My great great grandparents settled in Liberty Lake, Washington in the 1940s and started an apple orchard to survive. They then added a large barn and successfully raised fox and minks for their furs for additional income. After many years the property became a full blown farm with all the animals and kids. When i came along some of my earliest memories where helping grandpa picking veggies in the garden and eating some right off the vine.
I always loved everything out of the garden and it made me feel a sense of pride that we raised that food ourselves. When I bought my first house, the first thing home improvement project was a new garden spot. Then I got married and moved into my wife's house that didn't have a garden, so in went a garden spot that we all enjoyed. I always loved to share the produce we raised with friends and family. I always took immense pride at the look on friends' faces when they took a bite of my homegrown vine ripened tomato. They couldn't believe there is so much difference from store bought.
If all it took to make a tomato taste so good
was slowing things down, ripening properly and
feeding it good nutrients, then why not cannabis?
That is what got me thinking about cannabis production. Is the stuff we got right out of high school that burnt your throat like a flamethrower and tasted like you where smoking lawn clippings supposed to be that way? If all it took to make a tomato taste so good was slowing things down, ripening properly and feeding it quality nutrients, then why not cannabis?
So contrary to my wife's approval, I acquired some seeds and began a very small indooor grow. The result--as you would expect for the first harvest--was absolutely terrible. I knew nothing about growing indoors or cannabis production. So i did what any smart american would do, I purchased a book online. Ed Rosenthal's book I believe. I read it cover-to-cover many times. Before long, the book looked like it went through a war--I had pages highlighted, things circled and underlined. I think I even had some pages cut out and plastered on my grow room wall.
The next shot at it went a lot better and i got a nice little harvest out of my wimpy 400 watt light bulb. It was a decent smoke and as my nature would have it, I shared with everyone. People liked it and asked for more and I got some decent comments and feedback on how to do it better from regular smokers.
The hard part at this time of my growing career was that nobody spoke about growing cannabis. There is only one grow shop in Spokane at the time and it was taboo to talk about it. You hardly wanted to be seen parked in front for fear of law enforcement tracking you down.
When medical marijuana became legal, I got sucked into the snowball of purchasing indoor growing equipment. I upgraded bulbs to higher watts which prompted ventilation installation. I added more bulbs which prompted vented hoods. I added more hoods and bulbs which prompted airconditioning install. Tried hydroponics but that led to the basement flooding. And the list goes on forever.
I finally got it figured out and started producing some great bud. It took about 5 years of trial and error to really get dialed in. One problem was that during that time i had somehow abandoned my original reason for starting this all in the first place. Quality veggies or herb in this case like grandpa did it with all natural ingredients.
I had an equivalent yield to my synthetic
nutrients I was using but the flavor and smoothness
were out of this world amazing.
I got hooked on some commercial synthetic nutrient lines because life got so busy and they were plain more convenient to use. Growing organically is a lot harder than mixing 500ml of this and 195ml of that. So i started looking at just how I would like to feed my plants and still get great results
I started a new batch of cannabis plants and with a new approach of brewing fish effluent and natural fertilizers in a compost tea I found cannabis growing nirvana. I had an equivalent yield to my synthetic nutrients I was using but the flavor and smoothness were out of this world amazing.
And the rest is history, the only growing style I use with all my plants now because it works for everything. I hope we can adopt most of this growing style in a commercial application with good success as well.