fbpx
Is the Oklahoma cannabis market to blame for the crashing industry? Ft. Jessica Baker

Is the Oklahoma cannabis market to blame for the crashing industry? Ft. Jessica Baker

Oklahoma cannabis market

Anybody who is operating in the legal cannabis industry is likely feeling the strain of a seemingly shrinking market. Despite the massive growth of the national cannabis industry thanks to legalization in multiple states, the increased production of cannabis is tanking prices.

Cultivators and business owners are beginning to wonder if the industry is still profitable for small operators.

Jessica Baker owns and operates Clone City in Oklahoma City. She provides high quality clones to cultivations across the state, and has definitely noticed the industry beginning to shrink there.

Oklahoma has been the red-headed step child of the cannabis industry since it legalized medical cannabis in 2018. What started as a highly unrestricted industry that exploded into the largest cannabis market in the country in just two years, has turned into an industry that is rapidly shrinking.

Oklahoma has been, you know, an interesting market to say the least when we first got there, you know, three plus years ago, it was a very immature market in terms of the knowledge surrounding cannabis was pretty limited to you know, the little bit of, of knowledge that people have gained over the years from, you know, the private market, which is always amazing, but the strain names and things like that really weren’t, hadn’t quite hit Oklahoma yet. But now, you know, it is pretty much you’re hearing the same things as you’re here in Colorado and California in terms of growth techniques, terminology, and cultivars that are now popular in Oklahoma. So I feel like I’ve really seen that change and people get really enthusiastic about cannabis.

According to Jessica, the Oklahoma cannabis market has evolved to more or less replicate the Colorado and California cannabis industries, despite only being available to medical patients. However with easy access to a patient card and no cap on cannabis business licenses until very recently, the Oklahoma cannabis market quickly saw the consequences.

An oversupply of cannabis has led to the price per pound tanking across the country. While Oklahoma has been getting a lot of attention recently for the state’s efforts to restrict future licensing and regulate the industry more strictly, it is by no means the only state with the issue.

Many blamed Oklahoma when the industry began tanking following the COVID pandemic. However the criticism typically fails to account for the pandemic and the impacts that had on the industry as a whole.

With restricted trade and major impacts to the supply chain, inputs needed to cultivate cannabis at a commercial scale went up in price, if they were available at all. Without raising their prices to match their costs, many cannabis businesses began operating at a loss just to stay competitive with larger commercial competitors.

I think it has dropped nationally, because there’s just so much cannabis being grown and a lot of states that never were legally allowed to grow before. And I think with metric or not, I think there are still ways that people are probably putting that on the private market, even though they’re meant for the public market. But I think there’s just a glut and cannabis.

Overproduction is not an issue exclusive to Oklahoma. Oregon’s legal cannabis industry faced serious issues early on due to similar regulation. A lack of restrictions on who could grow cannabis led to a massive oversupply of cannabis, which dropped the price per pound drastically.

The state eventually passed a law that would allow the export of Oregon cannabis to neighbor states. However no neighbor states have passed a similar law yet, making it irrelevant. Eventually the market consolidated as grow operations could no longer afford the overhead costs with such a low profit.

It isn’t just overproduction impacting the current cannabis market either. Inflation, high gas prices and multiple other factors that impact individuals has resulted in less people purchasing cannabis recreationally.

 If gas is $5 a gallon, and you have to make a choice between buying your eighth or ounce for the week, or continue to put gas in your car to get to work and everywhere else you’re going, then you may have to sacrifice by spending less on cannabis.

For example, Colorado has seen a 30%+ decrease in cannabis sales since July 2020, the peak of the pandemic. While at the time many people had more disposable income thanks to stimulus checks and saving from staying inside, that has changed drastically.

When looking at the industry as a whole, it is hard to conclude that Oklahoma is solely to blame. Just about every legal cannabis market in the country has seen a drastic drop in price per pound.

As consumer purchases decrease, so does distributor purchases. With growers sitting on a massive stock of cannabis product from 2021 thinking the pandemic boost would last, there is an oversupply of product sitting in storage.

The longer it sits, the less it is worth.

I mean, people have already gone out of business, and it’s just the nature of business. 100% of all businesses don’t survive in any industry. So especially in a boom and bust scenario, and with the banking issues we have and the tax issues. You know, it’s not simple.

Listen to the latest episode of The Real Dirt with Chip Baker to hear more about how the Oklahoma cannabis market has been impacted along with analyses of other state markets, and what it all means for the future of the industry!

Transcript:

Chip  

This is Chip Baker with The Real Dirt podcast. We’re back again. Wow. It’s been a long time since we put out an episode. But we got a lot of important things going on in the cannabis industry and we felt like this was the perfect time to get back into it. 

