2012 01 UK by SoftSecrets

FREE 18+ For adults only. Soft Secrets is published six times a year by Discover Publisher BV Netherlands

POSSIBLE LEGALIZATION IN DENMARK Denmark, just like the Netherlands, has a centre-right government that is supported by the extreme-right Danish People’s Party. In spite of this, local politicians foresee possibilities regarding the introduction of a new model of marijuana legalization. Copenhagen’s city council voted by a large majority for the new bill allowing the

2012, residents of these regions can grow up to four cannabis plants each. In theory, this means that, for example, a family with four children could grow twenty-four plants. Of course, all this will happen under strict and rigorous control on behalf of the Swiss government, though the government takes care to emphasize that whoever decides to grow cannabis takes full responsibility for doing so. Nothing is known yet as to whether this amendment will be valid only for house plants or outdoor cultivations as well. The amendment is being introduced to avoid so-called “drug tourism” between the different cantons.

Issue 1 - 2012

NEW YORK: 50,000 SENTENCES FOR CANNABIS USE When you think of marijuana, you think of the United States. Especially under pressure are those states where medical use of marijuana hasn’t become a reality yet. In 2010, 500,000 drug-related arrests were

In this issue:

An Italian cannabis connaiseur ›› 30 THE RISE OF THE BUBBLER! Deep Water Culture (DWC) has seen a real surge in popularity in certain areas of the UK with word of mouth spreading amongst growers, more and more cannabis cultivators are moving from pots and soil onto the bubbler system. Lots of hydro retailers are putting together systems that are simple to use, cheap to set up and operate and produce BIG results. ››

sale of cannabis in sales points managed by the State. Mayor Mikkel Warming envisions about 30-40 sales points; however, the key is for dealers and shopkeepers to look out for their customers’ interests rather than their own financial accounts. Warming does not really agree with the model proposed by the Netherlands which is only apparently liberal, while in truth it protects the interests of retailers and the State itself. Warming asserts: “We are looking for a way to make growing and importing marijuana legal”. In any case, the bill has been submitted to the Danish Parliament and will be discussed at the beginning of next year. However, we are not optimistic, not least because a previous bill proposed by Copenhagen in 2008 was cancelled.

SWITZERLAND LEGALIZES – WITH CAUTION Swiss inhabitants of the French-speaking cantons, including Vaud, Neuchatel, Geneva and Fribourg, are witnessing golden times as far as cannabis legalization goes. Sure enough, from 1st January

AUSTRIANS ARE USING MORE AND MORE CANNABIS.

In Austria, joints are gaining more and more acceptance amongst high society. According to the latest estimate carried out in Austria by the Department of Health, one Austrian out of five between 15 and 59 years old uses hashish. Amongst young people (15-24 years old), the percentage is 30%-40%. This is a substantial increase compared to the 2010 estimates, when barely 26% of young people had tried hashish. The reasons behind this noticeable increase lie in the disappearance of the taboo surrounding the use of cannabis. The increase also concerns the number of nurseries where cannabis is cultivated.

made in New York City alone. In most cases, these arrests were made by undercover police officers. Out of half a million arrests made, around 50,000 ended in imprisonment. Most of these 50,000 arrests concerned African-Americans or South Americans. NYPD claims that this series of arrests has helped significantly reduce the violent crime wave in the city.

CANADIAN DOCTORS REFUSE TO GIVE PRESCRIPTIONS FOR MARIJUANA AS A FORM OF MEDICINE Although medical marijuana has been a reality in Canada for over ten years, it’s becoming more and more difficult for Canadian patients to obtain this form of medicine. Most doctors refuse to sign the papers needed by patients to purchase cannabis. However, the situation has improved considerably for patients Continues on page 3

3 Continued from front page

since the Canadian authorities who handle public health proposed attributing responsibility for medical marijuana prescriptions to the doctors themselves. Of course, the “high and mighty” doctors don’t agree at all. Doctors claim that there is no firm evidence demonstrating the credibility of cannabis, and they fear harming patients by prescribing cannabis, with the possibility of later complaints and lawsuits. The medical body is also uninterested in becoming a contact point for people who use cannabis only as a means of pleasure, thus abusing it, and taking advantage of the possibility of obtaining it by prescription.

Paradise Seeds has selected the most resinous plant of their Automaria nr 1 to use as a father plant, crossed this with a very famous Sativa variety to breed a new generation. What they found in those seeds was amazing, so they continued one step further and selected the quickest most Sativa up-high plants to cross with themselves. This resulted in a most Sativa autoflowering hybrid with some Indica traits to it. Automaria II gets you high as a kite. The buds rich with fragrances and dewed with resin, are responsible for a complete head-rush with a nice harmonic body relaxing effect. She grows highly vigorous to support the weight of spiral shaped flowers. The calyx to leaf ratio is excellent for quick manicuring. Indoors she can grow from up to 70 cm to 1 meter tall, outside even bigger. Ideal for guerilla growing, multiple harvests and indoor cultivation when limited space requires medium sized plants. These plants guarantee a fast potent yield and complete satisfaction for Sativa lovers! Type: Yield:

Autoflowering Sativa/ Indica 350 – 450 grams per m2 indoors. Outdoors 75 grams per plant. Lifecycle: from seed to harvest, approx. 60 days indoors and max. 70 days outdoors. Outdoors in colder regions Northern latitude: Start in May/ June and finish in July/ August. In warmer areas multitple harvests are possible. In tropical areas the whole year round. Effect: Uplifting, euphoric high Aroma /Taste: Fruity, floral THC: 15-18 % Photo: Paradise Seeds

Automaria II

“LEGALIZE CANNABIS WORLDWIDE,” STATES COLOMBIAN PRESIDENT At the end of October, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, stated during an interview that legalizing light drugs could actually be a way to fight heavy

drugs and the spreading of violent crimes related to the use of those drugs. The Colombian president appeals to other world leaders, in the hopes of convincing them to change their point of view on the war on drugs and to carefully analyse the problem, which needs to be taken seriously. Santos considers it necessary for the world to come up with a new way of dealing with this serious problem. According to Santos, “most people’s mentality hasn’t changed compared to forty years ago”.

FOUR MEN AND A BOAT OF HASHISH At the end of October, four men between 53 and 66 years old shared an extremely unfortunate experience. Amongst all the yachts that cross the British channel every month, English customs decided to stop the Majestic. On board, aside from the crew, they found two tons of Moroccan hashish.

It’s the biggest raid the English have managed to pull off this year. The people captured were tried and sentenced to terms that go from five to nine and a half years of imprisonment. The judge found himself facing people who certainly can’t be described as criminals by trade. The people in question are: two British citizens, one of whom has gone back to living with his mother after a separation and one who was bankrupt due to a lawsuit, and two Dutchmen from Amsterdam: 64-year-old Johan Bouma, a teacher nearing retirement, and 66-year-old Franciscus de Geus, terminally ill with cancer.

CANNABIS GENOME REVEALED A group of Canadian researchers from the University of Toronto has revealed the genome of the cannabis plant for the first time. Although the genomes of around twenty agricultural species had already been discovered, it’s the first time for the genome of a medicinal plant like cannabis. In case you’re not sure exactly what a genome is, this is what Wikipedia has to say: “Genome (or gene pool), the chromosome complement contained in each cell of an organism. [1] In molecular biology, the genome is the entirety of an organism’s hereditary information. It is encoded either in DNA or, for many types of virus, in RNA. The genome includes both the genes and the non-coding sequences of the DNA/RNA. Therefore the genome describes the combination of a series of hereditary factors, identifying the characteristics of several different genotypes.” In any case, researchers maintain that this research is of utmost interest for answering the most basic questions regarding the plant’s type and further development of possible plant applications.

sky high performance.

Soon at your growshop: Our new packaging and renewed product line!

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Attention Readers! Fancy a FREE packet of FEMINISED seeds from DINAFEM? Then send us a picture of your grow room or best cannabis plant, including a visible copy of Soft Secrets, and we’ll send you 3 seeds. Should your photo happen to feature your beautiful wife or girlfriend wearing a sexy microbikini or super hot lingerie, you will receive 6 seeds. Photo of the Month will even receive 9 prime quality feminised seeds. With compliments of Soft Secrets and DINAFEM! E-mail your entries to SSUK@softsecrets.nl. NOTE: All entries are handled with the utmost discretion. We don’t publish out of focus pics, and we don’t like photos of plants in veg stage. It’s fat buds & sweet babes we want to see!

E-mail: SSUK@softsecrets.nl

Greetings from England, I thought I would show you some pics of my recently harvested Blue Himalayan Diesel (Automatic) grown in a small grow tent under 125w CFLs for 3 weeks and 3 weeks under a 400W HPS for 18 Hours per day. I grew using Canna Coco A+B, Rhizotonic & Used a 70% Coco 30% perlite mix grown in a Autopot system. Maybe they could have gone a bit longer but time wasn’t on my side this time. Sorry no Soft Secrets paper in the pics, It’s hard to get hold of a copy where I am.Enjoy!

EDSTHREADS Excellent! Well done matey, the plant looks like a happy camper, impressive main cola!

This is the main cola – she’s had 8 weeks so she drying as you read. One Love, HERBMAN1975 Hello there, Stoners and Stonettes! I read your paper for it’s excellent information, pics of buds and the wealth of knowledge it contains. So it kick started me into sending you a picture of my second attempt. These little darlings are S8 plants (I think that’s how it’s spelt?) which if I was correctly informed is a “UK-only” strain. They were cultivated under 2x Mini-max ballasts with 2x 150w HPS bulbs. They “locked-out” near the end due to Phosphorus deficiency, hence the small buds, but you can’t win them all! Hope this makes your paper as it would please me and a few friends to say the least! Not only that, I need some “serious” seedage for my next SoG. Take care people, and keep up the most excellent work! Thanks chappie. We think your lights were hung too high, the plants shouldn’t look so stretched. Or you put too many plants under 1 lamp so they don’t have the space to branch out. For a second attempt it is not bad. But for your third attempt you MUST get your girlfriend to undress and pose for your fellow-growers in the UK, that’s the normal procedure. That’s how it works.

Jah man, nice sativa

STE, LIVERPOOL Lovely lassie, chap! The sativas look like they want to finger her.. And they’re not the only ones.

MADE IN THE UK

PLUS

My first grow under lights. Royal Automatic from Royal Queen Seeds. Took 61 days from sprouting. Shall be growing more autos in future. I used Biobizz only and had 600w HPS on 18/24 hours. Your back issues were invaluable, esp. iss.2, 2010. Keep up good work. DIGITMANT Nice result for an auto-strain mate. The plant could have been a little more dense and croppy, it looks like you hung the lamps too high. 20 to 30 centimeters from the top of the plant is best.

Hi guys, Scouse Ste here, my first grow Dinafem Cheese. In a home made grow tent with coco A&B an boost. There lookin good, thanks to growing for dummies and all your invaluable advice.I’ve enclosed a few photos for the editor of my babe Kimberley. STE, LIVERPOOL

I’m a huge fan of the paper and thought I’d show you a pic of my babies. A mix of AK, Blueberry and Amnesia Haze. Enjoy! LUKE

Well thanks mate… Never mind the plant, but the editor says he would like to meet Kimberly in the flesh. He’s sure he can teach her some new growing tricks to get things grow even bigger.

Mate why is your lassie hiding behind that bush? You can’t grow Blueberry, AK-47 and Amnesia Haze together, didn’t you know? The Amnesia is a plant which you don’t have to give more than 400w, all other plants need max wattage. Amnesia flowers for up to 13 weeks sometimes.

EVENTS

Soft Secrets’ GROWMED, a brand new trade fair and an event not to be missed! Soft Secrets is proud to announce the GROWMED cannabis fair in Valencia, Spain on the 20, 21 and 22 April of 2012. Having started the very first cannabis fairs in Spain (The famous Highlife fairs in Barcelona from 2004 till 2007), Soft Secrets is now looking to bring the cannabis industry a whole new experience in public fair trades. GROWMED will be a fair like you never saw before. The world of the international cannabis community will be presented in all it’s facets, and home growers, medicinal marihuana users, smokers and canna-businesses alike will have a great new venue to meet up, relax or talk business.

GROWMED, with its 12,000 m2, will be the largest cannabis trade fair in Europe!

WHY VALENCIA? WHY FERIA VALENCIA? Because: t 5IF SFHJPO PG 7BMFODJB JT SJDI JO HSPXJOH culture t 5IJSE MBSHFTU DJUZ JO 4QBJO t "MNPTU JOIBCJUBOUT t $FOUSBM QPTJUJPO JO 4QBJO t &YDFMMFOU QVCMJD USBOTQPSUBUJPO t $FOUSBM QPTJUJPO JO &VSPQF t U&YDFMMFOU BJS DPOOFDUJPOT XJUI UIF SFTU of the world

WHY FERIA VALENCIA?

TRADE FAIR MEDICINAL ARENA ARAB BAZAR & LOUNGE SOFT SECRETS LOUNGE / CANNABIS CAFÉ / CYBER VILLAGE

Because: t *U T 4QBJO T MBSHFTU BOE NPTU NPEFSO exhibition area t 'FSJB 7BMFODJB JT KVTU B GFX NJOVUFT BXBZ from the city centre t &BTZ UP SFBDI XJUI QVCMJD USBOTQPSUBUJPO t 6Q UP N PG GMPPS BSFB t ,OPXO GPS *#

Growmed will contain, among others:

So mark it in your agenda! This is the fair you don’t want to miss!

This first GROWMED infotainment fair will be divided into four spaces

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For more information: F. + 34 93 245.27.50 E-mail info@growmed.es » www.growmed.es

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PRODUCT FLASH

VITA START BY PLAGRON

TML - THE MISSING LINK®

VITAMIN SPRAY FOR SEEDLINGS, CUTTINGS AND MOTHER PLANTS

The ultimate Flowerbooster

A strong and healthy plant that delivers a great yield: isn’t that what we all want? Plagron offers an innovative vitamin spray that guarantees an excellent cultivation. Vita Start is not just a vitality product but also a growth stimulator.

This premium product from Bio Nova laboratory, protects plants from damaging external influences, it stimulates the plant’s natural defence system and demonstrably increases the yield.

Vita Start contains a carefully balanced combination of organic enzymes, trace elements and growth stimulators. These protect the plant against negative external influences and ensure a greater yield. Vita Start enables the plant to absorb the available nutrients better and use them more effectively.

The Missing Link consists of a great number of special trace elements that have become essential for the growth and flowering of any living creature on this planet as a result of a process of millions of years of absorption and release by plants and animals, composting, re-absorption, microbe activities etc., Nowadays people cultivate all sorts of crops in our over cultivated environment. They disregard the needs of crops, and often disrespect the laws of nature. These facts lead to deficiencies, which result into a great number of plagues and diseases among, not only animals and plants, but also human beings. Moreover, as a result of deficiencies of these essential nutrients, organisms are no longer able to fully develop themselves. The administration of these indispensable nutrients leads to an unprecedented positive effect on both the quality and the yield of treated crops. This product fills the hole in the foodchain which had not been discovered before. Justifiably this product can be called The Missing Link… The Missing Link can be used in combination with X-ceL Booster. This forms an ideal combination during the growing and flowering period.

DOSAGE: Its usage is easy: TML in a 1:2000 dosage (50 ml. per 100 litres) continuously or weekly in a 1:500 dosage in a single feed. As a spray: 1:1000 (1 ml. per litre) solution. Over dosage is impossible. TML should be applied from the first week of growth until the final week of flowering. TML is mixable with all fertilizers.

Broad effect Vita Start can be used for seedlings, cuttings and mother plants in the growth phase. Vita Start has a very broad effect. It ensures a comprehensive and strong root system, improved resistance, accelerated absorption of nutrients, faster cell division and more branching and sprouting. The time of application determines the exact effect on the plant. For a greater fruit yield use Vita Start in the second and third week of the flowering phase.

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Only a small amount needed Vita Start enables the plant to absorb the available nutrients more effectively and deeply and eliminates the risk of over-fertilisation and malnutrition. Spray Vita Start on the leaves of the plant. The product is highly concentrated so you only need 1 ml per litre of water. Vita Start is available in packs of 100 ml, 250 ml, 500 ml and 1 litre. For further information or in the case of any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us via servicedesk@plagron.com or visit www.plagron.com. You can also download our new catalogue from this website.

From just plain simple to highly sophisticated, all Bio Nova ways are incredibly effective.

You decide which way to grow!

Would you like to grow things, but lack a green thumb? No problem! Use The Basic Way and be overwhelmed by the success of your effortless input! Are you a passionate grower who wants high quality? Use The Dedicated Way of growing, it will blow your mind! Or are you that perfectionist, who knows exactly what he is doing and why? The Professional Way will be your path to ultimate satisfaction!

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® Feminised Seeds Collection 2012

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CANNABIS COMPANIES

Amaranta Seeds chooses the classics Growers who want to work with seeds but are intimidated by the insanely large range of cannabis seeds available can count on Amaranta Seeds. Even people with years of experience with the plant often can no longer see the forest for the trees. Amaranta Seeds has for this reason selected an orderly collection of classic top strains from said overwhelming offer. Each and every strain is a prize winner, about which even the most demanding connoisseur will say: a smoke like this is a rare thing indeed... There are currently hundreds if not thousands of cannabis strains, but even producers can no longer clearly explain the differences between them. Furthermore, the majority of that gigantic offer only has a limited number of ancestors. Many varieties are therefore so similar that you would have to carry out a study of the cannabis plant in order to notice the difference.

Three-time winner In addition to our five evergreens, we have also chosen four newer strains from the autoflowering family. In our opinion, autoflowering is the future, especially in countries with cool, moist climates. What is unique about these varieties is that they do not depend on the number of daylight hours to bloom, but already start blooming automatically after 3 to 5 weeks. This allows for quite a decent harvest in less sunny climates, where fall already begins in August.

In order to make this difficult decision easier for you, Amaranta Seeds has selected four top varieties that have for over fifteen years proven themselves among the most spoiled cannabis consumers worldwide. The best proof of our quality: three Thanks to the typically Dutch phenom- Amaranta varieties were awarded at enon of the coffee shop, Dutch consumers the Highlife Cannabis Cup 2011, includhave had their choice of a wide selec- ing our autoflowering variety, Amarant tion of high quality cannabis products for Dwarf, proving that autoflowering some twenty years. This large offer has of has reached maturity. Silver Haze and course made those consumers increasingly critical over time. Although many varieties came and went over the years, some names remained popular: varieties that can rightly be called evergreens. Why these varieties? Like classic dishes and drinks, true enthusiasts never tire of classic cannabis varieties. This is why we have chosen four varieties that have for many years been, and continue to be, top of the bill at Dutch coffee shops. Each and every one is a star with its own character with regards to appearance, smell, taste and effect. Varieties that have a permanent SEAL OF QUALITY: 1ST PRIZE HAZE HYDRO. place in the hearts of true enthusiasts.

Critical also received awards. You can take our word that the best growers of the Netherlands entered their most beautiful varieties, and that there was a qualified jury who knew what was good. To walk away with three prizes means that, in all modesty, you’re doing something right. Top quality does not however mean that you have to be a top grower to achieve excellent results. On the contrary, even novice breeders can attain impressive growing results with our varieties. Plenty

of cultivation information about these classics in particular can be found on the numerous international forums. And because all our varieties are feminised, you do not have to worry about the hassle of weeding out male plants. Each seed will guaranteed produce a female plant. White Widow, Silver Haze, Amnesia and Northern Lights are all very well known names. Varieties that adorn the menus of the best Dutch coffee shops year after year. Is there a better quality certificate conceivable? Visit our webshop and order today! We will ensure that your order is shipped quickly and discreetly. Amaranta Seeds Postbus 89 3360 AB Sliedrecht Internet: http://amarantaseeds.com E-mail: info@amarantaseeds.nl Tel. +31 (0) 184-779678

AMARANTA’S SILVER HAZE WAS AWARDED FIRST PRIZE IN 2011 IN THE CATEGORY HYDRO HAZE AT THE HIGHLIFE CANNABIS CUP.

GROW WITH LITTLE LEBOWSKI

New Year, New Grow Room It’s the start of the New Year and your green fingers are starting to get itchy. You’re not alone; plenty of new growers have made it their resolution to sack the dealer off and give growing at home a try. But what to start with and how will it cost? Maybe you’ve grown in the past and want to know what’s new?

constant contact with the solution. If you don’t check and regulate, you can fuck the roots up. Same nutrient package as Manc, with the extra bits, would be about £160.

We spoke to a couple of UK shop staff; one from the North West – let’s call him Manc – and one from the Midlands – let’s call him Brum – to get their opinions on what’s popular in the UK at the moment, what to buy to get you started up again and, more importantly, how much a closet grow room will set you back. Let’s go shopping!

