Cultivate Archives - Weed Reader

Analysis/Opinion, Culture, GuidesJune 8, 2017 by Adam Rhodes

Recreational Marijuana Grow: Starting Out

There are a few fundamental steps to starting a new business.

Whether you are starting an investing firm or a marijuana grow, there are a few key steps to making a dream into a business reality. Read any business startup book or ask any successful entrepreneur and you will more or less get the same list.
The list goes a bit like this: write a business plan, find a location, work out the business structure, get licensed, establish infrastructure, contract with partners, and finally promote the hell out of it. Fail in any part of that list and the consequences are dire. But some of the risks and challenges in the marijuana industry are unique to recreational growers and those are what I want to focus on.

Barriers to success in the recreational marijuana market are growing.

Oregon recently did away with all residency requirements related to ownership and investment in recreational pot. This means that people don’t have to live in Oregon to start their application process (unlike other states). Outside investors can channel money into operations based in Oregon and never have to physically be at the property.
There are also no formal capital requirements like there are for fast food franchising or insurance underwriting. In essence, if you can pass a background check, have a spot, and pay the annual fees (starts around $5000 a year) you can get licensed to grow weed in Oregon. This is a big change from the previous rules that had strict rules for who could even apply.
On the surface, these kinds of changes seem like they are great for small business and to some extent they are. Yet competition and rising prices are forcing many long time producers to rethink how they do business. Costs for laboratory testing have skyrocketed as lawmakers impose new restrictions and tests be performed. Less than a year ago, the average price for testing was between $300 and $500. Today that number is closer to $3500.

Cannabis is moving away from Mom and Pop.

The rising cost of testing is only one area where weed growers are feeling pinched. The incredible level of regulation and reporting that recreational growers are faced with is enough to make anyone pullout their hair. Add to that the delays caused by having thousands of producers and only a handful of laboratories and regulators to sign off on permits. Yet some states can handle the influx better.
While it can take up to 18 months to get through the licensing process in Washington (who has merged their recreational and medical programs), it might only take 10 months to get permitted in California. The long delay is enough to derail many individuals who simply don’t have the time or money to push things along or adjust to changing regulations.

Compliance is a big and constantly changing part of a marijuana grow.

Washington State’s cannabis regulations change on a monthly basis and the same can be said about Oregon. The Oregon legislature even added four new marijuana bills recently which caused the two governing bodies to scramble to write rules around them. For the first time in the 17 year history of the Oregon medical program, growers are required to report online. At the same time, the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) is changing concentration limits for edible products.
If the idea of; constantly redesigning packaging, testing costs growing by orders of magnitude, waiting for close to a year before getting to start making money, and the extreme amount of reporting required doesn’t excite you then you might want to rethink getting in. No matter which state you try to start a recreational grow, a marijuana grow will have to deal with these challenges in addition to finding a good spot.

Remember that location is key.

The old adage “Location location location” holds true here. In states like Washington and Colorado, there is no difference between a medical and recreational grow since they merged their markets. In states like Oregon though, there is a patchwork of friendly and unfriendly marijuana jurisdictions. Yet even in states where the systems are merged, finding a good spot for a marijuana grow is tough.
Even where weed is welcomed, zoning rules and time, place and manner restrictions prevent growing weed in certain areas or neighborhoods. It is also important to remember that growers must submit Land Use Compatibility Statements (LUCS) during the permitting process. New York entrepreneurs must demonstrate they’re in control or possession of the buildings, land or premises to cultivate, process and dispense marijuana,or they will have to put up a $2 million bond.
Even after finding a suitable location, growers must remain vigilant. Many operations worry about getting shut down after a school moves into an area after the grow was established. Most states view the marijuana establishment as ‘grandfathered in” but normally come to a conclusion on a case by case basis. Yet schools and zoning work to limit a marijuana grow.

Marijuana grows are transitioning to the recreational market.

In states like Washington they don’t have much choice as the markets have officially merged. States like Oregon decided to keep their medical programs unchanged. So only medical producers are still subject to two-year residency restrictions. Medical producers (unlike recreational) officially can’t make profit so are limited on how much they can earn.
The increased profitability for farmers producing recreational product presents a real incentive for growers to switch to recreational. This further compounds the issues of increased competition, increasing testing costs and the difficulty in finding a decent location. Yet these challenges don’t seem to be slowing down or going away any time soon.
Even in states where medical and recreational systems are both in place, legislators and business owners are preparing for the merging of the systems. The increased taxes generated by licensing and fees has to be paid whether a business succeeds wonderfully or fails horribly. Don’t forget to factor in states perpetually looking for ways to generate additional revenue.

The recreational market is growing but not evenly.

NerdWallet recently conducted a study. They found that if all 50 states legalized cannabis today, it would generate a collective $3 billion a year in taxes. With those kinds of figures running around post recession, it is easy to understand why states would actually be considering legalizing marijuana. It is also easy to see why a mom and pop marijuana grow is at such a disadvantage in the recreational market. Even though they are the lifeblood of the medical market.
Corporations like Pfizer, Monsanto and Phillip Morris all have a vested interest in controlling cannabis production. With a collective fortune that would rival most nations, these corporations have leveled their might at taking control of production.

The deck is stacked against a small marijuana grow.

Take a small business owner growing in a barn and can only produce one pound each harvest. It may take that farmer $900 to produce a pound of weed and another $400 for packaging and delivery. Add the $3500 for testing and that farmer has to charge $4800 per pound to break even. Additionally, that farmer doesn’t get tax cuts like most businesses do. But we can ignore that for now since neither will the corporation.
An international corporation like Nike or Apple can produce that same pound of cannabis (due to economies of scale) at close to $600. They could spend about $200 on packaging and delivery (because they own factories that already make packaging). The corporation has to pay the same $3500 for testing but can test close to 20,000 pounds at once. Which adds about 17 cents to the cost of each pound. This makes their pound cost $800.17.
There is no reason Apple can’t play hard ball either. They could start a sister marijuana grow company to put most small farmers out of business. Why not decide to take no profit and cut prices by 16% to stimulate demand for their product? A corporation can also file hundreds of lawsuits against small farmers like Monsanto is known to do. A company could also simply break the law and pay any fines they incurred in the process like BP does.

The game is designed for big players.

Now a dispensary can choose to pay $4800 or $800.17 per pound. If they choose the small farmer, they are limited on how much they can obtain. If they run out for any reason, there simply isn’t any more for the farmer to sell. The corporation on the other hand can produce more than a single dispensary can ever go through. They can simply send another pound if needed.
Dispensaries will choose the lower cost option or go out of business. Economic drivers and current US regulations work to force businesses to pursue the lowest cost option. If they don’t adjust (especially in a market that is overcrowded by competitors) they will go out of business.
It seems everyone is starting a marijuana grow. The low bar for entry and the extreme reporting requirements mixed with the challenges of a flooded market and international money make becoming a grower a risky business. Surely many will make millions of dollars before the large corporations squeeze out the little guys. Most will simply waste the little money they have trying to chase a dream that has been legislated and sold into oblivion.
Thanks for reading.

Analysis/Opinion, Guides, ScienceApril 11, 2017 by Adam Rhodes

Light and How Cannabis Consumes It

In the eons before dinosaurs, plants dined on light.

During the early formation of our planet, there was no oxygen to breath, only water and light. This paradise of water and photons gave rise to the first plants. Not like the orchids and redwoods we are accustomed to today, early plants were mostly algae in the early oceans. These early plants developed a way to transform light into food.
By using sunlight to convert light energy into chemical energy, plants were able to store it for later use. Although photosynthesis is performed differently by different species, the process always begins when energy from light is absorbed by proteins called reaction centers that contain green chlorophyll pigments.
In plants like cannabis, these proteins are held inside organelles called chloroplasts, which are most abundant in leaf cells. In the light-dependent reactions, one molecule of the pigment chlorophyll absorbs one photon and loses one electron. This electron is passed to a modified form of chlorophyll called pheophytin and the process propels a chain reaction of life.

