Original source seeds from the 70's: Yes I have some

BigSur your a wealth of genetic knowledge. I'm so glad there is still guys like you around to spread their knowledge on the younger generation. If it wasn't for guys like yourself I would have no way of finding truth. I would be stuck like most guys my age believing anything the interweb tells them. Thank you!!!
 
:popcorn::slide::reading420magazine::thanks:
 
CavScout420 said:
BigSur your a wealth of genetic knowledge. I'm so glad there is still guys like you around to spread their knowledge on the younger generation. If it wasn't for guys like yourself I would have no way of finding truth. I would be stuck like most guys my age believing anything the interweb tells them. Thank you!!!
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Indeed. Its funny. When I was young we had access to weed, but not to any information in it. The first books came out about growing and enjoying weed in the very late 1960s. They were thin booklets mostly from the Stone Kingdom Press and Level Press in SF. I bought them on Cannery Row in Monterey at head shops, or on Telegraph Ave in Berkeley. I bought them along with underground comic books, which I ate like candy. I still have all those old Marijuana books as well as the underground comics. In the 1970s more books on weed came out, like Jerry Kamstra's book called Weed in 1973. Then Michael Starks wrote a book on weed in 1977 called Marijuana Potency where I got the idea to freeze seeds from. That was published by And/Or Press in Berkeley, which also published Marijuana Botany by Clarke in 1981. These books were good, but thin on knowledge. As was the book, Sinsemillia, which was a photo book with monster buds that came out in 1977. Since then Roenthal has written a lot of books on weed, but they all have the same stuff re-iterated. My brother has all his books and I read them all, but IMO they lack good information on growing. Mel Frank has written or co-written some good books on weed though. Probably the best out there of the more recent ones.

The web of course is all over the map. People tell people to ditch plants for insane reasons. Debates rage over growing methods. Debates rage over strains. Several people on this thread have slammed me for freezing seeds, claiming it cannot be done. Many books and magazines say not to freeze seeds. Everyone is an expert, except... *shrug* I have certificates in ornamental horticulture from a college in California and a certificate in silviculture (trees anf forestry management) from a university in Oregon. This first thing they teach is that plants take up nutrients the same way, regardless of them being organic, inorganic, or synthetically derived. All fertilizers are ionic and hence 'salts'. I have grown using both organic and commercial practices. I use a combination of both now, called biodynamic. But I get slammed here for that as well. Most all weed growers are devout organic growers, so I do not post much about growing methods here any more. Its like going into a church and telling them god does not exist. She does not, but that is not what most people want to hear.
 
By the way, if you want to see the insane prices for some old books on weed now, the book Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers lists for $250 and up on Abe Books online. I mean, really? $250? *cough*
 
I'm one of the guys that wants to learn whether it's something I believe or not I'm willing to try. I've learned early on you don't learn anything if you don't listen haha. I'd love to here about your biodynamic approach can't find out what works best for me if I don't try ways others have mastered.
 
Zincite said:
I'm with CavSout on posting what you know of biodynamic, always ready for learning something new. BTW I have always froze my seeds. I don't remember ever not having good germination.

cheers.
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Yes, a few of us have frozen seeds and have never had issues with germinating them. But if you read back on this thread, you will see several that think I am seriously full of shyte regarding freezing seeds, and they have posted it. Many books say not to freeze seeds for whatever reasons, and I have also read that in a lot of magazines and online. Its a paradigm for some reason. The book, Marijuana Potency lists several studies mostly done in Japan about the viability of freezing Cannabis seeds. Keeping them dry is also important, but the colder you go, the less impact humidity has on them. The HUGE advantage of freezing seeds is that you do not have to continuously breed to refresh a strain. They stay fresh frozen. So I do one big run from my seeds and that is all I usually have to do.

I can post about biodynamic growing, and what I know about horticulture. However, biodynamic growing includes conventional growing methods and organic ones, including the use of chemical fertilizers, herbisides and pesticides. EVERY time I have posted about conventional grow methods here and elsewhere though, people start screaming about my using chemical fertilizers and tilling soil. Every time. It get monotonous, I get pissed off, and then I stop posting. Just the way its been. People are adamant about no till and "organic" growing on these forums, and chemicals are always associated with 'Evil Monsanto'. Then they pile on... and fast. Seemingly to preserve their ignorance? Or what seems to have become a religion of organic growing? I do not know. What I do know about horticulture is pretty much standard lecture matierial in most major ag universities in the US. Cornell, UC Davis, Oregon State U., etc. I have had 4 nurseries in California and Oregon, specializing in cymbidium orchids, bamboos, Japanese maples, roses, cane berries, and garlic. I have also been growing weed on and off since 1972. I also have a pinot noir vineyard in Southern Oregon that I planted 12 years ago. Just some of my experience with plants. I also have university degrees in engineering with a minor in life science. So I know a thing or two. But some people here on this forum simply do not want to hear what I have to say.
 
lazyfish said:
Huh! Cool. I love all the info, Sur. It's great to have you here. Funny you mention Saipan. I grew up there and saw my fair share of cannabis plants as a child. Never thought it was anything special. Wish I knew what strains they were.