SS: Sounds good, let’s total up…. Manc: Light, extraction, nutrients, coco

SSUK: Guys, thanks for helping us out with this. Can you let us know what kind of set up you are going to put together for us? Manc: One light set up with pots and coco, nine plants, nice and cheap and simple. Brum: I’m gonna go for a hydro set up, one light over four plants, all potted up in their

per hour – depending on humidity and temperature variables. A carbon filter will also be required to make sure that the fragrant scent of your crop doesn’t escape out; a major consideration – if not a necessity - if you have neighbours or visitors to your house! Manc: For this set up, I’d recommend a 5-inch fan, filter and ducting kit. We’ve got a budget set up going for £115, this should cover you for a couple of grows… the cheaper filters will only last you for about 6 months. Brum: Our budget kit is pretty much identical for the same price. I’ve seen some really cheap extraction kits going

A CARBON FILTER WILL ALSO BE REQUIRED TO MAKE SURE THAT THE FRAGRANT SCENT OF YOUR CROP DOESN’T ESCAPE OUT own bubbler buckets. Bit more effort than hand-watering pots, but a quicker grow, less plants and, I reckon, the same yield. SS: OK, let’s start with the basics… lights. The light is the heart of the grow room and to get some worthwhile results, you’ll need to invest in a HID (High Intensity Discharge) lighting system. Unless heat is a serious issue, forget LED’s and fluorescents, you just won’t get the same yield or quality of bud.

online, but you don’t really want to cheap it out on your filter. SS: So, light and extraction sorted for £180, pretty good so far. What about your actual grow set ups? Manc: Under a 600w light I’d do nine plants in 6.5L pots. Start them off in some small 10cm pots and then pot up into the

bigger ones. Sit the pots on some saucers to catch the run off when you water. For

A DECENT NINE PLANT SET UP FOR JUST £300! that many pots you’ll need a couple of bags of coco too. For all the pots, saucers and coco you’d be looking at about £35. Brum: I’d do four bubbler systems running off one four outlet air pump. Start the plants off in some rock wool cubes and then sit them in the baskets of the bubblers with some hydroton pebbles to hold them in place. For the rock wool, 20L of clay, four buckets, air stones and the pump, it’d cost £90. SS: What about the nutrients? Manc: I’d keep it pretty simple and go for 500ml of Root Stimulator to get the girls going. You’d get away with 1L of Grow nutrient, because you’ll be keeping the veg cycle short. Then you’ll need 5L of Bloom nutrients and a couple of litres of Bloom Stimulator – just a straightforward PK 13/14. Total cost £120. Brum: My set up is pretty similar as far as the actual base nutrients and additives goes, but I’d make sure that my customer walked away with a basic pH test kit, some pH down and a budget EC meter. You’ve got to keep your eye on your levels, especially in bubblers when the roots are in

and pots. A decent nine plant set up for just £300! Brum: The four bucket bubbler set up, including light, fan, filter, nutes and meters would be £450. SS: A couple of bargains, but aren’t we forgetting something? What are we growing? Those girls don’t come for free! Manc: Haha! Don’t look at me mate! Brum: Can’t help you there! SS: OK, I’ll enlighten the readers. Unless you have a very good and trusted friend to give you some clones, they’ll set you back around £4-£8, depending on what they are and where you are in the UK. A pack of 5 seeds will run you anywhere from £20 to £40, just double that for 10 seeds. So, taking the cost of plants into consideration, if you’re doing a few less plants in hydro it goes some way to balance out the cost difference to the coco grow. Either way, it’s cheaper than you think to get started!

Unless you have money to spare, get a dual spectrum HPS (High Pressure Sodium) lamp that can be used for the vegetative and flowering phases. Manc: For a 600watt set up on a budget, I’d recommend our value lighting set up; magnetic ballast, euro reflector and a dual spectrum bulb for £65. Bargin! Brum: I’m the same. There’s plenty of competition between UK shops on 600w set ups and those with a decent bit of buying power behind them have got a £65 set up deal on. You can spend an extra £60 on a reflector if you want to. SS: OK, so that’s £65for the basic light. Let’s move onto the second most important thing… extraction. Your home garden needs cool fresh air, laden with CO2 in order to effectively process food, grow healthily and produce buds. An extraction fan will pull warm, stale air out of the grow space and replace it with fresh air. You need a fan that is capable of exchanging all the air in the room between 30-60 times

STOP DREAMING, START GROWING. IT’S CHEAPER THAN YOU THINK

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GROW WITH LITTLE LEBOWSKI as light damages the roots. After a few day the moist atmosphere in the bucket will encourage the roots to grow out of the pot and down into the oxygen rich, nutrient solution – although most growers will prefer to give some water from above, just to make sure that the roots don’t dry out before they hit the reservoir.

Deep Water Culture (DWC) has seen a real surge in popularity in certain areas of the UK with word of mouth spreading amongst growers, more and more cannabis cultivators are moving from pots and soil onto the bubbler system. Lots of hydro retailers are putting together systems that are simple to use, cheap to set up and operate and produce BIG results. ability of water, nutrient and oxygen; delivered via an air pump. Deep Water Culture is most commonly used to grow plants full cycle, but can also produce great results when used to propagate clones.

Put simply, Deep Water Culture is a growing method whereby the roots of the plant are constantly submerged in a highly oxygenated nutrient solution (hence the term; ‘Deep Water’). Very little growing medium is used, other than a propagation cube and a few clay pebbles. The initial root ball of the plant is started in a net pot, suspended above a reservoir or bucket. The roots of the plant grow out of the pot and into the reservoir where there is constant avail-

Why Use Deep Water Culture Instead Of Pots And Soil? t 4JNQMJDJUZ o NPTU TZTUFNT BSF CVJMU PG KVTU four main components; a reservoir, a lid, a net pot and an air pump. There are no moving parts and, usually, no external pipework – so no possibility of leaks. t #JHHFS ZJFMET o %8$ TZTUFNT PGGFS NBTsive exposure of the plants roots to water, nutrient and oxygen. The more of these three key elements that the plant can uptake, the faster it will develop, the

DWC Cloners Usually consist of a tray or a bucket that is filled with water to create a small reservoir, air stones are placed in the reservoir and clones are held upright in a tray - using neoprene clone collars - that sits on top of the reservoir. The stems of

THE ROOTS OF THE PLANT ARE CONSTANTLY SUBMERGED IN A HIGHLY OXYGENATED NUTRIENT SOLUTION of the water and nutrient they require, they uptake whatever they need, exactly when they need it. No timers required.

What Types of Deep Water Culture Systems Are Available?

Plants that are grown in Deep Water Culture have constant access to nutrient solution and oxygen; taking up much more water and nutrients than A plants that are hand watered. RH DW O F CG The more oxygen, water and Y ROWN AD BUD… RE nutrients that a plant can absorb, the more bud they will produce.

bigger it will grow and the more it will potentially yield. t .PSF DSPQT QFS ZFBS o QMBOUT HSPXO JO DWC develop very rapidly, which allows growers to shorten the vegetative period of their growth cycle and get more harvests in per year. t /P TPJM o OP IFBWZ CBHT UP DBSSZ JO BOE out of the house, no messy potting up stage and no risk of soil borne pests and disease. t /P GFFEJOH TDIFEVMFT UP XPSL PVU o plant roots have constant exposure to all

Bucket systems are great for growers who want to get big yields off a few large plants. Each bucket fits a single plant into it and, because the buckets aren’t connected to each other, they can be moved around individually. Another advantage is that the plants aren’t sharing the same reservoir, so if one plant gets root problems, like pythium, you don’t lose your entire crop.

Bucket systems The most common and readily available form of DWC system, often known as oxy pots or bubbler buckets; these consist of a 20L black bucket with a net pot moulded into the lid and an air pump. The plant is placed into the net pot along with some clay pebbles; the bucket is filled with nutrient solution until the level is a couple of inches under the base of the net pot, this forms the reservoir that the plant feeds from. Air stones are attached to the bottom of the tanks with suckers and the pump is left on 24 hours a day. The bucket needs to be black to ensure that no light can penetrate the root zone,

the clones are suspended underneath the tray, just above the level of water. When the air pump is turned on, the ‘bubbling’ effect in the reservoir creates a moist, humid atmosphere in the root zone. This humid atmosphere, combined with the lack of restrictive growing medium, encourages roots to develop rapidly from the stem of the clone. Growers can benefit from a much improved success rate, as the lack of growing medium used means the propagation environment is kept sterile and the fast root development allows you to get your grow started earlier.

DIY Bubbler Systems For the grower that enjoys to put their own set up together, DWC provides a great option. All your need is a reservoir, a lid, some net pots and an air pump with air stones. Plastic storage boxes

the roots hit the reservoir, so there’s no need to hand water from above when the plant first goes into the system - only half of the plant roots are in the reservoir, this reduces the risk of root borne diseases that can sometimes occur in DWC - the plant is fed using a water pump and an air pump, giving growers extra HI DW GH insurance over pump A QU OF failures; if one pump ALI RT A TY A E IR PUMP IS THE H breaks the roots will still are available from receive nutrient solution most supermarkets or - faster veg time; there’s no delay DIY centres and create a ready-made in the plant getting established reservoir and lid, just make sure that they in the system because the are a dark colour so that light cannot plant is fed by the drip penetrate the root zone. ring before the roots hit the reservoir Simply drill holes into the lid and file - bigger yields; the them out so that they fit the net pots. dual feeding means Use air stones or soaker hose to aerate that the plant is the reservoir. Soaker hose is a great getting the optioption for larger tanks as it creates a mum amount of ‘wall of bubbles’ that covers a larger water, nutrient area than a single air stone. and oxygen

no bags of waste to throw away after you harvest, just a bucket of roots! t $PNNFSDJBM HSPXFST MPPLJOH UP DVU down on the number of plants they cultivate. Plants grown in DWC can get big, quickly.

Deep Water Culture Top Tips meters. There is no buffer around the roots in a DWC system, so the strength

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and PH of the nutrient solution must be constantly maintained.

2. Leave the pump on 24/7. To get results in DWC, the air pump must be left on constantly. A plant’s roots need constant access to water, nutrient and – most importantly in DWC - oxygen. Remember that DWC is a ‘bare rooted’ technique and the roots are constantly submerged. Turning off the pump, even for a short period, can damage them. 3. Make sure that your starting EC is low; it’s easy to overfeed in DWC.

The hybrid system offers several benefits over a regular DWC system; - the drip ring feeds the plant before

tives. Organic feeds and supplements aren’t suitable for DWC; the liquids will spoil in the reservoir after a few days and can, potentially, damage the roots.

5. Keep your grow room temperatures in check. Any temperature fluctuations in the grow room will directly affect the roots of a plant grown in DWC. Use a heater in the winter to raise the night time temperatures and increase the size of your extraction fan in the warmer months to reduce the temperature in the grow room. The optimum root temperature to maintain is 18°c – 22°c.

that use an aeroponic (or DWC) cloner can transplant as soon as the roots are three or four inches long. Take the cutting out of the cloner and place it into the net pot of the DWC system, using clay pebbles to hold the young plant in place. Take extra care when handling the roots as any broken or damaged roots are susceptible to attack from pathogens. By using a cloner, and not having to wait for a cutting to root out into a propagation block, you can cut the veg period by a good few days. If plants have been started in a propagation medium like rock wool cubes, then they are ready to transfer into the system as soon as the outside of the medium is covered in white roots. If you transfer before white roots are visible, then the roots in the cube can become saturated and starved of oxygen.

7. Only use an inert growing media, like rock wool and clay pebbles. If you transplant from soil or coco, the media will break down and could block the pump. You also run the risk of introducing soil borne pathogens into a ‘bare rooted’ environment.

8. Space plants out taking into consideration the faster growth expected. The water within the reservoir will act as a support for the roots – although the plant won’t be as stable as it would in soil or coco – there is no immediate need for plant supports – like there is in NFT or aeroponics. But, considering the big yields experienced in DWC; pea netting, roller hooks or yoyos may well be needed to support those monster buds!

THERE ARE NO BAGS OF WASTE TO THROW AWAY AFTER YOU HARVEST, JUST A BUCKET OF ROOTS! easy to set up; there are no timers or feeding schedules to calculate. t 1FSDZ HSPXFST MPPLJOH UP HFU B CJH yield off one or two plants in a small grow room. t "FSPQPOJD QSPQBHBUPS VTFST BT UIFJS bare rooted cuttings can be transplanted directly into the system and

4. Only use mineral nutrients and addi-

6. Transfer at the right time. Growers

Hybrid Systems

over the roots of the plant. The roots grow down amongst the clay pebbles, through the holes in the bottom of the planter and into the aerated reservoir below.

nutrients, you’ll need to change all the solution in the reservoir.

1. Invest in some decent EC and a PH

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These are becoming more and more popular amongst growers who have had successful crops using bubbler systems and are now refining the technique. The hybrid system uses a drip ring to feed from above whilst also O utilising the DWC technique. GR RI O Instead of using net pots like in YB SY H L STE a bucket or DIY system, the plants M S MA K E T H E I D E A are placed in a deep tray, or planter, with holes drilled in the base. The planter sits above the reservoir. Hybrid systems are also known as ‘bubThe young plant is placed in the planter, bleponics’ in certain areas of the UK. which is then filled with clay pebbles. Air stones are placed in the reservoir below. What Type Of Grower Is Using DWC? A water pump delivers nutrient solution t #FHJOOFST PS HSPXFST XIP IBWFO U VTFE hydro before. DWC systems are basic and from the reservoir out of the drip ring and

Remember that the nutrient solution is the growing medium; there is no ‘buffer’ between the roots and the food. Any mistakes in dosage can potentially damage the plant and there is no medium to flush through. If you overdose on

DWC SYSTEMS ARE BASIC AND EASY TO SET UP; THERE ARE NO TIMERS OR FEEDING SCHEDULES TO CALCULATE

The benefit of building your own bubbler system is that you can space out the plants how you want; grow one or two big plants in the system or put lots of plants close together in system and grow a sea of green.

will ‘take’ almost immediately, with little risk of transplant shock. t (SPXFST XIP EP OPU IBWF UIF GBDJMity to dispose of lots of soil or coco. The only growing media used is propagation cubes and a few clay pebbles. There are

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REPORT IMPLICATIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES IN SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

How Green is the Rif?

they spray the crops with all these noxious agri-chemicals. Under the industrial scale farming system there is no room for biodiversity so the system needs these apocalypse-inducing chemicals to maintain production levels.

By the Red One

It’s amazing who you meet when you go travelling, especially in places like the Rif mountains. We were over there researching the political and economic issues of bif in the Rif but that sort of work can get a bit stressful sometimes so plenty of hammock time is called for… Mmmm, the Monkey Man’s hardella, dobley zero zero - the best. Hot

ing as Youtube’s King of Compost but now he spends most of his time conducting research and consulting with farmers in Africa and south Asia. He’s been leading this nomadic lifestyle for the last seven years with his mission being to help farmers adopt better practices and resource management techniques. He has also learnt a lot while he’s been on the

THE MOUNTAINS ARE ENTIRELY UNSUITABLE FOR MECHANIZATION AND THEY ARE STILL TILLED BY HAND sunshine, forty-plus degrees. A gentle breeze and a lazy swing in the hammock. Before I knew it I was in slumber land. Then came an ear-splitting crash, a puff of smoke and a flash of light - was I dreaming? I rubbed my eyes. As the smoke started to clear I could see a man floating in front of me - he was sitting in the lotus position, hovering above a large, shiny metal chest. His grey hair was dragged back into a ponytail and his woolly beard gave him the look of an old colonial explorer. He was dressed in a pale blue Pakistani dress suit, his eyes were twinkling and he was smiling a mischievous smile… This is Malcolm. Malcolm McEwen is a self-styled travelling soil scientist and Sufi mystic with a degree in Habitat and Soil Management. He has a dedicated and adoring follow-

road. His website Persephone Habitat and Soil Management (www.phasm.co.uk) is a free resource and virtual consultancy for anyone wanting to develop sustainable agriculture. As we speak, Malcolm is busy researching the implications and opportunities of cannabis agriculture in northern Morocco; he’s got some very interesting points to make so SSUK took advantage of our meeting and conducted the following interview… SSUK: Before we start talking about cannabis agriculture in the Rif mountains can you give us an idea of the broader issues you deal with? Malcolm: Yes, of course. Since the advent of the ‘Green Revolution’ agriculture has become increasingly dependent on mechanization and the industrial scale use of artificial manures, pesticides

and herbicides. Once heralded as the end of food shortages, these modern practices have since lead to accelerated soil erosion, water pollution, a frightening loss of biodiversity and pervasive habitat destruction. There have been a good deal of social implications as well; men who used to drive horses have been replaced by satellite-controlled tractors pulling disc harrows. Whilst this may have led to greater efficiency in short-term production it has also created unemployment and precipitated the demise of rural communities. So, whilst the ‘Green Revolution’ might have theoretically put more food on the plate it did so at the cost of the environment and the rural social systems that depended upon it; a cost we now know to be unsustainable. SSUK: Can you take us a little bit deeper with regards to the chemical side of things? Malcolm: Sure. Monoculture farming has become a generator of ‘green deserts’, vast fields devoid of anything except a single strain of plant. Absurdly, in the name of efficiency some of these green deserts stretch to the horizon and beyond; they are maintained by regular applications of oil-based fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides. The GPS-controlled tractors trace and retrace their previous tracks through these green deserts whilst

Most agricultural crops, particularly grasses and cereals, require 250kg of nitrogen to be added per hectare per year. This nitrogen is produced by ‘fixing’ atmospheric nitrogen - a process that requires lots of energy, which is why most nitrogen fertiliser factories are located very close to oil refineries. This form of nitrogen is highly soluble so, whilst effective in plant nutrition, it is easily leached from the soil into water sources where it causes pollution. Furthermore, it interferes with the carbon cycle, accelerating CO2 evolution and eroding the soil’s organic reserves. The loss of Soil Organic Carbon through both cultivation and fertiliser use is believed to be a major contributor to the current elevated CO2 levels in the atmosphere with as much as a third having originated directly from agriculture. The use of herbicides and pesticides have similarly had major implications by causing massive declines in common herbs, insect populations, small mammals and birds that depend on them. This is by no means a recent phenomenon - we have known about the ill effects of pesticide use since 1960 when Rachel Carson got Silent Spring published. Now more than fifty years have gone by yet most of the bread you eat will have at least one herbicide and one pesticide application whilst in the field; if you are wearing cotton then this has had at least two more, and

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23 flowers, the majority of the plant, the biomass, is not exported. The extraction of the resin is achieved by physically beating the flowers over a fine mesh to dislodge and collect the glands. The husk, the stalks and large amounts of the beaten flowers are then returned to the land from which they came - this means they are, effectively, growing a green manure! In terms of chemical composition, the resin is quite innocuous; it contains no proteins, carbohydrates or nutritional value and is made of little more than water and air (carbon, hydrogen and oxygen). All this means that hashish exports do not rob the ground of fertility as only a very small percentage of the biomass is being exported.

if you’re a smoker it is highly likely that your tobacco still contains traces of the pesticides used in production.

dence that the environment is providing sufficient food for the grubs and caterpillars they originate from.

