Evergreen
05-16-2009, 03:32 PM
One Cannabis Aficionados Journey to Organic Growing
By Ev
I look at my cannabis like my food, I don’t like non-organic nutrients or pesticides being used. I think it is unhealthy to grow cannabis or even food for that matter using hydroponics. Have you ever tried a tomato grown hydroponically and then tried a tomato grown from soil? Well, I have and the soil tomato tastes far superior. This is the story of one cannabis aficionado’s journey to organics.
First bowl
The first time I tried smoking cannabis was in middle school. I used to hang out with this group of friends and we were kind of the troublemakers of our age group. No one else in the class smoked herb yet, but my friends were into it. My friends had been smoking for a little over a year now, and after refusing to try it for a while I finally decided to give it a shot. My friends were not pushing me into smoking like I had to do it, they would just always ask me when we were hanging if I wanted a rip. So one day after catching my brother and a group of his friends smoking on a bowl near my house, it kind of just got stuck in my head. We were sitting on this bench behind the 4th grade classroom of the school (on the weekend) and my friends packed up a bowl. My good friend looked over to me with bowl and lighter in hand and made a “wanna try this?” kind of gesture. Without knowing how to properly smoke, I grab the pipe and put it to my lips, lit the lighter and tried to take a rip. Everybody kind of looked at each other and started chuckling. “There is a carb!” my one friend yells, he ripped the pipe out of my hand and showed me how to do it properly. “you see, you put your thumb here and cover this hole, after getting a rip you release it and clear the pipe”
Fast forward 20 min: I’m ripped out of my mind walking home, trying to evaluate how that single bowl had changed my life. I was looking at the world in a completely new way. I kicked a rock out of the dirt on the trail I was walking on and thought to myself “that rock has been sitting in the dirt right there in that very spot for hundreds of years and I just altered its existence”.
New Beginnings
By the time I had entered high school I knew I was different than my friends. Most of my friends were mainly into smoking for social reasons I would say, but I was not into it for the social aspect. I would go off by myself at lunch and walk down this long street in front of my high school and smoke a bowl before returning to campus to eat with friends. I was constantly on the prowl for fine cannabis and that led to me meeting some new kids at high school. I made a friend in my grade that sold herb or at least could hook it up. The herb that he hooked up was completely different than what I was acquiring from my hometown. The buds were enormous, covered with trichomes and looking delicious. There was only one problem with this new herb I was getting. It didn’t taste half as good when burned and left an odd taste in your mouth. I couldn’t figure out why this herb looked so killer but tasted so horrid. I have now learned that cannabis like this is what you get when you grow hydroponically and pump it full of nutrients derived from heavy metals and salts, to top it all off the cannabis is not flushed properly. This is because most hydro growers are growing for profit, not for a great taste. There were only a few people who would sell herb to me when I was a freshman. One was a parent of one of my older brothers classmates and she would charge $60 an 1/8 for some of the worst Cannabis I have ever smoked in my life. Luckily the town I was born in was full of organic cannabis growing hippies. One of my friends had an older sister who we would smoke with and she would hook me up herb from this guy who lived about three blocks from my house. He had some of the stoniest herb I had ever smoked at this point of time in my life and I knew that I had to hook it up. I always hitchhiked to school and every once and a while he would pick me up, so one day in the middle of my freshman year I was on my way home from school and he gave me a ride. I knew that I had to figure out a way to let him know that I needed a new hook. Luckily he always drove around with a huge bag of weed on his seat and was constantly smoking herb. He lit up a huge spliff, took a few puffs and handed it to me. I took a few puffs and broke out into a near vomiting hack. After I recovered I said “shit, I wish I could find herb like this around here” he gave me his number and said call him anytime. He had some of the finest cannabis that me or any of my friends could acquire at the time. The next few months I was getting some of the best organic cannabis I had ever smoked and it was never more that $50 an 1/8.
Medical
During the middle of my junior year California legalized medical marijuana and I was the third person in the state under 18 with a prescription. Right after SB 420 passed I went to my childhood doctor and made the argument that marijuana helped me far more than any prescription drug could. I was pursuing medical marijuana for two simple reasons. I had extremely high energy and it helped calm me down. I also got injured riding my bmx bike often and it was far better for me to smoke cannabis to ease my pain than it was to crawl to my doctor so he could prescribe me all sorts of addictive pain killers. I also for some stupid reason believed that cannabis clubs had some of the best cannabis available and that by obtaining a medical card I would be set. When I finally got into the local cannabis club I found out that the people at club had no idea if the cannabis was hydro or soil, if it had pesticides used on it or much info on the strain. They basically were under the impression that the customers would buy whatever they said was high quality cannabis, even to this day the same club sells horribly grown hydroponic cannabis for $60 an 1/8 telling customers that is some of the best around. This seems to be a common theme at cannabis clubs in california, mediocre herb for insane prices but a really cool name . It is around this time that it first crossed my mind to grow my own cannabis, but it wasn’t until I was living in Santa Barbara that it became apparent I needed to grow my own cannabis in order to have the finest.
