Background:
So after the abject disaster that was last year’s attempt to make F2’s of Kaliman’s cheese seeds, I was left at a loss.
Not only were my seeds duds, but the other plants I had grown were utterly anihilated in a spider mite infestation of truly apocalyptic proportions. Angry and dejected, I just let the plants die, harvested the seeds from the crosses I’d made with Big Buddha’s Black Cheese and hung my grower’s hat up for the winter to focus on cacti.
Picture 1: One of last season’s plants showing increasing spider mite stippling.
Here is a picture of when the infestation got bad. I couldn’t bear to take pictures when it had got to the point that webbing covered everything. 
So after a long and very busy semester I decided to clean up the tent and try to get another cheese hunt going… and oh boy was the no-cheese curse still with me. 
Cheese Hunting:
For those who may be new to cheese, its lore is complex! The prevailing narrative states that the Exodus Collective, a group of ravers and squatters from the English town of Luton found a phenotype of Sensi Seeds Skunk #1 that smelled like cheese and distributed it around the UK. However when you dive deep into forums like UK420, you will see that there are many cuts that had existed and there are conflicting origin stories too. Examples of these include: the Suicide cut (which was used in Kaliman’s Suicide Blonde), the Brightside Cut (claimed to be the original “Exodus Cheese”), and another strain known as “Blues” which is somewhat related to the cheese.
Edam Bomb:
While there are a lot of strains that claim to be cheesy out there on the market, I knew I had to do my best to try and weed through what was out there and look for what might be close to the original exodus cut.
My line of thinking was companies that had been around in the 1990s that likely would have received a cut from the UK. This lead me to thinking of Dutch companies being a possible lead, and I had landed on Bomb Seeds’ “Edam Bomb” (previously known as Cheese Bomb).
While there was not a great deal of info available about it online, its morphology did resemble some of the exodus traits: foxtaily buds, leaf shape, and a somewhat viney structure.
Picture 2: Edam Bomb in flower.
This is an image taken from Secretflower’s grow of the Edam Bomb on growdiaries. (Source: Bomb Seeds Edam Bomb grow journal by Secretflower - GrowDiaries)
Picture 3: Original cheese in flower.
When compared to this supposed picture of the original cheese cut uploaded to seedfinder, one can’t help but feel there are some similarities.
So I went ahead and bought myself a pack of 10 Edam Bomb regulars to hunt through and tried to go on my merry way. Let’s just say I had nothing but trouble.
Two of the ten seeds were able to germinate after soaking, using peroxide, and even trying to instigate enzymatic activity in the seed with gibberellic acid. I did my best to put these to media and into ideal conditions but both failed to thrive.
The first simply fell over and died before producing a true leaf, and the other ended up in a weird state of suspended animation. It came up just fine, had two healthy cotyledons, and even rooted, but the thing just refused to become a mature plant. I had even resorted to applying benzylaminopurine (BAP) in an attempt to create stem tissue differentiation (as this is used to prompt stem growth in tissue culture) and it still remained stunted.
Pictures 4, 5, & 6: Packs of Edam Bomb seeds, the two sprouts and the lone survivor.
To this day, this little oddity has remained in my grow tent.
Blue Cheese:
My next thought was to try some of JAH Seeds Blue cheese that I had in my fridge. This was a combination of a blueberry and a THC Biomed cut of cheese. While these germinated amazingly, I believe I had an issue with fungus gnats that had caused the latteral roots to be decimated.
The plant ended up getting to a stunted size, and I ended up excavating the roots to reveal a tap root that had been chewed up to the point of being a single skinny stalk.
Cleaned it off, applied rooting hormone, and potted into fresh airy pro-mix with perlite and mycorrhizae. Did a cheeky little top to remove the stunted meristem and the little plant seems to be making two new tops, so let’s keep our fingers crossed for her recovery in this grow. 
(Yellow sticky cards are now a must!)
Picture 7: Blue cheese in recovery from fungus gnat larvae root damage.
Dinafem Cheese:
Finally it comes time to the stars of this grow: Dinafem’s cheese!
Now these are currently quite hard to get, with Dinafem being busted a couple years back, but I was browsing some canadian seed banks and noticed that Montreal Cannabis Seeds had this strain in stock!
Picture 8: Dinafem Cheese in flower.
As you can see from the picture, the strain does bear a striking resemblance to the original exodus in flower structure, however her leaves are a little more indica looking from other pictures I have seen.
Her claimed genetics are quite similar to that of Big Buddha’s Cheese (R.I.P. Milo Yung, thank you for all the work you did, you absolute legend 
), with her being a cross between the original cheese and an Afghani. In addition, reports on growdiaries seem to pretty consistently report a cheesy smell and taste from most phenos.
So with that I ordered a pack of 5 feminized cheese, got my silver thiosulfate spray ready, and prepared for the hunt.
Picture 9: Dinafem cheese seeds in a vial.
On receiving the package, I was very impressed that dinafem included silica gel beads with their seeds. After receiving them, I put them all into a solution of water and hydrogen peroxide for 12 hours, put them to a paper towel and within 48, all 5 had germinated!
Picture 10: Cheese seeds sprouted
Put these suckers right into some pro-mix and all five have now sprouted and are starting to prepare for early veg!
While there is not much to speak of as far as a stem rub aroma yet, I will be sure to keep you updated as and when I notice any pungency.
Picture 11: Chese seedlings among my tomatoes, peppers and other annual seedlings. 
So begins again my quest for the cheese in 2025! Beset by poor germination, weird plants, fungus gnats, and spider mites, I have worked my hardest to fight through it all. With these five dinafem cheese, I am hoping that I may once and for all, have beaten the cheese curse.
Let’s do this, growmies! 