SSUK: That’s some scary stuff. How does it all relate to the cannabis agriculture of the Rif? Malcolm: When we look at the Rif mountain agriculture we see little evidence of the above practices. The mountains are entirely unsuitable for mechanization and they are still tilled by hand and/or with a single plough pulled by a donkey or a couple of horses. It is hard, crude and

SSUK: How about fertilisers? There has been a bit of worry in recent years that Riffian farmers are starting to use chemical fertilisers on their crops. Malcolm: When it comes to fertiliser use, the Riffian agronomists add no nitrogenous fertilisers but they do use ammonium phosphate which contains nitrogen. Ammonium phosphate is a chief product of Morocco and it is also, arguably,

COMPARED TO MOST OTHER AGRICULTURAL CHOICES, CANNABIS IS A VERY ECOLOGICALLY SUSTAINABLE CROP poorly paid work. It is only performed once to prepare the ground for sowing and it is also the principle means of controlling [unwanted] weeds: no herbicides are or could be used here. Also, dotted in and amongst the cultivated fields are various fig trees which, under the hot summer sun, produce giant, soft, sweet fruits in shades of green, pink and yellow. Such is the abundance of these fig trees that their essential symbiotic partner, the fig wasp, is in similar abundance - this would not be the case if pesticides were in use. Relative to a lot of modern agriculture the cannabis agriculture in the Rif is surprisingly eco-friendly; with no herbicides or pesticides in use the spring time is awash with floral colour and the air is buzzing with bees and other pollinators. Summer time is equally as active with swifts performing their acrobatics as they scoop the dusk flies out of the air and 40 watt light bulbs become a Mecca for successive waves of moths. These winged evening visitors may be a nuisance to some but they are the adult stage of the insect and to the ecologist they are evi-

an unnecessary application. What they use more of is animal manures - mainly from sheep, cattle and horses. This is applied fresh and directly to the land at the same time as it is cultivated and sown. The Riffians are missing a bit of a trick here though; because their manure is not composted properly they are only harnessing around 10-15 per cent of it’s potential nutritional value - with proper composting they could boost that to 80 or 90 per cent. SSUK: It sounds like the agriculture in the Rif is quite sustainable - is that true? Malcolm: Well, all agriculture is environmentally damaging in some respects but, compared to most other agricultural choices, cannabis is a very ecologically sustainable crop. I understand that cannabis has been grown in these mountains for between three and four hundred years - this has sustained the local human communities for all that time and the sustenance of that, through the generation of employment, filters it’s way throughout Moroccan society. More recently though, the cannabis industry in the Rif has grown to inter-

national proportions in order to supply the demand in Europe and elsewhere. Despite this, it’s impact on the local environment has been minimal and with a little planning and consideration the industry could turn itself into an example of excellence in agriculture. This is all in stark contrast with the impacts of commercially cultivated indoor cannabis which is the other chief source of Europe’s cannabis. Done on an industrial scale, this indoor method destroys good housing, uses large amounts of electricity and produces a far more potent end result. Such an industry contributes nothing to either the society in which it is based nor to the environment in which it operates. This is in comparison to the Rif, where cannabis cultivation and production is a family affair - the backbone of the community; it sustains farmers, the land, tourism and the community as a whole. There’s also another important point I want to make about the cannabis crop in the Rif; as it is grown principally for the resin glands produced by the female

SSUK: That’s fascinating stuff. I know you’ve thought about cannabis cultivation and it’s role in the wider world - could you tell us a bit about that? Malcolm: Yes, we have to ask ourselves the question as to what extent does hashish production contribute to the global objective of sequestering atmospheric carbon and could/does this industry contribute towards a zero-carbon society? The answer to this is relatively easy to calculate; as is tailoring cannabis production to encourage nutrient accumulation, building fertility at the local scale. Both of these objectives are complimentary we could build fertility and achieve the global objective of carbon sequestration without compromising crop yield or quality. Arguably, a cannabis industry that is sustainable, environmentally friendly and socially responsible is, regardless of your political views, far better than one that is not. And lets face it, as long as there are people on this earth there will always be a cannabis industry to supply them. So there you have it folks. With a little care and intellectual investment the hashish industry of Morocco can be turned into a positive force for the environment and society in general. When analysed in contrast to the impact of indoor hydroponic cultivation, these very simple arguments alone should be more than sufficient to persuade policy makers to rethink their ignorant and highly politicised laws regarding cannabis. You’ve got the arguments, now it’s your job to start informing the policy makers!

INDOOR TECHNIQUES results in just a short time. I find his method quite recommendable.

A POTENT DELICACY!

Ice-water extraction: Ice

In this issue, we will describe how to prepare our jelly, a series of extractions resulting in a resin of excellent quality. There are several steps to follow in order to obtain a specimen that presents a good Mr.X level of purity; hopefully you will find our advice useful! flavour. However, if you wish to keep the quality high, extracting a decent percentage of the whole weight without introducing impurities is rather complicated.

Dry extraction

Inserting dry ice in the rotating drums works very well and increases production; this allows you to maintain the low temperature steady, while also ensuring that the trichomes rupture optimally. Remember that we’re talking about dry ice, also known as card ice, which doesn’t leave any liquid residue when it evaporates – this makes it a powerful ally. Because of the large quantities of carbon dioxide released, you should always work in a well-ventilated environment, and wear thermal gloves when handling it, in order to avoid skin damage or damage to your respiratory system.

First of all, begin with the easiest and most familiar part for any cannabis consumer: dry and/or ice trichome extraction. The result will be the first component of our jelly.

In this issue we will also describe how Juanito Manoverde showed us his effective and interesting method that uses liquid nitrogen, obtaining excellent

RESIN OBTAINED BY DRY EXTRACTION IN A CURING CONTAINER

To work in dry conditions, you can use any of the classic systems that everyone is familiar with: rods in a sieve, manual shaking, cylinder-shaped extraction containers… As long as the material used is of good quality, any of these systems will work. I recommend that the weed be cured for at least a couple of months, to avoid chlorophyll as much as possible, and that it be in its prime, strength wise. One thing I like about this method is that it’s not necessary to wait for the resin to dry; the terpenes remain more intact, and so we usually retain a better aroma/ PREPARING THE ICE AND OTHER MATERIALS

In this case, the best way to maximise your results is to opt for ice-water extraction. By using good-quality screens and correct micronage you’ve already won half the battle; then you need to gather a good quantity of ice in order to maintain water temperature as low as possible during the process. Although there are washers especially for this use, which work quite well, in my experience it is easier to control the process if you have the time to carry it out by hand. Beating the compound lightly means being less aggressive and so rupturing less vegetable material that you aren’t interested in. Using a large container means giving the buds more space to open. A mass of damp weed in 15 litres of water is very different from a mass of damp weed in 100 litres of water, where there is definitely enough space for it to unfurl and free its load. Using small leaves from the manicure gives good results, but if you can use buds, the best way is to shred them slightly with your hands instead of grinding them. Otherwise most of the resin will remain trapped inside. Quality is improved by alternately beating the compound and letting it settle (15 minutes per cycle); it’s important to keep adding ice so that a minimum amount is always visible. This method is no longer effective if the temperature rises. The idea is that frozen trichomes fall into ice

SURGICAL STAINLESS STEEL EXTRACTOR

THE GAS STARTS RISING, CARRYING THE TRICHOMES WITH IT

RESIN OBTAINED WITH ICE

26 After having done all this – and always outdoors – it’s time to put the gas through the bud-filled tube on top of the Pyrex container. In just a few seconds you can observe the liquefied gas rising and covering the bottom; if the first bottle starts shrinking it’s best to change to the second one right away, to maintain pressure.

PLACING THE TRAY IN A BAIN-MARIE

MOULDING THE JELLY

water, while vegetable matter floats on an air-entrained concentrate. Once this part is complete, the next step is to catch the first floating layers in a strainer, crushing them in your hands to try and free as much liquid as possible. Then move over to another container where you’ve placed your wire netting; of course, the thicker part is turned toward the inside and the thinnest part toward the top. After siphoning everything, place each net on a dishtowel to remove any excess water. Then gather the product and place it on a plate, using a knife to grind the grain as much as possible, in order to be able to strain it in a colander, as if it were a cheese grater, applying a slight pressure with your fingers and rolling the compound until all that remains on the plate is a fine powder.

Having already prepared a dish with several inches of solution, place it in the THE FIRST PURGE second container, previously filled with very hot water. Throughout the process it’s important to keep far away from any stoves, lighters or closed spaces in general. You’ll see how quickly the water starts evaporating, forming bubbles that you need to puncture with a pin to free the gas. In just a few minutes, you’ll find a layer of oil at the bottom, that will get BHO, READY FOR CONSUMPTION harder and harder but won’t be ready to use yet. This first purge only takes about 2 minutes, all in all. of retained gas, and the principle aim is to avoid this, because the mercaptans Let everything settle briefly while you contained in the gas are extremely toxic reheat the water and repeat the previous and shouldn’t be consumed. The word step, placing the Pyrex in a bain-marie; mercaptan means “capturing mercury”, puncture the bubbles that start forma substance you certainly don’t want to ing again. If you’re lucky and carried out come into close contact with. the process properly, this purge should already leave you with something that’s The first step is to try and obtain a high- fairly clear. This second purge should take quality and refined gas – some of the around 15 minutes. most common types are colibrì, vector or z-plus, as their impurity contents is After finishing the second purge, wait much lower. I use a surgical stainless steel at least an hour while everything cools

The powder must be left on a piece of cardboard or on a paper towel for a few days (at least a week) to expel any remaining humidity. Never press it right away BUDDER, EMULSIFIED BHO because, although the result might look good at first glance, it will crumble or harden within a few days, losing all elastic- extractor, made by Leocadius, which has ity and organoleptic properties. In other a section to capture activated carbon, words, if you don’t let it settle, all your so the gas is already free of contaminating substances and traces by the time it work will be ruined. reaches the weed. When it has dried completely, it’s best to keep it in this powder form and just work Fill the extractor with material, not too the part you want to use. In this case, save tightly but without leaving empty spacit for subsequent blending with the oil es, because the gas needs to be able to pass through quickly, and it needs to that you’ll extract as second component. be in contact with the most extended Extracting the BHO (Butane surface of weed possible. Once again, Hash Oil) the same as during the “ice” procedure, At this point, you have one of the two if you’re using buds you must crumparts you’ll be using, and it’s time to ble them with your fingers, not with turn to the more complicate and deli- a grinder. When the extractor is full, it cate part of the process – extracting needs to be placed in a freezer with the BHO, which calls for great care. First the bottles of gas you intend to use for of all, I must thank my friend, master at least thirty minutes. Leaving it overLeocadius – a genuine web crack as night is even better. far as extractions go – for advising and helping me as I wrote on the subject. Now you need a Pyrex container – borosilicate glass has higher resistance to thermal Extracting oil with gas is simple; doing changes, solvents and acids compared to it properly is a whole different story, regular glass. The bigger your container, and requires a job that is partly confec- the easier it is to carry out your purge; you tioner and partly chemist. Most extrac- also need another container, larger than tions I’ve witnessed show a high level the first, for your bain-marie.

heard innumerable times that the process should never be carried out indoors, I thought that the final stage really wasn’t so dangerous, and I decided to perform the purge in a bain-marie over the saucepan on my small cooker. I thought I could save a few minutes this way. But I had barely set it down when I saw a huge ball of fire lighting the dishcloth and food wrappers, and singeing my eyebrows and beard. Luckily I had an extinguisher on hand and was able to put out the fire, but I can promise that I was so scared that I never even think of smoking anything else all day!

Preparing the Jelly Now you have everything you need, and, with a little margin, can decide the quantities on a personal basis – however, a good foundation is 25% BHO for every 75% of resin. The rest depends on the texture and strength you wish to obtain; the result is so creamy that a light pressure is enough to amalgamate and unite it. Actually, it would be hard to avoid this result. This jelly is without a doubt one of the strongest and impressive hashes available for consumption; touching, moulding and observing its gelatinous appearance is always a pleasure. A crystal pipe is probably the best way to enjoy its many properties. Taking all those pains to extract resin just to reapply it to weed or – worse! – tobacco doesn’t make much sense. Nor does it make sense to use the oil to camouflage a mediocre pollen; the only reason for creating this blend is the high quality of each individual component which, together, are even more easily manipulated, allowing us to dose strength and consumption more effectively.

The level of purity is sufficient to consume it in a crystal nail file or a titanium swing, vanishing without a trace and offering a flavour, scent and “clean effect” without MOULDING THE JELLY additions. For me it led to an important change in my appreciation and enjoyment of this type of extracts with crystal down, then reheat it one last time, which pipes, which allow you to avoid using makes extracting the result easier. Be lighters, although you still have to use quick, because the compound will harden specialised gadgets for oil or ceramicso much in just a few seconds that you tipped heaters to begin combustion. A won’t be able to remove it. Use a series of possibility for the most health-conscious blades to catch part of the oil on each one; is converting a vaporizer to a bong (for it will crystalize, forming attractive gems, example), achieving a clear, rehydrated in a range of colours that go from pale vapour, which is much appreciated. yellow to dark amber. For your next manicure, I encourage you Now you have your BHO, the strongest to save any small leaves or low buds and extraction possible. In this case it’s used in then try to carry out your own extraccombination with dry pollen but I recom- tions – I’m sure the results will amaze you. mend that you keep a portion aside and Happy smoking, X. try it like that, because it’s truly a delight for the senses. Only if you have a high tolerance level, though, because otherwise it could leave you KO before you notice! This type of extract offers its best strength within the first week, so you shouldn’t prepare much more than you plan to use; if you have an excess amount and wish to keep it for a while, be sure to freeze it to maintain its properties. As a fun anecdote, I remember performing my first extractions of this type a few years ago – in spite of having read and

JELLY, READY FOR CONSUMPTION

www.buddhaseedbank.com

SEED COMPANIES

The First ‘High Times Dutch Master Award’ PRESENTED TO DUTCH PASSION’S HENK VAN DALEN smaller growrooms and less light to grow their pot. More weed can be produced more efficiently in a smaller area with less energy. Outdoors or in greenhouses growers can plant in full confidence that they will be harvesting only female plants with no male plants to worry about.

Henk van Dalen, owner and founder of Dutch Passion, has been honoured at the 2011 High Times Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam. He is the first ever recipient of the High Times Dutch Masters Award. This is an award given by High Times to those who have made an outstanding lifetime contribution to the cannabis community. This is a great honour for Henk, who established Dutch Passion in 1987 after many years of gathering and selecting the best cannabis genetics from around the world. Dutch Passion celebrates their 25th anniversary in 2012. High Times made the award for Henk’s contributions to the world of cannabis. As well as overseeing Dutch Passion create some of the finest and most iconic strains, Henk is also remembered for introducing feminized cannabis seeds in the 1990’s. Feminized seed had been a dream of cannabis growers for many years but was widely said to be impossible. Although everyone in the industry was excited when Henk claimed to have created the first feminized seeds, many were also sceptical. However Henk, a university trained Biologist was eventually to prove everyone wrong. Today feminized seeds have revolutionised seed supply. Many seed companies only supply feminized seeds, and many of the ‘self sufficient’ home growers only use feminized seeds. Indoors, feminized seeds allow the home-grower to use

Some of the early performance issues with feminized seeds are now a distant memory. “The feminisation process has come a long way technically since the early days. In Dutch Passions case around 80% of the varieties we sell are at their most potent and most consistent when grown from feminized seed” said Henk. Henk’s philosophy and motivation remains the same as it was in the 1970’s when he first started collecting and breeding the world’s best pot strains “Our goal has always been the same. We want to be able to offer the self sufficient grower seeds of the best quality strains possible so that they can grow championship quality weed easily for themselves. We want to make ‘growing your own’ as convenient as possible. Feminized seed was all about giving the home-grower maximum convenience and control. Today many growers only ever use feminized seeds. Sales of feminized seeds account for the overwhelming majority of our sales although we offer non-feminized seeds for the traditional growers and those who like to breed their own strains” he added. Henk’s passion for selecting and offering seeds of the world’s best strains remains the same today as it was when he started. “Many of our strains are household names such as Blueberry, Mazar, Power Plant, White Widow, Passion #1, Orange Bud…. the list goes on. It is ultimately Dutch Passion customers who benefit from the position we have and the experience we have gained. We also have perhaps the most complete genebank anywhere

and some of the best people. Genuine ‘Masters At Work’ as it says on our logo. But our mission is still to do all we can to allow the home-grower to cultivate better weed than they could buy. Once you grow your own weed you rarely want to go back to buying it from someone else.” Even after many decades in the seed business Henk feels the cannabis scene today is more exciting than ever. He explained “Today more people than ever grow their own weed, and the numbers increase every year. Medical marijuana is more widespread than ever before. Cannabis buds are being dispensed as a medicine in several European countries and in a growing number of states in the US. Legal marijuana-based medicines from pharmaceutical companies are coming along and the amount of research into marijuana as a medicine is at an all time high. It vindicates everything we have done and said over the years. Cannabis is a gift to mankind, it has never killed anyone. Its popularity and acceptance as a legitimate medicine is at an all time high. Today you can grow it in just 10 weeks with AutoFem seeds” The Dutch Master Award from High Times comes at the same time as Dutch Passion prepare some important new strain announcements for 2012, as Henk explained. “We have 4 great new strains which we are releasing in 2012, you can read all about them on our website blog. We are using our website more to communicate with our customers; you will see some big changes in this area. Traditional varieties were the best sellers for many years, but for us and many of our customers the really important new area is AutoFem seeds. We have seen people achieving up to 350grams from a single AutoMazar. Potency levels of the top Auto strains are on a par with quality traditional strains now. Our customers love the speed of production, seed to harvest in typically 9-10 weeks indoors or outside. It is an area we are working on intensively. The other massive growth area is in medical marijuana as patients are growing their own medicine individually and collectively in rapidly increasing numbers, sometimes they are doing this quite openly. Cannabis is becom-

ing widely accepted by the mainstream medical community. Today many doctors in Europe, North America and elsewhere accept that marijuana genuinely helps their patients cope with pain and illness” Henk says that the Dutch Master Award may have brought closure to the first modern cannabis era but that a new more exciting era is just beginning. There are 3 areas where Henk now wants Dutch Passion to evolve. 1. An increase in greener, more eco-friendly attitudes. In the 80’s grass was always grown outdoors and this produced absolutely top quality pot. However police confiscation and thieves forced many growers permanently indoors, this requires energy to run artificial grow lights, often produced from nuclear or coal power. Energy companies in collaboration with the police can sometimes trace those with heavy electricity bills and evict them from their homes. Henk would like to see a shift towards green energy such as solar power and the use of new technologies such as LED grow lights. Perhaps in sunny climates, solar powered LED can supplement sunlight. AutoFem seeds with their fast growth cycle and rapid bud production will be increasingly important. 2. To continue to supply the self sufficient recreational grower with the best cannabis seeds possible. This will mean continued progress in strain developments to deliver varieties rich in THC and the other key cannabinoids. Perhaps improvements in green technologies such as LED light can help here. 3. To develop the best and most effective medical strains possible. Here everyone still has much to learn about the role and influence of cannabinoids such as CBD (and others). But Dutch Passion are treating this area with the utmost importance. With his future strategy and mission clear to himself and his team, Henk makes one final comment. “We will develop the kind of great new strains that our customers like. We have pioneered feminized seeds and become leaders in AutoFems. Today we are working harder than ever to keep innovating and improving. It’s what our customers like us to do”.

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INTERVIEW

SOFT SECRETS INTERVIEWS AN ITALIAN CANNABIS CONNAISSEUR

As fast as Valentino An old advertising campaign for a brand of Italian beer, with motorcycle champion Valentino Rossi as its spokesperson, recited “Being Italian is more fun”, with reference to how wonderful life is in our country. And Valentino was right – there’s a lot more fun to be had in Italy!

This interview was conducted a few months ago. The man answering my questions is a collector I met while he was travelling through Europe in search of the products that won the most recent Dutch trophy. Meeting him was a great pleasure for me, especially because – in this field – collectors are still rare figures; I believe I know of only one other man in Europe who can be described as “a collector – as a hobby – of weed and similar items”. I promise you, it was just like talking with my grandfather, an old oenologist who’s mad about his small wine cellar! I’m still amazed by the tasting session offered as he answered my questions, and so won’t add anything else… here are his own words. SSUK: Dear P., what do you mean when you say “I am a collector”? Being a collector means worshipping good, wholesome, natural things. Smoking well equals feeling well. The collector is a necessary figure; there are experts in good food, and so there should be experts in any and every organic substance. Man finds fulfilment visiting wine cellars or tasting aged cheeses, for example. A cured Parma ham is no different from a flower. Both are natural, organic, alive. You mention collecting wholesome products; could you astound us by describing your collection? Why don’t you begin by telling us how many varieties you have and how you divide or classify the various types? Well, I have 73 varieties in all, but it would be better to count them separately. I have 7 types of Charas because I was able to

which is also extremely valid and Jack Herer x White Berry (aged 1 month). Let’s see… some others are my indoor Himalaya Gold (aged 2 months) and Dr. Grinspoon (aged 2 months), which are both quite special. The oldest I have is an outdoor Critical Jack, which I’ve kept in a glass jar in a clean cellar in the dark for the past 20 months, but it’s an exception because usually I don’t age my plants over six months. Certain products are best simply remembered.

table. I have another excellent one called Kashmir Valley, but it’s not as strong. You have to be careful with Ice-O-Lator, because the absolute best are Chocolope Ice 45-90 micron and OG Kush Ice which isn’t on the same level with the Chocolope, but the plant itself is, and you can tell. Then I have a Maxi-Melt, a gem amongst Jelly varieties. I would also add Grandaddy and Amnesia Haze’s Butter and Ice, sifted once and 25 micron per detail. What would you like to smoke right now? I would like an outdoor 5 month Utopia M., to compare it with the last one we tasted. It’s from a different grower, so it’s a different product.