Plants can use light from across the visible spectrum for photosynthesis.

Yet some wavelengths of light are more useful to a plant than others. Wavelengths that the plant uses a lot of get absorbed into its leaves and stem while wavelengths they don’t use get reflected back. We only see plants as green because they don’t use green light energy. They reflect the one color they don’t photosynthesize so we perceive them as green.
Because of how plants evolved their ability to photosynthesize, different wavelengths are needed in greater amounts at certain stages of a plant’s growth, such as the blue and red. Light high in the blue range enhances vegetative growth, while red light strongly influences flowering and fruiting.
What we perceive as visible light is comprised of seven main colors. All the odd colors we see like pinks, browns, and beiges are just mixtures of other colors. Our eyes can only register wavelengths of light are within the 400 to 700nm range. Below 400nm, we move towards ultra violet, x-ray and finally gamma rays. Above 700nm is infra red, then microwave and finally radio waves.

Let’s start with some measurements.

Nanometres (nm) are a measurement of light waves. Each degree in Kelvin (°K) rates the ‘temperature’ of a light and offers an indication to the peak nanometers (nm) or color within the spectrum. The lower the nm, the more blue the light appears while higher numbers look red.
Marijuana uses light from approximately 420nm through to 750nm. But what does that mean? To understand the unique diet of cannabis (and make those real yield gains) we need to create the ideal environment for the plants.
Giving them just any light simply won’t do if the goal is heavy crops (and who doesn’t want that?). Normal incandescent bulbs produce more high energy wavelengths like infra red (heat) and midrange light (550-650nm) than anything else. Anyone who has tried to grow a plant in a room lit only by incandescent bulbs can attest to their poor performance so avoid trying to grow with them.

Even light in the right wavelength may not have the right amount of lumens.

Cannabis need light from the right part of the spectrum with the right amount of intensity to encourage proper yet fast growth. Marijuana evolved to grow under sunlight which changes intensity over the seasons. Young weed plants can be easily burned if put under the same intensity of light as a mature ones.
For this reason, many cultivators use different lighting techniques for the different stages of plant growth. Fluorescent lights produce the right wavelengths for growth but lack the intensity of other lighting options making them the standard for use with seedlings and young clones. HPS (High Pressure Sodium) and MH(Metal Halide) are industry standard lighting options that are used during vegetative and flowering stages although LED (Light Emitting Diode) are quickly establishing themselves as premium lights in the market.

There are a few different types of light.

HPS lights offer light from approximately 540 through to 700 nm, typically yellow, amber and red light so they are great for flowering/budding marijuana. These lights tend to burn hot and need to be ventilated as well as hung from a decent distance from the plants. This makes having a tall area to grow in a priority. Luckily, the light produced by HPS lights penetrates deeply into thick canopies which is perfect for the flowering stage when buds and leaves are competing for room.
MH lights offer light from approximately 350 to 550 nm in the blue, green to yellow range. However exact levels depend on what lamp your purchase as some lamps are ‘cooler’ and others a bit ‘warmer’ than average. MH lights are good for the vegetative stage but not as much for the flowering/bud stage.

Lighting is going high tech.

LED grow lights can have a mix of LED diodes in a single ballast or specialized ones. This gives cultivators one more variable to work with but it also opens up a whole world of adjustment. With the increased lifespan of diodes over bulbs, reduced energy consumption and lower heat production, it is easy to see why cultivators are switching to LED.
While LEDs are far more efficient then HPS or MH lights (with almost 30% savings reported on average) they come with a significantly higher initial price tag. Small projects and weekend cultivators may not want to shell out the cash needed to obtain a quality growing LED but commercial outfits normally opt to go with the reduced energy consumption and quickly make back the difference in initial price.
LEDs also have the benefit of not needing specialized heat venting as they produce almost no heat. While HPS and MH lights require ducting, fans and additional controllers, LED lights don’t need any of that while providing a dynamic mix of color temperatures. The best LEDs are full spectrum and use some blues, some reds and a very stable white to create broad (full) spectrum LED grow light. These are the new breed of grow light and cover the full light range from around 420 through 750 nm.

Analysis/Opinion, Guides, ScienceApril 11, 2017 by Adam Rhodes

Super Cropping: Why It's the Best Ever

What is Super Cropping exactly?

Super cropping (also supercropping) is the name for a High-Stress Training (HST) technique where the plant is stressed by slightly hurting it in a strategic way. Super cropping is basically just a coined word for growing a bush-like plant by crushing its stems instead of cutting them off. This technique can be performed on virtually every cannabis plant (excluding autos) and can actually be done multiple times during the vegetative process.
Super cropping is most effective with 600 watt lights or bigger because they allow good light penetration. If growing a bush style plant from clones, it’s important to top the plant right after the clone roots. Doing so will provide a strong base where the extra branches start low on the trunk.
Cannabis plants become stronger after recovering from trauma. Things like bent or crushed stems can become even larger and stronger than undamaged stems. If the main cola (flower) of a cannabis plant is removed, the plant will put energy into growing the remaining colas. Each super crop basically doubles the number of potential colas on a plant.

What Does Super Cropping Do?

After super cropping the plant will grow bushier, produce more buds, and possibly even produce more THC! This is how the plant naturally responses to danger and protects itself. Growers take advantage of this technique to get bigger yields and more potent buds than would be produced otherwise.
If the goal is to harvest the biggest and the best buds, you should actively stress the plant in a way that will result in an increase in the production of cannabinoids. If the aim is to get a better harvest, “super cropping” is by far the best method of stressing your marijuana before harvesting.
Of the 483 known compounds in Cannabis, Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the primary psychoactive component of cannabis and produced in the plants trichomes. The second major component is CBD. It is also considered to have a wider scope of medical applications than THC because of study results in treating epilepsy, anxiety disorders, nausea etc. Both are produced in greater amounts by plants that have been properly super cropped.

How do we ‘stress’ the marijuana plant?

Super cropping works along with Low Stress Training, or LST. LST is the simple process of training your cannabis plant to grow laterally. This is usually done by tying down the branches of the plant to stop it from growing vertically. Light is one of the most important factors contributing to the growth of a plant so when it comes to cannabis, light dictates when a plant produces its flowers and how well those individual buds develop.
The main idea of super-cropping is to get marijuana to expose as many branches as possible to direct light and induce the plant to produce more leaves, buds and flowers. To apply the method, a certain amount of stress must be applied to your plant.
By exerting gentle pressure firm enough to slightly damage the tissues, a grower can intensely escalate marijuana yields. Because of the special stress response that takes place within the plant, the risk of infection or splitting is also minimized.

The technique is really simple.

Choose the most suitable branches you want to super crop. Start by doing only a few branches at a time, you will make sure that the plant reacts well to the stress technique. Remember that the goal is to stress the plant, not kill it.
After selecting the spot, gently hold the branch between the thumbs and forefingers of your hand and while gently exerting firm pressure, soften the inner tissues and carefully roll the branch between your fingers until stem feels limp in that spot.
A severely damaged branch may be beyond natural repair, especially if the branch is visibly split. Applying grafting tape or Duct tape will help to strengthen the damaged branch during the healing process.

Super Cropping takes advantage of natural processes.

When it’s time for a plant to flower, the size of the buds it produces is largely dependent on light exposure. The more light (in the right wavelengths) a certain part of the plant canopy gets, the stronger and bigger it is likely to be. That’s why the crown of a plant usually has denser, bigger flowers than the bottom.
Super cropping allows you to manipulate a plant and its canopy for maximum exposure. By ensuring the entire canopy gets evenly exposed to light, growers encourage it to build big, dense buds. This is true even in areas normally be covered by foliage.
For its own survival, the plants growth mechanism will cause it to ‘set’ the break and keep the limb in place after it is done healing. Arranging super cropped tops horizontally creates an environment for increased bud production as colas that would have been under the main cola are exposed to direct light.

Super crop at the right time.