You know, today it is July 10 2022. I’m in Denver, Colorado. We’ve been spending time all over the country, but primarily in Oklahoma this past year. And it seems that the state of the cannabis union is really in flux right now. You know, with the economy with inflation. With post COVID You know, structure of business and in life, the cannabis industry is really taking a turn. Today I have Jessica Baker as my guest. Jessica owns and operates a series of cannabis businesses in Oklahoma. Welcome, Jessica. 

Jessica  

Thank you for having me on the show, Chip. Always a pleasure to talk to you by cannabis and cannabis business. 

Chip  

Just to introduce yourself a little bit. I know you’ve been on the show before. And many people know you as my wife, but you are a incredible entrepreneur and educator. And let’s just talk about Jessica for one song moment. Okay, great. 

Jessica  

Thank you for the introduction. I am your wife gladly. But I’m also an acupuncturist for the last 15 years and a Western herbalist for the last, you know, two decades plus, so I have well versed in, you know, Chinese medicine and Western herbalism. And also I own several cannabis businesses. I’ve been growing medical cannabis since 1997. Back in the good old days, and so probably grown a lot of different ways. Not every way. But I’ve definitely dabbled in growing in multiple different modalities. And I own a clone nursery in Oklahoma City, as well as cultivation and processing facility. And so we’re kind of do a little bit of everything. And yeah, I love cannabis. And I love your show. Well, thanks, Jessica. And you know, I really appreciate all the women weed warriors out there, you know, this industry is is filled with dudes and dudes often try to dominate, uh, you know, whatever we’re involved with. That’s just the dude power. But, you know, we know so many women, cultivators, women, extractors, women, business owners, and the you know, I get to see it throughout the industry. I see. Maybe you call it discrimination against women business owners, just as we see it in the rest of society. But man, you know, if if the women that you know, in the cannabis industry, I guarantee you, they’re working twice as hard as the dude right next to them. And if you have a problem, you should go like maybe chat with the women that you know, in the cannabis industry and see how they feel about what’s going on. Because often they do have a different perspective than our dude oriented industry.

Bro science. 

Chip  

It is bro science. But yeah, we’re here today to talk about the cannabis industry. Boy, it is in a tailspin. Every aspect of the cannabis industry from the manufacturers and the suppliers of all the equipment, transportation, all the cultivators, the distributors, the the grocery stores, the dispensaries, like everybody is really filling this economic depression right now. Jessica, how has it been an Oklahoma what’s going on there? 

Jessica  

Oklahoma has been, you know, an interesting market to say the least when we first got there, you know, three plus years ago, it was a very immature market in terms of the knowledge surrounding cannabis was pretty limited to you know, the little bit of, of knowledge that people have gained over the years from, you know, the private market, which is always amazing, but the strain names and things like that really weren’t, hadn’t quite hit Oklahoma yet. But now, you know, it is pretty much you’re hearing the same things as you’re here in Colorado and California in terms of growth techniques, terminology, and cultivars that are now popular in Oklahoma. So I feel like I’ve really seen that change and people get really enthusiastic about cannabis. And so you know, the last year we’ve definitely seen especially at the clone nursery, a lot of the big cultivators aren’t buying clones, like they have been the two years previously. A lot of people that were maybe larger Cole debaters came in and bought less clones, because their facilities that were 1020 30,000 square feet, they, maybe they didn’t have the knowledge to pull off that large of a grow at the very beginning. So they were like, Hey, I’m going to scale back, learn a little bit more about it. And then I can always scale up again in the future. And then I know people who, unfortunately, you know, maybe they had a 401k They took out or some early retirement or some other personal investment to invest in cannabis, and it didn’t work out for them. And now they are cultivating anymore, either their want to sell their licence, or they are just kind of letting it stay dormant for a little bit.

Chip  

Tell us about like, what you feel about the number of cultivators that in Oklahoma that are cultivating this year, or number of businesses that maybe have like gone out of business or just aren’t operating? 

Jessica  

Well, I only know a handful of those, but I can say it’s all across the board, from dispensaries to processors to cultivators, I’ve heard a little bit from all of those sectors, saying that they’re they’re taking a break, or that they just downright are going back to their job at the, you know, do an oil rigging or we know whatever it is, I don’t think that’s the proper terminology. But you know, they’ve just decided they’re gonna go back to what they were doing before, right, or what they never stopped doing, you know, and they were doing cannabis on the side. And so, yeah, it has been significant. I know that, you know, where we’ve heard stories about when metric came into, into law at the end of May, that a lot of people never signed up for metric that actually had a licence. And so maybe they were going to do that later. Or maybe they just decided, well, I’m out now that there’s more regulation and work to be done to you know, how to leave or business

Chip  

To catch up on in Oklahoma. They’ve had a series, one, if you don’t know really was a free for all until recently on getting licenced and started cultivation in Oklahoma. But in the past couple of months, we’ve had a series of things going on between changes in the law, moratoriums and the licences requirements for metric tiered licencing. And it has reduced the number of people in the industry, right? Some people just didn’t want to deal with it, or they were barely making any enough revenue to support their hobby, so to speak.