As for noteworthy hashish, I should mention my Red Lebanese (aged 8 months) and my Moroccan Caramel, which has aged for about 4 months and has an incredibly sweet and unmistakable fla-

And which is your favourite? Definitely the 4 month indoor Strawberry Kush, because it’s the most particular of all; I would smoke it if I had a B.A.D., after a 4 month seasoning, of course, and not before.

vour – if you close your eyes, you’d think you were eating candy. As for pastes, my chopped sativa is quite special because of its strength (sativa effect) and citrus flavour. My balsamic OG Kif is also fantastic. Charas – the Fresh Charas – has a delicious, powerful flavour in spite of the richness of its plant component. Another powerful Charas is called Malana Cream; it’s as good as it is strong, and unforget-

When did you begin? I was young and couldn’t actually cultivate, so I always kept two or three different types of weed or hashish at home. Sometimes things went well, as far as smoking was concerned, sometimes not as well. Few people grew these plants in the city I lived in, and certainly none of my close friends. I realised that I had to start saving up

preserve them from last year, but during high season I usually have up to 20; 14 types of dry or chopped hashish; 1 oil, 19 types of Ice-O-Lator and 32 different types of weed. That’s how I classify them; of course, the weed is all organic, and I certify the pastes myself. What are some of the best types of pot and weed you have? Well, first of all I must mention my indoor Strawberry Kush (aged 5 months), then indoor Critical Haze (aged 3 months) and indoor Juicy Fruit (aged 4 months), which is a very special cross… then of course there are my Chocolope (aged 2 months), Sour Diesel (aged 1 month) and Big Buddha Cheese (aged 2 months), all indoor varieties that reach absolutely extraordinary flavours. There are three more indoor varieties I need to mention: Grapeberry (aged 7 months), which has incredible completeness and homogeneity; Lemon Haze (aged 2 months),

during the good periods in order to get through the “dry” ones – you know, smoking a joint, for me, is like smoking a cigar in bed with my woman after we’ve made love under the effect of Guadalupe rum. A good smoke sweetens all life’s pleasures! I ended up keeping so many types of weed because – for example – the good periods were especially memorable, that I realised that I still had to sort the various products, picking and choosing. The more good stuff you save, the more good stuff you smoke. It’s true! Ageing and seasoning are essential, but are you able to obtain so-called “new” products to age? Actually, the majority of products out there are new, and you have to be careful of so-called wet weed – which is different from fresh weed, but they should both be avoided. The former in terms of quality, as it is rubbish; the second for a weight issue – you can’t spend so much for water. However, when you buy weed, it’s usually moist because otherwise it would crumble easily, leaving grounds. There is no market anywhere for high-quality seasoned products; no one sells them to tourists, like certain wine that producers keep to drink themselves. What do you do if you can’t find good quality products? I’m not even tempted to compromise; of course, if someone hands me a lousy joint, I try it out of politeness. But then I send them a double batch of 25 micron cyloom Amnesia Haze Ice-O-Lator, and we enjoy a session together. The more time goes by, the harder it is to find items to add to a collection, you know, because, - unless you happen upon something special – you have to travel the world; certain things just aren’t on the market (no one will sell you a sativa aged for 7 months in a jar). So I end up exchanging products from my collection with other connoisseurs and collectors, if there is something I

When I’m looking for good weed, I try and find sweet types or sativas, or I check their freshness or afgan, and of course all those strange, fantastic crosses that represent an exception, such as Sweet Afgan Desire, which is the typical exception that proves the rule. I really appreciate the “up” effect, and I must admit that I pay attention to flavour, but I judge based on equal effects.

Thank you, P. You’re truly unique. I’m just a true lover of the genre. Think of how amazing it is to blend your own oil with a pollinator grinder, it’s all do-ityourself, it’s genuine, you can really do it yourself and you know what you have. Do you know how to blend the oil to smoke a joint?

Do you ever find defects in high-quality products, such as a too high vegetable component in an Ice-O-Lator? Yes, I do. If we are splitting hairs, as you say, the Mt. Olympus of qualities sometimes presents plants that are too full or, conversely, too empty - for example,

It takes a lot of patience… Of course. You put a joint in the freezer, then you mix it with tobacco using the palms of your hands, but never touching it with your fingers. It crumbles after a little while, as if it were non pressed weed. I prefer other types of paste, but

So let’s talk about tasting. What do you look for when you sample weed?

months and ten days. Amazing. Fresh dolcevita doesn’t yield anything. 1 Red Lebanese because it’s the best I have, a friend from faraway places. A legend, that made me realise the need to take a photography course, buy a technologically advanced camera and make a thousand macros. I wish I had a USB microscope. 1 indoor Utopia Haze (aged 2 months), because it’s a very sweet weed and because later we tried the corresponding plant from another grower, which was also quite aged. It’s very sweet and has a strong Haze effect. 1 outdoor Utopia Haze var. M. (aged 5 months), because of its sweetness and the way it has forcefully developed a truly unique flavour due to ageing. Incredibly delicious. 1 indoor Dr. Grinspoon (aged two months) that has that special something that fires up the mind like “fire keeps burning”. The Grinspoon plant is perhaps the strangest in existence, after the Duck’s Foot. 1 45-90 micron Chocolope Ice-OLator, because a very small amount enables you to prepare a joint big enough for two people to share, not to mention its very distinct flavour. In fact, it’s almost surprisingly delicious, it’s like smoking an organic Chocolope joint, an intoxicating and astonishing blend of flavours, scents and fruitiness. At the end of the session, there were still a few products left to finish. Unfortunately, some aren’t ready yet, while others are nearly overdue: a year and a half at 16-18°C (60-64°F) is definitely too long.

an aged, empty plant that would have been much better for just a little more sun (editor’s note: perhaps using an algae extract, like the one’s sold by Biomagno, to stimulate the initial flowering would have helped). The defect of the vegetable component is a bit impaired in the pastes, you know; if you were just expecting THC molecules, you’d be smoking budder. There is no compromise. How do you keep the products you smoke? And what about the ones you season? Well, the ideal for hashish would be glass jars, but it sticks to the sides, so I

THE MAJORITY OF PRODUCTS OUT THERE ARE NEW, AND YOU HAVE TO BE CAREFUL OF SO-CALLED WET WEED – WHICH IS DIFFERENT FROM FRESH WEED, BUT THEY SHOULD BOTH BE AVOIDED like. For example, once I tried a Critical Jack aged for 340 days in a jar, which is too long, because the seasoning bordered on excessive ageing – but the flavour was fantastic and absolutely flawless. That plant changed my palate; I offered anything I had in exchange for it, I had to have it.

For seasoning, I use glass jars with hardly any air compared to the volume of weed in the jar. The jars need to be opened regularly until the weed is moist enough. It’s better to distribute your weed amongst several smaller jars, in order to be able to open them sequentially and avoid the mould that can sometimes (though rarely) grow.

have to use plastic. I have to keep hashish, Charas and Ice-O-Lator in plastic. Certain types of Ice are excessively oily, so you inevitably have some losses if you use tin foil or glass. Personally, I recommend using the plastic from cigarettes or wax paper; if you put the packet in the freezer for about 5 minutes before opening it, you’ll be able to retrieve everything, even the oil that would usually stick.

sometimes you end up with great oil and so have to take advantage of it. And do you know that seasoned weed swells more than fresh weed? Once upon a time, maybe they sold drier weed that swelled more, and seemed better to us. Now everybody sells water, basically. Damn capitalism. During the interview we also enjoyed a tasting session, where we sampled: 1 outdoor Critical Jack, because it has aged for a year. Noticeably seasoned but flawless; perhaps its seasoning had become a flaw. 1 indoor Dolcevita (aged 3 months), because it was too fresh when I acquired it and so I wanted to age it just to see how it was, and it’s been in its jar for 70 days, maybe more than two

I’m in love with genetics, and I’m in love with genetic strains. The strains in my collection are: Juicy Fruit, Grapeberry, Blueberry, Strawberry Kush, Utopia Haze var.M., Utopia Haze, Himalaya Gold, Dr. Grinspoon, Tangerine Dream, Pineapple Chunk, Amnesia Lemon, Mk-Ultra, Amnesia Potter, 5 Level Hurricane, Moby Dick, Big Buddha Ceese, Sour Diesel, Grapefruit, Critical Jack, Critical Haze, Indian Sativa Fly-Bee, Dolcevita, Whiteline, Haze Shower #6, Grass-oberry, The Clementine, Chocolope d-line, Amnesia Lemon, Greenhouse Alps 1, Greenhouse Alps 2, Jack Herer x White Berry, Super Silver Haze. Meeting people like this is always a pleasure that improves and enriches your life. No matter the subject, no matter the field, it’s always more fun to speak with an expert.

GROW WITH GRUBBYCUP bon for their amount of nitrogen. Leaves, newspaper, cardboard, sawdust, straw, anything tree or sugar related is usually a “brown”. These will all take a long time to decompose if left in a pile without green materials. If too much brown material is added, composting will slow, but browns help with structure and odor control. If the compost pile starts to smell, add more browns and stir the pile.

DARK, RICH, HEALTHY COMPOST CAN BE MADE AT HOME ON THE CHEAP

The good news is that as long as only things that should go into the compost pile do, eventually it will work. In an untended forest or jungle, leaves and other plant materials fall to the ground, and decompose. This creates a rich and fertile layer of cold compost and humus for future growth. No human intervention required. It isn’t neat, fast, or necessarily pretty, but it has worked in nature for a very, very, very long time. If you took a bag of leaves, lawn clippings, ripped newspaper etc. and spread it out on the ground, eventually it will decompose much like it would on a forest floor. It would also be messy, and the neighbors would likely complain if you made a habit of it. A simple answer to this is to put the material in a pile instead. This not only keeps things neater around the garden, but helps with the composting process. This mound of decomposing vegetation can be referred to as a “cold” compost pile, and depending on what’s in it, in anywhere from a few months to a couple of years, it will become compost. Nature will do all the work if given enough time and an occasional rain. One very simple

form of composting involves taking the leftover leaves, stems, and roots after a fall harvest, putting it in a pile, and then digging out the compost that develops over the winter for use in the spring. Depending on the local conditions, this method may have to be modified to use a few different piles. Each pile can then be allowed to sit for a year or longer. Ideally, compost piles should be about a yard (meter-ish) or slightly larger to a side. Piles that are too small don’t heat up as well. Piles too large are both hard to stir, and need the stirring more, as the material at the core needs to be rotated with the material on the outside. There are ways to make the process faster and to avoid unpleasant aromas. While decomposing material in the forest can stink and few people will complain, stink up the back yard, and it can take the edge off the fun of being in it. If too much “green” material is added, the pile can start to smell. If too much “brown” material is added, decomposition slows and the process takes longer. “Brown” materials generally have a carbon to nitrogen ratio of greater than 30 to 1. That is to say, they have a lot of car-

“Green” materials generally have a carbon to nitrogen ratio of less than 30 to 1. In other words, they contribute more nitrogen for the amount of carbon that they contain than browns do. Grass clippings, vegetable or fruit food scraps, green leafy material are all “greens”. These will decompose quickly if left in a pile without brown materials, but they also tend to stink and rot in the process. Putting a layer of browns over a new layer of greens will help keep the pile from smelling unpleasant. The compost pile should have a light earthy aroma, foul odors are an indication that something isn’t right. Add browns and stir to help correct. To speed up the composting of browns, and to keep the greens from stinking, use approximately equal amounts of each, and mix well. Smaller pieces compost faster than large pieces do, in part because of the increase in surface area for the bacteria and other tiny friends to work on. This is why even though a log and sawdust are made from the same material, sawdust can be composted in weeks or months, and a decomposing log can take years or decades.

up is called a “cold” compost pile. It will still make compost, but will take longer than a “hot” one will. When in doubt, stir the pile, stirring corrects a multitude of problems and is an easy fix. If the mix, moisture and air is correct (or at least close), a new pile will start to heat up and become a “hot” compost pile. A pile with an internal temperatures of between 120F (49C) and 140F (60F) is ideal, but temperatures can reach as high as 160F (71C). As composting continues, the temperature will drop as more of the material converts into compost. Hot composting has benefits over cold composting, it is faster, and seeds and some pathogens are killed from the heat generated. Once the compost is ready, it should be a dark, earthy smelling material. To remove any debris (or walnuts, my compost pile is a favorite burying spot for the local squirrel population), the compost can be run through a piece of grating. The finished product should be very similar to commercially bagged compost. Making compost is not difficult, nature does it all the time. By helping the process along by using a properly aerated and moist mix of the proper proportions, composting can be done in back yards and save money on purchasing and transporting bags of store bought product. Peace, love and puka shells, Grubbycup

A pile of 50-50 brown to green material will compost faster and more pleasantly than a mix of too much of one or the other. The biological agents involved need air and moisture as well as this mix. To give the bacteria air, stir the compost pile occasionally. The pile should be kept damp, but not wet. Both lightly watering and stirring can speed the process. If the pile doesn’t start to heat up in the next couple of days, it is an indication that something is off. It could be that there isn’t enough material in the pile, the composition of the pile is off, it isn’t moist enough, it’s too moist, or it needs stirring. A compost pile that doesn’t heat

A MIXTURE OF BOTH GREEN AND BROWN MATERIALS IS USED TO MAKE COMPOST

THE OUTER LAYER OF THIS COLD COMPOST PILE HAS BEEN BROWNS” ARE CARBON RICH MATERIALS

REMOVED TO SHOW THE MATURE COMPOST BENEATH

STRAIN REPORT

Royalmatic

Ministry of Cannabis Environment: Grow Light: Flower Light: Method: Nutrient: Days in Growth: Days in Flower: Harvest Weight: Grams per Day: Structure: Bud: Scent: Rating:

by THCarlos

Indoor Closet 600 HPS agro 600 HPS agro Soil Canna Bio 19 43 260 g wet, 68 g dry. 1.114 Xmas three Dense Fruity with sour fruit aftertaste 9 out of 10

Royalmatic, one of the most recent addition to the Ministry of Cannabis catalog, is an autoflowering of the last generation. The breeders could use their past experienced with Angelmatic and Devilmatic. The exact composition of this hybrid has not been revealed, as well as the name of the parents. Ministry of Cannabis sells its seeds packed in a new transparent packaging containing 2 or 5 seeds. The experiment started with 7 seeds, all of them germinated so one plant was discarded. The plants were grown in a indoor tent (0.8m x 0.8m x 1.8m) under HPS agro 600 watt with cool tube. The distance from the seedlings was initially over 40 cm, but after 2 weeks it was possible to reduce it to about 10 cm. The seeds germinated directly in the pot were they lived their whole life cycle (12 lt). For the whole growing, the light was set to 20 hours on and 4 hours off, with an exception of a couple of days (timer broken and light on for about 3 days on a row). The choice for the fertilizer felt on the Bio line of Canna, according to the suggested dosages. The first plants showed the female pistils after 19 days, followed by all the others in another 3 days. All the plants were not topped nor pruned and developed a typical Xmas three structure. The plants were feed with fertilizer for vegetation for 25 day, then with fertilizer for flowering for another 25 days. The last few days only pure water was used to help the plants to flush the plants and avoid that annoying metal taste in the buds. All 6 plants were harvested in a period of 3 days, the total time was from 62 to 64 days. Curiously the plant harvested for first was the best producer, but at the end the strain was very uniform for harvest time and quantity and quality of the harvest. Once properly dried and cured, the final product have revealed a complex taste of fruits, along with a good high, able to satisfy even experienced growers. Our final rating is: an interesting autoflowering with consistent improvements compared to the old generations.

GROW WITH JORGE CERVANTES

Drying After harvest, medical cannabis must be dried must dry before consuming. Drying converts cannabinoids from its non-psychoactive, crude, acidic form to its psychoactive neutral form. In other words, fresh green cannabis will not have much medicinal effect. Drying also converts 75 percent or more of the freshly harvested plant into water vapor and other gases. Drying in addition starts the conversion of carbohydrates to simple sugars and converts chlorophyll and other pigments. A simple test is to weigh a quantity of wet flower bud at harvest and weigh it during the drying process. A dry cannabis bud weighs 75 percent less than when it was harvested. If the bud weighs 10 grams at harvest, it should weigh 2.5 grams when dry and cured. The entire process should take at least 14 days. When you cut a plant or plant part and hang it to dry, the transport of fluids within the plant continues, but at a slower rate. Stomata close soon after harvest, and drying is slowed since little water vapor escapes. The natural plant processes slowly come to an end as the plant dries. The outer cells are the first to dry, but fluid still moves from internal cells to supply moisture to outer cells which are dry. When

the drying and curing processes occur properly, plants dry evenly throughout. Removing leaves and large stems upon harvest speeds drying; however, moisture content within the “dried” flower buds, leaves, and stems can become uneven. If flower buds are dried too quickly, chlorophyll and other pigments, starch, and nitrates (fertilizer salts), etc. are trapped within plant tissue, making it taste “green,” burn unevenly, and taste bad. When dried relatively slowly, over five to seven days or longer, moisture evaporates evenly into the air, yielding uniformly dry flower buds with minimal cannabinoid decomposition. Slowly dried flowers retain terpenes and cannabinoids providing medical users with full medicinal benefits. Slow even drying–where moisture content is the same throughout stems, foliage and buds– allows enough time for the pigments to degrade. After about two weeks of slow drying all the chlorophyll is gone from “dry” buds. Hanging entire plants to dry, although more laborious, allows this process to take place more slowly over time.

CANNABIS BUDS THAT HAVE BEEN AUTOMATICALLY TRIMMED ARE PLACED ON A SCREEN OR NETTING TO DRY

Circulation and ventilation fans will help control heat and humidity and keep them at proper levels. You can also use a dehumidifier to control humidity. An air conditioner is ideal to “dial in” temperature and humidity in warm climates but environmentally expensive to operate. Large drying areas may require a heater to raise temperature and lower humidity. HANGING BUDS ON A LINE IN A CONTAINER IS AN EASY WAY TO DRY SMALL HARVESTS

Do not train fans directly on drying plants; it causes them to dry unevenly. The ideal air temperature range for slow drying is between 15.5-21°C and humidity from 45 to 55 percent. Temperatures below 15.5°C slow drying, and humidity often climbs quickly. Humidity above 80 percent extends drying time and makes the threat of bud mold imminent. HANGING BUDS ON WELL ORGANIZED LINES WITH PLENTY OF AIRSPACE IS MORE WORK BUT PROVIDES A PERFECT ENVIRONMENT TO DRY BUDS

Temperatures above 24°C may cause buds to dry too fast, and humidity can also fall below the ideal 50 percent level more eas-

ily. Temperatures above 29°C cause buds to dry so fast that they become unpleasant to consume. Relative humidity below 30-40 percent causes buds to dry too fast and retain chlorophyll, giving them a “green” taste. Fast-dried buds become crispy and crumble. Low humidity also causes buds to lose flavor and odor. If humidity is between 30 and 40 percent, allow for minimum air movement to slow drying. Always use an accurate maximum/ minimum thermometer and hygrometer to ensure temperature and humidity are kept in the ideal range. Hanging plants is a labor-saving way to facilitate slow, even drying. Large, moist stems can also be removed and small branches hung from the ceiling to cut drying time by a few days. Use clothespins to attach branches to drying lines, or poke a paper clip through the base of branches and hang clip from line. Another option is to trim branches to form a hook and hang from the “hook.”

THIS BIG BUD OF SENSI STAR NEEDS SPECIAL HANDLING TO DRY. IT NEEDS PLENTY OF AIR THIS GROWER NEEDS TO MOVE MANICURED CANNABIS TO A DRYING AREA BEFORE DIFFERENT VARIETIES ARE MIXED TOGETHER

CIRCULATION IN THE ROOM SO INTERNAL FOLIAGE DOES NOT ATTRACT MOLD

You can use the grow area as a drying room if not growing any plants. Do not dry plants in the same room in which plants are growing. Different climates are required for growing medicinal cannabis and drying it. Fungus and spider mites can also migrate from dead plants to live ones. Inspect drying buds daily for any signs of disease, insects and

38 Drying Large Harvests Large outdoor, greenhouse and indoor crops need large spaces in which to dry. Stagger large harvests on big 3-4.5-metertall plants by harvesting the top 60-80 cm from the top of the plant. The buds located lower on the plant, now exposed to sunlight, will continue to grow and swell. Harvest again in a couple of weeks by cutting the next 60-80 cm from the top branches. Most varieties can be harvested 2-3 times over a 4-6-week period. One variety, Mr. Nice can be harvested four times! Note that growers in northern California prefer buds harvested last.

THESE BUDS ARE TOUCHING ONE ANOTHER, WHICH WILL SLOW DRYING AND INCREASE CHANCES OF MOLD

Drying a large harvest requires a large dark cool space with good airflow. Do not harvest more cannabis than drying space available. Stagger the harvest so that there will be enough drying space. Friends in Switzerland were compelled to buy a four story industrial building to dry several acres of cannabis. Other surprised gardeners have to quickly erect tents and temporary buildings to serve as drying FORTY KILOGRAMS OF DRY BUDS ARE READY TO BAG UP! sheds. Large space such as bedrooms, barns, sheds, etc., Cut plants at the base or pull plant from ground. Remove large leaves and hang on drying lines in the room. Cut branches from (30- 100 cm). Manicure each branch and hang on drying lines to complete the drying process. Save space by building or buying drying racks for the buds. Make drying racks from window screen or plastic agricultural netting. Stretch the screen or netting over a wooden frame and secure with staples. Put three 8-15 cm spacers between framed screens to allow adequate airflow. Or build a drying box with removable screens. MANICURED BUDS ARE READY

JORGE CERVANTES EXAMINES A BUD THAT IS DRYING ON A NET SHELF.

spider mites. Smear Tanglefoot™ around the end of drying lines to form a barrier which keeps mites from migrating to live plants. Mites congregate at the barrier and are easy to smash.