Be really careful because this method is designed to induce the plant to throw out a greater number of colas and new leaves. Being too aggressive can have seriously negative results. Following the logic of nature, this method works because the plant is deceived into believing that it is under attack by some force and therefore it will compensate.
In the process of healing, the branch will grow a protective nodule to strengthen the damaged area. This ensures that transpiration of essential nutrients and water are not restricted. Growing the nodule is a key step of maintaining the overall health of the plant.
Since this technique requires time for the plant to heal, the best time to super crop is in the plants’ vegetative or growing stage. During the second or third week of growth will likely be most effective time. How will you know? When the plant produces vigorous new branches but has not yet fully started the flowering stage, it’s time.
By super cropping, cultivators enjoy shorter and more controlled plants that produces a great number of branches and buds. Even though the plant needs more time to recover, proper super cropping does not retard the growth of the plant like pruning of the tops or picking leaves to induce growth.

Culture, Guides, MedicalApril 3, 2017 by Adam Rhodes

Sold: Starting a Medical Grow Business

Before starting a medical grow business, you need to do a ton of research.

Federal, state and local laws create a vast web of interconnecting rules that are unique to each medical grow (even if they are in the same city and industry). Navigating this miasma is both arduous and tedious by design but is also vital to remaining in business. The best place to start is with your states official rules.
You can’t simply put some seeds in backyard dirt or throw thousands of dollars around and expect to get anything competitive out of it. And this is a competition. The time, effort and skill needed to get a plant from seed to sale is a skill that can be developed over several years. A skilled hand can take a good strain and make it great while an unskilled grower can kill everything.

But it takes more than growing the dankest buds to survive.

Growing great herb is a prerequisite to a business based around growing weed. But equally important is the ability to manage costs and duplicate results. It doesn’t matter how much you can sell your product for. If it costs more to produce than what you get, it isn’t a viable business.
“Even if you get your costs under control, you still have to worry about duplication. If you can’t produce the same product every time, you have a problem.” Mike Boynton, the master grower for Oregon Imperial farms told me in an interview. “Changing anything in the environment from fan placement to light duration will change how your plants grow and therefore your bottom line.” The more people and the bigger the farm, the harder it is to control costs. If you can’t get it under control with 5 plants, you will never be able to with 5000.

The Marijuana industry is an especially challenging one.

Getting a business off the ground in the weed industry is a lot harder than most other industries. Cannabis is one of the oldest crops known to man and you can bet there are a lot of talented people out there trying to do it better and cheaper than you. Besides having to deal with the standard problems of location and competition, cannabis businesses are heavily regulated and lack traditional support infrastructure like banking services.
Marijuana businesses lack the ability to use banking services because it remains federally illegal. This is not to say that banks refuse drug money. SBC was fined $1.9 billion by the U. S. government for laundering cartel drug money in 2012. Yet the cannabis industry is forced to work on a cash basis regardless of how big the costs.

There are a variety of rules regarding how to grow legally.

With over half of the nation having legal weed in one form or another on a state level, there have been many ideas about what should be allowed. Each state has taken different measures to ensure a safe and effective cannabis industry. Some states require seed to sale tracking and vertical integration while others prohibit delivery or drive-thu services.
In addition to rules and regulations about where and how to provide services, there are also rules around what kind of equipment is needed in order to get a license. This further compounds the complexity with many states have a different set of rules for medical grows and recreational operations. As an example, Washington merged their medical grow and recreational grow rules for a single comprehensive program while Oregon kept them separate.

After all, growing weed isn’t cheap.

Even in places with ideal growing conditions like Northern Cali, Florida or Hawaii, plants still need water, nutrients and protection from pests/diseases. In areas where the weather is too dry or cold, growing indoors becomes a necessity. The cost of equipment pales in comparison to the cost of keeping the growing environment perfect.
In addition to lights; pumps, timers, fans, filters and air conditioners all use electricity. Keeping the juice flowing can be a challenge in itself. Grows with more than one room may even need to have a more powerful line run by the electric company to keep from blowing transformers. All of these little additions add up quickly and can quickly eat up all the potential profit.

A lawyer, an accountant and a lobbyist walk into a grow room.

If you plan to operate a successful company growing a federally illegal substance, you need to have some specific talent on your team. This team needs at least a lawyer, an accountant and a lobbyist to run interference while the head grower does their work. Without someone covering each area, the chance of getting blindsided is astronomical.

Lawyer

Find someone who specializes in canna-based business compliance and criminal cannabis defense. Ask others in your area who they recommend. Don’t forget to check online databases like www.martindale.com, www.avvo.com, www.justice.org to name a few.

Accountant

Look for someone with experience in the industry. Overly “creative” accounting can get you in hot water so make sure you can trust them. In addition to searching online for local tax professionals, ask colleagues for referrals. Asking others in your area who they use and why is also a great way to narrow the search for the right accountant.

Lobbyist

Look for someone with the time and energy to represent your cause. Their job is to keep an eye on local and statewide changes that pertain to your business. They are also there to help prevent others in the community from effectively banning your business or engaging in sneaky tactics to close you down. There are no lists/registries for this, gotta tap into that network to find the right person..

Head Gardener

Look for someone with botany experience. Many master gardeners hang out in local hydro stores or are at least known by them. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and be picky. This is the person who will dictate the initial and final quality of the product and choosing the wrong person can have dire consequences.

Skipping the support staff can have dire consequences.

Many states ban the operation of any marijuana based business (including a medical grow) within a certain radius of schools. But most states don’t ban schools from opening near a marijuana businesses. There is normally nothing explicitly stopping a preschool from opening next to a dispensary or grow location and putting you out of business.
A good team is the difference between closing up shop or staying open for years. It does you no good to spend millions of dollars on a medical grow business just to have a preschool open next door a week later and shut you down. Better to have the staff on hand to stay open and deal with the issue before it gets finalized than not.

You need to find just the right spot.

Besides schools randomly popping up, there is a lot to consider when starting a grow business. The first thing most growers work out is where they plan to grow. Most medical grows are done on a personal consumption scale. If the plan is to make it profitable, it takes a bit more consideration.
Because cannabis remains federally illegal, landlords are almost as hesitant as banks are to work with weed entrepreneurs. Even in the case of a medical grow, it can be almost impossible to get permission to start. In most cases, growers need to own the land/building they plan to operate in or receive written permission from the land owner before getting licensed.

Security is a major concern as well.

Each state has very specific rules on which types of security are needed for a medical grow to remain in compliance. States may require barriers like walls be erected around grow sites. They also might require closed circuit cameras linked to cloud backups but it depends.
Whole sectors of the economy have been dedicated to the outright eradication of cannabis for decades (I’m looking at you Big Prison, Pharma and Tobacco). As cannabis moves from illicit trade to regulated market, there is bound to be pushback from entrenched interests. Even a medical grow can face opposition from local religious or political groups that don’t like cannabis.

The market is growing.

More and more people are getting in on the Green Rush and starting to grow cannabis. Like the Gold Rush that sparked westward expansion, the hype and obvious wealth being generated is causing a migration of talent and willpower. Fortunes are waiting to be made by talented and driven individuals willing to put in the work.
In the end, most of the states where weed has been legalized were ballot measures which means they were supported by voters. With the majority of the population clearly supporting cannabis reform, cannabis is primed to continue growing for years to come. Getting a good team will make every other part of the process easier.

Do you agree?

Or do you think I’m off my rocker? What advice would you give to someone just getting started? What do you wish you knew before starting a medical grow? Let us know in the comments down below. We would love to hear your take. And as always, thanks for reading.

