Broscience Mythbusters Archives - Page 7 of 10 - The Real Dirt with Chip Baker

Did the USDA Really Deschedule THC?

by Travis C | Jun 3, 2019 | 420, Blog, Broscience Mythbusters, Cannabis Law, Culture, Hemp, Hemp Law

The USDA did deschedule THC. Just not in the way people currently believe.

An article that has exploded within the cannabis community claims that the USDA quietly “legalized” THC last week. While this isn’t entirely wrong, it is incredibly misleading. This is because the descheduling of THC by the USDA only applies to THC in hemp.

For a quick refresher, The Farm Bill of 2018 legalized industrial hemp. This “legal” hemp is defined as any cannabis plant with a THC percentage of .3% or less. But if THC is still on the controlled substances list, how can that be?

The USDA on THC

In a memorandum submitted to the Secretary of Agriculture on May 28th, the USDA gives a legal opinion on provisions to the Farm Bill. They point out a specific amendment in the newest version of the bill that removed THC in hemp from the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

By amending the definition of marijuana to exclude hemp as defined in AMA §297A, Congress removed hemp from schedule 1 and removed it entirely from the CSA. This means hemp is no longer considered a controlled substance at all. With the amendment to exclude THC in hemp from schedule 1, Congress has also removed THC in hemp from the CSA.

Now, that last sentence from the memorandum is what people are getting excited about. When paraphrased to say, “Congress has removed THC from the CSA,” it’s easy to see why. But the key words in the entire amendment is “IN HEMP”.

THC in Hemp

This is where the entire article claiming THC is legal falls apart. Hemp has a very specific definition, that being the definition requiring a THC content of .3% or less to be considered hemp. It makes perfect sense that THC in hemp would need to be legal, in order for legal hemp to be able to contain any amount of THC. In other words, because hemp can contain up to .3% THC, that THC needs to be legal for the hemp to be legal.

Now, because of hemps legal definition pertaining to any cannabis plant with .3% THC or less, surpassing the .3% threshold disqualifies the plant as hemp. Under this legal definition, anything above .3% THC is considered psychoactive cannabis, which is still a controlled substance that is federally illegal.

Why it Matters

The article that broke this story hinted at future possibilities with this newly legal THC, like simply breeding hemp to have higher THC. And that’s what makes this article lose all credibility.

Remember when I said that to be legally considered hemp, the cannabis plant must have a THC content of .3% or less? And remember what happens when the THC content surpasses that .3%? It’s no longer hemp.

While this article suggests that the USDA basically just added a magic loophole that will now allow breeders to grow THC rich hemp, it forgets to mention that by doing so, the plant will no longer be hemp. If the author knew the origins of the cannabis plant, they would know that most of the THC-rich strains we consume today were bred to have that high content from what originally was European Hemp with almost no THC to begin with.

What this article is suggesting, is basically repeating the entire history of cannabis breeding, so we can turn the legal hemp we have now, back into illegal cannabis. If you want The Real Dirt’s legal advice, we suggest that you don’t do that. THC has been legalized in the sense that as long as it is in hemp, and does not surpass .3%, it is legal. Once it leaves the hemp, or surpasses .3%, you’re entering some dangerous territory.

But hey, you can judge for yourself! Read the full USDA Memorandum right here.

The Truth About Living Soil

by Chip Baker | May 27, 2019 | 420, Blog, Broscience Mythbusters, Growing, Science & Technology, Stranger Than Fiction

I hear two really popular tag-lines about growing cannabis these days: living soil and no till.

In reality, these terms are really just old forms of magic poking their head into the new cannabis industry. Living soil is a term defined by Elaine Ingram, our godmother to biological understanding of the soil. The problem is, all soul is living.

The idea of living soil is that you nurture the environment within the soil and develop an ecological or biological ecosystem. Now, on the surface it sounds great. But how do we get there, and what does it really mean to have “living” soil?

Origins of Living Soil Ingredients

First off, living soil is no more environmentally friendly than rockwool.

Ok, 3/4 of the people reading this just threw their phone across the room or started cursing my name. But just think about where all those organic ingredients come from. Just because they are natural ingredients doesn’t mean they’re superior.

