Until I grew Gangster OG Kush made by HazeMan Seeds, I’d avoided growing and using Kush marijuana strains for many years.

One reason I avoided them is that other than one phenotype of Kandy Kush, every time I consumed Kush it was like taking too many Quaaludes.

I prefer being high and awake to being in a Kush couchlock coma.

Another reason I avoided pure Kush strains it they usually produce “popcorn” buds susceptible to mold, mildew, and pests.

Cannabis botanists say that because landrace Kush grows at low-humidity, cold, high elevations where insect pests, molds, and mildews rarely exist, authentic Kush has never developed resistance to attackers that exist in warmer, more-humid locales.

But after hearing rave reviews of HazeMan’s Gangster Kush, I germinated non-feminized seeds of the strain, which he describes as an elite 5K OG Kush cut crossed with an Aloha White Widow male.

The 5K OG cut , and most rare Kush cuts, originated in breeding projects in Holland and on America’s west coast, but landrace Kush genetics come from the Hindu Kush mountains of northeastern Afghanistan.

This region is known for extremely low temperatures, humidity, and rainfall. High elevation and frequent windstorms challenge growers and cannabis plants.

Landrace Kush genetics are known for extreme resilience to harsh conditions, dark green leaves, short stature, fast flowering and finishing, skunky, acrid scents and tastes, an abundance of trichomes, and a narcotic high.

Afghani growers use Kush buds to produce thick, dark, wickedly potent sieved hashish.

In the 1970s and 80s, cannabis explorers gathered landrace Kush seeds and carried them to The Netherlands, where professional cannabis breeding was “officially” tolerated more than anywhere else on the planet, creating a booming, international, black-market Dutch cannabis seeds industry.

Breeders used Kush genetics to create Northern Lights, Skunk #1, and Sativa-dominant hybrids in which Kush genetics were inserted to shorten phenotypes, tame bloom phase duration, increase vigor, and promote heavier harvests.

The sad thing is, those early Kush breakthrough strains as produced by formerly respectable Dutch companies like Sensi Seeds are now just pathetic, overpriced shadows of their former selves.

That’s why I appreciate how HazeMan has worked hard to give us this stellar Kush.

HazeMan’s Gangster OG contains about 17% Sativa genetics in the form of Aloha White Widow, which was the male parent for the strain.

In a recent grow test, Gangster OG was the most resilient, fastest-growing and vigorous of three strains I grew together indoors.

I was warned that the strain goes tall, so I flipped to flowering after only three weeks in grow phase, when the Gangster plants were 14-17 inches tall.

They were 46-53 inches tall at harvest, indicating a tripling of height in bloom phase, with almost all the stretch coming in the first three weeks of flowering.

I topped them once, at the start of bloom phase. Even though they stretched a lot, their structure was sturdy, compact, and branches were strong. Phenotype consistency was remarkable.

Gangster OG showed primordial flowers faster than the other strains growing with it, and bud development was faster too.

By bloom phase week four, compact buds dense with trichomes were filling in the plants’ short internodes.

It was a big surprise that the buds had a sweet floral scent until about week seven, when the scent shifted to pine, skunk, and pepper. Like most Afghani strains, Gangster OG has a penetrating scent and you’ll need carbon filtration to mask the odor.

HazeMan stipulates a 9-10 week bloom phase but I do incremental harvesting, especially the first time I grow a strain, to see when the high and potency are closest to what I want.

I started harvesting a few buds when about 35% of the trichomes were cloudy, 54 days into bloom phase. I did another partial harvest at 59 days and 63 days, and a final harvest at 67 days when all the resin glands were cloudy and some amber.

The high I got from the 54 day harvest was my favorite. It reminded me of the Kandy Kush high, uplifting, euphoric, manageable, but also very strong, immediate effects, and about 100 minutes later, an overwhelming urge to sleep for a very long time.

The 59 day harvest had similar effects, but was slightly more sedating.

The 63 and 67 day harvests were classic Quaalude Kush—a dreamy narcotic high great for pain relief, stress reduction, and inducing sleep. But not the kind of high for exercise, operating dangerous equipment, or doing geometry.

Given that the growing buds first expressed sweet floral and fruit scent but later produced skunk and black pepper scent, Gangster OG’s cured and dried taste and scent were surprisingly piney and almost Haze-y.

I also detected the unmistakable taste, odor and high of old-school Afghani and Lebanese red hashish.

Smoke and vapor are thick and harsh, but do not produce excessive coughing.

I made dry sift and bubblehash from Gangster OG buds. The concentrates were very high quality because Gangster OG is similar to other Kush strains in that they are related to the famous Hashplant strain.

Extraction ratios were very high—if your goal is to create dry sift, sieved hashish, icewater hashish, or other concentrates, Gangster OG is a very generous strain.

Like other Kush strains, Gangster OG doesn’t like overwatering, overfertilizing, hot temperatures, high humidity, or excessive PPFD.

It prefers well-drained, neutral root zone media and organic feeding. If you overfeed or overwater, leaf tips will immediately burn, the plants stop growing, and even with flushing, it takes them a long time to recover.

I got an average of 127 grams per plant from Gangster OG, a respectable yield indoors. Lab testing revealed buds with as high as 26.7% of their cannabinoids as THC!

The buds were longer and more columnar than typical “popcorn” Kush buds, as you see from the photo accompanying this article.

Growers and consumers in my networking group love Gangster OG. Other growers who scoffed at Kush marijuana, calling it a “cannabis barbiturate,” are now growing Gangster OG, harvesting around 54-61 days into bloom, and loving it.

As you read in our interview article with HazeMan, he’s an “obscure” underground breeder who lacks a fancy website, YouTube channel, and other hype marketing.

Regardless, insider craft and connoisseur marijuana growers who seek the best “lone wolf” marijuana breeders are very aware that HazeMan’s seeds are 100% reliable, and his strains are rare, desirable, and well worth buying!

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