Can you tell us did you ever have that moment of realization that you could only get the best buds by growing them yourself? Or what was the first thing that started you growing your own.
You're very perceptive, or perhaps you had a similar experience?
I started smoking fairly young, but was lucky enough to be able to score excellent pot from almost the beginning of my smoking 'career'. I sat next to this girl in Math class and we used used to chat about various things during class etc. One day I was at a party sitting around and rolling/smoking some hash with friends- she was there, and I happened to be dating her best friend at the time.....I guess she thought I was trustworthy and so said I should meet her older brother because he always had good pot, which was somewhat of a rarity... people mostly smoked hash in my area in those days; it was really before indoor growing took off on a scale that allowed almost everyone access to the top grade.
Anyhow I met her brother- he was this funny hippie looking guy and somehow he had the conection for the good stuff.... really nice indoor buds and Malana creme 'fingers' (we used to call them) really nice flavourful hash. He always had something new and different, so I guess you could say I was spoiled.
Sadly, one day two guys woke him up with a shotgun to his head and took about $4,000 in cash and all of his buds and hash- they took his room-mate/best friend with them and told him if he called the cops they'd kill his room-mate. This type of viloence was way out of the norm for our area, but obviously the worng person had found out about his business and wanted it to stop.
They dumped his friend about 30 miles out of town in his underwear, luckily he was OK but that spelled the end of my friend's business... he just was so freaked out and wanted nothing to do with it anymore.
I had to find a new dealer... and I'm sure many of you know how that goes.. bouncing around from one guy to the next who has buds one day and nothing the next time we'd call, or it would be low grade. I finally met some guys that had a consistent supply, but it was all outdoor but being brought in from near Montreal.. and these guys had pounds and pounds of it... always the same stuff month after month for a period of a couple of years. The problem was that he would only pay so much for pot, so he could turn a better profit... I knew there was better bud out there because my previous dealer always had the goods and I became so annoyed about having poor access that I decided I had to learn how to grow and produce my own.
A friend had a photocopied portion of "The anarchists Cookbook" so I borrowed the drug section and decided to grow out some seeds I had saved of some particularly skunky pot. Of course the info in the book was a joke (I had no knowledge of growing at the time), and in my basement room at my parents house I set up a small hydroponics tray with 1 single small florescent tube above the plants. Every night I would say goodnight to my plants and turn off the lights.. and turn the light on again when I woke up in the morning, LOL! of course they never flowered properly. I used to have parties on he weekend and friends from team sports would come by and freak out that I had plants growing in the house... and finally my mom had enough of it and told me I had to move the plants elsewhere (I was about 15 at the time).
I brought them to a friends small apartment- he had recently been kicked out of his parents house and I put them in a south-west facing window and come fall what do you know they flowered! The pot was decent, but not the best seeds obviously. Anyhow that was the beginning of what would become a big passion of mine- obviously.
Is the best bud you ever smoked, one of your strains or was it grown by somebody else?
I don't there there is ever a "best"... to me it's like fine wine or fine food- there is a top grade for any given varietal and it really just comes down to personal preference when it's in that top class. I don't believe there is a "holy grail" of cannabis.... it's not feasible for anything to be so much better then what I consider the top.
Of course now I prefer my own bud, because I know exactly what has been done to it every stage of the process from feeding to drying/curing, but I do enjoy trying out buds from other good growers occasionally and if their pot is in that top grade I will by some for the library. Mostly though I just smoke resin nowadays... so the library is heavy in resins these days and the pot is just around for guests or social events.
I do remember some of the finest though from about 20 years ago- my friend obtained it working in Alberta one summer- someone from Lesquiti Island had brought something they called "Lesquiti Sweetie" and he managed to send back a couple of grams to me because he knew I was a bit fanatical, haha. I'd still love to come across these seeds, but have never heard of it since.
Did you first grow professionally indoors or outdoors?
By the time I started growing indoors in University, I was also growing outdoors every summer... it seemed silly not to take advantage of the big halide in the sky. ;)
What do you find more rewarding, indoors or outdoors growing?
I prefer greenhouses for a few reason mostly for scale. but I like being able to control the environment indoors more than outdoor.
Do you believe that there is a difference between seeds bred outdoors and seeds produced indoors under lights?
Genetically, no. Greenhouse plants seem to produce less gorgeous, dark brown or striped seeds as a percentage, so I do the vast majority of seed production indoors under a mixed-spectrum.
Thanks to you all for the kind words, look forward as always to see what you are growing.
Respectfully,
-Chimera