Almost every specialty organic ingredient is strip mined. Somebody rolls onto a piece of land, sets up conveyors and starts digging a hole. They get all the gypsum or bat guano or whatever else out and maybe they fill the hole back up. Maybe they just walk away. Not the most environmentally friendly.

For instance, bat guano is one of the most loved organic ingredients by living soil farmers. However they don’t just sweep up the fresh bat poop on the floor of caves. They find areas around the planet where bats are living, and tear them apart top to bottom.

High-nitrogen guano is the freshest bat poop. This is the first product that is swept up off the bottom of the cave using large excavators and front-end loaders. As soon as the fresh bat guano is depleted the hard soil at the bottom of the cave begins to be dug up. This is the high phosphorus bat guano.

The same destructive process is used for fossilized kelp, humus, gypsum and lime, creating eco-damaging strip mines everywhere. Kind of uncool if you ask me.

Real “Living Soil”

If you have a real commitment to organic farming you would use just compost and other waste products such as fish emulsion, bonemeal, harvested kelp, and composted agricultural waste. Compost has minimal nutrition in it and only biological life like weeds, seeds and other bugs.

I have made literally millions of yards of compost. Compost is usually made from green waste materials or sawdust. The whole point is to add nitrogen to the carbon-based waste product.

When you balance the carbon-nitrogen ratio, your compost is ready. This means all the nitrogen and most of the beneficial phosphorus and potassium has also been eaten up in the composting process. Therefore compost is mostly cheap filler. The only benefits you get from it is biological life, yet you have to deal with the bugs, pests, weeds and the seeds.

Living Soil and Cannabis

Besides the environmental impacts, living soil doesn’t really work that well inside. Living soil is often full of bugs, part of what makes it “alive”. Once a critter is introduced into an indoor environment there’s little chance that you’ll be able to restore your grow room back to its bug-less inception.

With modern cannabis growing, pesticides and pest control are of the upmost importance. Pest control is a heavily regulated area within the cannabis community. Pest control is so highly regulated that the introduction of pests into your room is the first line of defense.

Living soil doesn’t yield indoors and in most cases living soil does not yield much at all. It mostly serves as a magical term used by magical people to complete their Bro-science degree.

I’m not telling you it doesn’t work, I’m saying it’s like a hole-in-one. You can try as hard as you can, practice your swing all day. But a hole-in-one is determined as much by luck as it is determined by your skill. Living soil is the same way; it’s expensive, it’s never the same twice, you have to work hard at mixing it, and then only randomly does it actually work well.

At this point if you’re still reading you’re either intrigued or you totally hate me. Here’s the truth. I’m a sucker for organic, and if it says organic on the label I generally buy it. I’m a 25 year vegetarian, and even lived off the grid for numerous years. I am a tree hugger and a conservationist.

But if you want to grow the highest quality cannabis indoors, the above ideas don’t mash. If you want to grow consistently and not crap after crap, living soil will not work for you.

If you want to believe your bro science or your brother-in-law or your “Master” grower friend that’s always putting you down, go for it. But look at the quality of all of your buds without excuses and you’ll see living soil a little differently.

Top 4 Reasons to Grow in Coco

by Travis C | May 16, 2019 | Blog, Broscience Mythbusters, Growing, Science & Technology

Coco coir is the medium you have been looking for. You just might not have known it.

It’s easy to just grab a bag of potting soil from your local grow shop and plant your cannabis plants in it. You’ll get results, they just might not be the results you were expecting.

The reality is, to grow better cannabis you need to be smarter about how you’re growing it. From the nutrients you use, to when you top your plants, to when you chop them down are all important factors. But a simple change you can make in your grow to boost your yields and quality is to just swap out your medium.

And there’s no better medium to add to your blend or as a standalone home for your plants than coco coir. Here’s the top 4 reasons you need to be using it in your grow.

Coco is Renewable

Coco coir is a byproduct. If it wasn’t for some genius discovering how great cannabis grew in it, that’s what it would have stayed. When coconuts are used for their husks and meat, in food to textiles mainly across Asia, coco coir is the loose stringy material that falls off during processing.

