Hey, have you hunkered your guts and butched today?
Do you smoke or are you gay?
Guess what's going on to our meditators?
Dr. Earl!
So I'm here with Aaron from Astronomics.
He's growing in sealed greenhouses utilizing RDWC,
recirculating deep water culture here at Area 420.
That is something that is really new even to the experienced growers
and everybody's excited to learn a little bit more about that.
I'm glad to have you on here today, Aaron.
Thanks for having me.
Great. I was wanting to ask you what was the reason you got into growing in the first place?
Yeah, you know, we were kind of talking about this earlier,
like a little bit of a kind of just interest over the plant,
a little bit of medical.
I was, you know, as a teenager taking SSRI, anti-anxiety kind of depression medication
and switched off of that to cannabis and had a really positive experience there
and then grew in Texas back in 2009, 10, 11
and built my own RDWC system at that time after doing,
you know, first it was just kind of small rockwell cubes and buckets
and then it was tables and then built the RDWC system
and I just had really good results with it.
Took a big long break and then got back in in 2020 here in Area 420.
So you moved here just to set up your system here?
You know, it kind of evolved over time.
You know, we were bicycle taxi drivers for a long time.
It's how me and my wife met on the side of the pandemic that kind of crashed.
I was helping build a house here in Area 420.
It was actually a mushroom shaped house.
Shout out to my buddy Gary Evans if you're out there ever hear this.
But and we saw the guys, you know, pulling down harvests and, you know,
just I was telling Gary, I was like, hey, man, you know, we want to live in Colorado.
I can grow weed.
At the time we were living in Salida,
just kind of passing through on some temporary work
and we just really wanted to live here
and do the things we're passionate about, you know, mountain biking, climbing,
being in the outdoors and we just, you know, utilizing my skills
of traditional agriculture, regenerative permaculture.
We started the field and my knowledge of weed, you know,
kind of blending those two things together to try to pull a crop through.
We started that in 2020 and pulled through 1800 plants
and then another year, 3400 plants and then now we're in the greenhouses
and it's just kind of gotten, it turns into a bit of a monster, you know,
it gets a little out of control sometimes.
I don't think we ever knew we would be where we're at now.
Yeah, we were talking about that a little bit earlier
and what the difference is between growing at home for yourself
or 50 plants compared to growing commercially for something like a market out there.
It's completely different and the styles go completely different
and everybody's interested in this recirculating deep water culture,
as I say that, right?
Yeah.
So basically you're growing in buckets and you recirculate the water
and you were telling me how much water you save on this.
Could you kind of go into this grow technique and how you got into it?
For sure, yeah.
You know, when we were designing, we wanted to get out of the weather up here.
We're in one of the highest Alpine valleys in the world up here in Moffett,
7,500 feet, you know, wonderful dry weather.
It has its limitations.
Weather is unpredictable and we just had so many headaches outside
that we really wanted to get under something,
but I didn't want to do a passive greenhouse.
I wanted to do, you know, I wanted to have as much, like, you know,
stringent tight controls over the environmentals,
more so than like a water wall passive kind of air system.
I wanted to seal it up.
We ran this specific kind of HVAC system called a VRF.
So instead of compressing air, it compresses coolant
and moves that into some air movers, really efficient version of a HVAC system.
And then, of course, the buckets.
So utilizing, you know, indoor style controls,
the power of the sun primarily as our light source
in a fully sealed depth greenhouse.
And then combining that power of the sun driving the,
just the metabolic rate of these plants, it's crazy inside the buckets.
Bioavailability of deep water culture, media lists, true hydro,
under the power of the sun is pretty wild to see.
It kind of blew everybody's expectations out of the water in terms of growth rates.
And we don't veg.
We buy our clones because we don't have a mother prop right now, which is fine.
It's a lot less work for me and just one other employee.
They're pretty much running the whole thing right now,
which is 4,000 square feet, two 4,000 square foot spaces right now running.
So two systems.
The RDAWC, you know, because it is water,
sort of the way that it works is, you know, you fill the system up.
It's got aerated bubbles in it, so you're dissolving oxygen,
creating a slight bit of turbulence in the water to move the nutrients.
And then, of course, it has recirculating pumps as well.
The water is just kind of gently moving through the system with the air bubbles.
And you put bare root clones in there, and they just,
as long as your environmentals are right and they can transpire appropriately,
they just drink and eat and breathe oxygen through their roots 24-7.
They never stop doing it.
There's no dry back, just constant drinking,
which has its challenges in the environment as well.
So that being said, you're not like draining to waste, right?
Like you're putting solution into the system, and the plants drink it
and trans evaporate that moisture out as condensate.
We capture that, reuse it.
And then, you know, we're generating RO water from the deep wells here in Area 420.
It's pretty good quality water as it is,
and it's easier to keep stability in the chemistry of the water if you,
and stardom too, if you are producing RO water.
So as they drink, you just fill it in.
And you can usually use, I would say, in a traditional drain to waste,
you're probably recapturing enough that I'd say, you know,
you're using maybe 10,000 to 15,000 gallons of water for our entire 13-week cycle.
And that's for 400 buckets we have in each space.
About actually 392 to be accurate.
And so it's seven ex-exile systems for current culture, 13-gallon buckets,
one epicenter is kind of like a little brain,
and then there's 56 buckets attached to that,
and they recirculate that system, and then there's seven of those.