Cheers,
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I have a 420 grow friend not far from me here in OryGun that offered me some Saipan seeds to try out. Supposed to be interesting plants. Said to be a land race of their own.
 
I don't think there's anything wrong with using chemical fertilisers unless you create a serious environmental damage, which unfortunately happens everywhere where intensive agriculture is practised. And it's hard to argue with that! We have studies, that clearly show that due to this type of farming the humus layer is getting thinner and thinner, soil carbon is dissipating and local rivers are overflowing with nitrate and phosphate runoff! I tried to steer away from radical conclusions once saying to myself "calm down, it's exaggerated", but then I looked at the studies done in the heart of the biggest agricultural zone in Italy and they were dramatic!

But the bottom line is not the use of synthetic fertilisers and chelates itself, but the quantity of it. If we scaled it down by 50%, the impact would be much less severe and this a fact! As soil is a buffer, however not all soils are created equal, it can take a bit of synthetics without any negative consequences. But it has its limits and people rarely stay within them!

Now growing a few or even a few dozen cannabis plants in your garden or in a indoor facility, where the runoff is controlled is a totally different thing than growing wheat on a thousand acre field. This is like comparing a behemoth to a mosquito, no point IMO.

Everything else like the smell and taste of the produce, the pace of growth, the health of the plant, bud shelf life, numbers etc. coming from different growing methodologies is purely subjective until we start doing real field trials with control groups and double blind tests on a large scale.

However, discussions about organoleptic quality of cannabis, which usually go like this: "I smoked bud grown hydro and organic and the organic tastes better" is valid only as a personal experience not as an OBJECTIVE proof, cause you can't measure someone's palate. It can't be done! I know a lot of people, who couldn't make a distinction between exceptional wine and cheap table shit even if you whipped them with a barbed wire... but then there are people who can and those will demand high quality product and will pay the price. And for the same reason we have all kinds of growers and all kinds of growing methods.

But top notch bud is rare, even in dispensaries, cause American or Canadian consumers are not educated, so they're expectations are not very high! As far as I know and I try to stay up to date as much as I can, the only thing that matters in the world of legal cannabis is THC. Customers enter the shop, they look at the shelves and they take the strongest stuff there is. That's it! So how could they possibly tell the difference between the bud that was grown properly and bud that came from a commercial operation, that pumps 2000 pounds every 6 weeks?

Just my 5 cents and even if we don't always agree on everything I still enjoy your wealth of knowledge.

:passitleft:
 
Well, damage does not occur only from inroganic, chemical and synthetic produced fertilizers. Actually in the US, far more damage to the environment occurs from natural fertilizers because of the concentartions of animals grown for food here. As in barn, feed lot and pasture runoff. We had a settling pond at my ex's sheep ranch to stop the excess nitrogen from the barn from running into the local stream and river. There was a 3 foot perimiter around the barn where nothing would grow because the nitrogen was so high in the barn muck. It was a toxic zone. And it was all "organic." Outside of the toxic zone was a 6 foot swath where the grass grew really tall and blue-green, and then it tapered off down to average pasture height. Streams here are overloaded with animal waste and it is a big problem. Most of it is from sheep and cattle farming here. In North Carolina, it is a huge problem with all the hog farming that they do there. The rivers there are all overflowing withatoo much animal waste, particularly nitrogen. The flip side is that chemical fertilizers are applied at optimal times when plants will take them up, and they cost money so they are used a lot less than you might think. We applied urea on the sheep pastures at the optimum time every year after 200 heat units were reached every year. Heat units are calculated by the average temperature per day above freezing in centigrade starting in January 1 each year. After that, the fertilizer is pretty much wasted.

One thing I (and others) have a huge issue with is the definition of organic, at least here in the US. The word Organic on food labels and in agriculture in the US is owned by the USDA, and so is subject to whatever they define as organic. I know a lot of organic growers that are pissed off with the US Organic food labeling system and requirements. They are most upset with what is allowed, as in synthetic sulfur sprays, and concentrates like Aza- refined from neem oil. Also what they do not allow. For example, Azadirachtin is considered organic here, whereas Abamectin is not. Abamectin is actually a natural product produced by bacteria in the soil. Both are miticides, and both are "natural" products, but only one is organic.
 