Instead of just throwing this byproduct out, it is recycled and batched into bags, then shipped across the world. Compared to other mediums that take hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years to collect its beneficial microorganisms and other decayed biological material, coconuts take much less time to mature.

The main source of coco coir comes from the Malaysian coconut tree, which has spread across most coasts around the world, making it the most available worldwide. After reaching full growth in 5-6 years, the coconut tree will continually produce coconuts for several more years.

While six years might seem like a long time to wait for some coconuts, it’s much faster than waiting for a peat bog to develop, and it’s much more environmentally friendly than mining for perlite and other media, considering just one coconut tree can produce over 150 coconuts in its lifetime.

Coco is pH Neutral

pH can be subtle, and also detrimental if ignored. Potting soils, peat and other organic media will either have a more basic or acidic pH based on what it contains. Because cannabis requires a specific pH acidity to grow, this has to be accounted for when you decide to use an organic medium and additional nutrients.

While it isn’t difficult to change you pH with some additives, you can avoid the hassle altogether by growing in coco. As a pH neutral medium, you have much more control over your plant’s environment. It is also easier to manage your feedings without having to account for rapid pH changes that could shock your plants.

It’s Great for Holding Moisture

Because of coco’s lightweight but still-absorbent nature, it can hold water extremely well while still maintaining its great aeration and drainage abilities. If you want to feed your plants more often while still ensuring your plants are getting as much as possible without overfeeding, coco is a great option.

When combined with other additional media like peat and perlite, you can create a high aerated blend that can still hold moisture. Or simply add coco into whatever soil blend you are using now to add some extra aeration, plus the final benefits of coco; its nutrient content.

Full of Nutrients

Think of a coconut like a giant seed. The way coconuts spread across the globe was by falling off of their tress and rolling into the ocean. After landing on a foreign beach the coconuts would shed their outer material through the journey and eventually result in the sprouting of a new tree.

The same organic, nutrient rich material that the coconut produces to sprout new trees is also in coco coir. By adding coco coir to your soil mix you get additional nutrients rich in hormones and bio-stimulants that encourage more growth. Compared to peat which is also full of nutrients, other than the obvious renewability benefits of coco, it also much stronger of a material. In fact, coco coir resists compacting and breakage to the point that it can last three-times longer than peat.

If you aren’t convinced that coco is at least a medium you need to try, then there just might be no convincing you. However if you’re already growing with coco, we’re just preaching to the choir because you know how great it is. For those of you hesitant to try it, check out this full Real Dirt Episode that takes a deep dive into everything coco.

And if you’re ready to try a bag of awesome coco-ey goodness, check out the High Porosity Blend from Growers Soil, The Real Dirt’s favorite soil blend.

Hempcrete: The Billion Dollar Building Material

by Travis C | May 10, 2019 | Blog, Broscience Mythbusters, Business, Hemp, Science & Technology

It could revolutionize home building and construction. If only people could get past the fact that it’s made from hemp.

Hemp is a nuisance. It has this way of growing into a wide variety of uses, from clothing, to paper, to medicine and yes, building materials. Suffice to say, the million-dollar corporations that run the paper industry, the textile industry and others aren’t a fan.

Some would even argue that it is hemp’s fault that cannabis ever became illegal in the first place, because it was stepping on the toes of the cotton and paper industries in the early 1900s. But nevertheless, we’ve entered a new age of hemp legalization, and the opportunities are vast.

While there is a very heavy focus in the hemp industry on CBD products, and hemp biomass for extracting that CBD, another hemp-derived product has been gaining traction. Hempcrete has been a word seldom tossed around among construction and home building circles since the mid-2000s, but it’s finally getting a little bit of the limelight (surprisingly, pun unintended).

What is Hempcrete?

What do you get when you add hemp and concrete together? Hempcrete. It isn’t quite that simple of course, as it’s not really concrete at all. It’s actually hemp and lime mixed together, and that’s really about it.