And yeah, that's kind of the system in a nutshell.
So you were talking about the bioavailability,
and what that means is it's able to absorb the nutrients out of the water faster, correct?
Yeah.
More efficiently.
More efficiently, yeah.
I think, you know, depending on – and the other thing that's interesting about RDWC
is kind of getting the growers that come in to kind of deprogram their understanding of like,
you know, PPM increase and how it's going to hit the plants.
We drop ours in at 150 PPM, and much hotter than that,
and it'll burn the roots and stunt them out.
And so, you know, really what you're doing is you're just keeping a finger on the pulse of the chemistry,
drop the plants in.
They're just – they're picking up exactly what they need when they need it,
and you just watch the parts per million of your food in the water.
When that drops, your pH goes up.
You can – there's a number of ways you can do it,
but essentially you're putting that food back in, bumping it slightly,
and then getting you back – so you have these parameters, right, your pH parameter.
You could be anywhere from like 5.7 to 6.3, kind of in that range,
and let that nominal drift happen as they eat.
And then as they eat, you know, you put the RO water, the food, and the pH back in,
balance the chemistry, and let them do their thing.
As long as they're in that kind of zone, and you're bumping them real slow and easy,
you know, we work on the 700 scale, and I mean, or even just EC for people,
like never above, you know, 1.2 EC, very rarely.
You don't need to push them that hard.
So for my growers, I say like, just think about it as, you know,
half of what you would do in a traditional like rock wool or, you know, cocoa,
something like that.
So you're using less water and less nutrients altogether,
so it's a lot less money that you have to invest in the beginning, correct?
Yeah, I would say the nutrient uptake is fast, but it is resource efficient in that way too.
And that's from the culture solutions line, same guys who make the buckets.
So they've, you know, tailored their nutrients regimen to, you know, RDWC.
I think any time you're doing any kind of cultivation,
it's important to understand the uptake of your system
and kind of what sort of nutrients are going to uptake well in your specific system
if you are doing hydroponics.
So you know, we were talking about how the terpenes are preserved in this system too
because it's so much easier to flush it, right?
You're not using as much of the chemical or your nutrient,
and it's easier to flush it out.
And you can use the sun UV you were talking about because it increases the terpenes.
Could you go into a little bit more about how the terpenes in your herb is?
Pretty nice, I smell them, I really like them.
And how you preserve those?
Yeah, so I mean, of course, like, Keri's always kind of king when it comes to,
you know, retaining the quality.
And then I think it starts with genetics, having good starts.
We go from TC, so you know, no viral fungal bacterial load.
I think that's really important for our system's health in general
and also the final genetic expression of whatever cultivar you're messing with.
You know, as you said, the flush, I mean, we flush probably two or three days,
and because there's no media, there's not much, there's nothing really to flush out.
You're not going to rid the plant of anything that's stored up in its cell walls.
I think the KETA is giving a really efficient and bioavailable nutrient regimen
so that the plant is using just what it needs and not storing a bunch of waste or what have you.
And then as far as like, you know, the terpenes, I think one of the things that helps that kind of,
I think a lot of people who have been smoking for a long time could probably pick out,
you know, a phenotypical expression from soil versus a pure hydro.
You know, it just kind of looked a little different.
But the sun just really throws down those UVA, UVB, and really generates this.
We're at 7,500 feet, so you know, the plant is using that light stress
and UVB stress to pump terpenes as a defense mechanism.
Our trichrome density, I think, is definitely aided by the sun,
really helping it pack on some serious protection, really.
And then, you know, beyond that, I'd say that just the sun just definitely gives the structure,
that tighter feeling than what you might see in a typical kind of indoor style pure hydro.
And then marrying that outdoor sun, the effect that like all people kind of know,
like sun-grown weed just has that kind of special oomph to it in terms of flavor.
And I think just marrying that, driving the metabolic grade of the system
and the plants in the system is just kind of a match made in heaven if you can get it right,
which we're still trying to do.
It's hard.
It's a strain-specific thing, too.
And that's another thing I wanted to talk to you about, the genetics.
That you're growing now, you said you have to get very clean genetics
because if it carries a virus in it, it can spread to all the plants,
and they grow because they're connected, correct?
Yeah, seven systems.
So 56 are connected, the buckets are connected, and flow together.
So there's, you know, you lose one, you lose 56 in some cases,
but we haven't had that much trouble yet.
Had seen a little bit of physarium coming up on the first run,
and we kind of caught it in time, was able to triage the situation,
slow the spread to finish.
But, you know, we got those from tissue culture, you know, in fresh bucket runs.
So I think a lot of people, you know, are right to be skeptic in the sense
that the learning curve and the penalty for failure is quite high
because, you know, water is an excellent place for pathogens to propagate.
So keeping it really sterile and clean is another reason why, you know,
we can't use microbial life in the bucket.
Some people might argue that, but we keep it out,
and we just make sure we have a really clean regiment from start to finish.
Jazzy, you told me you have to get your clones from a specific place
that's really specific on cleaning and make sure they're clean,
don't get infected into your growth system.
But I want to ask you, from when you started growing,
you said you replaced your other medicines with cannabis.
What were some strains that actually helped you at that moment,
and were there any that actually increased your symptoms?