Jessica  

Yeah. And like, oh, MMA, the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana marijuana advisory or stands for something like that. We’ve had a couple of inspections. Now it took it took a couple years or more, but we finally have been starting to get inspected. And our inspectors are telling us that, you know, they’re going to places that are not operational. So a lot of places still have a licence, but they’re not operating. 

Chip  

And we haven’t touched on to the elephant in the room, but it is about the decrease in price.

Jessica  

Oh, 100%. It has to do with also the decrease in profit margins for people. Right.

Chip  

Right. Right. Yeah. You know, it’s not just Oklahoma, across the country, people are having these, you know, this, this decrease in cost per pound cost per gramme from the wholesaler to the distributors to the manufacturers. Everybody has their theory on why you think this is. And some people say it’s just simply supply and demand. I believe it goes a little bit deeper than that. But why do you think the national price of cannabis has gone? So it has dropped so much? And why do you think it’s dropped so much in Oklahoma?

Jessica  

I think it has dropped nationally, because there’s just so much cannabis being grown and a lot of states that never were legally allowed to grow before. And I think with metric or not, I think there are still ways that people are probably putting that on the private market, even though they’re meant for the public market. But I think there’s just a glut and cannabis. I know people regulated market, the regulated market, right. So I know that there’s a glut of you know, cannabis in Oklahoma, and Colorado and California. And in Oregon production, overproduction. People still are sitting on hundreds or 1000s of pounds from last year. And now they’re like, growing again this year. So there’s going to be even more on the market.

Chip  

Do you think this is overproduction in the regulated market or the illicit market?

Jessica  

Probably both both. But yeah, I would say both.

Chip  

Yeah, farmers mostly have one. You know, one business plan and we talked about this many times on The Real Dirt is prices down, grow more, prices up, grow more. And that’s really what’s going on and you know, there was just such this huge decrease increase in demand for cannabis products, you know, 2020 2021 And it’s a fact unemployed people consume more wheat, right? They unemployed people smoke more weed. Right? So, you know, all those people have gone back to work right now we’re at the lowest unemployment rate, you know, the country’s one of the lowest the country’s ever seen like everybody’s back at work, but the economy is not so great.

Jessica  

And if gas is $5 a gallon, and you have to make a choice between buying your Eight for the week or your ounce for the week, or continue to put gas in your car to get, you know, to work and everywhere else you’re going, then you may have to sacrifice by spending less on cannabis

Chip  

Or many people walk. Many people don’t have that option. Yeah, how many people unfortunately, transportation options, but you know, that recreation is one of the first things to go. And you know, they say that, like the vice industries are recession proof, but it’s just not true. As as we see it now, if people just don’t have the money to spend on it, you know, and cannabis isn’t like coffee, or alcohol, right? People really need that coffee and alcohol. And most people can just like do without we, they might want it. But they can do it out do without it. And it’s similar to the cleaning business we were talking about this earlier, is, you know, one of the first ways that farmers can cut their costs is by not buying clones. And you know, one of the one of the things that I see, you know, farmers use clone nurseries for is when they can’t fill up their fields, they can’t fill up their rooms, and they come to clone nurseries often in an emergency situation. Absolutely. I see that. And they say, you know, oh, my clones died or

Jessica  

Yeah exactly my clones died, or I bought clones apartment out or

Chip  

and it’s often because they need to fill up that room. Yeah, but many people are shutting down lights, they’re shutting down greenhouses.

Jessica  

Their rooms are getting smaller. They had, you know, eight rooms and a 20,000 square foot facility and they’re gonna run two of them. Right? That’s where they started their own moms. Right and took clones, right, you know, but most of them still come back saying my clones didn’t work out. I need more. You know, we can all we always need more, you know? Not always but

Chip  

Yeah, totally. But no, we we know several people who have shut down parts of their business, you know, and aren’t cultivating any longer because they can buy cannabis cheaper or as cheap as they can produce it. And so now in their dispensaries instead of buying a built making in house, they’re buying it on the market.

Jessica  

Yes. Yep. I see all of that. 

Chip  

What about this overproduction that’s been going on in Oklahoma.