Hempcrete is made of the inner woody core of the hemp plant and a lime-based binder. It is the hemp’s higher silica value that allows it to bind well with lime. This creates a strong, lightweight product that has been used an effective and durable building material for centuries.

What makes hempcrete unique isn’t merely the fact that it contains hemp, but its potential applications in construction.

Hempcrete Applications

While there are hempcrete buildings dating back to the 6th Century that are still standing today, more modern usage has seen hempcrete utilized as insulation. Due to its light weight, it is not a standalone building material, and must be assisted with wooden beams or other types of support.

Modern day building materials are either mined from the earth or harvested from centuries old forests. Hemp can be harvested annually in perpetuity. One acre of hemp provides as much paper as 4.1 acres of trees. Considering trees take decades to grow and hemp takes about 4 months in comparison, the advantages are obvious.

Some companies have developed hempcrete bricks that account for its light weight and help it to stand on its own without added support, which is going to advance the applications of hempcrete as a building material even more.

Why Does Hempcrete Matter?

If you haven’t noticed as of late, housing isn’t getting any cheaper. This is in part due to the fact that construction costs are also increasing. Concrete needs to be made from scratch with a variety of raw materials that can become difficult to source, especially with so much demand for concrete.

With Hempcrete however, just the pure scale of its applications and potential replacements of other materials in construction will make a huge difference in the future of the housing market. Just think about the costs (and potential health risks) of insulation and how Hempcrete can completely revolutionize how we keep our homes insulated.

The passing of the Farm Bill at the end of 2018 has opened up the national hemp industry across the U.S. with untapped potential in Hempcrete. While many businesses are focused on the hemp plant or its derivatives like CBD, not too many people are capitalizing on the plant’s material applications.

There’s a lot of money to be made in the legal hemp industry, if you start working now. If you want a less saturated competitive space with the potential for widespread expansion, Hempcrete and other hemp materials could be your new avenue.

Learn more about the many applications hemp can have in a new legal industry on The Real Dirt Podcast.

Check out some of our Hempisodes here.

4 Issues Cannabis Growers Deal With

by Travis C | Mar 14, 2019 | 420, Blog, Broscience Mythbusters, Growing, Science & Technology

Growing cannabis isn’t easy. In fact, growing great cannabis consistently is difficult for most. However, the issues growers face are widespread and much more common.

New growers face a lot of the same issues when they get into cannabis cultivation. But even experienced growers can face the same issues, especially when expanding.

The fact is, the bigger your grow, the more problems you’ll likely have to deal with. From mold and mildew to clogged lines and broken timers, here are some of the most common issues growers deal with, and how to deal with them yourself.

Powdery Mildew

If you’ve been growing, you’ve probably already dealt with powdery mildew. For the lucky few that have avoided PM up to this point, powdery mildew is a fungal infection that destroys your plants.

PM thrives in warm environments, which makes your flower room a great spot to sprout its spores. The reason PM is so hated by growers is that it can’t be cured. Once your plant is infected, it must be destroyed. Then you need to spray down the rest of your plants with some fungicide to prevent the PM from spreading any further.

Luckily there are organic options for dealing with PM so you cannabis plants will still be consumable.

Bugs

As long as plants exist, so will bugs that try to eat them. When it comes to cannabis specifically, the most common bugs growers encounter are aphids, mites, thrips and white flies. There are other bugs that can be problematic if you are an outdoor grower, like grasshoppers and crickets.

When it comes to bugs like mites, that are so small you can’t see any problem until your plants are affected, it is better to be proactive in the grow. The options for pesticides and insecticides are vast, but there is a select list of products you can use on cannabis. Keep in mind that the permitted products on the list don’t apply in all states. For example, some pesticides permitted in Colorado are not permitted in California.

Irrigation Issues

Irrigation issues normally plague growers who are producing on a larger scale and must use irrigation to compensate. While a drip irrigation system is extremely cost effective and efficient in the grow, one problem can throw off your entire system.

Other issues that can arise in your irrigation are mold and mildew, which can do just as much damage to your plants.

One clog in your tubing that goes unchecked can result in the death of however many plants are down-line from that clog. And in a large scale operation, that can mean hundreds of plants. However with regular maintenance, checking your lines for clogs consistently, cleaning them out often, and timers and notification systems that you can set up, these problems can be easily avoided.