Drying Small Harvests Small harvests can easily be dried in a closet, cabinet, or a cardboard box that is a fraction of the growing area’s size. If drying space is a problem, a staggered planting schedule, or planting varieties that ripen both early and late, carries over to a staggered harvest that frees up drying space as buds dry. A cardboard or wooden box makes an excellent drying space to hang small harvests. The air flow in the enclosed area is diminished, and buds and leaves must be turned daily to even out the moisture content and discourage mold. Thread a large needle with dental floss, and string the floss back and forth through the open box near the top to make drying lines. If the box is tall enough, you can install several levels of drying lines. Lock the flaps on the

box and set it in a closet or spare room. Open flaps to allow air circulation as needed. Or, cut holes near the bottom and top of the box to allow air exchange and circulation. Check daily to see how buds are drying. If tops start drying too fast, open the box-top and set the box in a cooler location.

Hanging compartmentalized net bags TO HANG FOR DRYING. are inexpensive, collapsible and easy to store and expand into a perfect drying rack. Perfect! surfaces are exposed to air. Buds dry slower, because the air flow is reduced. Line Hang manicured buds to dry for a day or boxes with cardboard or aluminum foil to two before placing on drying screens to contain resin glands for collection that fall allow the bulk of the moisture to dissipate. to the bottom. Or seal cracks with tape to Once on screens, buds should be turned contain resin glands for collection. every day or two to ensure even drying.

Use a portable foldable clothesline to make a quick mobile drying room. Unfold clothesline, hang buds from lines, and cover with a large, black bed sheet or cloth. The cloth sheet allows the exchange of air and maintains darkness. Train a fan on the outside of the sheet so air circulates underneath to help dry flower buds. Building a small drying room is as easy as tacking some plywood together at right angles and hanging lines across the enclosure. Or you can make walls from black Visqueen™ plastic by tacking or taping it to the ceiling and floor to form walls. Manicured buds can also be placed in boxes to dry. Move buds daily so new

MANICURING BUDS UPON HARVEST SPEEDS DRYING TIME.

GROW WITH GRUBBYCUP

Light, Wavelengths, and Intensity

THESE ARE COLOR BANDS FROM METAL HALIDE LIGHTS

Light is one of the most important aspects to a successful garden, and serious growers should understand at least the basics.

Light Light is energy specifically, it is a form of electromagnetic radiation. The two components of light are the electric and the magnetic fields, which are set at right angles to each other. These fields are synchronized together, and collectively are known as an electromagnetic field. Electromagnetic radiation travels in a wave from a source.

Wavelength Although the speed of the wave is constant, the frequency or wavelength is not. The speed at which the same point on the wave passes by a point in space is the frequency. The distance between wave crests, is its wavelength. A wavelength is literally the length of the wave. Even though specific numbers are often used as a boundary, electromagnetic waves are a gradient. Where one color starts being a different color is more an approximation than a hard line.

between about 790 and 390 nanometers. This visible light is further broken down into colors. The long wavelength end of the visible light spectrum is perceived as red, and at the short end of the spectrum is violet. Approximate values by color: Red 700-625nm Orange 624-600nm Yellow 599-670nm Green 569-500nm Blue 499-465nm Indigo 464-426nm Violet 425-400nm Light waves slightly too long to be red are called infrared, wavelengths slightly too short to be violet are called ultraviolet.

RED LIGHT HAS A LONGER WAVELENGTH THAN BLUE LIGHT

Objects appear to be the color of the light they reflect. If all colors are absorbed by a leaf except for green, then the leaf will appear green. The wavelength of the electromagnetic field determines its color if visible, or its type if not. Photosynthesis in plants makes best use of light with wavelengths from peaks at the red, blue and violet bands.

The order of longest to shortest wavelengths are: radio waves, infrared (heat), visible light, ultraviolet, x rays, and gamma rays.

Chlorophyll a is the blue-green pigment in plants, and two peaks of absorption occur at 665 (red) nm and 465 nm (violet-indigo).

The human eye only uses a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum to see with. These wavelength of visible light are

Chlorophyll b is the yellow-green pigment in plants, and absorbs light at two peaks of 640 (red) nm and 450 nm (indigo-blue).

IF AN OBJECT REFLECTS GREEN LIGHT, THE OBJECT WILL APPEAR GREEN

40 The valley between the two spikes, between 600 and 500 nm (the green and green-yellow bands) are not used as much, and are reflected by the plant. An ideal light source should supply wavelengths including 665-640 nm (red) and 465-450 nm (indigo). A rule of thumb is “cool” lights lean toward the blue-violet side, and “warm” lights tend toward the red-orange side.

Lighting efficiency Power comes from some source, such as a wall plug, and goes through a process to give off light. How much of this power is converted to useful light is the lighting efficiency. If the process produced 683 lumens per watt used, perfect efficiency would be achieved. Fire gives off light, but most of the energy is expressed in the infrared wave-

HIGH PRESSURE SODIUM LIGHTS GIVE OFF A LOT OF ORANGE AND RED LIGHT, BUT NOT MUCH GREEN

the lumens, which includes all the light given off (including the less used wavelengths), but at least it is an estimate to work with.

OBJECTS AT TWICE THE DISTANCE, ONLY RECEIVE A QUARTER OF THE LIGHT

The amount of light that hits the plants drops off as an inverse square to the distance. At two meters, the lux is reduced to ¼th and at three it is reduced to 1/9th. A plant that is twice as far from the light source only receives a fourth

of the light. A plant three times as far only receives a ninth. If a 400 watt bulb gives off 50,000 lumens in an area one meter to a side, then the bulb gives off 50,000 lux. These lights are used for areas .5m to 1m to a side. This same bulb could be used to light an area two meters on a side, but at only 12,500 lux to the plants. A 600 watt giving off 95,000 lumens at one meter, still delivers only 23,750 lux at two. Good for 1-1.25m gardens. A 1000 watt bulb may give off 130,000 lux which would be overkill for a one meter, but 32,500 lux over a two meter space is more reasonable. These are well suited for gardens of 1.5m to a side. If you measure your grow space, you can draw out different scenarios until you find one you like. For example, in a space 1.5m x 3 m, two 1000 watt lights, two or three 600 watt lights, or three 400 lights could be used as a general guideline. However, make sure you can deal with any waste heat the lights generate as cooked plants perform even worse than underlit ones do. There are many factors involved in choosing the lights for an indoor garden, the better informed you make yourself, the better the chances are you’ll be happy with the results you get.

LIGHT EMITTING DIODES (LEDS) CAN BE USED TO TARGET SPECIFIC WAVELENGTHS. THIS UNIT EMITS MOSTLY RED AND INDIGO LIGHT

Intensity Waves not only have length, but also have height, or amplitude. The greater the amplitude, the brighter the light. A light at 550nm will appear green, either dim at low intensity, or bright at a high intensity, but the color remains the same. The greater the intensity, the more energy is being transmitted. A lumen is the light of one candle. A lux is that light from one meter away spread over a square area one meter wide. A full moon on a clear night lights at about 1 lux, a well lit indoor room is about 400 lux, and bright sunlight is about 100,000 lux.

Peace, love and puka shells, Grubbycup

lengths, and therefore is not well suited for growing plants. Incandescent lighting has an efficiency of about 6%(10-30 lumens per watt). LEDs are about 6%(20-60 lumens per watt) efficient although in theory they could be made more efficient, Fluorescents 10%(30-100 lumens per watt), Metal Halides 14%(70125 lumens per watt), and High Pressure Sodium 15%(60-140 lumens per watt). The excess heat generated by lighting systems is often the largest source of waste heat in a garden.

Matching the light to the space. One number that is often listed is

A METAL HALIDE LAMP WILL GIVE OFF MORE A MORE GREEN LIGHT THAN A HPS

OPINION / STRAIN REPORT

The Return of Soapbar Who would have thought it? After its almost total eradication as a player on the Scottish dope market by the positively massive influx of (reasonably) affordable Skunk, the infamous Soapbar brand appears to be enjoying something of a renaissance. Really, who would have thought it? Some evidence for this: on January 11th, three men were sentenced at Glasgow High Court after being busted with 242 kilos of cannabis resin (worth £1.2 million, apparently); last year another four men were sentenced at the High Court for involvement in smuggling 1,122 kilos of resin valued at “nearly £3.5 million” (I should say that I don’t make these amounts up: they’re the official estimates. There’s an obvious discrepancy between amounts and values that I can’t account for. Perhaps the 1,122 kilos were of particularly duff quality?). Naturally, there are a number of very good reasons for this turn of events, as these things never “just happen”. 18 months or so ago, weed was in the ascendant, having gone from being expensive and hard to source in any significant quantity to being pretty much everywhere, and reasonably affordable. The knock on effect was that tokers switched from poor quality resin to grass.

But then something happened. Skunk was in plentiful supply but the quality was rather poor (a number of my sources mentioned that the suppliers were cutting corners in order to meet demand at the expense of the quality; cropping it too early, for example). Soon after, the price of weed began to go up while the quality remained poor. There were reports of crushed glass being added to the buds to give them weight and so forth. The price continued to creep up and people continued to buy it because it was pretty much all that was available. And then it seemed as though the South East Asian guys (who appear to be the big players in this market) got their acts together as, suddenly, the quality of the weed improved to the sort of level one would expect. The price remained very high (currently £200+ an ounce and as much as £70 a quarter), but nobody complained because all of the issues around strength had apparently been resolved and where they’d been paying premium prices for very poor product, at least now the product was good even if the price was prohibitive. One of my correspondents suspected the whole thing to be a long-term marketing ploy to 1) kill off the competition by initially cheap prices, and having achieved this 2) intentionally sell substandard product while increasing the price to a target group who

Environment: Grow Light: Flower Light: Method: Nutrient: Days in Growth: Days in Flower: Harvest Weight: Grams per Day: Structure: Bud: Scent: Rating:

by CannaXTC

Indoor Closet 600 HPS agro 600 HPS agro Soil Atami 22 66 395 g wet, 108 g dry. 1.227 4-5 main cola‘s (after topping) Donkey Dicks Mild sweet with a licorice aftertaste 9 out of 10

Mandalay, the last introduction in the Ministry of Cannabis catalog, is a robust sativa obtained by crossing a sativa from Burma with Chronic, and then backcrossing again with the original sativa ((Mandalay x Chronic) x Mandalay). Ministry of Cannabis sells its seeds packed in a new transparent packaging. All the seeds (5) were healthy looking, and sprouted quickly, even if a couple of them seemed very little. The plants were grown in a indoor tent (1m x 1m x 2m) under HPS agro 600 watt. Only for the first 7 days, an energy saving CFL lamp was used (125w white-blue light). For the pots, those of 10 lt. were used, fulfilled with clay on the bottom and All Mix over it. For the growth phase, they were kept under a light set to 18 hours on 6 hours off. The lamp was also contained in a cool tube, so it was possible to sensibly reduce the distance from the top of the plants, that in this initial

It certainly seems like a plausible theory; they couldn’t get away with it in the regular economy, but in the black economy anything is possible. However, what happened next was that there was a huge gap at the bottom end of the market for those not fortunate enough to be able to spend top dollar on Skunk, and that gap has been filled by Soapbar...again. A number of years ago, dealers almost couldn’t give Soapbar away, and it was selling for as little as £30 an ounce (how they managed to make any money on that is anyone’s guess). Now though, with the inflated price of Skunk, resin is once again changing hands for £80-£120 an ounce. Given the price of weed, I suppose that’s okay, if the quality of the resin is acceptable; however, given the history of resin over the past 20 years I wouldn’t expect much. It’s funny, don’t you think, how after all the ructions and changes in the cannabis market over the past 4 or 5 years, that everything has settled back down almost exactly into how it was 20 years ago? The question of course is whether this is by accident or design? dimethyltryptamine777@hotmail.com

to 66 days. The harvest per plant was from 89 to 108 grams per plant (dried and manicure product). The plant harvested for last was indeed the best producer. The manicuring was fairly easy, but given the total quantity of green material it took a few hours. After about 20 days, the smoking test revealed a sweet smoke followed by an earthy sensation, more strong. The high was very happy, intense but still social enough. Definitely a strain to try.

Mandalay

Ministry of Cannabis

might moan but couldn’t really do much about it as there wasn’t anything else available, and then 3) reintroduce the high potency weed and have the target group pathetically grateful and happy to continue paying premium price.

phase was about only 25-30 cm. The tent contained only 6 pots, in 2 rows of 3. The seeds sprouted directly in the big pots and the plants remained there for the entire cycle. Atami fertilizer was used, according to the suggested dosages. Given that the water was very poor of calcium and magnesium, Epson salt tablets were added once a week to the diet for the whole cycle. The plants vegetated for 22 days, then the timer was switched to 12/12. After one week of flowering the plants were all topped, this kept the final height on a maximum of 130 cm. All the plants developed a structure where more of the fruits were concentrated on 4-5 main colas, with a very small residual production in the rest of the plant. The plants started to show pistils after 9 days of flowering, after that they grown very uniform till the end. All 6 plants were harvested in a period of 5 days, the total flowering was from 62

45 LIGHTS FOR SATIVAS

OVER-FERTILIZATION

In Marijuana Growers Handbook the lighting section specifies that you need about 750-850 watts per m2 for sativas. I was wondering if there was a way to reduce that the wattage needed? Will using diffusion foil reduce the watts per square foot? DALE

My 2½ week-old plants have leaves that are curling up on the sides and “crinkling.” I’m using rockwool, 10 plants in a 122 x 122 cm (4’ x 4’) container, 1000w HPS air-cooled lamp, and temperature in the room runs between 26-280 (8082º) and the air is enriched with CO2, I’m using GH nutrients with Floralicious, Cal-Mag, and Home and Garden Root Accelerator. For the first week the PPM was 600, now I’ve upped the GH and the PPM is about 1000. I can’t figure out the problem. RANDY

Sativa plants evolved at or near the equator and they adapted to extremely high levels of light. They have a lighter green color than indicas. The reason is that sativas have fewer chloroplasts, the organelles that contain chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is the green pigment that captures light to power photosynthesis. This is the process in which sugar (C6H12O6) is created. First water (H2O) is broken apart. The oxygen (O) is released as a gas. The hydrogen is combined with the carbon dioxide (CO2).

Ed Rosenthal is recognized worldwide as a leading authority on marijuana. In his 30-plus years as America’s “guru of ganja” he has written or edited more than a dozen books about marijuana cultivation and social policy that cumulatively have sold over one million. His first book, Marijuana Grower’s Guide, is the only title on marijuana cultivation to be reviewed by The New York Times Book Review. After almost two decades, his Ask Ed advice column continues to answer questions on all matters of marijuana from readers around the world.

At the equator sunlight is much more intense than at the 30-35 parallel, where indicas evolved. Sativa plants growing at the equator receive more light than indicas, which grow at higher latitudes. Sativas evolved fewer chloroplasts, narrower leaves and a loose structure that captures less light because they receive more radiance than they need. Thus they became less efficient light users and require more light than indicas. Even with good reflective material that assures that the garden receives more of the light that’s produced, the plants will not produce solid, tight buds without intense light. When growing under less light such as 600-650 watt per square meter the buds will be looser and will crumble. They will not be as potent as buds grown under stronger light, but they will still be intense. One solution to the problem is to grow sativa-indica hybrids, rather than pure sativas. These plants are usually easier because they require less light than purebreds, and their growth is more controlled so they are more compact. There is less inter-nodal space (shorter stem length between branches) and the branches themselves are shorter. Many of these varieties still have soaring sativa highs.

Although the meter is only reading 1000 PPM, the plants are suffering from over-fertilization. If the water has a reading of 125-150 PPM from the tap it probably doesn’t need CalMag. I suspect that the extra calcium (Ca) you are supplying is causing the problem. In addition, using the root accelerator is probably overkill and may be affecting the leaves too. You can obtain a report from the water company that details the water’s contents so you can determine which dissolved solids the tap water contains. Once you change the fertilizer formula new leaves will not have this problem and will appear normal.

VARIETAL DIFFERENCES I started two plants from the same seeds; they sprouted within one day of each other, but they are growing differently. One has an umbrella-like canopy and the other has leaves that grow upward like a palm tree. They are both very healthy. Why are the plants so different? CALI You didn’t mention where you obtained the seeds, but I suspect it was from a seed company. Most marijuana seed companies sell hybrids that vary quite a bit in their characteristics. Even though a certain package might claim the seeds are a variety, they are often really hybrid complexes with a spectrum of characteristics. The reasons for this are both genetic and logistical. Logistically, classical breeding requires large numbers of plants and careful record keeping. Because of laws and other legal/security reasons the amount of space and number of plants is limited. As a result, available varieties are not inbred for five or six generations to make the plants more homogeneous. F1 hybrids, made from a cross of two true breeding varieties are uniform genetically but have a heterogeneous gene package: half their chromosomes come from each parent. When they are crossed, the second generation (the F2s) receives random assortments of genes resulting in plants that vary widely in their characteristics. Sometimes seed companies say that there are two phenotypes and one is found 25% of the time and the other, 75%. The reason for this is that one of the versions of the alleles (gene) is dominant over the other. Thus, only the 25% of the plants that only have the recessive version of the allele will exhibit that characteristic. The plants that have one of each allele will look almost the same as the plants that have two copies of the dominant version. Seed companies expect that people are going to grow out as many seeds as they get and choose the best plant(s) as clone mothers. So, they figure, when the customer gets an assortment of versions of the “variety” s/he can choose the best for her/his situation. This, they say, gives customers the best chance of getting the right version of the “variety” for their needs.

A bud attacked by brown (or grey) mold, Botrytis cinera, with a touch of powdery mildew near top. Infected buds cannot be smoked. They molds are rinsed away in the process of making water hash.

46 READY FOR THE BIG LIGHT At what stage can I put my plant under the 1000-watt HPS bulb? Right now the plants are under a florescent light. The leaves all have 5 fingers and are dark green? Is it time yet for the big light? AMY The plants are ready for the big light right now. Plants can be germinated under an HPS lamp. They are ready for the high indoor intensity, which is less light than they might receive outdoors. When seedlings or clones stretch with thin, weak stems, it is an indication that they are not receiving enough light. This is exacerbated by high heat. The plants won’t stretch as much under low light when the temperature is kept below 21 degrees C.

BLACK LIGHTS I’m just starting out and at a local hydro place they are trying to sell me black lights. I’m going to soil grow indoors. My intuition tells me black lights are not any good for growing. LEONARD

LIGHTING A SPACE

You have good intuition. Black lights produce UVA light, which plants don’t use. Placing them in the grow room will not affect the plants’ growth or potency. Perhaps the proprietor was confusing them with UVB lights, which do increase potency and according to some preliminary reports also increases yield. This is discussed at length in Marijuana Growers Handbook.

I have a 33 m2 space that I plan to use for a garden. How many lights should I use? What yield can I expect? RON M.

SULFUR DEFICIENCY

Sulfur deficiency is apparent in the new growth, which turns yellow and becomes necrotic.

The amount of light to use over the plant canopy depends on the variety of plants you are growing. Generally speaking, plan to have a single 600-watt lamp over a meter. A 1000-watt lamp comfortably covers an area of 121 x 121 cm2. Indica plants need a little less light so the lamps can be placed slightly further apart. Sativas need more light so the lamps should be placed closer together.

How much Epsom salt should I add to the water to treat a sulfur deficiency? PAUL

COOKING WITH PLANTS INFECTED WITH MARIJUANA

Symptoms of sulfur deficiency begin with yellowing at the base of the leaves and spreading throughout the plant including the leaves. Older leaves become brittle. This is followed by necrosis at the base of the leaves and yellow veins. Growth is stunted. Sulfur deficiency is unusual because it is an ingredient in many fertilizers and is found in most soils. However, it is absent from many indoor planting mixes and substrates.

My last crop was severely infected with powdery mildew. I harvested the crop but don’t know what to do now. Is it is okay to make butter out of the infected flowers? I have read that making bubble hash concentrate removes the spores, but I would like to make some butter for edibles. DONNA WOLF Don’t use infected marijuana to make butter. The powdery mildew spores will remain in the butter. Powdery mildew spores are washed away during the process of making water hash: to make marijuana butter from infected material first make water hash and then dissolve this in the butter.

Add about 4 grams of Epsom salt per liter to start and as symptoms disappear on new growth lower it to about 2 grams per liter. It dissolves easily in water and is quickly absorbed by the roots and transferred throughout he plant. New growth will be deficiency-free but older growth will not recover.

Epsom salt’s formula is MgSO4. Each molecule has one atom each of magnesium (Mg) and sulfur (S) and four atoms of oxygen (O). For this reason Epsom Salt is often used to correct Mg deficiencies. For more information on this problem and other deficiencies refer to the book, “Marijuana Garden Saver.”

Ask Ed — TM

“Ed Rosenthal is the guru of ganja”-- High Times

LIGHT

LED lamps use less than half the electricity of HIDs per unit

of PAR light produced. At $.10 a kilowatt, LEDs will save $215 per year when compa red to the cost of running a 1000w HID twelve hours a day. UÊ LEDs last longer than HID bulbs. UÊ LEDs need little to no cooling equipment, in contrast to HIDs that require air or water cooling, ventilation system s, or air conditioners.