Yeah, you know, growing up in Texas and not in Houston,
it's just a mixed bag, you know.
You didn't really know what you were getting.
It wasn't that kind of state.
It was Reggie's or good stuff.
Or crazy fun.
Yeah, it was just like, you know.
Reggie's are chronic.
Yeah, exactly.
And it was really just, once I started home growing, though,
as a lot of young guys do, I had somebody that was teaching me
who had extensive experience running and flipping houses and stuff.
He almost got caught, went to the oil fields, kind of hid away for a little bit.
I met him when he had just moved back to the college town I was living in,
which is the University of North Texas.
And, you know, he was just, right away, he was like,
oh, this kid's got some savings.
Let's start a grow, you know.
And I was like, well, at that time, you know,
I had been smoking in high school, just kind of whatever I could get my hands on.
Just, you know, my grades went up, surprisingly.
I started getting like better grades.
Just more interested.
And school was more interesting, turns out, on your face.
Yeah, I know.
It's not too.
I was the same way in college.
Dropped out of college pretty immediately to just grow with this guy
and then move on on my own.
But, you know, the strains that we brought to the table
originally were the Island Sweet Skunk.
And I had an NL4 Cross Morning Glory that we started with.
Just some bag seed, really, nothing crazy.
I kind of phenohunted that out and then got a production cycle going,
kind of trading off to keep it perpetual,
split the labor on both.
I was living upstairs, he was living downstairs.
And it was just super sketchy.
It was really scary.
Yeah, growing black market or a traditional market,
it is definitely, even if you're not selling it,
you're just growing for yourself, it is sketchy.
Oh, it was incredibly sketchy.
But, you know, learned a lot.
And then you get plugged into the breeding community pretty quickly.
It's weird, like, you know, in a kind of profession there
where you tell one person, two people, no, you tell two people, 12 people, no.
Really the only kind of people that you tend to associate with
or start forming a relationship with is other growers in the area.
So, you know, another pal in the same town was blowing out a house
and they were doing strawberry cough and blueberry.
And so both of those were just constantly floating around.
We didn't cycle much at the time.
It's just like we knew we had some bangers and we were just running with those.
Cloned them and cloned them and cloned them.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, I was really new to the culture at that time
and still am, like, never got crazy deep into it.
It was just something that was really interesting to me.
And when I got into cabbing and doing more bicycle taxi stuff
around the United States and Sarah was doing some park service work,
my wife was working for the National Parks, United States Forest Service,
in various places and at that time I was doing more, like, traditional agriculture,
like French biointensive permaculture kind of stuff up in California.
And so I got some traditional agricultural techniques from that
and then it kind of buried those two things to start to grow out here.
So we spoke a little bit earlier about preferred methods of consumption.
Mine is a blunt.
I don't recommend tobacco use, but I do it myself because I used to smoke cigarettes
and I substitute not as bad for my health.
And it's a crutch.
I can hold it in my hand in social situations and I have to have a beer or something
to feel like I have to have a little comfort or a blanket, comfort blanket, you know.
You said you like to smoke flour.
Yeah.
And you're a little bit of rosin.
That seems to be the consensus with everybody I've interviewed.
It seems to be a trend.
Flour seems to be the preferred method of consumption for all the breeders and growers.
And live rosin is right behind that.
Have you ever had a bad experience, like, with some really high THC content
or like a really greasy sativa or just an edible that you consume too much
and put you in a bad position?
Yeah. I mean, for sure.
I think the older I get, the less I like to stay lifted.
And the flour just helps me kind of keep the finger on the pulse
of how medicated I want to be.
You know, dabbing for a year was fine too, but just, man, your tolerance just,
you just rip the tolerance so fast.
You just need to consume so much all the time to kind of keep chasing it.
So like, yeah, really, really, I think most people here probably would agree,
but yeah, total cannabinoid profile is what I'm looking for.
Low THC, moderate THC with like a good terpene profile.
And many of these guys are all breeders and growers and connoisseurs.
It's the same kind, it's our generation of wine, you know what I mean?
It's our generation of the, it's our culture of craft beer.
It's just like people who are really sensory in the way that they interact with the world,
like just love to nerd out on cultivars and smells and pick it all apart.
And it's enjoyable, you know, and it creates this camaraderie, I think,
where just people can get excited around, you know, somebody's work,
especially in this community.
It's just like, you know, the people who are working hard to produce something special,
and then when something special does come up that kind of hits your palate,
you know, you can all be pumped together and hyped and grow it out.
And it's just been a really good experience being in this community for that reason too.
Yeah, I like the community and I like the fact that you,
earlier you mentioned your grades went up, things became more interesting, learning.
I think that's a thing with cannabis.
People become more aware, they want to interact with nature a little more,
they become interested in their health instead of other consumptions
that just makes you like alcohol or certain types of pharmaceuticals.
They just turn you into a zombie or you just don't care
and you don't, all you want to do is sit around and complain all the time.
I don't see that in this community very much and it's very uplifting, I believe.
Yeah.
To see everybody in a positive mind frame and enjoying themselves.
Yeah, I think, you know, anybody that comes out here and sees this,
and you know, by all means we are competing businesses in this, you know, quotations, free market.
But, you know, you come out here and you see all these people supporting each other
and lending each other equipment and coming out and just giving, you know, some free advice about this or that.