Analysis/Opinion, Guides, ScienceMarch 25, 2017 by Adam Rhodes

Treating Common Cannabis Pests

Spider mites, thrips, fungus gnats…

If you are a cannabis grower you’ve likely been warned about these insects more than once. There are many pests that can endanger your crops. But some turn up a lot more often than others. Knowing how to identify and deal with the most common offenders can be the difference between doing some extra work and losing a whole crop.
To start off, the best way to prevent a garden infestation is through prevention. Being aware of the symptoms and, above all, knowing how to eradicate them efficiently can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Not to mention months of caring for them. The main goal is to not give any potential pests or diseases a place to hide/nest/grow. This is best accomplished with some soap.
Wash the walls, floors and all surfaces with soap and water. Using diluted chlorine, bleach (although never together) or other disinfectant works too. Do the same with pots, buckets, utensils and any other equipment you plan to use. Make sure that nothing comes into the garden that might be able to carry stowaways.

It’s important to make sure everything is clean inside and out.

When changing reservoirs, make sure to wash and disinfect them as well. You never know what might be growing in there, even if the previous plant didn’t show signs of problems, eventually something will go wrong.
You may also want to cover the floor with plastic sheeting. The kind available at most home improvement stores but thick enough that you won’t tear through it. Carpets and similar flooring types make great homes for both pests and molds/fungi. Covering them with plastic ensures that they remain in good condition and won’t offer sanctuary to pests.
Keeping your air and water temperatures along with room humidity at the ideal levels while using adequate air circulation will prevent most pests/infections from ever getting started in a marijuana grow. As will filtering the air intake to block the path many marijuana pests use to gain access to the plants.

Soil-borne pests

One of the many advantages to using hydroponic/aeroponic systems to grow cannabis is that they prevent many insect and other infestations. There is no place for many types of larvae to incubate or hatch. When choosing soil, look for sterilized or composted soil. If using native soil, make sure to sterilize or compost it as well to prevent hitchhikers.
Covering soil in diatomaceous earth will prevent flying and crawling insects from laying eggs in your corp. This is because the sharp edges damage their tiny bodies like rubbing them across sand-paper. A less effective alternative uses a 1/2” or so of fine perlite on top of the soil as a barrier. Insect eggs generally don’t grow in perlite and most insects wont burrow deep enough to hit soil.

Spider mites

Best Prevention:
Keep the room clean throughout the grow. Fully disinfect and sterilize everything before attempting to start the grow. Also make sure to keep the room tidy and free of excess soil.

How to Identify:

Spider mites live underneath the leaves plants and are invisible to the naked or untrained eye. The mites drink the chlorophyll for sustenance. They also have eight legs which classifies them as a tiny spider instead of as an insect.
Spider mites are visible under a magnifying power of 15x or more. The magnified mites are whitish, red, or (most commonly) brown with two spots. These mites spin webs which makes them easier to spot. Once seen, it unfortunately means the mites are already a generation or two in.
Misting the undersides of leaves reveals the webs easily to the naked eye. Once fertilized, females remain so for life. After mating they can lay about 100 eggs every 5 days. With 75% of all spider mite eggs being female, their numbers can grow rapidly.

Repression Measures:

Spider mites ideal temperatures range between 70 and 80F or 21-27C. They also need average to high humidity to stay happy. Cooling a grow room to 60F/16C and dropping the relative humidity slows the reproduction rate of the spider mite.
Cooling the room reduces the damage an infestation can do. At 50% humidity and below the mites start getting uncomfortable. By spraying jets of water across undersides of leaves, growers can blast larger colonies loose and slow the spread of these pests considerably.

Best Predators:

Neoseiulus (Amblyseius) californicus and Mesoseiulus (phytoseiulus) longipes are the two most common and effective options out there. They can eat up to 20 eggs or 5 adult mites every day. And once their food supply runs out, they die off.

Sprays:

Neem oil is the most effective spray available. Other effective methods include pyrethrum, horticultural oil, and insecticidal soap. Spraying three times at 5 to 10 days apart should destroy a mite population if the room remains clean. Spider mite eggs hatch after 5-10 days which makes a second application necessary.
The first spray kills the adults while the second destroys newly hatched mites. A third application will kill any stragglers left behind. Make sure to also cycle to another chemical if using pyrethrum to spay frequently. This ensures mites don’t develop a resistance to the synthetic chemical. Several miticides have DDT or fungal relatives that are toxic if inhaled by humans so choose your miticide carefully.

Thrips

Best Prevention:

Keeping a clean grow area is the only defense against a thrip infestation. These miniscule insects avoid detection by even by the most cautious grower until they reach damaging levels. Best to make sure they don’t feel welcome in the garden in the first place.

how to Identify:

The thrip hits greenhouse more than any other garden. It’s difficult for the thrip to reproduce in large quantities outdoors and they must hitchhike into indoor gardens. Their small size helps them fit through all but the finest screens and finters.
Thrips can be almost any color, move very quickly and can fly which can make it hard to get a good look at them. Thrips tend to move in herds though, grazing tiny strips off the top of leaves like tiny lawnmowers. This can strip plants of chlorophyll so thoroughly that the leaves become brittle, dark, and begin to crumble. Tiny black lines across leaf surface are fecal trails left after gorging themselves.
The flying thrip easily infests gardens if protected from outdoor conditions. The female bores a hole into the plant and leaves her eggs in a hole. The opening is so small a magnifying glass is needed to even see it. In marijuana, the thrip colonies primarily infest and reproduce inside buds. A good shake of a cola infested with thrips produces a cloud as the tiny pests fall, jump and fly out of the buds.

Repression Measures:

Using powerful fans to move air throughout a greenhouse or growroom can prevent the thrip from latching on to plants or taking flight. Regularly misting plants with water will flood the thrips and slow their travel, reproduction, and minimize their ability to damage the plant. Sticky traps do help, however the thip doesn’t migrate much. Which reduces the effectiveness of sticky traps.

Best Predators:

Nearly any predatory mite can effectively battle thrips. Parasitic wasps work but the size of thrip populations limit their ability to be effective. You might be able to see herds skittering across your plant. And while crushing them will reduce their numbers, it is of course not effective overall.

Spray:

Pyrethrum or insecticidal soap sprayed 2-4 times at 5-10 day intervals is the recommended treatment.

Fungus Gnat

Best Prevention:

Keep the relative humidity of your garden low, and don’t over water. Make sure the surface of your grow medium doesn’t stay soggy. Covering hydroponic medium surfaces also prevents growth of green algae which can entice these pests.

How to Identify:

Fungus gnats attack plants during their adult and larval stages. The maggots are almost invisible to the human eye. This is compounded by their see-through bodies and a black heads. The maggots infest the upper roots of plants and will spread throughout an entire hydroponic root system.
Fungus gnat maggots love dark, dank, and water soaked environments. Checking the medium at the base of a plant reveals these pests. The gnat larvae are also perfectly happy going through their life in rockwool. They infest root systems, damage larger roots and consume root hairs. This results in the plant weakening, slowing its growth, and visible fading of foliage.
Adult gnats are normally grey to black, so small they are hard to see and have disproportionately long legs. Females are prolifically breeders, laying an average of 200 eggs weekly. They can also usually be found at the base of your plant along with their maggots. They basically have a Hulk-like grip and are basically impossible to remove by force.

Repression Measures:

Damaged roots make marijuana insanely vulnerable to several types of fungus and prevents nutrient uptake. Maggots will consume decaying plant matter. This means that infestations reproduce faster the more damaged your plant becomes. Reducing surface moisture in your plants medium will slow fungus gnats reproduction dramatically. basically, the drier the better. Applying an anti-algae product to the base of plants kills any green algae currently growing. It also reduces the number of food sources of maggots. Yellow sticky traps placed 2 inches away from the growing medium will catch most adults looking to spread.

Best Predators:

There are no predators proven to be effective at controlling gnat populations themselves. Although the predatory soil mite Hypoaspis and the nematode Steinemema feltiae severely impact the insect population in soil grows. Unfortunately, they are not effective countermeasures for hydroponic applications. It is also impossible to force them out. Swatting a few adults doesn’t kill the eggs they lay underground.

Spray:

Neem or insecticidal soap applied as a soil drench kills eggs and larvae in 1-3 applications. Spray containing the fungal culture Bacillus thuringiensis var. israelensis (Bt-i) successfully eradicates adult gnats. The soil drenches and spray should be applied simultaneously every 5-10 days.

