet Tooth that a friend of mine grows,the Critically Smashed has a heavier buzz though & a much stronger skunk smell.
Overall the strain is a keeper for me.