LEDs are powere d by either a transformer or a digital driver. Transformers are similar to old-style magne tic ballasts for HID units; they use more energy than digital contro llers and produc Higher quality systems use mostly e heat that may need light along with to red be dissipated. SYSTEM some blue.DRIP This is a small S OUTDOORS consideration Just as with any other produc compared to Drip irrigation t, manufacturers the heat HPS is a 90% more lamps produc standards differ. A efficient e, which has method’ of few manufacturers delivering water to be vented LEDs are convenient LED lamps emit . to add to plants green light NASA virtually no heat, outhighly efficient light use because they are lightweight thanthe has shown doors other metho so they producers, and emit far to be be placed very ds. That is can with plants, and e less HPS lamps. They are much highereffectiv close to the garden than floodin amber is also small, so they are easy heat than g an area using are not encum and sometimes Stealth LED™ grow to install. The added. Most a hose, bered with tubes light manufacturersor overhead spraying. The for air or reduces energy consumpti has a 50,000 hour lifetime and water include result is more cooling, heavy a few white light emitter water deliver ventilation, or systems by 60-70%. on as compared with HPS or MH s in their units. ed to the root of the other any zone than These diodes actuall proble other any ms or inconv waterin y emit a combin eniences of HID lamps. ation of red, g system. Drip irrigati green, and blue on other benefit spectrums,has s that make which of a 1000w HID bine to appear it useful.Light from LEDs can is easy tocomIt system. install, easy to white. White be combined LEDs emit very little with HPS and lights design heat and can be placed to help An and both MH lamps, so advantage of is inexpens supply useful to the plants. The light using a combin there is no wavelengths ive. spreads at a 120° angle.very close reason to scrap tion of HPS plants and soften athe from Maxx Power has your digital Dripforsystem and LED lights the eerie purple a built in digital driver This LED HID lamp. s use pressu Adding LEDs is that you tors the power going can ensure that that monire from color generated by to your other public water the to the combination you are providi lights increas adjusts accordingly to the bulbs 100 times a second and es the amoun ng all the - spectrums of red andsystem, gravity or a pump blue light. Luckily t of light deliver ensure that maximum to deliver that plants need water output is being , the spectru achieved. ed to the garto thrive. If m range is where it is wsanted.den. For instance, more HID lamps usually wider Spaa garden using than the bandghetti lines tap rather than a 400w used, that guar- off a main deliverHPS can be increas LEDs are anteed for each they add PAR y line that is is ed to the equiva connected to emitter. light, but most lent 600 the of water source watts using 100 of the increase is in 120 | MARIJ emitter on the . An watts of LEDs. UANA GROW the yellow spectru ER’S HANDB other end of Adding ing 300 watts of For m. AddO Oeven K distribution the spaghe red and blue LEDs creates ti line contro , use tLEDs instead the equivalent ls the rate at water through its porous a water soaker hose, which “leaks” increases PAR light, but which water material. flows. not in the yellow spectrum. As with other plumbing system eastern U.S., s there are all kinds and other areas, MARIJUANA of accessories GROWER’S H there may be ANDBOOK | to deal with no need to irrigate problems that 121 plants at all or may be encoun to use it as plants just a supplem tered by or gardens. Some ent to natural sources. of these are garIn areas where dens located there is a summe on different levels, remote drought such r gardens and as parts of southe different size rn Europe varying and the North plants with American west, water needs. The irrigati plants can be is required or on fertilize the plants will d using a fertilize die. r siphon placed Outdoor plants in the water line. and gardens can be irrigated using Irrigation system a hose that fills s vary tremen a trough in reservoir, using dously their complexity a gravity powere resulting from d canal they that delivers the tasks are designed water to a group to accomplish. of plants or most efficien Store bought kits tly using a drip are suitable for system. most backOverhead waterin yard gardens. Even simpler g is very ineffici is the pinhole because of loss ent pail or bag irrigation. to evaporation A container is and the with shotgun approa filled water. The water ch of deliver ing water in slowly drips areas where there to the desired area throug are no crop roots. h small holes drilled Once pierced the plants are or flowering, overhe into the reservo ir. It delivers ad water slowly is dangerous water to the buds to the plant so which are susthat little is lost. ceptible to attack by mold when moisture is present. thrive under those specifi c conditions. Indica plants Thus, in any developed in season, no matter central weathe 292 | MARIJ what the U A N A Asia n G R O Wbetwee the r, some plants E R ’ S H A N D B 25th and 35th OOK will do better latitudes, others. where the weathe than r is changeable. Drought one year may Indicas, includi be followed by ng Kush varietie cloudy, rainy or sunny weathe s, have broad general charac r. For the popula teristics: they tion to early, continue, the mature MARIJUANA have compact plant group GROWER’S short branch needed different individ es and wide, short leaves uals that survive which are dark and even someti green, mes tinged purple . Their buds are

INDICAS, SATIVAS, ETC.

HYDROPONICS

Handbook MARIJUANAGROWER’S

LED ﬁxtures are more expens ive than HID lights, but they save money in the long run:

UÊ

INDICA

HANDBOOK

INDICAS, SATIVAS, ETC.

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HYDROPONICS

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LIGHT

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tems because each diode emits light in an unusually narrow spectrum. The minerals used to make it determine the spectrum the diode emits. HID lamps emit most of their light in spectrums that are not very useful to the plant. With LEDs, fixtures can be design ed to provide the plants with exactly the spectrum that they need for maximum growth. By tailoring the diodes’ light spectrum to plant requirements, LEDs can be more efficien t PAR produc ers. HPS lamps deliver more total light per watt of input, but LEDs are twice as efficien t in PAR light per watt as HPS lamps. That means a 200w LED lamp can be substit uted for a 400w HPS lamp, and the 300w LED lamps can be substit uted for 600w HPS lamps. The first genera tions of LED lamps did not emit an intense -enough light to support either active vegetat ive growth or flowering, but modern fixtures , which use higher-capacit y diodes, have solved those early proble ms.

| 293

Your Complete Source for Medical & Personal Marijuana Cultivation MANGOLIAN INDICA: Smell/Taste: fresh woodsy,100% Indica, Flowering 55-60 days, High: heavy body mango citrus taste. stone, sleepy, long lasting, 36 | MARIJU ANA

MAZAR: 100% Indica. Afghan weeks, early Nov. outdoors. x Skunk. The Afghani (Mazar-i-Shariff) part is a very short Christmast Photo: Dutch Passion Seeds ree-like plant. High:

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| 37

8-9

49 END OF FLOWERING LIGHT GLITCH

PRUNING AND TRIMMING

I’m one week from harvesting but I had a glitch on my timer and the flowering lights stayed on for 20 hours once last week. Can you please give me some advice on the consequences of the 12-12 cycle being interrupted? Will there be bad side effects? RAUL

Please shed some light on some pruning questions. Should I top the main branch during vegetative stage? Some say it ruins the main cola. Others claim it produces more tops and increases yield. Should I top again just before flowering? Next, lollipopping: Taking off lower branches, leaves and flowers in the first and second month. Finally, aggressive stripping of all leaves (except greenery in flower buds) during last 2-4 weeks for better light, increased air circulation, and to lessen the chance of mildew infection. Are these leaves necessary for photosynthesis and for final stage flower/bud development? Do different strains react differently to these procedures? FD

One extended light period towards the end of flowering has little or no effect on flowering, yield or quality. The plant is already so set and committed to flowering that the light aberration will not set it back.

PLANTING IN THE WILD This summer I’m planning to plant seeds in the wild on an island in Ontario and plan to leave the plants there until they are ready to harvest. The average temps are: June 11/24, July, 14/27°, August, 13/26°C. What are the chances of the plants surviving and producing some bud? Are there any techniques I should use such as turning the soil or amending it? BRANDON You can succeed planting in the wild, but it takes careful planning to deal with the environment. First, let’s deal with temperature. The low and high summer temperatures that you provided show that during those three months the temperature range is adequate for growth, but the range during May and September are just as important. If parts of those months are warm enough they can provide the plants with a little more time to grow or mature. The main problem that you must deal with is the long days even in late summer. Unless the plants have been well adapted to initiate flowering under this short night regimen, they will begin to flower late in the season, beginning in September and not maturing until October. This will be too late because both temperature and light intensity will diminish, resulting in diseased buds and plant death before maturity. Since you are not planning to tend the plants or to provide light deprivation, autoflowering varieties will probably be your best choice. They germinate, grow, flower and mature in four months or less. The chance of harvesting a crop increases exponentially when you plant seedlings or clones rather than seeds. Transplants are hardier; they have moved past the most vulnerable stages and are ready to begin fast growth. Test the soil for nutrients, pH, drainage, and water retention and adjust it as required. If the soil has low nutrients, add slow-releasing organic fertilizers or commercial time-release fertilizer. Soil that is compacted should be loosened so the roots can penetrate easily. Anything that inhibits the roots’ lateral growth reduces the width of the canopy and affects total yield. Large rocks, boards or other barriers should be removed from the root area. Make sure to plant in a place where the plants receive full sunlight during the whole season. Often plants receive adequate light in early and mid-summer, but as the sun sinks lower on the horizon as Autumn approaches the canopy falls under shadow part of the day. Only choosing the right location prevents this.

The top bud produces auxin, which inhibits the lower branches from growing. When this happens more growth is concentrated in the top branch producing a massive top and much smaller side branch tops. When the top growth is pinched or clipped or even bent down auxin production stops. The other branches, no longer affected by the hormone, grow larger. Although this results in a smaller top bud, the growth of the other buds is much larger, so total yield increases. Varieties differ in their reaction to this procedure. Some just produce major buds in the first few branches under the main stem. Other plants start bushing out, producing growth throughout the plant. Clipping the top bud causes the plant to grow wider rather than taller, so this technique helps fill the canopy with fewer plants. To grow larger central buds clip the tops of the side branches or clip off entire side branches. All the plant’s energy and growth becomes centered on the main branch. This allows you to place more plants, each with only a main cola, in the space. Pruning the plant of weak lower and side branches just before flowering prevents the plant from wasting energy and nutrients developing smaller, Grade B bud. Instead its energy will be devoted to the remaining larger buds. Lollipopping is the practice of removing all the lower branches so all of the plant energy is centered in the top, near the canopy. It’s a useful technique to direct the plant’s energy towards the main growth area when other vegetation shades the bottom part of the plant, which happens when plants are placed close to one another. Cuts are most effective when the plant is in vegetative stage so that the upper branches receive more nutrients and energy. They grow larger and support heavy bud growth. But even when plants are trimmed just before flowering or in the first two weeks after forcing, it can still result in higher yields. When plants are spaced far enough apart so the bottom branches receive adequate light and can form good buds, there is no reason to remove them.

MIST FOR CLONING If I am using a hydro-mist system for cloning, do I still need a humidity dome on top of the babies? ALEX MANZO No. As long as the humidity stays above 60-65% in the garden space no dome is required. Use a dome when the humidity dips lower.

50 MOLDY BUD I have some moldy bud. Can I make topicals from it? TRUDY First use a water method, such as that used in making bubble hash. In this process the THC-containing trichomes are separated from the plant material; the water rinses the mold from the trichomes. The result is mold-free trichomes.

GIBBERELLIC ACID I just purchased some gibberellic acid with the hope to make some feminized seed. You mention it in your book, Marijuana Growers Handbook, but I am not completely clear on how to use it. Can I do just a branch or must I treat the whole plant? How do I do it? After treatment how do I prevent the pollen from getting on other plants? MIKE Gibberellic (GA3, GA4) acid is a natural plant hormone that can be sprayed on plants. Among its effects are stem elongation and larger fruits. It also causes development of male flowers on female plants. When adult human or other mammalian females are given testosterone the result is development of male secondary sex characteristics such as deepening of voice, body hair and bulky muscles. The primary sex organs are already developed so they are affected, but new organs don’t form. Close-Up of powdery mildew

HERMAPHRODITE PROBLEM My NYC Diesel plant is in the 3rd week of flowering and is a hermaphrodite. In almost all of the flowering tips, there are one or two little male flowers growing. I have a few other all female plants that I have separated from the hermie by moving them to another closet at the other end of my apartment. Was it something I did that caused this amazingly beautiful female to turn hermaphrodite? Is there something I can do to prevent this from happening again? Can I pick off the male flowers with tweezers and salvage the female flowers? Will the other plants be safe from the hermie pollen? The hermie was my first choice for a mother plant until I noticed the little footballs. Can I get female clones out of it? Should I self-pollinate it for seeds? What should I do with the hermie? NICK There is no hermaphroditism problem with the other plants that you are growing. This is an indication that it wasn’t the environment or your care. The plant that turned probably had a genetic propensity to hermaphroditism. There was nothing that you could have done to prevent it. You can try picking the male flowers off the plant but your attempts may be in vain for several reasons: First, the buds are not very noticeable. They hang down from the plant looking somewhat like green pawnbroker’s balls. The white to creamy five petal flowers are noticeable only as they turn up and open, ready to release pollen to the wind. It’s difficult to find them all before they open. One or two open flowers will produce a few seeds, but a group can ruin good sinsemilla. Male flowers ripen continuously over a period of 10-15 days so the plant must be inspected daily. The one time that you miss the inspection is probably the day when the most flowers will open. Hermaphrodites take many forms. Your plant has a few male flowers on each branch. Sometimes there is a whole branch of male flowers. The pollen will not spread from a closet on one side of the apartment to a closet on the other side unless you help to carry it from one space to another. To prevent this, NEVER visit your hermaphrodite before going to the other garden.

When plants flower they are growing new sexual organs all the time. So when given a chemical that affects their sexuality, their new sex organs are affected and female plants produce male flowers with viable pollen. The female plants, like mammalian females, contain only female genes in their chromosomes so all of the pollen produced only contains female genetic information. As a result all of the pollen is coded only for females. When female flowers are pollinated with it, they produce only female or “feminized” seeds. My experiences with gibberellic acid have been equivocal because I have had success with it at times but I have also had failures, when the plants did not produce male flowers. GA has a localized reaction. It affects the sprayed portions of the plant, but not the rest, so it can be used on plants that are to be harvested. However, the buds on the sprayed branches will be unsuitable for use because they will be loose and stretched. About a week before the lights are to be changed, spray the branch(es) with a light spray of GA. Repeat this as the light regimen is changed to force flowering, and again a few days after. If the plants produce male flowers they will appear along the sprayed area. Some growers report more success using a combination of GA and colloidal silver, which is available as a 100 ppm solution on the Internet. Most professional breeders who produce feminized seeds use either silver nitrate or silver-thiosulfate. Both of these chemicals are somewhat restricted and must be shipped to an industrial/educational address. There are some caveats to consider when feminizing seeds: Some growers have found increased hermaphroditism when a female plant is crossed with its own induced pollen. A more important consideration is that repeated use of this technique when breeding can result in increased levels of hermaphroditism. The reason is that when plants are treated with male-flower inducing hormones, the plants most likely to be affected are those with an increased tendency to hermaphroditism. So they produce more pollen. This slight increase is not a problem when seeds are being produced for grow-out. However, each time the technique is used the chances increase of hermaphroditism because the parents with this tendency produce the most pollen. After several generations, hermaphroditism can become more prevalent. One way to thwart this is to choose plants that produce the least pollen.

Hermaphrodites are not desirable candidates as either clone mothers or for breeding because they carry a genetic characteristic for hermaphroditism. The clones will bear male flowers. Crosses with pure females will result either in a mix of females and hermaphrodites or all hermaphrodites depending on whether the hermaphrodite has the characteristic on only one or both of the paired chromosomes.

Once you see the little “pawnbroker balls” that are the bud of unripe male flowers, the plant should be removed from the general plant population. To collect the pollen, place the plant in a room with no air circulation or ventilation. When the buds open the pollen drops. Collect it on paper that is placed underneath. To facilitate collection, place the plant horizontally so the flowers are closer to the collection paper. If only a branch or two have been sprayed they can be cut from the plant and placed in a container with water and a collection plate underneath. Paint selected female flowers with the collected pollen using a watercolor paintbrush.

I would probably dump the plant and use the light for better specimens. The plant is essentially a mule; it’s not going to be used for reproduction and the chance of at least some of the buds being ruined is high. I don’t think it’s worth the effort or frustration.

You can also pollinate selected plants directly by placing the branch or plants with male flowers in a room with female plants. Circulate the air within the room for a few days but try not to use ventilation because it removes the air-borne pollen.

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BACKGROUND

Sativex: A Tale of Two Cannabinoids - THC and CBD By Hugh Fitz

it showed the scientific community that cannabis clearly does effect the many ways our brains and bodies operate, be it pain perception, mood, muscle control, sleep, anxiety, psychosis and so on and so on. Research has so far identified two main cannabinoids that affect the human endocannabinoid system: D9-THC (Delta-9 Tetrahydrocannabinol) and CBD (Cannabidiol), and it is these two that make up Sativex. In their own words, “THC has analgesic, anti-spasmodic, anti-tremor, anti-inflammatory, appetite stimulant and anti-emetic properties, whilst CBD has anti-inflammatory, anticonvulsant, anti-psychotic, anti-oxidant, neuroprotective and immunomodulatory effects”. Another study in to cannabis’ effect on sleep found that “Fifteen milligrams THC would appear to be sedative, while 15 mg CBD appears to have alerting properties as it increased waking activity during sleep and counteracted the residual sedative activity of 15 mg THC.”

There wasn’t much of a fanfare from cannabis activists or even outrage in the Daily Mail when cannabis started to be legally prescribed in this country for the first time in June last year. A few years ago getting cannabis prescribed for Multiple Sclerosis sufferers was high on the Cannabis Activist’s wish list (- remember Mark and Lezlie Gibson getting busted in 2007 for providing MS sufferers with cannabis chocolate? -) so now we should be happy, right? Well, kind of… The fact is, rather than allowing the estimated 1/3rd of MS patients in the UK that currently uses illegal cannabis to treat their symptoms, to possess and consume cannabis without fear of prosecution, the Government have outsourced to the pharmaceutical industry, namely GW Pharmaceuticals (a division of Bayer), for the delivery of cannabis as medicine. Unlike California and some other progressive states in America, the UK Government, at present, only recognises cannabis-based medicine as effective for the relief of spasticity related to MS, not for the whole host of conditions from Cancer to Insomnia and Depression that some American doctors can prescribe it for. Over there your prescription from the doctor allows you to buy a whole host of raw buds from specialist dispensaries where the ‘experts’ will advise you on

what variety will best treat your condition. Over here the only way you’re going get government sanctioned cannabis is with a prescription from the doctor for relieving MS related spasms, and even then it will come in the form of spray called Sativex, and it won’t actually get you high. So, it may be a good thing that the government finally recognises some medicinal value in cannabis. In that typically British way they’ve had to admit that it is an effective and suitable treatment, but only once they’d sucked all the fun out of it. One positive to come from this development is that GW Pharmaceuticals with all their facilities, laboratories, equipment and most importantly, money, have done some pretty interesting and long overdue research in to cannabinoids and how they actually affect us. From their perspective the more conditions they can prove their drug works for the more money they make, which puts them as uneasy allies with the pro-cannabis community. By proving some of the positive effects of cannabis consumption the hope is that the image of cannabis may improve in the eyes of the general population having taking such a bashing in the media following the Lancet Journal’s publication of the paper: “Cannabis use and risk of psychotic or affective mental health outcomes: a systematic review” in 2007 which supposedly highlighted the causal link between cannabis and

psychosis. Ironically, high on GW’s list of conditions that may be helped by cannabis is Psychosis. It was in 1988 that scientists first discovered the endocannabinoid system in the human body, that is, naturally occurring cannabinoid receptors (CB1 and CB2) in all human brains followed a few years later by the discovery of the ligand that bonds with these receptors, named Anandamide after the Sanskrit word for ‘bliss’. This discovery that the human brain and cannabis were linked through these receptors and naturally occurring “endocannabinoids” opened up the study of cannabis as medicine as

Clearly these two cannabinoids interact in interesting ways that we are only just beginning to understand. Both are present in the vast majority of cannabis plants but in different ratios depending on the plant itself. Recent cannabis breeding has had the aim of deliberately increasing THC levels and lowering CBD to achieve the most powerful and euphoric high, without the counter-effect of CBD. It is this same logic which has ultimately brought about the introduction of a suitable medical cannabis product. When taken together the CBD modulates the effects of the THC. For this reason GW include a fine balance of both in Sativex which all but eradicates any kind of “high”.

54 Undoubtedly it is a good thing that MS sufferers can have some much needed relief from Sativex. Getting any pharmaceutical drug to market takes a painfully long time for those waiting for it. GW is currently trying to get Sativex licensed for many more conditions but research has to be done and reviewed before this can happen. What Sativex has done is draw a distinct line between medical and recreational cannabis. This is the major difference between medical cannabis here and in California or Holland where it is accepted that cannabis is beneficial and it is up to the patient as to how they administer it and in what form they buy it. Whether or not this is a good thing is debatable.