Do you agree?

There are way more ways to fight off these pests than I could possibly list on my own. Let us know in the comments below what pests you have come across and what you have found to be effective. I’d love to hear what else you think should have been included. Thanks for reading.

Analysis/Opinion, Culture, Science, Strain ReviewsMarch 21, 2017 by Adam Rhodes

Landrace Strains: Discover the Power

There has been a lot of talk about Landrace (LR) strains over the last few years. From Acapulco Gold to Malawi, people across the world claim to have landrace variants of many popular strains. These cultivators claim that their genetics are some of the oldest known to man. They take pride in the native, indigenous or heirloom nature of the cannabis strains under their care.
As humanities scientific understanding continues to grow, we have found that CBD may be better for treating pain and muscle spasms than THC. Without access to strains that had not been selectively bred, people would not have been able to create strains like Charlotte’s Web or LSD. Breeders needed to combine plants with new characteristics than what the market had available so they turned to the untapped potential of landrace strains.

What is a Landrace Strain?

A landrace strain never been crossed with a different phenotype and has grown in its natural environment for as long as people can tell. Like the Giant Tortoises of the Galapagos Islands, these plants have spent a long time in genetic isolation. Cultivators have taken the best of each generation and bred it with the next for many human lifetimes.
This isolation (and the resulting ) makes these varieties highly stable and extremely vigorous since only the best were kept. Over generations, people grew the plants that performed best for their environment. In the jungles of Durban South Africa, the plants needed to be able to grow above the trees so only tall plants grew well enough to survive.

Where Did Landrace Strains Come From?

Historical records (some dating as far back as 2900 B.C.) tell us cannabis has lived with humanity for thousands of years. Cultivated for food, fiber, and for religious and medicinal purposes, cannabis is one of the oldest known agricultural plants and has many uses. According to the best available research, cannabis originally evolved in Central Asia and spread to nearly every region of the planet thanks to humans.
Outside of Asia, landrace strains are the result of escaped cultivars (strains that were selectively bred by humans) which gradually adapted to their environment over time. Over the centuries, other cultivars would have interbred with these feral escapees. Due to the complex nature of the winds and plant/animal interactions, even the wild plants native to Central Asia are not believed to be untouched indigenous strains.

Why Are Landrace Strains Important?

Not all cannabis is created equal in the eyes of growers. Plants that produce large colas full of cannabinoids like THC are traditionally prized over low yielding variants. Over generations, certain traits get bred out of or in to the genetic lines. People use this to make bigger and stronger plants than could be obtained otherwise.
This breeding method also has the effect of removing many of the less understood compounds. Since the same trichomes produce THC and CBD (and only one is psychoactive) growers selectively bred out the ability to produce CBD. That way all of the trichomes could focus on producing THC instead of some deciding to make CBD.

Where Are the Real Landrace Strains?

In today’s cannabis market people rarely see the pure landrace strains. On sites like Leafly and Cannafo, most of the sativas (the red tiled ones) are not pure sativas. Instead, they are sativa-dominant hybrids that exhibit strong sativa-like attributes. Same thing goes for indicas and hybrids. Landrace strains also exhibit these hybrid traits but to different degrees.
Landrace strains were embraced worldwide during the 1960s and 70s by growers who began collecting them in their own local gardens. Once the landrace strains were removed from their local growing environment, they became heirloom variants. For marketing reasons, most breeders don’t differentiate between landrace and heirloom.
These heirloom strains were then propagated in places like Hawaii and California. As the landrace movement grew, people who hunt for these hard to find strains became sought after. People like Arjan Roskam, founder of Amsterdam-based Greenhouse Seeds, and his colleague Franco Loja have spent millions obtaining these landrace varieties for use in their selective breeding.

What Landrace Strains Are There?

Here is a short list of some popular landrace strains:
Malawi Gold:
Malawi Gold originated in Southeastern Africa. Grown on the shores of Lake Malawi (the third largest lake in Africa) the plant was adaptable to its local conditions. It’s genetic flexibility was perfect for the wildly changing environment which is why many phenotypes can be found in the market today. Aromas and flavors given off by the phenotypes of Malawi Gold help differentiate between the varieties. Two main phenotypes exist. One gives off a fruity smell while the other is a woody one. The fruity plants are normally smaller than the woody ones.
Afghan Kush Indica:
The plant is medium height with dark, broad leaves which makes it perfect for growing in the northern Afghani mountains. Its heavy, sweet aroma and taste mix with spices and incense to create a deep flavor. New smokers often find that this strain gives a very potent high that easily turns sedating. Perfect for people that are having trouble sleeping.
Hindu Kush Indica:
Cultivated in the Hindu Kush Mountain range for generations where it grows wild, the flowers of the fertile hillsides and valleys make the world’s finest hash. Years of selective breeding for resinous, indica-dominant plants with feral varieties have resulted in short, stocky bushes covered with huge, shiny trichomes. Known to relieve symptoms of pain, nausea, and stress while providing a pleasantly strong, earthy scent.
Lambs Bread Sativa:
Also called “Lamb’s Breath” Lamb’s Bread produces a bright green and sticky flower with a sativa dominant high. The effects have been known to help generate energy and positive introspection. Stress melts away under the warmth of the Lamb’s Bread buzz. This plant comes from Jamaica and it has been reported that Bob Marley himself enjoyed it.
There are literally tens of thousands of strains across the globe with a small percentage of them being landrace varieties. Because of the geographical nature of the landrace title, most strains retain the name of the area where they originated. Yet some places have made more of a name for themselves than others and it can be far easier to obtain their seeds or clones

Analysis/Opinion, Culture, Marijuana Legalization, Marijuana News, Medical, ScienceFebruary 24, 2017 by Adam Rhodes

DEA: Marijuana is Not a Gateway Drug

Marijuana has been called a gateway drug for over 80 years.

The battle lines were drawn long before anyone currently driving the gateway debate had assumed power. Political figures have demonized cannabis and those who consume it for almost a century and worked to create a massive industrial prison complex designed to harvest people. Low income and minority people have borne the brunt of the assault.
Americans have been tricked into accepting the most ridiculous claims about cannabis and a whole generation of people have grown up behind bars because of it. Politicians have used slippery speech to sway public opinion and outright changed the law in order to suite their desires for decades. When Reagan and Clinton enacted laws that put more people in jail than the Romans had slaves.
Larry Anslinger didn’t care about how many would suffer without the healing properties of cannabis, he was motivated by an zealous hatred for the plant to create the movie Reefer Madness. President Nixon was motivated by a religious desire to punish people regardless of what his own investigators proved. Reagan had no mercy for people caught in the crossfire when he enacted draconian mandatory punishments for minor drug infractions.

We stand at the dawn of a new era of American drug policy.

Despite an abundance of empirical evidence about the medical benefit of cannabis from reputable medical professionals from the Shafer Commission to Sanjay Gupta, it remains a schedule 1 controlled substance. This classifies weed as having “no medical benefits” and creates massive hurdles for scientists and doctors looking to research cannabis. It also puts it in the same medical category as heroin.
With the rise of Trump and the appointment of Jeff Sessions to Attorney General, the entire industry is bracing for another impact. Part of the collective wince comes from the evasive actions of top officials on the matter through election season. Instead of giving clear messages about how they plan to pursue policy, government officials are as vague as possible about how they plan to pursue policy.
This evasive attitude has made many wary of the how the Trump Administration plans to deal with cannabis. Statements in the past by Jeff Sessions like “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.” and his past issues of discriminatory prosecution during the Civil Rights movement has helped to stir up old debates.

The debate surrounding legalizing marijuana has resurrected the Gateway Theory.