I graduated high school in 1999 and moved to Santa Barbara to ride bmx bikes and go to college. I quickly became friends with the local bmx crew who worked at the local bike shop downtown. Luckily they were all complete stoners and had a good hook up. They knew this guy who came thru the shop once a day and would sell sacks to everybody. If you were not at the shop he would drive to wherever you were and deliver a sack. There was only one problem this guy. He charged $60 an 1/8 all the way up to an ounce and would always call me Lucas even though my name sounds nothing like it. And although this guy had some of the best herb you could get in Santa Barbara, it smelled really synthetic and was not the best tasting . After dealing with this scum of the cannabis community for a year or two it finally dawned on me while puffing one night that I was wasting my hard earned money on this synthetic garbage. I tried to eatly healthy food all of the time so why not healthy cannabis free from pesticide. Almost all of the herb available in Santa Barbara was hydro, even all of the morons living next to the UC were peddaling hydroponic crap. I had some friends who had done some growing and they all said that I had to go the hydro route if I wanted the best herb. Problem was I already figured out that in order to get the best tasting and smelling cannabis, it had to be grown organically in soil without the use of pesticides and amended with organic nutrients. I will say that hydroponically grown cannabis does finish faster than soil and the buds can be bigger, but anybody who takes time to really learn about the properties of soil and how to properly feed can grow cannabis just as quick and big as hydroponics. Take a look at food for example it doesn’t take a genius to know that soil grown food is far superior than hydroponic grown food. Another big factor in my choice to grow organically in soil is because it leaves a smaller carbon footprint on the earth. A lot of people kind of shrug it off when I bring it up, but think about it, there is a huge amount of waste in the growing of hydroponics. From the rockwool thrown in the garbage to the nutrients washed down the drain on a constant basis.
Food for thought
I don’t know about you, but when I buy food I try to buy healthy organic food. Not only does it taste better, but it is better for your body, the earth and you even feel better with a healthy diet. Non organic food requires a large amount of pesticides in order to fight off pest invasions. these pesticides that farmers use are extremely harmful to the environment(check out the salton sea for example) and the human body. Study’s have found that these chemicals cause serious side effects in the reproductive systems of fish and frogs inhabiting the same land and live in the runoff, so what could be the impact in humans? For me what it comes down to is it is not healthy to ingest things made using chemical nutrients, food or cannabis. I wonder when the rest of that cannabis community will realize that organics is the way to go not only for a better product but for a better earth.
By Ev
I look at my cannabis like my food, I don’t like non-organic nutrients or pesticides being used. I think it is unhealthy to grow cannabis or even food for that matter using hydroponics. Have you ever tried a tomato grown hydroponically and then tried a tomato grown from soil? Well, I have and the soil tomato tastes far superior. This is the story of one cannabis aficionado’s journey to organics.
First bowl
The first time I tried smoking cannabis was in middle school. I used to hang out with this group of friends and we were kind of the troublemakers of our age group. No one else in the class smoked herb yet, but my friends were into it. My friends had been smoking for a little over a year now, and after refusing to try it for a while I finally decided to give it a shot. My friends were not pushing me into smoking like I had to do it, they would just always ask me when we were hanging if I wanted a rip. So one day after catching my brother and a group of his friends smoking on a bowl near my house, it kind of just got stuck in my head. We were sitting on this bench behind the 4th grade classroom of the school (on the weekend) and my friends packed up a bowl. My good friend looked over to me with bowl and lighter in hand and made a “wanna try this?” kind of gesture. Without knowing how to properly smoke, I grab the pipe and put it to my lips, lit the lighter and tried to take a rip. Everybody kind of looked at each other and started chuckling. “There is a carb!” my one friend yells, he ripped the pipe out of my hand and showed me how to do it properly. “you see, you put your thumb here and cover this hole, after getting a rip you release it and clear the pipe”
Fast forward 20 min: I’m ripped out of my mind walking home, trying to evaluate how that single bowl had changed my life. I was looking at the world in a completely new way. I kicked a rock out of the dirt on the trail I was walking on and thought to myself “that rock has been sitting in the dirt right there in that very spot for hundreds of years and I just altered its existence”.