More on the uptake of nutrients later, but basically plants take up nutrients the same way, regardless of the source. I know everyone thinks that organic produce will taste better, but studies do not show that to any great degree here. I have not seen it myself. Nor have I seen organic weed taste any better than my Miracle Grow enhanced weed does. Actually I use more human urine on my weed these days than Miracle Grow, but I also use chelated iron and superphosphate, and during peak growth periods in June I use water soluble fertilizers. Sometimes that may be Miracle Grow, or K-Grow or Scotts or whatever is on sale. Mj plants do not care which brand of water soluble fertilizer I use. I use those as they are specifically blended with everything that a plant needs. Pee does not have everything that a plant needs. I also use wood ash from my wood stove, hoof and horn meal, and sometimes kelp, bone meal and blood meal. But I will get into my soil mixes later.

One other fact to point out is that organic farming here in the US only produces about 40% of the produce per acre as does conventional farming. So if say the world were to go all organic, which of the 7.5 billion people on earth are going to starve to death as a result of the decline in food produced? Food costs would rise, so the poor would be hit first and the hardest. We saw that when oil prices spiked and it led to the start of the "Arab Spring" uprising in North Africa and the Middle East. Also I do not advocate the use of GMO or Roundup Ready corn and wheat, but if you stopped using them in the third world, the young and women in particular would have to go back to weeding the fields. That is hard labor. Just pointing out some facts from the 'other side' of the ag coin. Not saying it is good, but it is what it is and the population is continuing to increase and putting demand for even more food to be produced.
 
Well you couldn't see any studies on taste, cause there were none... also cause as I said double blind is necessary on a statistically valid sample of users to yield any results and even if you get on with studies like that you still can't exclude bias in subjects or in your methodology.

It doesn't even make any sense to discuss it I think. Everybody says something different depending on what one smokes.

For example here you have a significant bunch of growers using High Brix method, which can but doesn't have to be organic. It's often a mixture of both worlds, where measuring the output is more important and it's soil science sound.

Well these guys will tell you that they grow the best tasting pot, but there are examples where something else works better.

At the end of the day it's to each his own I guess :passitleft:
 
Taste is purely subjective. I think it also has more to do with curing than growing. Also other factors like growing indoors or out, what strains are used, the weather that year if grown outdoors, and when you harvest are all relevant. Its not just the result of using chemical or natural fertilizers. Also brix is easy to increase in Cannabis. Just spray them with sugar water. Yes, that is really all it takes. But I do not recommend it early on, as it is a foliar food, and your leaves will grow abnormally large as a result. Sugar also works well to kill mites later in flowering. Growing indoors DJ Short had an interesting comment in an interview online. He agrees with me that HID MH lights are the best overall, and CMH lights are even better and more efficient, though more expensive. A comment he made about Europe is that they tend to run HID HPS lights there. He has a very deep background in growing indoors under lights, and his opinion is that blue light in MH tends to make blooms sweeter, and red light in HPS tends to make blooms more acidic and sour. I finished my plants indoors under MH lights last year, and the buds were very tasty. Especially the landrace Lebanese. The temperature finishing grows indoors, especially at night, is another factor in increasing bud quality and potency.

Also for tasting, compare weed to wine, a similar commodity that gives you a buzz. I was in a wine club in the SF Bay Area when I was making 6 figures and had money to burn. We had blind tastings twice a week with eight top rated world wines. We bagged them up and changed the labels around. Then we poured eight glasses each with about an inch of wine and tasted them for about an hour, and rated them first to last. Typically there were 8 to 10 of us at each tasting. Some were wine snobs, some owned wineries, some had vineyards, most of us were wine collectors in high tech. They are still doing them, and I get emails twice a week with the results. After tasting, we would then hand in our rankings, they were tabulated, and then we revealed them last to first, one at a time. It definitely took the BS out of wine labels, price and the ratings from Wine Spectator magazine. It was a good way to figure out what you liked in wine, and a good way to learn a lot about wine in a hurry. I also went on wine tasting and buying trips in Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino counties and often challenged owners and managers to bind tastings. Often times the cheaper wine was ranked better. I won more than one bottle of wine from wine makers doing that. So you do not really need a double blind, just a single blind will do for tasting. I suggest a bud tasting group. Then a wide variety of weed to smoke. And high CBD bud handy to take the edge off if you get too stoned. Also I have found that to get a better idea of taste with weed, you have to go a few days without smoking it. Whatever I smoke tends to affect my taste buds. The same weed does not always taste the same to me either. Same pipe, same buds, same batch... different taste.