This theory presumes that experimenting with marijuana inevitably results in the use of harder drugs like cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. Until recently, the DEA website contained dozens of lies and inaccuracies and it begrudgingly changed them only after being threatened with legal action.
Many people don’t know that it is illegal for federal agencies to spread incorrect information. Yet when it comes to cannabis, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been doing it for years. In less than a month, a petition from Change.org calling on the DEA by a to stop lying about medical cannabis received 85,000+ signatures.
The petition was started by Americans for Safe Access (ASA), a nonprofit organization working to increase access to medical cannabis. “The DEA has actually admitted that the theories that cannabis use leads to harder drugs (gateway theory), long-term brain damage, psychosis, and other alleged harms, are not based in scientific fact, and yet they keep distributing this false information”, says ASA. “[W]e have found 25 instances of these false claims on their website.”

The petition for updated information was direct and their arguments were air-tight.

The group argued that the document previously known as “The Dangers and Consequences of Marijuana Abuse,” had a few inaccurate claims about cannabis. They showed how the page was in violation of the Information Quality Act which requires that administrative agencies provide accurate information to the public. The DEA also had to respond to requests for correction of information within 60 days.
A separate petition was filed by the Department of Justice demanding that the DEA immediately update misinformation about cannabis. While neither the DEA nor the DOJ responded to ASA’s request, the document which contained the majority of the inaccurate statements was removed from their website.
But the governement is made up of more people than ever before. There is a lot of room for competing ideologies and goals to play out. A key observation of the Shafer Commission is that many of the risks of drug use are the result of drug policy/enforcement rather than from the drugs themselves.

The “gateway drug” stigma refuses to die.

A prime example of how this stigma presents itself is New York governor Andrew Cuomo. He wants to keep cannabis illegal in New York State because it “leads to other drugs and there’s a lot of truth to proof that that’s true.” He holds this view despite the results of a major study on medical marijuana conducted by the venerable Institute of Medicine, which included an examination of marijuana’s potential to lead to abusing other drugs.
The study found that “There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs.” Even the DEA has gone on record to say “Little evidence supports the hypothesis that initiation of marijuana use leads to an abuse disorder with other illicit substances,” while refusing to reschedule cannabis in August of 2016.
The continuing stigma prevents meaningful reform of marijuana laws by perpetuating harmful misinformation. A Rasmussen poll found that a large percentage of Americans believe the gateway argument. Nearly half of voters (46%) believed marijuana use leads to harder drugs. Thirty-seven percent (37%) did not see marijuana as a “gateway” drug.

Patterns in progression of drug use are strikingly regular.

Because it is the most widely used illicit drug, marijuana is predictably the first illicit drug most people come across. Not surprisingly, most users of other illicit drugs used marijuana before the harder stuff. In fact, most adult users begin with alcohol and nicotine long before moving on to cannabis and other illicit drugs.
In 2006, the University of Pittsburgh released a thorough study which researchers spent 12 years putting together. They tracked a group of subjects from adolescence into adulthood and documented the initiation and progression of their drug use. The researchers reported that the gateway theory was not only wrong, but also detrimental to properly understanding and addressing drug abuse.
The myth of the Gateway effect needs to be put to rest once and for all. The more research that is conducted the clearer it becomes that cannabis use does not lead to abuse of other drugs. Some promising research has also shown that cannabis can actually help people kick the other stuff like heroine. As more and more states legalize medical and recreational marijuana, it is more important than ever to put the gateway myth to rest. Thanks for reading.

Culture, Marijuana Legalization, Marijuana News, Medical, ScienceFebruary 6, 2017 by Adam Rhodes

A History of Medical Cannabis Part 2: Modern Cannabis

In Part 1 we talked about ancient cannabis and how it has been used throughout the ages.

Today we are going to talk about modern cannabis and how it moved from prominence as a medicine to a recreational drug. Yet medical cannabis is not relegated to the ancient past. Modern medicine uses the term marijuana instead of the ancient name: cannabis but it means the same thing.
The original name can be traced back to the Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides. He was a roman army doctor from around 40-90AD who traveled widely on campaigns throughout the Roman empire. He wrote the medical text that virtually all others were based on for over a thousand years and had a special entry for both male and female cannabis plants. It wasn’t until the 1930’s when the plant became known a marijuana in an effort to re-brand it. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

By 1621, medical marijuana had made its way into the English Mental Health Book.

Cannabis was entered into one of the most popular medicinal textbooks from the era to treat depression. Because of the work of an Irish doctor working for a shipping company during the colonization of the new world, medical cannabis moved to the Americas.
Cannabis treatments were a staple of a professional doctors curriculum up through the industrial revolution. Before Alaska and Hawaii were states, America had laws on the books that supported medical marijuana in all 48 states. Cannabis was not seen as a recreational drug, it was medicine with little risk of side effects.

But in 1936 all that changed.

Pressure was being placed on the U.S. by the international community to sign the International Treaty on Controlled Substances. While not directly listing cannabis as a controlled substance, the treaty forced all countries that signed to adopt similar drug policies. Propagandists later used the treaty to get cannabis banned across the developed world.
A very popular anti-marijuana campaign burned through the nation. Funded by the government and directed by the talented propagandist Larry Anslinger, “Reefer Madness” was a sensational tale about marijuana. It featured the plant ruining people’s lives through sex, insanity, and horrific acts of violence. Although Reefer Madness was a work of pure fiction, it was accepted by a whole generation as fact with the tenacity of religious convictions. The influential power of the Reefer Madness propaganda laid the groundwork for Larry Anslinger to get cannabis banned.
Larry Anslinger was a potent propagandist that was able to convince the developed world to outright ban cannabis use, cultivation and distribution. He used a mixed media of propaganda to accomplish this. Anslinger was a master of using media and used the newspapers, radio and television to spread a web of half-truths and outright lies.
After spreading a racially motivated panic with the Reefer Madness propaganda, Anslinger convince the U.S. to pass the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. Anslinger provided his political masters a new way to target their political opponents voting base. The politically motivated police force acted quickly on the new laws to target the poor.

The Marijuana Tax Stamp Act brought America Modern Cannabis.

On the day the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act was enacted (Oct. 2, 1937) the FBI and Denver Colorado police raided the Lexington Hotel. They arrested a man named Samuel R. Caldwell for selling modern cannabis. He was a 58 year-old unemployed laborer. Three days later, on Oct. 5, 1937 Caldwell became the first person convicted under U.S. federal law of distributing cannabis.
In 1942, cannabis was removed from the U.S. Pharmacopeia. When that happened, cannabis lost the last vestiges of medical legitimacy. Because of the International Treaty on Controlled Substances, most of the other countries in the developed world were forced to enact similar rules.

Over the next decades, criminalization of cannabis continued.

As more and more regulations were heaped on medical practitioners, they became unable to prescribe cannabis. Legal penalties increased massively with the Boggs Act of 1951. It established minimum prison sentences for simple possession of cannabis. Thanks in great part to Anslinger’s work, cannabis was classified as a schedule 1 controlled substance in 1970.
Schedule 1 substances are substances no medical benefit and high risk of abuse. The controlled Substances Act of 1970 Classified Marijuana as a having “No Accepted Medical Use”. After the passing of the Substances Act, medical practitioners were barred from prescribing modern cannabis for any medication, effectively removing the oldest known medicine from a whole generation of healers across the globe.
In 1971, the Shafer Commission was created by the U.S. president to determine the merit of criminalizing cannabis. The Shafer Commission was bi-partisan and overseen by congress. President Nixon himself ordered it to determine “if the personal use of marijuana should be criminalized.” The commission came back with an answer and Nixon ignored it because he didn’t like that they believed there was no reason to scale up action against users.
In 1971 president Nixon chose to aggressively pursue action against cannabis consumers by declaring the War on Drugs. Motivated by personal prejudice political corruption, he saw marijuana as a way to get at his political opponents. He even admitted at the time that his reasons for attacking cannabis users and increasing penalties was motivated by personal directives.

Nixon acknowledged his action was not based on empirical evidence.