You know, at the end of the day, your neighbors want to see you succeed
and we want to see our neighbors succeed because we are out here shoulder to shoulder.
And just the family kind of feeling that you get from 420 is definitely an added benefit.
We live out in Crestone and we commute here about 15 minutes, so we live out there.
But, you know, like last night, my wife was off back in Austin visiting family
and I saw the train cars getting ready for tonight.
And the person came by and smoked out and just got to laugh and commiserate about the struggles of growing in a competitive market that it is right now.
Yeah, I learned a lot about rosin and extracting the rosin, pressing it, what's needed, what's not needed.
There are certain strains for it, there are certain strains not for it.
There are some breeders that breed now just for strains that will wash well and produce a nice live rosin.
That's interesting for people to know because there are strains like that.
And for people out there wanting to extract, there are certain strains you want to avoid if that's your final product.
If that's what you're wanting to do, stay away from these breeds or these strains and focus on these other ones.
And I wanted to ask you about Crestone. Crestone is what, 15 minutes down the road.
I went down for coffee this morning. It's a cool little town.
It is an international dark sky community, correct?
It is, yeah.
So what is that? I mean, there's no lights within a 15 mile radius or something?
Yeah, there's a brightness kind of ordinance, kind of a style of light that you can use.
And it is, it is, it's incredible, it's spectacular.
I've never seen the Milky Way from horizon to horizon just so bright.
Somebody was asking me if our neighbors, if our neighbors' little LED security lights were messing with our field last year.
And I was like, you know, no, it's like, you should see when it's full moon out here.
I mean, you can see clear across the valley. It's so bright.
So it is, it's a unique place. It's still kind of one of the last vestiges of Colorado that feels, it's funny.
You come out here for 420 and it just, you really do feel like pioneer spirit in your bones, you know.
You're just like out here just trying to hold onto a slice of heaven any way you can.
And it is, it's nice out here for sure.
Yes, I totally agree.
I really appreciate you coming on the show, Aaron, and talking about your system.
It's highly interesting. I want to have you on again sometime in the future and we'll talk a little bit more about that.
But let's go out here and enjoy the rest of this festival here and get something to eat.
Check out some more of this fresh harvest that's all around.
Yeah, man. Well, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
You're welcome. Thank you.
Would you like to grow your own cannabis at home? Are you able to now because it's legal in your state?
Are you intimidated by the prices of seeds and worry if you can't even get the seeds to germinate?
Are you worried it may be a waste of money and time to even try?
This is how I felt when I first started growing for myself.
Hundreds of dollars were spent and wasted because of my inexperience.
Some of them got overwatered. Some of them were burnt by hot soil.
Some didn't have the right environment and conditions to survive.
If this is the case and you are hesitating to purchase seeds, for a limited time,
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This is a great chance for all those who are intimidated by the prices
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Make sure to take advantage of these seed prices while they last because they won't last long.
And now back to the show.
Welcome back everyone. I am here with Patty Kelbert of Galactic Cultivations
and we are going to talk about her grow down here in Moffat down in area 420
some of her growth styles and why she got into smoking and why she got into breeding or why she got into growing.
Welcome Patty, how are you today?
I'm good, thank you.
We are going to talk to people today and discuss why you got into smoking.
Okay, well. Or consuming I should say. I don't want to say you started smoking at first.
Did you maybe started with edibles?
Well of course it all started socially. I'm 6 years old now so I would say probably around 16, 17 years old
smoking in the, you know, out in the school yard with the kids in the smoking area
and there's passing around some joints and I'm like, oh this stuff is pretty good.
And as I got older, stopped for a while when I had my family and stuff
but then realized how I really needed it as I got older and now I have Parkinson's.
My mom passed away at Parkinson's and it really does help with Parkinson's.
So I really like it and I smoke a lot actually.
What are some of the symptoms of Parkinson's? I'm not 100% familiar with that.
I know it involves trembling maybe.
Yes, it has. Sometimes it can be tremors, sometimes not.
It kind of depends where it lodges in your brain and you know, you lose memory,
you lose a lot of different things, mostly in your hands.
I'm having a lot of little problems with my hands right now so just smoking definitely helps with that.
Where are you originally from?
I'm originally from New York and then my family had a restaurant.
We moved to Florida when I was 14 and we started a restaurant there and we're very successful
and we ended up selling it about 7 years ago.
And my daughter got into the marijuana industry here in Colorado.
She opened up a grow in Gunnison and then a dispensary.
And we worked for her, me and my husband, and we helped her along with her business and just kind of learned.
We experimented in Colorado when we sold our business and came out here and bought property
and had a little garden outside and we realized we really enjoyed growing
and you know, really had a purpose in getting into the different strains
and you know, just learning all about it and realizing we can actually really grow.
So yeah, I started smoking at 17 or 16, I think the same way, but not too much until I got into college
because I played a lot of sports and just wasn't accessible.
And was it easily accessible to you in New York? Were you in New York City or were you upstate New York?
No, I was actually 14 when we moved to Florida. So I was in Florida when I started consuming.
And you know, it was very accessible because everybody was growing it.
We called it ditch weed because we would grow it in the ditches where it could be hidden.
Creeper, it was something from Florida that we heard of in West Virginia, that's where I'm from.
We heard a creeper, oh it's a Florida thing.
Yeah, we called it just ditch weeds or regs. It had a lot of seeds in it.