Jessica  

So you know, the overproduction in Oklahoma is twofold. One, and just to be frank, it’s okay. To be frank, a little bit about the overproduction of Oklahoma, is that a lot of the cannabis just isn’t really that great. So you have inexperienced growers growing outdoor in a really harsh environment. Yeah, or a greenhouse or greenhouses, you know, in harsh environments. And so it’s kind of sub quality weed. And so that’s one reason why the price is so low,

Chip  

because when the market is flooded with whatever it is, the price does drop, but it drops that lowest common denominator with the quality of the weed being

Jessica  

exactly and I think a lot of people, outdoor growers and greenhouse and even indoor, they know that they’re just growing for extraction, and that their quality is only going to be extraction material anyway. And so there’s this large volume of only things that they know will only go to the extractor, so the quality doesn’t have to be there,

Chip  

right but then somehow that extractable quality weed still ends up in the flower market. Oh, absolutely. Right, because there’s just 1000s and 1000s of pounds. Do you have an estimate of how much nobody even knows how much wheat was grown in Oklahoma?

Jessica  

I can’t even try to guess but I mean hundreds of 1000s of pounds million. I don’t even know what 2 million so I think that’s part of it. And then I also think that

Chip  

Hey right now, if people are listening to this, we’re definitely getting some responses about how Oklahoma was fucking up the market for everybody else. But that’s

Jessica  

just not true because California and Oregon have waived for cannabis and Oklahoma even has because there’s more people and it’s better quality and it’s still going for super cheap. And that has nothing to do with Oklahoma’s outdoor and non regulating the amount of plants you can grow.

Chip  

Yeah, so you know talking to people around the country we still see the most cannabis both regulated and you know A private market cannabis is coming from California and Oregon.

Jessica  

I mean, California, of course. 

Chip  

Right. It’s just pot the seed over there. Yes. You just put it in the ground and it grows great. It’s not like that anyplace else in the country. Absolutely. So we got in Oklahoma, we’ve got an overproduction issue, we’ve got inflation issue. And we kind of have a regulatory issue that’s occurred here, too.

Jessica  

But you know, the other thing we have is the fact that a lot of people with no knowledge or history of being in cannabis, or business, or business thought that it would be easy money to get into cannabis. And then three years later, they’re realising that’s not actually true. And so I think that’s a large part of it too.

Chip  

Getting rich quick since 86.

Jessica  

Yeah, I mean, I love you know, it is what it is. But I think

Chip  

that also because, at least at Oklahoma, it’s not get rich quick, is it? No,

Jessica  

it’s absolutely not, you may have some couple of great harvests and think you made some money. But, you know, you never know.

Chip  

You know, few people can do this number, where they like, enter the market, get a bunch of weed, make a bunch of profit, and leave and exit the in and out hot potato business strategy, right people that just doesn’t work for No, absolutely. There’s this just dream. And what happens for most people is they put all of their retirement. All right, exactly. 101 K, you know, their friends, money, their grandparents, whatever, whatever investment, they use it, right, because they’re inexperienced, they may love weed, they may have grown wheat all of their life, they may grow great weed, but none of that matters in commercial sales, commercial production. You know, when the price drops so low, you have to know how to grow that cannabis as inexpensive as possible, but still remain the highest quality,

Jessica  

Absolutely absolute, but most people, especially with how low the prices are right now, even for indoor and a lot of places. It’s really, you have to know how much it actually cost you to grow per pound, to make sure you’re not actually losing money on every pound that you sell. 

Chip  

Yeah, absolutely. In many people, you know, there’s this struggle because people so many people think that like you’re reducing quality and blah, blah, blah, but but so much of it is just organising the space, time and materials, right and people, right, and if you can organise space time materials and people like you will, like have the most efficient operation that you have that you can get a no matter what technique you’re growing under. But when you’re able to do that, then you will reduce your you know, your cost of good your overhaul cost. In hey, let’s talk about that. Jessica, what do you think the breakeven cost of production for farmers should be your needs to be for, for people to continue to stay in the industry or cultivators?

Jessica  

I mean, that’s hard to say if you are just talking about you’re growing for extraction, and Oklahoma pounds for extraction go for about 50 bucks a piece. So if you’re growing cannabis for under $50, and then you know and that’s your entire cost of labour and you know,

Chip  

You’re gonna grow it for extraction in Oklahoma,

Jessica  

then you better be growing it for $25 or $5 of have me just hard to

Chip  

do right because of the manual labour associated with harvest mostly manual labour associated with planning till the irrigation can be put together what but what about indoor?

Jessica  

I mean, indoor again, I’ve seen the indoor for as low as $500 in Oklahoma, and these you know, I don’t know if they’re truly selling indoor if they’re just calling it indoor, it’s hard to say. But I’ve seen what they call indoor that does not look that great.

Chip  

We see this throughout Oklahoma, and we’re unsure if it’s just, you know, nice greenhouse operations, poor operators indoors. Yeah, I don’t know. Yeah, we don’t quite know.

Jessica  

But I know I’ve seen it. You know, I’ve even seen $350 pounds of indoor with somebody that claims they have a 50,000 square foot facility.