This was a major hurdle to be got over by GW in bringing their product to market because as a medicine it is not meant to actually get you high. Heaven forbid! As an aside, research also found that when CBD is separately administered first then followed by THC (as was done under scientific trial conditions with human volunteers) it inhibits the breakdown of THC in the liver and therefore raises levels in the brain for a longer period. CBD before THC gets you higher basically. So how exactly do they produce this cannabis-based preparation? Sativex is an oromucosal spray which means it is absorbed through the mucous membrane in the mouth. The label states that “Each 100 microlitre spray contains 2.7mg delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol and 2.5mg cannabidinol from Cannabis Sativa L”. To make it GW has been growing its own cannabis plants at a secret location in the south of England. Primarily they have been using a high THC strain with no CBD and a high CBD strain with no THC. They have grown the CBD chemovar outdoors which, along with the lack of THC, would suggest it is a hemp fibre or even ruderallis strain, whereas the THC chemovar has had to be grown indoors or under glass in the summer. Much time was wasted trying to grow a greenhouse crop in the winter before GW realised that high light levels played a crucial part in producing THC (is there anyone reading this that didn’t already know that?). Then, effectively they’ve been making hash (they call it an Enriched Trichome Preparation or ETP), or more accurately bubble hash, from the dried buds. They could have no doubt saved themselves a bit of effort if they had asked an experienced grower and hash maker for some tips. Still, it’s nice to know that the men in white coats endorse the bubble hash process, but for their purposes only the 6 or 7 screen process (like the Next Level Bubblesacs and the Canadian Bubblebags with the 75 micron and 25 micron screens) are used for separating the useable gland. Their research showed that most of the plant’s cannabinoids are in the upright gland heads (again, we could have told them that) which are roughly 75-100 microns in

size and so are exclusively caught on the 75 micron screen. The THC hash (ETP!) and CBD hash are blended together, suspended in ethanol and voila, Sativex. It’s not original to observe how remarkable the cannabis plant really is, but the more we learn with rigorous scientific research the more the population as a whole will be able to see how much we have missed out on through prohibition. The fact that cannabis can have so many medical applications for conditions where the best alternatives are either ineffective or cause horrific side effects, whilst being completely non-toxic and free from unpleasant side-effects, must be a dream for a pharmaceutical company, and is in itself pretty remarkable. The fact that we humans have our own, naturally occurring cannabinoid (ananandamide) in our bodies and receptors in our brains to receive it, and that cannabis is the only place outside of our own bodies where these compounds are found must surely hint at a very long evolutionary history between us and the cannabis plant. Indeed, it is well documented that humans ate the seeds and used the fibre but a recent archaeological dig in the Gobi desert, China, found the tomb of a blue eyed man buried with 789grams of bud that still had active THC in the glands that they estimate to be 2700 years old. Man has evolved alongside cannabis, growing and selecting all the time.

Already growers, breeders and cannabis experts are responding to this new research and particularly to the benefits of CBD. Jorge Cervantes, Howard Marks and Shantibaba have all put their names to the ‘CBD Crew’ while Jamie from Resin Seeds in Spain recently tested an individual plant with an even ratio of THC and CBD. This has kicked off a program to breed seeds that can offer this chemical profile every time, clear evidence that the Cannabis Community is responding in its own way to these new discoveries. The problem they have is that the only way to tell the chemical

profile of a plant is by having it tested in a laboratory. Most cannabis breeding is done by selecting plants on the basis of size, smell, yield and high rather than their cannabinoid profile. This means that simultaneously we have the dedicated cannabis experts and breeders with limited resources but a wealth of knowledge and experience of cannabis use, and GW Pharma with all its money, resources and scientific know-how, but clearly no direct experience striving for the same thing. Both ultimately have the same goal, namely producing effective cannabis based medicine, but both are being held back by their lack of the very thing the other party has. You can see where this is going... Medicines take a notoriously long time to get to market, but as more and more conditions are recommended for cannabis therapy the harder it will be for the anti-cannabis lobby to paint it as the ‘devils-weed’ of 1930 prohibition propaganda. The medical community has well and truly started to take notice of cannabis as a possible panacea. Public opinion in the US is quoted as being 70% in favour of the federal legalisation of cannabis, Switzerland have just made growing a personal supply of cannabis a non-prosecutable offence, Portugal has de-criminalised all drugs, while all over Europe laws on personal use are increasingly being relaxed – except in Britain. We are sadly now a long way behind the rest of the Western world in our attitude to cannabis. Still, if you’re an MS sufferer with spasms – Congratulations! You can now get the first legal cannabis this country has seen for a very long time. What is certain is that the issue is not likely to go away, especially now that the Pharmaceutical industry’s appetite is whetted. As this goes to press a challenge has been raised to the monopoly that GW has been granted by the government to produce medical cannabis. Since GW holds the only licence in the UK, they certainly do have a monopoly, which is indeed illegal, so it will be interesting to see how it plays out. This is just the beginning...

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GROW WITH GRUBBYCUP

Breeding Grubbycup’s Stash

THE LABELS ARE INFORMATIVE, IF NOT STYLISH It started because I wanted to smoke cannabis that I really liked. When I first started smoking weed, I learned a few things. The first thing I learned is that I wanted to smoke more of it. Shortly thereafter, I came to the conclusion that it was too expensive, and I didn’t want to buy it. I didn’t want to spend the

exactly trip off the tongue. If a line showed promise or had a trait I liked, it might show up again in some form. For example, both the Blackberry and Blueberry were used in the final selection.

Blackberry mothers, but the name stuck. Besides, even if I wasn’t working with different cultivars anymore; it was all Grubbycup’s Stash, I was still labeling with codes for specific traits.

It was during this time that Grubbycup’s Stash got its name. I didn’t name it, as much as it wound up naming itself. Everything in my stash was labeled with an almost unpronounceable code, but often had something worth trying in it. My friends would ask to load up a bowl of whatever was in “Grubbycup’s Stash”. As time went on, finally I settled on a White Rhino x Blueberry father crossed with a couple of different Purple Lady x

Genes may be hidden, but they are set and finite. If the genes don’t exist in the starting pool, they won’t exist in following generations. To create a starting pool of genetics, make sure that you select from plants that have traits similar to what you want in your final line.

On the father’s side: The White Rhino male’s sisters were very potent, but other than a slight citrus,

ied botany in college, and had always enjoyed gardening. Growing marijuana came very natural to me. Although information about marijuana specific breeding was scarce, information on genetics and for breeding plants in general was much easier to come by. The same basic principles apply whether

HE SAME BASIC PRINCIPLES APPLY WHETHER BREEDING PEA PLANTS OR CANNABIS PLANTS money, and I didn’t want to deal with finding someone to buy it from. As I used to say, “I don’t mix greens”, the greens in question being cannabis and cash. I didn’t want to buy weed, I didn’t want to sell weed, I didn’t want anyone not in my circle to know I knew anything about weed, I just wanted to smoke it. After careful consideration of my options, growing it myself seemed the safest choice, since no money would be changing hands, and once I had seeds, I wouldn’t need to involve anyone else. The biggest threat to any marijuana garden walks on two legs. My first grows were all from friends’ bag seeds, and to be fair, we were more concerned with just having enough to smoke, and not all that picky about how good it was. This was in the 1980’s, and pre-Internet, so accurate information was much more difficult to come by than it is today. The buds I grew were harsh, uncured, and of very iffy parentage. They were also better than a lot of what my friends were used to smoking, which was often seeded Mexican brown broken off of bricks, or very expensive.

breeding pea plants or cannabis plants. I also decided that if I was going to grow my own, I was going to breed my own. The first step in starting a breeding program, is collecting the original pool of genetics to start selecting from. I tried a lot of different cultivars, and made a lot of different crosses. Anytime I’d join a circle with friends, I’d bring my latest test buds to share, and I’d ask them their opinion afterward. Since these were all experimental plants, they had names that were more for recordkeeping than ease of use. For example, one promising candidate was: “(nl x bb) x bm) x (d x blueb) x black) #2”, which was an abbreviation for “ Northern Lights crossed with Big Bud and the result crossed with Blue Mystic and the result of that crossed with a Durban Poison that had been crossed with a Blueberry and then had be crossed with a Blackberry, second plant in the set. “ Which doesn’t

GS MALE NAMED “GOLIATH” AND USED FOR BREEDING

GS 3 MALES TEND TO HAVE THREE LEAVES PER NODE, ALTHOUGH INFREQUENTLY FEMALE PLANTS HAVE DEVELOPED THE TRAIT. IF THE TRAIT WERE TO BECOME CONSISTENT, IT COULD BE A METHOD OF EARLY SEXING

Over the years my growing and harvesting techniques improved. I found better seeds to grow, and the quality of what I smoked improved. I smoked of what I grew, and gave the excess to friends. It takes the same effort to grow average genetics as it does to grow superior genetics, the trick is in getting the seeds for superior genetics in the first place. That would become a lot easier to do once seed banks became more common. I had grown up on a dairy farm, stud-

THIS GS 3 PRODUCED FOUR LEAVES PER NODE

GRUBBYCUP’S STASH

58 and plant structure. The reason that the stone and flavor are higher rated and more stable than the plant structure, is that they are traits that are the most important to me as a smoker. That isn’t to say that they aren’t also bred for bud size, but that trait holds a lower priority to quality of smoke. The goal of the breed is to be my favorite, and to that end it succeeds. THE LABEL MEANS THAT IT’S FROM THE LAST GROUP OF ORIGINAL SEEDS, AND IT’S MOTHER HAD SUPERIOR COLOR.

didn’t have the fruity-flowery sort of flavor I had in mind.

ing project had taken over my entire garden at the time, so it was my only source of personal smoke.

The Blueberry mother had a very nice flavor, but didn’t have the plant structure I wanted, and was a bit cranky to grow. In selecting the father, I looked for the most robust and best flowering out of the group to declare early.

I kept working with the White Rhino x Blueberry until I potency and flavor regularly showed in the same plant, and did the same with the Blackberry x Purple Lady.

Using this father, I pollinated several mothers. When breeding, it’s easier to track

After I felt confident that I had a White Rhino x Blueberry male that had a good

I’M OKAY WITH SHOWING A LITTLE FAVORITISM TO IT THOUGH , AFTER ALL I’M WHO I BRED IT FOR one father with several mothers than the other way around. One drawback to this method is that it creates a bottleneck; if the father has dropped an important trait, the generation may have to be repeated.

chance of contributing desirable traits to the Blackberry x Purple Lady line. The Blackberry x Purple Lady mother was easier to select, since I could taste test the buds off of clones to select the best ones for seeding.

The mothers: The Blackberry male’s sisters had a berry flavor, but similar to the Blueberry, didn’t have the sort of plant structure I was looking for. The Purple Lady mother had an amazing kick, and a very interesting floral flavor. The pairs were selected by what I thought would be give me the best smoke while I worked on combining all four cultivars. By matching potent plants with nice flavored plants, I hoped to start to accumulate the genes needed for a potent, nice flavored variety. If I had paired the two most potent, I may have gotten potent offspring, but I wanted flavor as well in each of the crosses. Once the two lines were crossed, it wouldn’t matter which of the four was paired with the others, but meanwhile I’d be smoking each of the pairs. The breed-

In a large scale operation one option would be to grow very large numbers of the seeds and make selections from hundreds if not thousands of plants. This method commonly used by corporate vegetable seed breeders. However, it is very possible to breed using much smaller numbers of plants, grown in groups. Recordkeeping becomes absolutely critical, but it can be done. The key is being able to match each bowlful of final product to its seeds and parentage. Clear and accurate labels are a must. Personal label machines can help if poor handwriting is a hindrance. A few buds of each plant grown are seeded. Each growing container is labeled, and each stem at harvest. Seeds are collected and labeled, and so is the bud as it goes through the curing pro-

FROM THE LATEST GENERATION OF GS 3, THIS MALE WILL BE CROSSED WITH A GS GOL, AND IF THE RESULTS ARE ACCEPTABLE, THE OFFSPRING WILL FORM THE BASIS OF THE NEXT GENERATION OF GS. OTHERWISE THEY WILL REMAIN AS SEPARATE LINES, AND THE BETTER OF THE TWO WILL RETAIN THE NAME GS

There is a technique known as cubing that is very useful to stabilizing a genetic line. Anyone interested in breeding is heartily encouraged to learn about it. However, all you really need to know to make use of the principle is that you should grow out AN EARLY GS 3 MALE multiple generations at the same time, and cross the best plants together regardcess. Each container of weed lists the less of what generation they are. exact plant that it was harvested from. This way seeds from the best smoke Any plant showing a superior example can be selected for, and seeds from only of a trait was marked as part of the label. average buds can be disregarded. For example, the GS Gol indicates it has a GS male that was named “Goliath” in its The seeds from the five mothers were ancestry, GS 3 has parents that displayed labeled GS-A, GS-B, GS-C, GS-D and whorled phyllotaxy (3 or more leaves per GS-E. More bags with codes, this is the node), etc. Part of the reason that these reason that people just tended to say types of notes are so important, is not “Grubbycup’s Stash” or “GS”. only for breeding toward, but for breeding against. Any plant that displays an One grow was dedicated to each of undesirable trait can be eliminated from the five mothers. The best of GS-A was the gene pool, and that information can cloned and grown again with the GS-B be used to extinguish unwanted traits. lot for comparison. This process was repeated with GS-B, but the GS-C, GS-D, It is a work in process, and it’s going to and GS-E lots did not produce specimens continue to be a work in process until better than the GS-A and GS-B mothers. inbred depression sets in, or I find someGS-A and GS-B were grown as two sepa- thing I like better. rate cultivars and did not cross pollinate for several generations. Both lines were I would never claim it to be any betbred using the same criteria in parallel. ter than anyone else’s work, but I can It was my intention to use only the best grow pretty much any strain I want, and between the two lines, but GS-A devel- Grubbycup’s Stash still makes up most of oped to be the more potent of the two, what I put in my pipe. I’m okay with showand GS-B had superior flavor and struc- ing a little favoritism to it though , after all ture. Whenever I would get close to decid- I’m who I bred it for. ing in favor of one, the other would produce a superior specimen. Eventually the My best advice for people thinking of trybest of the two lines were merged. ing a home breeding project: 1) Even if you don’t learn the math or the The process continues as much more science behind it, if you just keep breedof the same, isolating and recombining. ing your best male to your best female, Over time, the plants became similar to and don’t add new genetics into the mix, each other, and today have many more you are off to a good start. People bred traits in common to each other. New both plants and animals using this princitraits have surfaced as recessive genes ple for hundreds if not thousands of years found matching recessive genes. As with to good effect. Marijuana is not particuall traits, some of these traits were kept, larly sensitive to inbred depression, and some discarded, some ignored. by the time you have enough generations under your belt to worry about it, you will The standard for the breed includes a nice likely have learned how to deal with it. initial effect, distinctive floral - bouquet garni aroma, smooth clean flavor, potent 2) Learn the basic principles of Mendelian long lasting “creeper” stone, bud structure, genetics. You don’t have to become an expert, just learn how dominant /recessives genes work, and how to use them to make educated predictions. 3) To benefit from cubing, grow plants from different generations together, cross the best plants regardless of generation. The tracking of traits, and making educated attempts to adjust and recombine them is the heart of any good breeding program. It is not a fast process, but THE LEAVES ON THIS GS 3 MALE HAVE AN with time and patience you can produce EXTRA FINGER OR TWO AT THE CENTER noticeable changes and put your own mark on the weed you smoke.

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DIY

Water Extracting Keif By Little Lebowski

of the container, as the portion you want will sink to the bottom. Do not try to do too much in a single batch, if layered too thickly, efficiency will suffer. Fill the container 3/4 full of water. Seal, and shake well. Let sit undisturbed for a half hour or so. The material should separate into a floating portion, a sinking por-

tion, and a semi-clear band in between. Carefully spoon off all the material that floats. If you are feeling frugal, you can use this to make a second pass with, or use to make a light cannabutter or infused oil. Then remove as much of the top liquid as is easy to do so without disturbing the silt at the bottom. Using a coffee filter or the single layer of a paper towel, strain the silt at the bottom of the container. This is the water keif. Dry the keif thoroughly. If allowed to sit wet for long periods, mold will develop, so it must be well dried before storing. Once dried, I had a 6 gram pile that I lightly pressed it into a heart shape, and it may be smoked as is, or with a little heat and pressure the keif will melt into hash.

Simple household items can be used for water extracting keif from the other plant material. The basic principle involved is the difference in buoyancy between the trichomes, and the rest of the plant material. Trichomes will sink in water, and most of the rest of the plant material will float. Big buds are sexy, desirable, and by far get the most attention, but what about the rest? After harvest, the trimmings and small buds can make a fair sized pile. At one point or another, many home growers wind up with a bag of harvest that they don’t care for. A cure gone slightly off, can make for a jar of second choice too nice to throw out, but not nice enough to be very enjoyable smoke. What I propose

that you do, is keep a jar handy and collect these until you have enough to bother with. Make sure that as you collect them, the material you add to the jar is dry enough not to start molding. I started with 45 grams of trim and weed I didn’t care for the flavor of. If it isn’t already, overdry it slightly, as you want to crumble or grind it into very small pieces. I used a wire mesh kitchen sieve to sift the ground material into a rough powder. Purer results can be obtained by resifting the powder, or using a finer grind. After sifting, place the powder in a closeable, preferably non-breakable container. Make sure that you can reach the bottom

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SHOP REVIEW

8 Ball Hydro, Birmingham ONLY 6 months after they moved shop location to larger premises, 8 Ball Hydro are at it again. The shop has now moved 700 yards down the road into a large industrial unit on the Long Lane Trading Estate. A great location with plenty of parking and discreet loading if required.

Good deals are always available and it will be difficult to beat them on price! Having moved from their previous shop address a college of theirs has now taken it over and opened a Head Shop, GreenTingz.

The stock selection they have available is hard GreenTingz can be found at 296 Long Lane, to beat. All leading nutrient brands fill the Halesowen, Birmingham B62 9LB. ALL your head shelves behind the counter which include: requirements will be met from grinders to bags, House & Garden, Ionic, Canna, Plant Magic+ souvenir seeds to ‘legal highs’. The shop is well and the rest of the unit is filled with all the stocked so you should be able to purchase all you growing equipment any horticulturist could need and much more! Be sure to drop in..... want from grow tents to ballasts, hydroponic sys8 Ball Hydroponics GreenTingz Headshop tems to soil based mediUnit 20, Long Lane Trading Estate 296 Long Lane ums, ballasts and accesHalesowen Halesowen sories. Be sure to check Birmingham Birmingham out Buddha’s Tree PK9/18 B62 9LD B62 9LB which is available in store, (t) 07735 252447 07732 011419 amazing results!!

Green Day Hydroponics & A New Dawn Headshop, Stowmarket I was very impressed with the owners work ethic, knowledge of the industry as well as the specifically chosen product selection they had available to purchase. They know what they are talking about! Location of any business is always paramount to its success and Green Day Hydro is well located on an industrial estate with plenty of discreet parking available. The shop is located on the upper floor of the unit with the owner always there to welcome you with his extensive knowledge of hydroponics having been in the industry for well over 16 years with 10 of them working in the dutch grow industry. Add that to a very completely stocked shop with all the leading brands of nutrients and accessories available to purchase , all chosen to suit all levels of growers from novice to the professional. A New Dawn Headshop has been opened across from the Hydroponics shop and I was not expecting to see the layout as it was. There is loads of space in the shop with plenty of products to view as well as clothing, Tattooing and Piercing service on site. Every effort has been made to have on offer all the leading brands from the industry and what is not in store can be delivered within 24 hours. They stock grinders, souvenir seeds, Hemp clothes, Rolling papers, scales and much more..... Drop in to see the guys soon!

Green Day Hydroponics 9B Charles Industrial Estate Stowmarket IP14 5AH (t) 07941 179951 (w) www.greendayhydroponics.com (e) greenday_horticulture@live.co.uk

WWW.HYDROHELP.INFO Hydrohelp.info was set up to help growers achieve a problem free grow with one easy phone call. The expert team have between them over 75 years experience within hydroponics and organic soil growing. The team are here to help!! Whether it’s grow room management or plant and pest problems we can assist with all enquiries resulting in much bigger yields and improving your quality. This will ultimately save hours of time on the forums, which more often than not have conflicting answer’s to the growers questions, leaving the grower confused and still none the wiser. The strait talking team was set up by growers for growers so they know how important it is to have the right information to hand , especially

if the grower is having a problems setting up a grow room or problems in the bloom or vegetative stage, they have a step by step process to work through. One easy telephone call and we can work through the issue and resolve any problems. The team are constantly keeping up to date with latest technology of lighting and techniques within the hydroponic industry .The web site has loads to offer with links to every product you will ever need to be successful . The lines are open 10am to 10pm (GMT) seven days a week, 52 weeks a year! Finally, the team want to say thanks for all the support they have received off you guy’s over the last four months. Happy growing!!

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In most countries, using hemp is prohibited even for medical purposes. Self-medication with cannabis has brought a great number of normally law-abiding citizens into conflict with the legal system. Patients often feel compelled to engage in a political struggle for not only their lives or health, but for their freedom as well. People often become criminals merely for obtaining their needed medicine. Willingly or not, they sometimes become known as civil rights activists and freedom fighters. The international fight to get the sick and dying access to medically approved cannabis has been Sebastian Daniel going on for many decades now.

starting to realize their government is increasingly anti-democratic and much too often run by liars and crooks. In the 1970s and 1980s two-thirds of the States legislatively mandated that marijuana had medical value, but the unelected drug warriors in Washington blocked these popular state efforts. The Attorney General threatened to arrest any doctor who dared to even mention marijuana’s medical use with a patient. The government also proposed a ban on any and all research into the prohibited plant’s potential benefits.