And it was very accessible. People would just, you know, partly, I hardly ever bought it.
I didn't end up having to buy it until I was like in my 20s.
But you had to hide it though, right?
You did have to hide it. It was very illegal in Florida and of course you had to be very careful.
Of course, never drove with it, just you know, had it at home.
And then, you know, about, I'd say probably about 10 years ago, I ran into a person and she just, you know, said,
hey, you need to try this. She said it will help you with your Parkinson's, it will help you with everything.
Mentally, I just had lost my father. He had heart problems and passed away.
And I was so depressed and they wanted to give me any depressants.
And I said, no, I just need some weed because I remember that helping me in the past.
I know a lot of people in that situation where I'm from would rely on alcohol and that's just a downward spiral of depression.
Exactly.
And I know I've drank a lot and I've been around a lot of drinking and smoking weed is a positive impact on most people's outlook on life.
Yes, it is. It is.
And compassion and it just makes you feel more positive as a person.
And it really shows. Everybody here in this community, I feel that.
And going back to smoking or not smoking, what is the preferred method of consumption for you?
What give you most relief for your Parkinson's?
Well, you know, I'm just like an old timer. So I really love my joints.
I could say I'm a weed consoer. The strains I picked to grow here in area 420, I have grown technically six strains,
but I dabbled in a few other strains just to experiment how they do in this area.
Some are known for Southern climates, Columbia and all that.
But I said, you know, I'm just going to give it a try, see how it grows here.
It unfortunately did not grow very well, but it did grow. You know, I'm very happy.
My favorite weed of all time is the Golden Goat. I just really, it's a sativa.
It's one of the, you know, pure sativas, I think, in my heart. It's not a hybrid, you know.
And also it just really helps me get me going in the morning, gives me energy,
and it really helps with my tremors and stuff with Parkinson's.
But that's my favorite one for the day. And at night I kind of like gelato cake.
That seems to be my indica kind of going, you know, we've had that strain for a long time.
And just really like that. And then I actually tried some seeds this year for the first time.
Kind of got forced into seeds, unfortunately. But anyway, to make a long story short, I'm glad I did.
We started our seeds in June, and they ended up to be just beautiful.
They were like six foot tall and just loaded. And they came from Matt from Brainstrap here in area 420,
the flower factory. They were his seeds. And I was really lucky. I had to sex them.
That was a lot of big challenge. Took a long time to get all the males out of there.
But it was a great experience to learn about seeds, because we've really never done seeds before.
And seeds we have done were feminized. So these were not feminized.
But they were so strong and just great. It was a great experience.
So your grow is completely outdoors, under sun, no greenhouse?
It is. No, we have one greenhouse. But we ended up putting the last of the seeds in there,
because like I said, we started them in June. So by the time we got all the males out of there,
we're now into August. And I was getting a little worried. And I said, you know what?
We're just leaving them in here. And the rest were outside. So we had 1800 total.
We had 400, about 300 in the greenhouse. And 1700 outside.
And you worked with Build-A-Soil to help you? I did.
To regenerate your soil, right? Yes, I did.
Is this your first year in the soil? Yes, yes. It was the first time growing.
Our soil was from Build-A-Soil, as well as our nutrients. So I'm hoping they test well.
Because nobody else really does Build-A-Soil out here that I know of.
I think there is one other grower, not in Area 420, but in the St. Louis Valley.
He is a Build-A-Soil grower. But yeah, I felt really confident of the organic.
We mended our soil with all good stuff. Worm castings and all different kinds of,
I can't even think off the top of my head. I'm sorry.
Did you go the vegan route with them? Yes, I did.
I know they got the vegan supply, got a bag of nutrients for them.
Yes, yes. They were. We did use some pure fish. I call it the fish guts.
I don't know what it was. It was like a fish oil.
Fish it? Yeah, and they loved it. The plants just loved that stuff.
And of course molasses. It's a lot of molasses. Molasses is great for growing.
It really feeds the plants. They enjoy it. I think that's why all my wheat smells so sweet.
Yeah, the brieks, it does help with the uptake where it helps to break down the nutrients
so they can absorb it quickly. Exactly, exactly.
And I love the idea of the living soil. So you started growing the strains that you liked
because you wanted to help medicate yourself. Exactly.
And the golden goat is a great example. I forgot about that one, but that's a good one
that people do for a day time. My roommate smoked it, gets to work, mechanic goes at it.
The other one, gelato cake, is one I discovered here in Colorado that I fell in love with
and I really liked a lot. I'm actually growing that one now.
I have that one for myself. That's going to be in my medical cabinet all the time.
Exactly, they're really good strains.
What happened? You were going with Cloned and did you lose it because of the weather?
Did you have a bad day?
I hired somebody to help me that he admitted to me. I'm really not a grower.
So he missed some steps like acclimating the plants from the clones out into the sun.
You just can't throw them out. You have to acclimate them.
So you start them in either a greenhouse or a shaded area and as they grow they get used to the sun
and then slowly plant them in the ground and we kind of miss that step.
So I had my clones put them outside because we're like an outdoor grower.
We have no indoors. Everything's out.
The greenhouse wasn't started yet. Actually my greenhouse is all open.
The only thing it has is a hood over the top but the ends are open and the doors roll up.
So it's like a wind tunnel.