Chip  

We have seen those prices in Colorado to hurt them. I don’t think that’s the average price. But those are the lows. What do you think people in Oklahoma or? I’ve heard you sing for the like, how much does it cost to produce it? That’s what I’m asking. 

Jessica  

I mean, I honestly don’t know for people because I don’t know. So you have to Yeah, okay, you know, because I don’t know what they owe on the building they’re growing in are they paying back investors every month for part of this grow? Or if it’s, you know, they own the building

Chip  

for $500. Then like, you know, like you got to indoor specifically, they’re either liquid needing to get rid of round is how much it’s gonna cost, right? Yeah. Like if you’re the one of the best operators in the country, you got all your shit together, you might be at 250 pound indoors, and some people can do it even cheaper. And that’s trimmed all your cost of production in the bag. Yeah, most people it’s not that much money. It’s 450. It’s 750. It’s, it could be $1,000 For some people, and it doesn’t matter how great the weed is.

Jessica  

I mean, I’m still hearing some rumour. There’s a couple growers in Oklahoma claiming they’re still getting 2000 and door lb, I have yet to see that. I’m sure that exists. I get but the emails I get, they’re not selling for that much. 50.

Chip  

So there’s the other thing we talked about, about pricing throughout the country, too. And now what’s even worse, is these emails and texts, often I feel like you’re just driving the price down. And so much of it’s fictional, right? There’s nobody that has the operation that needs 1000 pounds a day or you know, it’s just fictional in order to drive the price down or to manipulate the market or just people fucking around.

Jessica  

Well, and these brokers don’t even get me started on like, how they lowball and then still try to get the same price because at one they in Oklahoma, none of them had a licence to be doing that anyway.

Chip  

Yeah, they you know, they shouldn’t be called brokers. They should be Hey, pardon me, all brokers out there. They’re really nice and honest, dudes. They shouldn’t be called brokers. They should be called hustlers.

Jessica  

Yeah. Well, we always tell the middleman and we really never liked unless they were helpful and actually, like, not just trying to rip off the growers.

Chip  

Well, you know, what I’ve seen between old days in these days, and distributors and brokers is old days, it was like a set like, Hey, I’m gonna get $50 or $100 a pound.

Jessica  

Now they want as much as the grower made. 

Chip  

Yeah, exactly and they’re just trying to lowball the grower to get that price down so much. And then the bad part is, it’s usually not even their money. So it’s often this like, you know, fucked up deal where they’re truly middleman, someone else has the money. Right? And, you know, they’re like, 

Jessica  

they’re acting like they have some inside knowledge into the weed space. 

Chip  

They should be connection and they should be paid for that connection. Don’t get me wrong, but like, I don’t know, if you want a sustainable business and you really wanted to clean up like, you know, having a reasonable brokerage fee. You know, I mean, hell, what a, you know, like,

Jessica  

but you can’t be trying to make $200-300 a pound you’re buying for $500 or $400. Well, not only that, 

Chip  

but like your seeds right now. I know. But hey, man, you’re gonna go they’re gonna go out of business right now. Or your your profit definitely is gonna change.

Jessica  

Yeah, absolutely. As it should. Because I mean, once again, the farmers are always the ones who take the hit.

Chip  

Yeah, let’s talk price structure. That’s a great way to do it. Alright, so we’ve been taught cost to production, but like farmer sells the pound for 500 bucks. Let’s just say $500. He sells it to a dispensary direct. Right? dispensary sells $100 ounces. They make $1,600. dispensary sells $75 ounces. Right. They’re making 12 hundred bucks.

Jessica  

But then 40% of that goes to the tax man because of you know, the

Chip  

well 40% of the profit. So not 40% of the sale. Right. Right

Jessica  

or 40% ofthat profit goes to the taxpayer. Well, that goes to the feds. And then if you’re in Oklahoma City, 15.5% of that immediately goes to

Chip  

passed on though it’s usually not out the door pricing on what I’m talking about. Sometimes it

Jessica  

In Oklahoma they really like out the door pricing

Chip  

Yeah, but this just is just not the standard, you know. And so basically what I’m saying you’re buying it for 500 bucks, you’re selling it for 1600 bucks, you’re making $1,100 profit and then 40% of that should go to the man which is about 400 and something dollars. So like, now you just made the six $700 on a $500 lb there’s still quite a bit of money going on with dispensaries.

Jessica  

Absolutely. But I mean, especially in Oklahoma, man, you’re seeing three ounces for 150 bucks and unit Yeah, but that’s greenhouse or outdoor we No, I’m just saying that like, I’m not seeing the high priced in Oklahoma. I don’t see as much of the high price than you used to. So I do think in some respect, those profit margins may not be as high but I’m sure they’re still high for a lot of places.