He increased criminalization despite the commission he put together telling him officially and unequivocally that cannabis use should not be criminalized. Over the next two years, the Nixon built a force specifically designed to scale up violence against modern cannabis users.
The Department of Drug Enforcement (DEA) was established in 1973 by merging the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNND) and the Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement (ODALE) into a single agency. It comes as no surprise that the DEA continues to aggressively pursue cannabis consumers, producers and distributors to this day. They use every tool at their disposal regardless of legality or constitutionality to continue the criminalization of marijuana.
Things continued to go downhill for cannabis in the coming years. It wasn’t until 1976 that Robert Randall (who was afflicted by glaucoma) used the Common Law Doctrine of Necessity (US v. Randall) to defend himself against criminal charges of marijuana cultivation. In 1976, federal Judge James Washington made waves with his ruling. Judge Washington ruled that Randall’s use of modern cannabis constituted a ‘medical necessity’ and the case was thrown out.

The next milestone for modern cannabis crusaders came in the winter of 1991.

Modern cannabis took a step forward with the passing of medical marijuana reform in California. The first medical marijuana initiative was called Proposition P and was in San Francisco. It passed with an overwhelming 79% of the vote in November of 1991.
Proposition P called on the State of California and the California Medical Association to restore hemp medical to the list of available medicines in California, and to stop penalizing physicians for prescribing hemp for medical purposes. It only effected San Francisco but the cogs of bureaucracy had been activated. It would take another 5 years for legislation to go statewide.
Voters in California passed the first statewide medical marijuana initiative on November 5, 1996. Known as Proposition 215, it permitted patients and their primary caregivers to possess and cultivate marijuana for the treatment of AIDS, cancer, muscle spasms, migraines, and several other disorders. It also protected doctors from state sponsored punishment if they recommended marijuana to their patients.

The wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly.

In September of 1998, the House of Representatives debated a resolution called H.J.Res. 117. They passed H.J.Res 117 at the same time Oregon, Washington and Alaska provided their medical marijuana programs. In H.J.Res. 117, Congress declared support for the existing federal drug approval process.
They decide not to reschedule marijuana despite the overwhelming evidence coming forth that it should be decriminalized. While cannabis is classified as having no medical benefit, the United States Department of Health and Human Services) currently holds a patent on medical cannabis.
Patent No. 6630507 covers the use of cannabinoids for treating a wide range of diseases and was submitted to the patent office in 1999. The Department of Health and Human Services was awarded the patent in 2003. Yet the Department of Health is not the only regulatory agency that has chosen to abandon science, compassion and reason.

In 2002, the FDA decided how to use modern cannabis in a study.

They decided that shipping 300 pre-rolled joints to patients in metal canisters was the best way to judge modern cannabis. The material was frequently two or more years old upon receipt by patients and a close inspection of the contents of NIDA-supplied cannabis cigarettes revealed them to be a crude mixture of leaf with abundant stem and seeds.
The study concluded that “cannabis smoking, even of a crude, low-grade product, provides effective symptomatic relief of pain, muscle spasms, and intraocular pressure elevations…” and that “clinical cannabis patients are able to reduce or eliminate other prescription medicines and their accompanying side effects.” The FDA report was ignored by those in power and cannabis remained a schedule 1 controlled substance despite the undeniable evidence.
The DEA has still not reclassified cannabis. It remains a holistic herb used throughout time as a medicine that current U.S. legislators are violently opposed to. While international progress has been made with the UK rescheduling cannabis to Class B and the Netherlands also making great strides in medicinal research, the U.S. still struggles to come into the light. Use of scientific reasoning is about to get even harder for the U.S. government as President Trump decides who will take the reigns of power. Yet his choice of Jim O’Neill to head the FDA (who openly supports cannabis legalization) gives modern cannabis hope for the future. Only time will tell. Thanks for reading.
Featured image: shutterstock

Analysis/Opinion, Culture, Medical, ScienceJanuary 29, 2017 by Adam Rhodes

A History of Medical Cannabis Part 1: Ancient Cannabis

Medical Cannabis is known by many names.

Whether you call it; ganja, weed, dope, grass, or the medical cannabis, it all means the same thing. Cannabis is one of the earliest plants known to be harvested by man. In fact, the oldest human artifact on record is an ancient sandal made from cannabis fibers known as hemp. The fibers of the cannabis plant were used in the oldest civilizations like Rome, Assyria, Egypt and China.
Some of the oldest known medicine was also made from cannabis. The earliest record of medical marijuana use was in 2900 BC by Chinese Emperor Fu. He and a majority of his citizens used the herb for medicinal purposes. From treating headaches and nausea to acting as an aphrodisiac, the ancient Chinese were pioneers in cannabis research.

Over the centuries, marijuana was used medicinally all over the world.

Many festivities and religious ceremonies involved cannabis as well. Cannabis was so important to ancient religious rites that it was an integral part of many rites including the process of anointing. Early Christians were well aware of how cannabis worked and used it in many of their most sacred rituals.
Christians inherited many of their religious practices directly from the Hebrews. The word Christ actually means ‘the anointed one’ and many scholars believe that Christ was anointed with chrism, a cannabis-based oil. The ancient recipe for this oil recorded in Exodus (30:22-23), included over 9 pounds of cannabis flower which the Hebrews called kaneh-bosem.
The Hebrews extracted the cannabis into about 11 pints of olive oil. This cannabis concoction was then mixed with a variety of other herbs and spices in very specific ways. The mixture was normally used in anointing and rituals that would allow the priests and prophets to commune with the divine.

Cannabis was used by more than just the ancient Chinese and Hebrews though.

India has a deep and long history with the plant. Ancient chefs created a drink known as bhang out of cannabis paste, milk and spices. Shiva is said to have loved the drink so much that he took the title “Lord of Bhang”. Bhang has remained a medical remedy/ preferred beverage in India for centuries and is prepared there to this day. Zoroaster is also said to have listed cannabis as the most important of 10,000 medicinal plants.
The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission described the history and culture of cannabis in India: “To the Hindu the hemp plant is holy. A guardian lives in the bhang leaf… To see in a dream the leaves, plant, or water of bhang is lucky… No good thing can come to the man who treads underfoot the holy bhang leaf. A longing for bhang foretells happiness.”
Cannabis has been popular in India since the beginning of recorded history and is often drank. Nuts and spices like; almonds, pistachios, poppy seeds, pepper, ginger and sugar are mixed with cannabis and boiled in milk. Yogurt can also be used instead of milk. While popular in the east, bhang has never caught on with western pallets the same way.

Romans used Medical Cannabis as well.

The Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides from around 40-90AD was a Roman army doctor who traveled widely on campaigns throughout the Roman empire. He studied many plants, gathering his knowledge and assembling it into a book he titled De Materia Medica (On Medical Matters).
Published around 70AD, De Materia Medica became the most important medical text for the next 1500 years. Virtually all medical texts were based off of this single work. Within its pages were contained the most important and useful plants known to mad. Included in the tome was cannabis, both kannabis emeros and kannabis agria, the male and female respectively. Dioscorides stated bluntly that the plant used in the making of rope also produced a juice that treated earache and suppress sexual longing.

Even the Egyptians were into medical cannabis.

In the ancient world, Egypt was a center of trade and information. Their position at the mouth of the Nile provided a base of strength for millennia. Part of that strength was advanced medical techniques that were passed down through the use of writing. Ancient Egyptian doctors and pharmacologists would use papyrus to record their work.
One of the oldest texts to survive to modernity is the 2nd century Fayyum Medical Papyrus. This ancient Egyptian text is believed to contain the earliest record of cannabis as an ingredient in cancer medicine. While they didn’t record enough for us to assess the successes of ancient Egyptian cancer treatments, cannabis continues to receive interest as a cancer therapy today.
Cannabis pollen was even found on the mummy of Ramesses II. He was a powerful Pharaoh who died in 1213 BC. It is unclear how the cannabis was used but prescriptions for cannabis in Ancient Egypt also included treatment for the eyes (glaucoma), inflammation, cooling the uterus, as well as administering enemas.