Yeah, but to be honest with you I think just growing outdoors is best because the rain washes them
and it's just beautiful. When they're in that greenhouse the wind blows through
and then you get all kinds of stuff in there and I think the plants, just the ones outside to me,
are just much healthier.
Well shout out to Growcast. We went to a living soil class with them
and I would recommend you get in touch with them and learn about their living soil
and regenerating it in some of their manners.
And you will have some of the biggest trees out here.
That's what I'm going for.
And hit Matt's advice of maybe planting some seeds in the ground this fall before the frost
and then those taproots will go in and you can weed out those males a little bit sooner
and the wind will not knock your plants over here.
Within a couple years you keep your genes and genetics that go good here
and you're going to have some mind. I've seen your trees and they look pretty impressive for first year.
So Buildus Oil did a good job with you.
I think they did. I just wish they had more knowledge.
I called them a few times. I had questions.
I think they could be a little bit more knowledgeable. So shout out to Buildus Oil.
I think you're dabbling in the marijuana industry.
I know you have been doing it for a long time.
But just maybe giving the growers a little bit like we're not sure what we're feeding.
I shouldn't say we're not sure what we're feeding. We know we're feeding.
But just doing different, like for bloom and flower.
When you go into a grow store you see all this stuff and you're like, what the heck?
There's 20 different thousands of nutrients out there.
There are some organic ones in there that are very good as well.
But if you run out of something and here you're stranded and you're like,
what can I just give a little bit of boost?
I feel like my buds aren't maybe big enough or hard enough.
They're not really, I just felt like I could have got a little bit more help from them.
And then we got this horrible grasshopper, locust, whatever cloud that came into Area 420.
Everybody was freaking out. What do we do with our, they're eating our plants, they're on our buds.
So that was kind of scary for me just growing outdoors and coming from an indoor environment
where you control everything and outdoor you can't control anything.
You never know what's going to happen. So you're always worried.
So that was a little troublesome through the summer.
But when the grasshoppers came, I didn't freak out. I just looked around.
I did call Bill to say, hey, is there an organic remedy for a pesticide or something?
I really don't put anything on my plants. They're flowering now.
And they couldn't tell me anything. Oh, just walk around and pick them off.
Well, you know, I have 1,800 plants. Am I going to pick all these off every plant?
So it was kind of frustrating. But I kind of every morning I walked through my watering routine
and check and pick them off. And I said, you know, they're really not eating much.
So I'm just going to let them be. You know, I just I'm not going to put anything on my plants.
So that's what I ended up doing. And sure enough, time went on. They started to diminish.
Bugs, the birds came, started eating them. And yeah, so it was fine.
Well, nature will keep itself in check. Exactly.
If you do it outdoors like that, that's the that's the living soil.
I'll try to do living soil indoors because I'm an indoor grower and trying to recreate outdoors indoors.
It's kind of hard because you don't have birds.
There's certain aspects you just can't get in life will keep itself in check.
But like I said, Grokas will have some good information about even getting rid of those or not getting rid of them.
And it's how to direct them somewhere else. Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. And sometimes it's not bad.
I mean, we've talked to many people that the bugs can actually trigger parts of the plant mechanism to create more terpenes,
which makes it stronger. And sometimes I had a friend who would grow outdoors
and the chickens would eat the bottoms of the plants off and it would just make the tops bigger.
It's like it's a natural part of they did some trimming for you. They pruned up for you.
Exactly. And that's kind of what the grasshoppers were doing. They were they were just eating the leaves.
They weren't eating the bud or they didn't even disturb the bud at all.
So it didn't bother me. They read a few leaves.
There's natural defoliation for you. You didn't have to hire another worker to come out and help you out.
And I think when you grow organically, it just seems the plants were so much hardier.
They could take the wind. I never even trellised them.
You know, I just had one stake in the ground by them to start them off as young.
And that stake stayed with them all the way through the harvest season.
So now, you know, all my plants are harvested and I'm drying and, you know, I'm looking at my bud and it's done pretty good.
I'm very proud of it. Yeah. Sticky as can be.
So with Bilda soil, I know Miles, fermented extracts works with Bilda soil and he wanted to come down here today, but he's not here.
That's another person I'd recommend. OK, those extracts from it.
That's the future of growing. If you want to go as natural as possible outdoors. Yeah.
The extracts fermented. That is the route that a lot of people go out to where I'm trying to move into and learn myself.
And it's way more natural.
There's ways to get some of those pests, IPO management to keep them off of your plants.
Like I said, it doesn't kill them. It just pushes them somewhere else.
So they don't bother yours or you add some plants aside that they like more.
So they eat those instead of your plants. Yes, exactly.
That's it. To change their environment. Like I had an old school grower tell me, you know, the thing about bugs are you have to you have to, you know, shake their environment up because they like a special environment.
So if they like a driver might well, maybe a little bit more wet, you know, a little bit more this little bit more that.
So that kind of, you know, did help a little bit, too.
So, yeah, you just have to play around with it. But I really am happy with the Bilda soil and I love all their their nutrient program.
I think I will stick with it for next year.
Well, hey, fatty, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing all the information with you is highly enlightening and I appreciate it a lot.
Let's get back out there and mingle with some people and sounds good. Enjoy the rest of this harvest festival.
OK, let's do it. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you.