Chip  

Sure, sure. And then a lot of those places are produced a lot of you know, if you’re producing the cannabis and you’re selling it, that’s the best deal you got going if you can grow it cheap enough? Yeah. Right? If you can grow it for 500 bucks or $700 a pound inside, and then resell it for that that’s decent money. That’s really good, good money. But I guess my point is this is that restaurants, farmers, entrepreneurs throughout the world operate on 10 and 12%. Net profit. And it just takes a skilled business person to operate in that manner. And you’re still making money, as the dispensaries right at these at these low prices, you have to get the customers come in to buy it.

Jessica  

And you have to have the staff, of course. 

Chip  

You have to have the staff and in all of that, but there’s still money to be made out there. And if you’re in the cannabis industry, and you’re like, oh, man, I can produce $170 $190 pounds in a greenhouse. And I can sell them for 350 or $500. But you’re making good money.  

Jessica  

Yeah, there’s still no doubt about that. It may not be the profit margin you think you should be getting? Or do you use to begin entitled to be or you feel entitled to be getting. 

Chip  

Right. But it is the sky is not falling? There? Will many people go out of business in Oklahoma? 

Jessica  

Well, of course. I mean, people have already gone out of business, and it’s just the nature of business, not 100% of all businesses don’t survive in any industry. So especially in a boom and bust scenario, especially in a boom and bust. Yep. Especially with the banking issues we have and the tax issues. You know, it’s not simple.

Chip  

Well, you know, one interesting thing from my perspective is, you know, we operate hydroponic stores and, you know, potting soil manufacturing is, you know, how bad the manufacturers are and how much the prices have risen on our side. Inflation is truly shit. You know, in all of your cannabis, grow equipment, at Cultivate Colorado, Cultivate OKC you know, we operate an online shop there, cultivateokc.com cultivatecolorado.com. People from all over the country in the world buy products from us. And you know, we have seen, they’re still we still understand there’s the demand there. And even though we have a decrease in business in our retail shops in Colorado, and in Oklahoma, we’re still on an up three year average last year was a banner year for us. But we’ve been able to like still do pretty good and you know, we we made may operate a little bit differently than other people, but many of the stores that are you know, because we’ve been around for such a long time and many of the other stores including like, grow generation and you know, some of the other like smaller stores that either are just oversized or underdeveloped they’re they’re having a struggle hanging on to this industry. But you know, we have a really well established business Kobe, Colorado you know, we expect to weather this storm, you know, you know, well you know, we’re definitely talking to our customers you know, we’re offering the best prices we can we know everyone’s struggling you know, we see new products come out all the time. This past couple of years. We haven’t seen any new products come out

Jessica  

There’s a couple new products that have come out.

Chip  

I guess you’re right, I do have some products coming out. Yeah, growers our potting soil company if you’re not familiar with us, we make potting soil in and outside Denver, Colorado, some of the highest quality potting soil in the world made from cocoa fibre. We’re coming out with two new products right now that we’re actually using, you’ve been using you’ve been a prototyping our organic cocoa for a moment.

Jessica  

Absolutely great cocoa

Chip  

…so we’re coming out with a organic cocoa and a 7030. And we’ve actually put these off for a moment that are coming out with them right now at really great great prices because everybody’s having a hard time right now.

Jessica  

Well it’s also you know, just thinking post COVID and everything going on with not only inflation, but it is a supply chain issues. So really noticing that there are things and all of our grocery stores and markets that we noticed just isn’t there anymore because of supply chain.

Chip  

Oh yeah, it’s it has been hard we have we have bought more cocoa fibre than we thought we were going to use. We’ve really tried to get the biggest deals from our competitors coming from our suppliers, the best deals so we could, you know, be able to like me Eat this market because…

Jessica  

Well I don’t even have it in stock when you need it struggling

Chip  

to manufacture is you’re struggling to get materials. But yeah, so we got a 7030 Cocoa fibre coming out. We’ve got a organic cocoa fibre coming out right now. Call us at cultivate Colorado, look us up at growers grown on Instagram, cultivate Colorado on Instagram, and Facebook. And, you know, follow your progress there. If you’re in the Colorado area, we’re offering incredible prices to you right now on this product. So give us a call if you’re in Oklahoma or Michigan or anywhere in the country, if you’re a grower, or if you’re a grocery store, you know, drop us a line at growers cocoa or it goes big Colorado. We’d love to help it out. How do people getting get in touch with you and your organisation?