Environmental Control Issues

There is a small window of environmental settings that allows cannabis to thrive. Straying too far outside these climate requirements is detrimental for your plants. A lot of new growers will just throw some plants in their room and feed them, without much regard for the temperature or humidity of the room.

The easiest way, though an expensive option for the hobbyist or home grower, is to have an automated environmental control system. You can set up monitors that track your temperatures and humidity, and notify you when there is a fluctuation. Of course, if you don’t have a proper ventilation system or A/C and heat set up in your room, a controller won’t be of much use.

As long as plants are growing, bugs will try to eat them. Hand watering won’t always be efficient. Cold weather will damage your plants if not accounted for. These issues seem obvious, but a lot of people deal with them every day.

But you don’t need to break the bank and build out the next generation grow room to be efficient. There are plenty of DIY options for irrigation, as well as simple and easy to use pesticides that are also organic for use in cannabis. And you don’t need a high-tech environmental controller to stay on top of humidity.

If you’re willing to put the time and work in to save the money, you’ll be fine. Or if you got the change to spare, spend it wisely.

Rosin Explained: How It’s Made

by Travis C | Jan 29, 2019 | 420, Blog, Broscience Mythbusters, Culture

Rosin can be made a couple different ways. These techniques will produce vastly different results.

It carries a hefty price tag compared to other concentrates. It’s usually three times the price of your run of the mill wax and shatter. Rosin became extremely popular in 2018 as concentrates became more accessible in the legal industry.

With more people using concentrates now compared to any time in the past, many seek the cleanest option. Most concentrates are made with some type of solvent like butane or propane. Rosin is the exception.

Early Days of Rosin

The discovery of rosin is fairly recent, with widespread knowledge not becoming easily accessible to the home-extractor until around 2015. The new concentrate exploded because it is easy to make at home; all you need is a hair straightener and some parchment paper.

While pressing a nugget of cannabis between the hair straightener will get results, it is very minimal. Eventually, people invested in larger heat presses that could press large amount of cannabis for higher yields. While this was more effective, it wasn’t always the cleanest.

A problem with early rosin technology wasn’t so much the technology itself, but the product being used. Rosin is normally made from freshly harvested cannabis, that is then frozen for a period of time. This preserves the plant as close to its live state as possible, maintaining stronger terpene profiles prior to curing.

While it might have been fresh, the flower used was not always clean due to pesticides and other chemicals that aren’t flushed out prior to pressing. This is much more strictly regulated now, but many transitioned to a much more effective way of making rosin: Bubble hash.

Bubble Hash Rosin

Ice water hash being made.

Bubble hash is actually a usable concentrate on its own. While not as concentrated as waxes, shatters or live resins, bubble hash is one of the most basic and oldest methods of extraction.

Using micron filtered bags, the fresh frozen cannabis is submerged in ice water and stirred constantly to separate the trichomes from the buds. After the cannabis is separated and removed, you are left with a whitish-tan paste that eventually dries. This end product is bubble hash.

However, rosin makers in all their ingenuity discovered that you can avoid the excess plant matter that was normally pressed for rosin by using bubble hash instead. By first making bubble hash from the cannabis flower, extractors could get just what they wanted from the buds; their trichomes.

Pressing bubble hash into rosin was easier, more efficient, cleaner, and produced a superior product. This is also why rosin carries such a high price on a dispensary shelf. Not only is the cannabis extracted into bubble hash, but then extracted again for the cleanest, purest product possible.

The Future of Concentrates

Rosin and the methods and technology that has evolved with it has opened the door for many new concentrates to enter the market. The desire for “live” concentrates has grown exponentially, with more and more people willing to spend a little more for higher quality products.

Bubble hash extraction has seen growth as well, since most serious rosin makers will use bubble hash.The desire for tastier, cleaner and more cost-effective concentrates will continue to rise, and as rosin becomes more common it too will become more accessible to the average consumer.

But with everything in this industry, from flower to edibles to concentrates, you get what you pay for.