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And now back to our show. Welcome back, everyone.
I'm here with Mike Young and he's working over at Ferrari Farms down here in area for 20 right now.
And we were talking about what he got her, how he got into consuming cannabis.
Can you tell the people out here how you got into consuming cannabis and where you were at? Sure.
Thanks for having me. I started young just with friends, but saw the medical benefits early, started developing a passion as I would grow small seeds out of bags of mid grade stuff that I got downtown in Florida.
Saw how interesting the plant was and how much I enjoyed smoking it regularly and feel that I truly have a better quality of life with it than without it ever since then than a regular smoker for over 12 years and haven't had any health issues and love it and recommend it to everybody for sure.
Yes. So you moved to Colorado just because of the legalities in Florida and you want to feel more comfortable out here, just like I did. Exactly. And did you grow while you were in Florida or did you wait till you got out of here?
I did a little bit as scary as it was. I didn't go on any kind of good scale of it.
When I heard that you could move out to Denver and get a medical license or the plant count and comfortably do it in a small apartment, even I moved right away, dropped out of college in Florida.
And after taking horticulture classes, I just decided to not work in Florida at all and take a chance out here and it was the best thing I ever did.
Denver was great with the laws, letting you grow at home and I just prefer to do that rather than buy from the stores.
Yeah. So what are some of the strengths that you preferred to grow and helped you out?
Originally I had older names like Blue Dream, Banana Kush, LA Confidential, stuff that you don't see in regular circulation now, but stuff that was very hardy at the time, very resistant to mildew and mold and pests.
Sour diesels and older strains are not as popular, but it seems like all the mixes that are derived from those originally anyways and I still see the names around in the mixes.
Yeah, so you work over here at Warrior Farms, or not Warrior Farms, I'm sorry, Ferrari Farms.
And what are some of the strains you guys are growing over there?
Well for now we're just in construction. Another place I'm working has stuff like white truffle, runts, a lot of mixes of Gorilla Glue.
I've seen that Gorilla Glue number four and a bunch of mixes of that this past year being really popular, even longer than that.
We're at home, I'm growing stuff from heart and soil from bread, stuff like minty mountain mist and Sweet Dreams. Very excited to have some new flavors to share with them.
Yeah, so it's a totally different game when you're growing commercial open end for yourself, right?
I'd say so. The commercial side of it really just needs an efficient production. There is the craftsmanship of it and getting good product, but nothing like having a small batch at home that you can really baby and appreciate because you know you're going to consume it yourself and have it as a personal thing rather than trying to sell it.
I love that connection to the home grow.
Yeah, it's one of the main reasons that I continue to grow is because I can grow the strains that I like and keep them alive whereas on the commercial scale here it seems to change every six months you have like a whole different list of names out there and it's hard to find some of those older names and strains which people really want.
So I see there's a big push for that in the cannabis community to bring back those old strains.
I'd like to see it. I learned most of what I know in the growing side of it from these hardy resilient strains and we didn't have to baby them as much at the time of growing in every type of grow medium hydroponic system and indoor outdoor and some of the older strangers.
They put these new ones to shame. They're so much stronger and kind of miss that.
What's your preferred method at your house or for yourself personally.
I use a pro mix. Right now I have five gallon pots. It's real easy and quick to turn over, do a little perlite at the bottom, start on a 20 and 4, 20 on and 4 off in the light slowly work into flowering after a couple months, vegem a little longer than normal just as I have the time and have a little more yield at the end of it.
I probably do four full rotations a year at home with my little garage.
Yeah, I do about four myself and that's the thing you can let them go a little bit further too. So that changes the terpene profiles and it really changes the overall cannabinoid spectrum too and you can definitely tell the difference.
Oh yeah. You can assume it. A lot of the cannabis strains on the commercial market are fast producing, bulky, look good, but that doesn't mean it's always going to make you feel the best.
That's right. Yeah, some of the stronger terpene smells really do take more time to develop. They don't have that seven week finish like some of the more purple, colorful strains have. But if you can take the time and have the space and rotation it's nice to give it that extra bit.
So you are in the process of getting your own facility running correct.
I'm working towards a partnership with the current owners. I'm their contractor as of now doing the construction side soon to be a large indoor grow facility 15,000 square feet in phase two over there.
It'll be all on sliding trays.
We'll have something like 500 lights that are all 630 watts ceramic metal halides. That'll be a pretty large production. We're just waiting on stuff like power and water and to be finished with the framing and instruction inspections and also definitely some time.
But by beginning of next year there'll be plants in the building.
Nice. That sounds good. What are some of the strains that you plan on running there? Are you going to be forced to run some strains that are available or do you plan on running some that you like from your past?
Well, the owners are very generous in letting me do most of the recommendation. I'd like to do some of the local strains that have been popular through guys like BrainStrap and Heart and Soil like I'm growing at home.
But being on such a large scale we do have to see what's popular in the stores and selling in bulk just to keep up because it'll be such large batches that we kind of have to work with the times and do these popular trendy strains and just keep up with that.
It's just what the customers want in the stores.
Yeah, it's a whole different market. The market here changed a little while ago because they changed the law where medical patients can only buy eight grams of concentrate and they used to be able to buy up to 28 or more.
That's right. So the sales of medical and concentrates has almost went cut in half.
And now that that need for that we to extract is not not there. That's right. You got to look out for different avenues.