New Beginnings
By the time I had entered high school I knew I was different than my friends. Most of my friends were mainly into smoking for social reasons I would say, but I was not into it for the social aspect. I would go off by myself at lunch and walk down this long street in front of my high school and smoke a bowl before returning to campus to eat with friends. I was constantly on the prowl for fine cannabis and that led to me meeting some new kids at high school. I made a friend in my grade that sold herb or at least could hook it up. The herb that he hooked up was completely different than what I was acquiring from my hometown. The buds were enormous, covered with trichomes and looking delicious. There was only one problem with this new herb I was getting. It didn’t taste half as good when burned and left an odd taste in your mouth. I couldn’t figure out why this herb looked so killer but tasted so horrid. I have now learned that cannabis like this is what you get when you grow hydroponically and pump it full of nutrients derived from heavy metals and salts, to top it all off the cannabis is not flushed properly. This is because most hydro growers are growing for profit, not for a great taste. There were only a few people who would sell herb to me when I was a freshman. One was a parent of one of my older brothers classmates and she would charge $60 an 1/8 for some of the worst Cannabis I have ever smoked in my life. Luckily the town I was born in was full of organic cannabis growing hippies. One of my friends had an older sister who we would smoke with and she would hook me up herb from this guy who lived about three blocks from my house. He had some of the stoniest herb I had ever smoked at this point of time in my life and I knew that I had to hook it up. I always hitchhiked to school and every once and a while he would pick me up, so one day in the middle of my freshman year I was on my way home from school and he gave me a ride. I knew that I had to figure out a way to let him know that I needed a new hook. Luckily he always drove around with a huge bag of weed on his seat and was constantly smoking herb. He lit up a huge spliff, took a few puffs and handed it to me. I took a few puffs and broke out into a near vomiting hack. After I recovered I said “shit, I wish I could find herb like this around here” he gave me his number and said call him anytime. He had some of the finest cannabis that me or any of my friends could acquire at the time. The next few months I was getting some of the best organic cannabis I had ever smoked and it was never more that $50 an 1/8.
Medical
During the middle of my junior year California legalized medical marijuana and I was the third person in the state under 18 with a prescription. Right after SB 420 passed I went to my childhood doctor and made the argument that marijuana helped me far more than any prescription drug could. I was pursuing medical marijuana for two simple reasons. I had extremely high energy and it helped calm me down. I also got injured riding my bmx bike often and it was far better for me to smoke cannabis to ease my pain than it was to crawl to my doctor so he could prescribe me all sorts of addictive pain killers. I also for some stupid reason believed that cannabis clubs had some of the best cannabis available and that by obtaining a medical card I would be set. When I finally got into the local cannabis club I found out that the people at club had no idea if the cannabis was hydro or soil, if it had pesticides used on it or much info on the strain. They basically were under the impression that the customers would buy whatever they said was high quality cannabis, even to this day the same club sells horribly grown hydroponic cannabis for $60 an 1/8 telling customers that is some of the best around. This seems to be a common theme at cannabis clubs in california, mediocre herb for insane prices but a really cool name . It is around this time that it first crossed my mind to grow my own cannabis, but it wasn’t until I was living in Santa Barbara that it became apparent I needed to grow my own cannabis in order to have the finest.
I graduated high school in 1999 and moved to Santa Barbara to ride bmx bikes and go to college. I quickly became friends with the local bmx crew who worked at the local bike shop downtown. Luckily they were all complete stoners and had a good hook up. They knew this guy who came thru the shop once a day and would sell sacks to everybody. If you were not at the shop he would drive to wherever you were and deliver a sack. There was only one problem this guy. He charged $60 an 1/8 all the way up to an ounce and would always call me Lucas even though my name sounds nothing like it. And although this guy had some of the best herb you could get in Santa Barbara, it smelled really synthetic and was not the best tasting . After dealing with this scum of the cannabis community for a year or two it finally dawned on me while puffing one night that I was wasting my hard earned money on this synthetic garbage. I tried to eatly healthy food all of the time so why not healthy cannabis free from pesticide. Almost all of the herb available in Santa Barbara was hydro, even all of the morons living next to the UC were peddaling hydroponic crap. I had some friends who had done some growing and they all said that I had to go the hydro route if I wanted the best herb. Problem was I already figured out that in order to get the best tasting and smelling cannabis, it had to be grown organically in soil without the use of pesticides and amended with organic nutrients. I will say that hydroponically grown cannabis does finish faster than soil and the buds can be bigger, but anybody who takes time to really learn about the properties of soil and how to properly feed can grow cannabis just as quick and big as hydroponics. Take a look at food for example it doesn’t take a genius to know that soil grown food is far superior than hydroponic grown food. Another big factor in my choice to grow organically in soil is because it leaves a smaller carbon footprint on the earth. A lot of people kind of shrug it off when I bring it up, but think about it, there is a huge amount of waste in the growing of hydroponics. From the rockwool thrown in the garbage to the nutrients washed down the drain on a constant basis.
Food for thought
I don’t know about you, but when I buy food I try to buy healthy organic food. Not only does it taste better, but it is better for your body, the earth and you even feel better with a healthy diet. Non organic food requires a large amount of pesticides in order to fight off pest invasions. these pesticides that farmers use are extremely harmful to the environment(check out the salton sea for example) and the human body. Study’s have found that these chemicals cause serious side effects in the reproductive systems of fish and frogs inhabiting the same land and live in the runoff, so what could be the impact in humans? For me what it comes down to is it is not healthy to ingest things made using chemical nutrients, food or cannabis. I wonder when the rest of that cannabis community will realize that organics is the way to go not only for a better product but for a better earth.