IMO taste is a far lesser factor in Cannabis than it is in wine. In wine the only thing that gives you a buzz is the alcohol. In Cannabis, there are many cannabinoids and terpenoids that give you a buzz and affect the buzz. Hundreds of them in fact. Also you can alter the high by eating certain types of mangoes and other fruits and veggies that also have terpenes that will also affect your high from weed. For me the highs and stones are more important to me than flavor with weed. As in, the buzz from certain terpinoids may be way better than just the taste. Again, it is subjective, but with weed it is also a lot more complex than taste alone.
 
I'mOne said:
Would love to hear more on making soil. I have lots of brown dirt, horsemanure and leaves. Attempting a compost pile now but no heat is being generated.
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Ah, soils. I grow in pots mostly. Many reasons. One being that I can move them inside and light dep them to bloom earlier. Another reason is that I can move them into and out of the greenhouses. This year was really hot here, so I moved them outdoors most of this summer out of the greenhouses. Otherwise they stretch too much. Stretch does not really give you more bud, it just gives you way taller plants. I like them to be between 80-90 deg. F. during the day here. Over 100 and they really stretch... these plants love heat. They can take 120 F no problem. You just have to water them 3 times a day in that kind of heat, which is easy to get in a greenhouse. Last week I moved them all back into the greenhouses because it rained all week. Now it is nice again, but I am leaving them in the greenhouses to finish blooming, and for harvesting which I am doing now. Its been 75-80 in the greenhouses this week. Noce and warm. Also I can move the potted plants into the garage and grow them under HID MH lights if the weather turns cold here for good. You never know what October will be like in the PNW. It is always different. Also I can move my plants in pots to pollinate them in a separate area so there is no unwanted cross breeding. Cannabis pollen is a fine fine dust... it drifts around. I keep the male bullpen at the far end of the property, downwind of the greenhouses. I keep them a dwarf in 2 gallon pots. No need for large males. They are messy.

I have grown weed in everything from pure river valley hardpan clay to loose silt to sand up and down the west coast of the US. Cannabis is not all that fussy about soil, really. They are weeds after all. I have also grown them well tilled soil with added amendments like composted leaves and sawdust, well rotted horse manure and gypsum. They seem to like anything and everything that I have thrown at them. In the pots I grow them in here I make my own soil mix for the Cannabis every year, and it is a different mix at different stages of plant growth. I start seedlings in wet paper towels with water and a small amount of hydrogen peroxide to keep the fungus down. Then when the roots are about an inch long I put them in 2 inch plastic pots an inch under T-8 daylight 5100K lights in a mix of fine sand and Perlite with just a little silty soil mixed in to coat the Perlite. I continue spraying with the hydrogen peroxide mist every day, and water with plain water until they have their second pair of true leaves. I have found that peat and peat pots tend to get too wet and heavy, and regular soil mix gets too heavy as well. They like the loose sandy mix to root fast in. I will feed them with a mild 1/2 tsp of Miracle Grow type plant food per gallon of water at this stage.

Once they fill out under the T-8 lights in the 2 inch pots, they get potted up into gallon pots with one part Perlite, a one part composted and screened fine leaf matter from my maple trees from the previous fall, and two parts silty soil that I have on my property. Then I add an earthworm or two. Worms are key. They aerate the soil, they leave worm castings as plant food, and the keep the soil from compacting. They also reproduce and make more worms. I grow in solid plastic pots, so I like the added aeration. Worms work for free too. The main reason I add the leaf matter is to feed the worms. You can add used coffee grounds (do not throw them out!), ground up nut shells, ground bark, or even composted sawdust to feed them. Then I start feeding the plants more too. More on that later. When they get to be about a foot tall, I move the one gallon pots under 12/12 light to force bloom to sex them. Then I label the sex, and cull most of the males, or all of them if I am not going to breed that line.

End part 1
 
I'mOne said:
Would love to hear more on making soil. I have lots of brown dirt, horsemanure and leaves. Attempting a compost pile now but no heat is being generated.
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Horse poop is good chit. :thumb: We ran our entire barn grow with half horse manure, half commercial topsoil. There's a load of fiber in it - aerates beautifully. But it's gotta be old. Ours was 5+ years old - nice and mild.
 