Jessica  

In my organisation if you’re a commercial grower in Oklahoma, and you want clones, you know you can reach us at You can go to our website, which is clone dash city.com on Instagram, we’re at the clone city and also clone nursery. You know, because you gotta have more than one and then you can always just Google clone City, Oklahoma, and we come up oh my gosh, probably around 50 These days we really expanded our our mom rooms and got some great Oh, there are Yeah, we plant a bunch of seeds we select for specific finos and then we grow them at least two different ways in Oklahoma and then we put them out on the market so so we know they’re actually going to survive in greenhouses and outdoor yields 

Chip  

Great speaking to you today, Jessica. You know, I fortunately I get to get your wisdom on Cannabis industry all the time. Is there anything you’d like to say to fellow business?

Jessica  

I always have things I want to say.

Chip  

Women Business Owners or just cannabis business owners in general.

Jessica  

I’m gonna say cannabis owners and business owners in general even if you’re not in the cannabis space yet and you’re just thinking of any business endeavour. It is a long game it there is no shortcuts. Like I said you may do well successfully at first and then that’s when your hurdles start. But don’t think this is an easy like I’m in and out and I’m gonna just it is a long game and enjoy it Have fun, please honour and respect the plants and your employees and your business contacts, the earth, all of it. But definitely it is not it is not a short game. It’s a long game. So be patient. Take deep breaths, connect with the other people in your industry community and don’t feel entitled to anything because we’re not

Chip  

Hey, and I just want to say to you listeners. We love you all, keep the plant in your heart and just keep going you know times may be tough but just roll the biggest joint you can and fire it up.

Jessica  

We’re about to!

Chip  

This has been The Real Dirt!

The Real Dirt on Indoor vs Greenhouse Cannabis [Freaux Pt. 1]

The Real Dirt on Indoor vs Greenhouse Cannabis [Freaux Pt. 1]

indoor vs greenhouse cannabis cultivation podcast

The day indoor cannabis cultivation was invented, it has been said that immediately a man came running over the hill top to argue whether it was better than greenhouse cultivation. Not really.

But it’s a funny way to say that the arguments about indoor vs greenhouse cultivation have been around since indoor cultivation was invented. There will always be the traditional growers who will only grow in outdoor sunlight, and others who have converted to strictly indoor. Then there’s those in the middle who may use a greenhouse, light deprivation or some combination of indoor and outdoor.

Any cultivation method has its pros and cons, so it’s difficult to argue that one method is the best above all others. Most would probably agree that indoor cultivation would be the best if it wasn’t for the price associated with set up and maintenance. Most would also agree that when it comes to cost, growing outdoors will always have the lowest overhead.

Freaux started Jive Cannabis Co in Oklahoma to produce boutique, small batch, selectively bred cannabis strains that are constantly on rotation. Jive has quickly become one of the most sought after flower and extract in the state, and it’s because of Freaux’s extensive indoor cultivation experience.

Chip on the other hand has been a traditional outdoor and greenhouse grower, with plenty of experience in an indoor setting as well. But currently he is growing outdoor, greenhouse and indoor in Oklahoma.

With the two touting their recent harvests from the past season, Freaux and Chip have a lot to compare, contrast and learn about each other’s grow methods, genetic sourcing and more. Which is why this episode is all about just that!

This episode of The Real Dirt with Chip Baker is all about the great indoor vs greenhouse debate. Coming from different cultivation backgrounds Chip and Freaux have plenty of differences in how the cultivate cannabis, indoor and outdoor. Yet both grow some fine cannabis for their respective methods.

It’s not a competition, there is no winner. Just a couple growers sharing some of their secrets for growing some high quality cannabis!

Transcript

Chip:  This is Chip: with The Real Dirt podcast. Welcome to another episode of The Real Dirt. Today, I have one of my favorite guests in Oklahoma. He’s a surprise guest, but he’s been here several times before. You can’t see him through the radio but, but maybe you can hear his voice skip. Mr. Surprise Guest, say a few words to see if our audience can, can pick up on, on who you are.

 

Freux:  Chip:, it’s always a pleasure to come out here.

 

Chip:  It’s Freux, it’s Freux from, its Freux, it’s Freux from Jive. He’s here today. I know everybody guessed that immediately. Good times, good times. Sorry, just sorry to step on you. I was just having a good time with the audience there myself.

 

Freux:  Oh, you’re more than good.

 

Chip:  I’m getting into my podcast character.

 

Freux:  It is a beautiful day out here. Always, always good to come out here. It feels like every time I come out here, there’s just more and more stuff going on, you know?

 

Chip:  I know, man. This place is really great. You know, we’re sitting in our kitchen of our grow farm in Wellston, Oklahoma. Our dining room there’s these two huge windows looking to the north from the south, we get to see all the storms come in one way or the other.

 

Freux:  I mean, it looks beautiful out there. And the lake, everything’s blooming, everything’s green, weather is great, not too hot yet.

 

Chip:  The grass is high. Literally, I need to, I need a zero turn. Do you cut grass?