That's guys backup plan or you know a lot of the main plans to is going to extract and you know having these these little cuts like that affect them greatly if they're not going to flower and relying on some kind of extraction process it needs to be able to be purchased
like it was and everybody get as much as they want because they're just a few grams. The price goes up.
You know the customer is losing too. So it doesn't really make sense that they only have to buy a small amount of time.
Yeah. So you actually help other other people to put their grows together here or build their structures.
I have I've done some shipping containers with lucky seven. I've also worked part time there.
My wife and I have done some harvest work and plant maintenance work regularly some spraying and transplanting.
There's been a few places that have needed helps in the two years that we've worked here. So it's nice to meet a lot of people.
No regards gardens moved in next to us recently and they have a spot here in phase one and looking forward to seeing new people like that start up next year.
It'll be a big wave of new people that have moved in these past few months. Yeah. And that's just going to be more common. I believe so.
Are there any strains that you avoid growing at home or you would never grow on a commercial scare.
Yeah. Why. It's tough to say I've had strains that I've had multiple phenotypes of like an L.A.
confidential was a great example. Some of them were great but some of them were so prone to just having mildew no matter what.
I would have preventative methods and good room conditions plants right next to it of a different strain would be totally fine.
But this plant in particular would always have something on it and I eventually stopped growing it.
It's not that I have anything against it because the phenome that was resilient was great product.
I've seen some clones from clones eventually deteriorate in their quality and their resilience.
Lately these past couple of years I've been starting from seed starting new moms and having that first or second generation just a lot more production and a lot more hearty for sure.
I think that's a big movement to the cannabis community. A lot more growers are moving to seeds to avoid viral late in the year.
Or pathogens that pass along powdery mildew. They don't want to get a cut or they they they like one part of the plant but not another.
So they're mixing their own together to come up with their own medicine and just it's fun.
It's cool to see. I really like it. This is an inspiring area for sure.
It's fun. I kind of like compared to having dogs but you don't have to take care of them like a kid.
But when you breed them you got a bunch of seeds you get this a whole you get to pick your studs you get to pick your female you like and then you can breed them and come up with their own breeding.
I've had some weird mutants recently in the last batch of seeds. I started I had 40 or so from heart and soil and only two of them didn't pop.
And one of them came up in this kind of triploid growth where I think that's the right term where instead of a symmetrical to growth it's got a three initial growth of the cotyledons and the secondary stages.
It looks a little squirrely but from a few people have told me that if that's a male that'd be really good to breed because they might not be heavy yielders but that's where they get a lot of that stink from is some of these cool males that are almost a mutant plant.
So I heard some I had one recently too is a CBG plant mad dog 2020 or something like that I had the trifloid and I looked it up. Triploid.
I can't remember if that was a good example of it is something genetically like a mutation with the chromosomes I believe but some with the trifloid if you have a one, a female it is going to be sterile of a trifloid female I don't know about a male.
Interesting. If the, if the pollen but they if you can get a, it's going to be something for the future. I heard for outdoor growing, there's a great season here for outdoors there wasn't many seeds from what I heard.
Yeah, but since it's a sterile plant, it will prevent the pile pollination cross pollination from other grows, that'd be a good good genetic trait to pass on.
Is it a trifle you might want to hold on to just for that just to see if if it is true and it is a trifle aid or if it's just a three plant which is a different term because somebody told me it wasn't a trifle aid but I haven't had another.
I haven't had time to go research it is but it's a good, good topic for to research or for somebody that is the three leaf, instead of two, is it a trifle or is it a different term and the trifle it is the only detectable through some type of gene analysis or tissue, I'm not sure.
Yeah, there's definitely something some other word I can't recall for it. The one I have is not a very pretty growth the leaves are misshapen and there's some discoloration on it that just every other plant is healthy but this one just even though it has that interesting growth, I know you have some freak show in there.
Yeah, and his collection maybe some freak show got in there and get it all messed up. Maybe that's a good name for it. Yeah, there's a freak show out there which has these really highly serrated leaves on it and just doesn't look like a cannabis plant at all.
I think I saw almost looks like a fern or something. Yeah.
Yeah, some people are mixing it I saw him post a picture of it the other day. That's cool. It's pretty wild. So, what's the future. You said you're getting your grow going and what else would you like to say up there.
I've really enjoyed being out here. This is our second year and keep meeting more friends and I love the skiing close by and the hot springs around and having this community of smokers and growers it just makes it that much sweeter.
It's in the middle of nowhere but it's kind of a diamond in the rough out here and we've been loving it ever since the Holly. Yeah, we recommend I've been done people it's kind of like the field of dreams for cannabis consumers.
If you build it, they will come, people are coming and that's why I'm down here trying to help promote it. Yeah, turn it into that cannabis Mecca, where we can feel comfortable and not to worry about.
Piss tests or yeah, it will be that there's so many more job opportunities coming in the next year with all the new grows. Everybody works hard and tears up and they'll need twice as many employees, and if we get a little housing out here I can really see this area being much more popular than it is now so these big parties are great next year we'll have a lot more of these I'm sure.
All right, yeah, I highly appreciate you coming on the show today sharing your knowledge and information. I wish you all the best of luck with your grow. It's a competitive market out there right now.
It is thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Those rumors that you're her.
That's the saddest point.