Begin part 2

Once the plants are sexed and grow roots to the bottom of the one gallon pots, I get out the 7 or 15 gallon pots that they will be in for the rest of the grow season. At that time I make a lot of soil in a wheelbarrow. No need to buy Ed's bagged special soil for a fortune. I was at a weed supply store in Portland and looked at the insanely priced soil mixes that they sell there. Along with the insanely priced special fertilizers that they sell there. No need to pay a fortune for soil or fertilizers. Pee is free! Also at my place, compost is free, silty loan is free, the worms are free, and well, the Perlite is about all I buy any more. Though I may buy blood meal, cottonseed meal, kelp meal, hoof and horn meal (if I can find it), and fertilizers on sale, or even at Goodwill. If you need to, you can buy potting soil at the store and it will work just fine. The cheap stuff at WalMart or the 'black gold' at the rock and sand supply place. I have used them both as well for growing weed.

Anyway, my final soil mix is basically half screened silty soil from my property here, and a quarter fine and coarse screened leaf matter mixed with hardwood sawdust 'noodles' from chainsawing my firewood here from the previous fall cold composted from piles on my property. Then I add some Perlite, some sand, some gypsum, some wood ash, some stomped with a 2x4 wood charcoal bits (so called biochar), and any of the meals listed above if I have them around. They are slow-release fertilizers. I also add a few more earthworms per plant pot as I find them screening the soil. I plant the Cannabis in the soil, label the pots with marked tape, and move them into the greenhouses. I do not use any manure any more for my soil. I used to use steer manure, but it is really dense and mostly composted sawdust. Alpaca poo is good, but hard to get any more.

Graytail said:
Horse poop is good chit. :thumb: We ran our entire barn grow with half horse manure, half commercial topsoil. There's a load of fiber in it - aerates beautifully. But it's gotta be old. Ours was 5+ years old - nice and mild.
Click to expand...

Horse manure is good, but it has to be fully composted and 'old' as Graytail says here. Horse poop is dense stuff. My ex's sheep ranch was a horse ranch before she bought it, and there were huge piles of the stuff 6 or 7 years old that I dug into with a tractor tooth bar and used. Hard to get that aged stuff here though. Its all fresh, like the cow poop that I can get from my neighbors ranches here. So I do not use manures. I used composted barn muck at my exes for soil amendment as well, but that stuff varied in how 'hot' it was. It can also be too dense and make layers that water sheds off. I stopped using it tilled into the soil and just built a donut around the plants in the ground with sheep muck in a 4 foot diameter ring, and that worked really well. I used that for bamboos, roses and cane berries there. But I do not have mountains of barn muck here. I do not even have a barn. I could, but I have chased enough farm animals around for one lifetime.

At my brother's last year, he has hard very dense river bottom clay on his property. We double tilled the soil in the pot plant beds inside a greenhouse that he built. We then tilled in a large bag of compost, a small bag of gypsum to break up the clay, and small bags of meals that he had bought, including: kelp, cottonseed, blood, bone, alfalfa, and some others. He grew a Lebanese strain in there that was supposed to be "short" and they grew 12 feet tall! A lot of that was stretch from the heat, but a lot was from all the soil and added amendments. That is another reason I grow in pots; it keeps the plants down to a manageable size. Like less than 6 feet. My greenhouses are only 8 feet high. My brother grew his plants in pots for that reason this year as well. Far more manageable.

Anyway some things to avoid in soil are vermiculite, as that is puffed clay. It tends to revert back to clay over time. Perlite is puffed sand, and works better at water retention for longer periods of time. If crushed, it turns into fine sand. I avoid using fresh manure, and I do not compost using manure. Manure is not needed and it adds a lot of bacteria to the soil. That can be good or bad, depending. One thing about using cold compost (which I use to feed worms with) and sawdust is that microbes will rob nutrients from the soil to digest the compost and sawdust. So you have to be aware of that. When they break the amendment down they return the nutrients to the soil though. I prefer to be able to control and vary the fertilizer with weed as it is needed, which is one reason I use water solubles so much. I also mostly cold compost as opposed to hot compost to feed my worm army. Cold composting can be done by piling up smaller amounts of leaf matter. Once you get about a cubic yard of leaf material, sawdust, pine needles and wood chips it will start to cook all on its own. It will get hot here even in the dead of winter. It becomes good stuff to use in soils, I just do not use it for growing weed. I use that for my bamboos which I propagate and sell in pots. They love the stuff. Oh, and you never need anything called 'compost starter'. What a rip-off that is. Leaf material, bark, sawdust and whatever has all it needs to crank up the oven and cook. You do not need to add anything to get it going. I used to have a large Brush Bandit wood chipper and I would grind up shrubs and trees into a pile and within a few days it would always be getting hot inside, no mater what time of year or what type of trees and shrubs. It is magic.
 

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