About a week and a half from seed to smoke...
Nah, don't we all wish?
Vegetative growth is very dependent upon the grower. The minimum time anyone should grow in the vegetative stage is about 2 weeks, but most people would recommend 5+ weeks. Flowering time is much more strain dependent. Some strains are early finishers. AK-47 is named such because it is supposed to finish in 47 days under optimal conditions. If you're growing plants from clone, you cut off about 2-3 weeks on the vegetative growth, as you have the size you need from the plant, you just need the root structure. So when growing from clone, it's traditionally thrown into veg for a couple weeks to shoot out some nice roots, and then is thrown into the flowering photoperiod (lights on 12 hours then off 12 hours).
So to answer your original question: Yes, it depends widely on strain. But on AVERAGE, you're looking at:
- 1 week maximum for seed to pop from the ground and grow its first set of leaves.
- 2 weeks minimum vegetative growth
- 7 weeks flower
- 1 week dry/cure (this should be much longer, but sounds like you're antsy to finish - this will not give your buds the best taste possible though)
Roughly 11 weeks. But you should go longer to get the best quality smoke.