Cannabis is actually new to the Americas.

By the late 1700s, American medical journals began recommending hemp seeds and roots for the treatment of inflamed skin, incontinence and venereal disease. But it was Irish doctor William O’Shaughnessy who first popularized marijuana’s medical use in England and America.
O’Shaughnessy was a physician with the British East India Company during the years leading up to the American Revolution. He found marijuana eased the pain of rheumatism and was helpful against discomfort and nausea. Patients were prescribed cannabis most for cases of rabies, cholera and tetanus. Truly, Dr. O’shaughnessy was an integral part of the rise of medical cannabis in Europe and the Americas.

In the age of scientific innovation, cannabis was in medical texts.

In 1621, medical marijuana made its way into the English Mental Health Book, the most popular medicinal textbook from the time. Of all the things it could have suggested, it recommends marijuana to treat depression, the same as modern scientific research has shown.
Early Settlers had cannabis but mainly used it for fiber. The Jamestown settlers brought the marijuana plant specialized to produce fiber commonly known as hemp, to North America in 1611.
Throughout the colonial period, hemp fiber was an important export. By 1762, cannabis cultivation can become so common that Virginia awarded bounties for hemp culture and manufacture along with imposing penalties on those who did not produce it.

It wasn’t until the 1900’s that cannabis lost its medical, economic and spiritual prominence.

With the invention of television and the consolidation of media during the 1900s, cannabis moved from medical staple to outcast with surprising speed. Due to the efforts of Larry Anslinger and his associates, medical cannabis was stripped from medical texts and scientists were effectively banned from studying it.
Top image: Bigstock

Guides, ScienceJanuary 27, 2017 by Adam Rhodes

NPK: The Essential Nutrients of Cannabis

How do I use NPK to grow the Best Cannabis?

If you are planning on growing cannabis, there is a lot of information to absorb. One of the most basic and important elements of growing great cannabis is making sure it has the right nutrients. Like any plant, cannabis has a special diet made up of three main elements. Instead of eating fats, protein and calories like humans, plants need nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium or NPK for short.
The three main nutrients are known as macro-nutrients and basically all plants need them to survive. From giant redwood trees to Venus Fly Traps, Nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are the building blocks of a healthy plant. Yet not all plants require the same amount of each element so care is needed to provide the right mix of nutrients.

So how do I get the right mix of nutrients?

The easiest way to adjust the nutrient balance of soil is to add fertilizer. Modern cultivators have a wide range of products available to choose from. Most garden supply stores have a dizzying array of fertilizers in a myriad of forms. Liquid, solid, powder, organic, the list of methods for delivering nutrients to plants goes on. Each method or delivery system is keyed to different growing techniques but there is some basic info on every one of the bottles on the shelf.
All fertilizer has three numbers on it referred to as the NPK levels. The three numbers on fertilizer represents the value of the three macro-nutrients used by plants. These macro-nutrients are nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) or NPK for short.
Why do they call it NPK?
People have been growing plants for a LONG time. Some of the most important cultivators we have records of are the Greeks. Not because they were inherently special, but they helped propel language into a new era through conquest and trade so people often refer to them as founders of “Western Societies”. Greek also provided the root for the development of Latin. The Greek impact on cannabis cultivation permeates deeper than many understand.
Take the names of the nutrients; Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium. Nitrogen is a French word coined in 1790 by Antoine Chaptal from Greek nitron “sodium carbonate” and French gène “producing,” which is itself a derivative from Greek -gen “giving birth to”.
Phosphorus comes from Greek φῶς and -φόρος (phos and phoros), which means “light bearer”. They called it that because white phosphorus emits a faint glow upon exposure to oxygen. Phosphorus was also the ancient name for Venus, or Hesperus, the (Morning Star) which has a faint glow. Then we get to Potassium which is often referred to as potash.
The English “potash” means “pot ash” as potassium is a compound prepared from an alkali extracted in a pot from the ash of burnt wood or tree leaves. Potash is a literal translation of the German potaschen, which means “pot ashes”. The symbol K is from the Latin name kalium, which means “calcined” or powdered ashes.

So how do I read the NPK values?

All modern fertilizer has the NPK values on the packaging. These values scale with potency. The higher the number, the more concentrated the nutrient is in the fertilizer. For example, fertilizer listed as 20-5-5 has four times more nitrogen in it than phosphorus and potassium. A 20-20-20 fertilizer has double the concentration of all three nutrients than one with 10-10-10.
Plants need nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium to grow. Without enough of any one of these nutrients, a plant will have issues and may even die. But they need each for different reasons. Nitrogen (N) is largely responsible for the growth of leaves and foliage on the plant. Phosphorus (P) is largely responsible for root growth and flower or fruit development. Potassium (K) helps the overall functions of the plant like stem development and water absorption perform correctly.

How do I know how much to use?

For cultivators working with prepared soil like Dakine 420 or Fox Farms, the level of nutrients in the soil is labeled. For cultivators working with native soil, getting a soil test is a great way to measure its health and fertility. These tests are generally inexpensive, but vital when it comes to growing and maintaining healthy plants in the garden.
Soil tests are used to determine the current fertility and health of your soil. Once a cultivator has this information, they can find the right formulation to bolster what is already there. Soil tests also show the pH in addition to macro-nutrient levels.
By measuring both the pH level and pinpointing nutrient deficiencies, a soil test can provide the information necessary for maintaining optimal fertility. Most plants, including grasses, flowers, and vegetables, perform best in slightly acidic soil (6.0 to 6.5). Others, like azaleas, gardenias and blueberries, require a somewhat higher acidity in order to thrive.

Why do most nutrients have a Veg and Bloom portion?

Not all plants require the same nutrients throughout their lives either. Marijuana requires a higher nitrogen ratio during the vegetative and early flowering stages as it is the main component for plant growth. During flowering the plant prefers a lower nitrogen and higher phosphorous NPK fertilizer ratio because phosphorus is important for flower and resin development. Adjusting the micro-nutrient levels can also change the absorption rates of macro-nutrients.
The NPK fertilizer ratio does not show the micro-nutrients. These are trace elements provided by most soils. They need to be added when using a hydroponic grow system. Having ‘hard water’ or water with calcium above 200 PPM makes adding more calcium counterproductive and can lead to nutrient lock-out. This is why several companies offer micro-nutrients for hard water.

So are all fertilizers with the same NPK interchangeable?

Even given the exact same NPK ratio, not all formulations are the same. The NPK elements of any fertilizer are bound up in molecular compounds with differing degrees of bio-availability. Companies may offer their nutrients as inorganic salts, oxides, or even as colloidal minerals. Depending on the individual system (soil, hydroponic, aeroponic) one method may be preferable over another.
Be sure not to mix nutrient lines from different manufacturers without knowing how their micro-nutrients interact. This is a difficult process for most without a chemistry degree so it is advised to see if other cultivators have experimented with identical mixtures. If their results are and mimic their process. Remember that order of operations is important and to follow their process exactly.

What should the NPK levels be?

Even more important than the actual numbers on the package is the ratio of each of the primary nutrients to each other. One cultivator can grow using nutrients with a rating of 15-30-15 and another can get identical results using 5-10-5 because the proportion of each nutrient is the same. During vegetative-growth, phosphorus levels should remain at about 1/2 of nitrogen levels. Potassium should be close to 1/2-2/3 that of nitrogen.
During flowering, phosphorus takes the lead. Keeping nitrogen at 1/2 and potassium at 1/2-2/3 the strength of phosphorus is a common benchmark. It is important to note that potassium is consistently maintained throughout both stages at 1/2-2/3 the level of the main nutrient. Staying close to this ratio will prevent a nutrient lock-out.
A nutrient lock-out is when nutrients combine to form compounds that your plant can’t use. Many liquid and powder nutrients need to be added in a specific order to prevent them mixing with other compounds and forming unusable compounds. Make sure to read the instructions on any nutrients used to prevent wasting product or damaging plants.

Thanks for reading.