Robert Randall was the first legal medical marijuana patient in the U.S. since cannabis prohibition began in 1937. At 25 years of age he was told he would be blind before he turned 30; he kept his eyesight,

Despite all the propaganda, harsh laws, suppressions and denials by governments, patients have discovered hemp’s healing powers for themselves and used it, trusting their own intu-

any natural medicine that is easy to grow at little or no cost but cannot be patented, threatens the corporate monopoly. For example, a synthetic anti-vomiting drug used by cancer patients undergo-

WOODWARD CRITICIZED THE WAY THE WORD “MARIHUANA” HAD BEEN USED TO DELIBERATELY CONFLATE AND CONFUSE THE MEDICAL AND INDUSTRIAL HEMP COMMUNITIES however, thanks to marijuana until he died of AIDS 28 years later. Forced to break the law to save his eyesight, Bob sued the federal government to obtain legal access to marijuana and won, then continued to work on behalf of other patients. Randall convinced the judge that he would have to break the law, for marijuana kept him from going blind. In 1976, D.C. Superior Court Judge James A. Washington ruled that the patient had established a defense of medical necessity. Unfortunately, the federal program providing legal cannabis medicine to patients was soon closed down by the government. Randall was an inspiration to countless other medical freedom fighters around the world. Keith Stroup, executive director of NORML called him “the father of the medical marijuana movement.” By 2011, medical marijuana has become legal in 15 states. The drug is commonly prescribed for glaucoma, nausea, poor appetite, and pain. Robert Randall and Alice O’Leary in their book Marijuana Rx: The Patients’ Fight For Medicinal Pot describe the situation of medical marijuana users in the USA in harsh words: bureaucrats are willing to arrest, jail, blind, cripple and even kill seriously ill people to maintain “the consistent message” of “zero tolerance” and fight “the evil weed”. There is also a cult of synthesis: only drugs invented and owned by large companies are welcome;

ing chemotherapy may even cost $600 a dose, usually $1500 a day. By comparison, marijuana controls vomiting better and costs 50 cents a day. The authors conclude that the American people are

ition, folk tradition, or gossip. Only recently have various independent experts started to notice that the masses were right in their judgment about this famed but illegal folk remedy.

David R. Ford says in his book Marijuana: Not Guilty As Charged that falsely instilling fear into the hearts of citizens is immoral, while withholding medical marijuana from patients is criminal. It is hypocritical to ban this relatively harmless drug, which has never caused one death, and leave dangerous drugs like alcohol and nicotine legal. Ford notes that in the US, physicians can prescribe about 50,000 drugs, many of which can cause death or seriously bad side effects. Yet they cannot prescribe non-toxic cannabis preparations. Ford suggests that many of the crusaders for the anti-marijuana war may have honestly concluded that marijuana is the evil they have been brainwashed into believing it to be, as few people could be so heartless intentionally. As Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist and an expert on issues of civil obedience, has written, ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Franklin C. “Lyn” Nofziger, former deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee and a White House advisor

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67 during the Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan presidencies, supports the medical marijuana movement. In his opinion a doctor should have every possible medication in his arsenal. If doctors can prescribe morphine and other addictive drugs, it makes no sense to deny marijuana to sick and dying people. Some politicians have begun to realize that it seems cruel and unusual to the public to treat the sick and dying as if they were drug cartel kingpins. Moreover, it is a complete waste of taxpayer money. Polls have shown that 80% of Americans support marijuana for medicinal purposes (2002 Time/CNN survey). Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States, states that often the government is only moved to reform by the civil disobedience of organized citizens. A hundred years ago ending child labor, granting women’s rights, stopping racist segregation, creating an eight-hour work day, or accepting the right to organize were radical ideas to many Americans. Today, medical freedom fighters are causing a similar social upheaval. Physicians often express the opinion that the war on drugs has become a war on doctors and patients. The target is easy compared to underground criminal empire warlords. The DEA has maliciously investigated and prosecuted thousands of physicians in the name of the war on drugs. And it is doctors who have been on the frontiers of this war since the very beginning: one of the few reasonable voices of doubt during the 1937 committee hearing on marijuana came from the American Medical Association (AMA). Their Legislative Counsel, William Woodward, offered compelling testimony before Congress begging them not to pass the bill. Woodward criticized the way the word “marihuana” had been used to deliberately conflate and confuse the medical and industrial hemp communities and asked why the bill had been prepared in secret for two years without any warning to the profession. Later his statement was ignored and forgotten: the act for prohibiting marijuana was passed. Woodward said no medical man would identify this bill with a medicine until he read it through,

because marijuana is not a drug, but simply a name given cannabis. The AMA defended cannabis in 1937 and still does today. In 2009 the AMA officially asked the federal government to review the status of cannabis in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. The biggest medical association in America has once again acknowledged the medical benefits of marijuana and its component cannabinoids. Many American physicians continue to recommend marijuana to their patients even though by doing so they are running the risk of being imprisoned or ruining their careers. Doctor John P. Morgan, professor of pharmacology at the City University of New York, has expressed the belief that

knowledge till the second half of the 20th century and the invention of modern scientific methodology like double blind studies. However, large double blind studies are almost impossible to conduct because of the law. To cite only one example, it took Dr. Donald Abrams 4 years to receive permission to study marijuana’s effects on AIDSrelated neuropathic pain. Despite evidence that cannabis is useful in treating both major and lesser diseases, the DEA under federal law continues to arrest patients and caregivers, even in states that have tried to legally protect marijuana under their own state laws. Doctors feel threatened for even discussing marijuana with their patients. The sick, the crippled,

Court; in 2005 an amendment to stop the arrests of medical marijuana patients was also defeated in Congress. Cannabis remains a Schedule I controlled substance with “no medical value”, the most restrictive category, which also includes heroin. Drugs like methamphetamine have enough medicinal value to be classified as Schedule II narcotics. Marijuana, under federal law, is a more serious narcotic than crack cocaine. European countries like the United Kingdom, Spain, Switzerland, and Italy have undertaken efforts to explore the benefits of cannabis for medical purposes. In the Netherlands, since 2003, cannabis can be obtained in pharmacies, and a government center of medical cannabis has been founded. In

PATIENTS TOO OFTEN MUST TAKE THE RISK OF LOSING THEIR RIGHTS, FREEDOM, PROPERTY, AND CHILDREN, JUST FOR USING THE SAFEST DRUG KNOWN TO MEDICAL SCIENCE the government’s purpose in regulating medicine is to protect patients from toxicity. Marijuana, though, has no overdose level. Doctor Morgan is also a board member of NORML. Another distinguished NORML board member is Professor Kary Mullis, 1993 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. NORML has helped cannabis to become recognized and accepted as medicine by state laws, a huge success that did not come easily. In 1972, NORML filed a petition with the government to reclassify cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule II so that doctors could prescribe it as a medicine. Finally, in 1988 the DEA responded when their own Administrative Law Judge Francis Young concluded in a 69-page ruling: “ ...in strict medical terms, marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume.” After 2 years of hearings, DEA rejected their own judge’s recommendation. Doctor Lester Grinspoon, author of “Marijuana: The Forbidden Medicine” points out that a mountain of evidence coming from thousands of patients is being ignored, while controlled clinical trials are discouraged. Anecdotal evidence was accepted as part of medical

and the dying are usually confronted with guns during raids and arrests. They are sometimes shot and killed, often sentenced to many years behind bars. Some patients have attempted suicide, unable to live without their medication. Victims of cancer, AIDS, or stroke testify that marijuana had the power to bring them back literally from the edge of death. Glaucoma sufferers are petrified of going blind without their medicine. Patients too often must take the risk of losing their rights, freedom, property, and children, just for using the safest drug known to medical science. Many die in prison deprived of their medicine, as is often the case with cancer or AIDS patients. They are allowed to use morphine, but not cannabis. Sick people of all walks of life fear incarceration because of the medicine they use. The sick and the dying feel that the prohibition of medical marijuana is the greatest social injustice in history of mankind; one desperate patient said that their tragedy and pain are comparable only to the crucifixion of Christ. This is still the harsh reality of the medical marijuana underground in many countries around the world. Patients have lost their case in the US Supreme

2007 Germany allowed its first medical marijuana patient (a multiple sclerosis sufferer) to legally buy medical grade marijuana. In 2008 the Supreme Court in the Czech Republic decided in favour of growing cannabis destined for medical applications. In 2009 at Prague’s Lichtenstein Palace, during the 16th gala evening of the Czech Government Committee for People with Disabilities presided over by the Prime Minister, and consisting of, among others, several ministers, an official prize was awarded to the ,POPQÓ +F -ÏL $BOOBCJT $VSFT PSHBOJzation for a web page devoted to old and new applications of Cannabis in medicine. The Czech Minister of Health Care Dana Jurásková promised not only to participate in a public debate on the issue, but also to support the introduction of phytotherapy to the Czech health care system, provided the results were promising. The Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Petr Šimerka presented the President of the KJL Dušan Dvořák with the award, signed by the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic Jan Fischer. Dušan Dvořák once faced a five-year sentence for cultivation of over 800 marijuana plants.

MUSIC

Do you know what a “Jam Band” is? A jam band is a musical group whose albums and live concerts are aimed at a specific fan culture that originated in the Sixties with musical groups like Grateful Dead and continued through the Nineties with bands like Phish. The performances of this type of group always include an extended musical improvisation and often feature a variety of completely different musical genres. Today we would like to give you an in-depth introduction to a prominent jam band on the American scene:

moe. When guitarist Al Schnier was asked to describe moe.’s music for people who had never heard of the band, he said: “Our music is a blend of a variety of musical genres from the history of rock – all regurgitated and recycled through the eyes, ears and hands of my band members, who face everything with a certain sense of adventure and humour, never giving up on their insatiable desire of crossing all boundaries.” The band’s origin goes back to October, 1989, when University of Buffalo students Chuck Garvey, Rob Derhak and Ray Schwartz met for the first time at a

Halloween show, where a mutual friend asked them to play together. Their performance was so successful that they decided to form a band – at first calling themselves “Five Guys named Moe”, which is the title of a Louis Jordan song. A year later, they changed their name to “moe.” – all lowercase, with a full stop at the end. This choice was made, after much procrastination, to avoid any confusion with an already-existing band from Brooklyn called “Moe”. And that was that. With their debut album Flatboy, published in 1992, the band managed to establish itself as a favourite on the jam band and improvisational rock scene, which only led to more enthusiasm. In spring of 2004, nearly two years later, moe. recorded their second studio album, called Headseed. This led to the band members all quitting their jobs more or less at the same time and moving to Albany, NY, in order to dedicate themselves completely to their beloved music. And their success amply paid off. Headseed was nearly as successful as Fatboy and helped spread word that moe. was an amazing group, especially live. This enthusiasm led to the recording of a very energetic and forceful live album: the following year, the band recorded two concerts in New York City, producing their first live album, Loaf, released in the summer of 1996. Just as Grateful Dead fans were previously called “Dead Heads”, moe.’s enthusiastic fans soon began calling themselves “moe. rons” – and these moe.rons never stopped following their idols to concerts and large festivals. In their 22-year history, moe. have performed during the most important North American music festivals, as well as performing in several clubs. They have also, occasionally, participated in special events such as a concert in Central Park or

opening a concert for The Who. They’ve also been very committed to charity; moe. is amongst the most active bands when it comes to fundraising. In February 2005, for example, moe. held a benefit concert for rebuilding a sea coast town in Sri Lanka, hit by multiple tsunamis. They raised a total of $ 155,000. The following year, moe. organized a benefit concert for the Kelberman Center in New York State, a health facility specialized in the treatment of individuals with autism, raising the sum of $ 200,000. The band commits to raising funds for a specific charity every year; in 2010, for example, they chose to donate to the World Hunger Year. With impressive regularity, the five boys from moe. have published a new album every 2 / 3 years, and at the same time have managed to constantly expand their fan following with live concerts. Now they’re ready to hop over to Europe, in the hopes of increasing their popularity on this side of the ocean. They’re bringing along their new (their tenth!) studio recording. The album, called What Happened to the La La’s, contains 10 new tracks, all catchy tunes that, of course, trace back to moe.’s typical “rock-riff” style, with a background of dynamically vibrating percussion. Most of the new material was previously and successfully tried out on the street and during live concerts; in other words, some of these new tracks appeared on “fan radar” before the official studio recording. The album stand out because this time moe. didn’t work alone. In the beginning, they were everything: producers, editors, owners of their own label. But the band recently signed an agreement with Sugar Hill Records, a record company famous for producing artists such as Social Distortion, Kid Rock and No Doubt.

moe. European Tour Dates: 14.03. – Amsterdam (NL) – Jam In The Dam 15.03. – Amsterdam (NL) – Jam In The Dam 16.03. – Amsterdam (NL) – Jam In The Dam 17.03. – Seelow (D) - Kulturhaus (Blues- & Jam-Rock Fest) 18.03. – Bonn (D) – Harmonie 19.03. – London (GB) – O2 Academy Islington 20.03. – Paris (FR) – Palladium 22.03. – Hamburg (D) - Fabrik 23.03. – Plauen (D) – Malzhaus 24.03. – Lorsch (D) – Musiktheater Rex 25.03. – Milan (IT) – La Salumeria della Musica

Furthermore, for the album What Happened to the La La’s, the band decided to work with an outside record producer for the first time since 1998. This decision led to a partnership with John Travis, who has also produced artists such as Kid Rock and No Doubt. “Until now, the production of every aspect of our career has been “homemade”, in a way…” says Chuck Garvey, who plays the guitar and does vocals for moe.. “For most of our recordings, we were in charge of the necessary equipment ourselves, and of course we financed everything we produced. That gave us complete control over the entire recording and production process of an album. But with our current album, we’ve decided to trust our music to other hands, hoping to create something completely different.” Discover the result by purchasing moe.’s new album or going to one of their European concerts!

CANNABIS NEWS / INDEX OF ADS / COLOFON

MEDICAL HEMP FOR DUCKS

Index of ads Name

A French duck breeder, Michel Rouyer of Gripperie-Saint-Symphorien, was fined 500 euros because he was using cannabis supplements to raise his ducks, for medical reasons. The breeder claims that there is no better way to defeat intesti-

nal worms. Rouyer says: “I administer the means to my ducks subject to the recommendation made by a specialist.” Rouyer’s lawyer declared the following to a judge: “This is not a prank. None of the ducks suffered from intestinal worms again; in fact, they’re all healthy as can be.” But the fact that the Frenchman was growing twelve cannabis plants and admitted to rolling himself a joint every now and then was enough to earn him a 500 euro fine.

STILETTO HEELS

sent, a group composed of the same few thousand people underwent an exam testing their IQ at ten year intervals. The subjects, five years old at the beginning of the study, were asked upon turning thirty whether they had made use of narcotics during the past year. A comparison of data showed that subjects who had a high intellectual level at five years old made more use of drugs when they were older compared to their contemporaries with a lower IQ. The drug doses were actually tripled in female subjects. An explanation for this can be found in the fact that more intelligent people might be more open to welcome new experiences. Intelligent children are also assumed to be more quickly bored, which leads to the need to experiment. Drug use could help them feel less different. The study shows, in any case, that drug use has no influence on the human mind’s intelligence level.

KNOW WHAT YOU SMOKE WITH THE DNA DATABASE

A Spanish phenomenon has unearthed a Colombian-based drug ring. For more than two years now, especially elegant Spanish women have been noticed returning to Spain after nice tropical holidays in Colombia. Initially, no one gave weight to the fact that these women were all bringing Manolo Blahnik stilettos as souvenirs. But at the beginning of November, the Basque police force announced that something was wrong with the tourists’ shoes. Sure enough, these shoes were manufactured using a special paste made of cocaine, but the difference compared to real Manolo Blahnik shoes was barely perceptible. The only thing is - a pair of shoes made with this coke paste had a market value of 50,000 euros. Not even Blahnik’s shoes are that expensive!

CANNABIS SMOKERS HAVE A HIGHER IQ The British Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health published the results of a thirty-year long study at the beginning of December. From 1970 to the pre-

Research on cannabis genetics is taking giant steps forward. At the beginning of December, the University of New Haven reported data relating to the marijuana DNA database, not long after the discovery of the cannabis plant genome. Thanks to these studies, it’s now possible to determine the type of species in question and it’s even possible to learn where the plant comes from. For example, establishing that marijuana grown in the Californian “emerald triangle” was then purchased by a marijuana dealer for medicinal purposes. According to team leader Heather Coyle, the marijuana DNA database would be extremely useful for states where medical marijuana is legalized and establish stricter regulations as to which species can be sold. Those in favour of medical marijuana aren’t too happy with this perspective, because they claim that the cause of success would be the variety of the offer. The problem isn’t the variety of people offering drugs, it’s the black markets run by drug cartels.

Colofon Page

8 Ball Hydroponics 1 Advanced Seeds 20 Amsterdam Seed Center 55 Angel Grow Hydroponics 8 Ashford Hydro 63 Atami 72 A-Zee Hydro II 52 Big Stone River Indoor Garden Centre 64 Bio Nova 12 Bio-G-Power 71 Brit Crops 66 Buddha Seeds Bank 27 Buddhas Tree 59 Bushman 66 Carbon Active 42 Clever Green 1 Clockwork Horticulture 55 Dinafem Seeds 14 Dr. Blooms Hydroponics 1 Dutch Passion 10-11 Ed Rosenthal 48 Eva Female Seeds 44 Flash Seeds 59 Funky Skunk the 66 Grass-O-Matic 34 Green Life Seeds 63 Greenday Horticulture & Hydroponics 25 Gro-Rite Hydroponics 63 Grow 2 Go 66 Grow Room (Worthing) the 61 Grow World Hydroponics 68 Growing Underground 64 Growryder 34 Head 2 Head 68 Hesi 1 Hesi 2 Hydro Lab 61 Hydrohelp.info 32 Hygrow II 64 I Grow Ponics 63 Jorge Cervantes 36 Junction 6 Hydroponics 28 Legalhash 64 Libertarian 59 Ministry of Cannabis 47 Money Tree Hydroponics 61 Mycologics 64 Nirvana 22 Odysseed.nl 66 Paradise Seeds 1 Paradise Seeds 17 Plagron 4 Plant Magic Plus 7 Procare 64 Pyramid Seeds 24 Royal Queen Seeds 52 Seedmadness 49 Seedmakers 41 Seeds of Life 18 Simplease 66 Smokin Vinyl 68 Soft Secrets Growmed 51 Southern Hydro Centre 66 SouthWest Headshops 35 Sweet Seeds 13 Sweet Seeds 29 TGC Trading 56 Top Grower Fertilizers 56 Triangle Hydroponics 68 UK GroWorks 61 UK Skunkworks 59 Urban Jungle Hydro 63 Wellingborough Hydroponics 66

Soft Secrets is published by Discover Publisher BV P.O.Box 362, 5460 AJ, Veghel, Netherlands Telephone: +31-(0)73-5498112 Fax: +31-(0)73-5479732 E-mail: uk@softsecrets.nl Editor: Cliff Cremer Contributors: Ed Rosenthal, Jorge Cervantes, Lazystrain, Dr. John Dee, Grubbycup, Little Lebowski, Guerilla Daan, The Red One, the Professor, CBG, and others Translations: Jules Marshall Comics: Jim Stewart Editorial adress: Soft Secrets, P.O. Box 17250, 1001 JG, Amsterdam, Holland, E-mail: ssuk@softsecrets.nl Advertisements: James Telephone: +44 (0)751-4273810 E-mail: james@softsecrets.nl A word from the publisher: The UK government has embarked on a process of relative liberalisation towards the use of cannabis, and cannabis activists are engaged in broadening this engagement. Several local councils and police chiefs now actively support a Dutch-style coffeeshop system as a way of separating soft and hard drugs, as it has proven to do in Holland. Whether they are finding their way to new coffeeshops or growing for their personal supply, cannabis users are a menace to no one, and are causing no discernable social problem. Some politicians and commentators are calling for the outright legalisation of marihuana. Let’s wait and see how the debate develops during a period of relative peace between all sides of the argument. In the meantime, the publisher hopes Soft Secrets will show the public a positive side to the normalisation of cannabis use, and is anxious to offer a forum to both pro- and anti-legalisation advocates. This assumes that the publisher does not necessarily agree with everything that appears in articles and advertisements. The publisher therefore distances himself explicitly from published statements or images that might give the impression that an endorsement is being made for the use or production of cannabis. Nothing from this publication may be copied or reproduced in any format without prior permission from the publisher and other copyright holders. The publisher is not responsible for the content and/or point of view of advertisements. The editors take no responsibility for unsolicited submissions.

Next issue out: April 27 2012

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