 

Freux:  Oh, I used to when I was younger. I haven’t lately. I kind hadd to outsource that now. Just not enough time in the day, you know?

 

Chip:  I enjoy the occasional grass cutting. We lost our grass cutter this year though. He literally passed away.

 

Freux:  Oh, I’m sorry.

 

Chip:  No, we’ll make light of it because he was a really light and fun guy. But man, he can cut grass for the shit. Sparkles, if you’re listening from the netherworld…

 

Freux:  That’s terrible, man. 

 

Chip:  Oh, I know. We love the man, we love the man. But yeah, he liked to like, leave. We’ve got, we have to cut like, 40 acres of grass out here for the cultivation, because that’s one of the ways we manage the IPM. But Kelly would like leave the same, like, not cut row over and over again. And it was, it was this pattern. It was just so amazing that you – he’s just grown up. He just passed you know, not several months ago. But you know his last cutting has just grown out. But you could see over the whole property these like, rows where he missed a strip of grass, right? For like, succession for year, you know after month, year after year. But you know, it’s always sad when you lose somebody but you know, you get to remember the fun times, you know for as long as we’re around. Yeah, so, enough serious talk here. Hey, man, this is the weed episode, Freux.

 

Freux:  Yeah.

 

Chip:  This is a podcast about cannabis, and about marijuana, and medical marijuana. And we’re gonna look at some, some weed. This is gonna be a verse. This is a verse, right? This is a greenhouse verse indoor. Smoke-off 2021.

 

Freux:  Sounds exciting right there.

 

Chip:  In one corner, we’ve got Jive and Freux weighing in at five nice jars. They’re the good kind too, the wide mouth jars.

 

Freux:  My favorite. When they’re not in stock, it’s never good.

 

Chip:  Yeah. And we’ve got Chip: weighing in the other corner. He’s got several piles of large Mylar bags stuffed full of weed.

 

Freux:  Making my pile look small, right? Taking up whole table right there.

 

Chip:  Right. So how are we going to play this game? You know, I think I should pick one of yours and you should pick one of mine.

 

Freux:  Let’s do that.

 

Chip:  Let’s pick and talk. You –

 

Freux:  You know, you kind of, before we got started you were showing me a couple bags. You know, the one that kind of stuck out and was that uh, that sherbadoe, that dosi, that’s what that was, right?

 

Chip:  Sherbet Dosido, yeah.

 

Freux:  I also liked that uh –

 

Chip:  This is, this is a photo op right here. I’m gonna pass this over. Right? Like this way. There we go. Here we go. Audience, I’m passing the weed over for the photo op. Yeah, there we go. Oh, it’s great. Great photo op. This is Sherbet Dosidoe. This is a Archive strain.

 

Freux:  Very familiar smell, I love the smell.

 

Chip:  Yeah, Fletcher’s a longtime friend of mine. I’m part of his you know, his research and development network. And that basically means he, many of his friends, he gives us seeds or gives us good bulk deals on seeds. We plan out genetics and you know, tell him what we think about it. Fletcher grows in just incredible seed, his quality of seed is incredible. Man all of this stuff, of this past, this is all experimental for him I guess we’ll call it. They’re all Dosidoe crosses they’re kind of just like everything. I don’t think any of this really hit the market, other than the moon bow. 

 

Freux:  Yeah.

 

Chip:  The Moonbow did hit the market.

 

Freux:  That’s been huge for the last couple of years.

 

Chip:  It has. But this Sherbet Dosi, Dosidoe. And I really love the name, Sherbet Dosi Dosidoe. Say it five times fast.

 

Freux:  Yeah, it looks great. I mean, anything from Archive is solid. And he’s one of my favorite breeders, I would say. You know at Jive, we run him pretty heavy.

 

Chip:  Oh yeah, we get your Thin Mints. What else do you, do you have Rude Boy?

 

Freux:  I don’t. I have like, Hazmat OG, Sunshine Lime. 

 

Chip:  Yeah, Sunshine Lime very popular with the dispensary customers.

 

Freux:  Mhm. We have Dosi, Dosi 22, we ran out some of the Dosi 22 F2s. That’s really good. 

 

Chip:  Right, right. Yeah, we just planted some of those as a matter of fact.

 

Freux:  Yeah?

 

Freux:  You’ll like those. I mean, amazing flavor, amazing flavor. Found a lot of good phenos, it’s obviously one of my favorite things smoking right now. The pheno we found not as much bag as feel as some of the weed out there. But as far as flavor and smoke, I mean it’s…

 

Chip:  Yeah.

 

Chip:  It’s good.

 

Freux:  It’s going on awesome. 

 

Chip:  Man, you know, Fletcher really hit it with Dosi. He it’s one that became you know, a craze throughout the US. A mad craze with all the youngsters.

 

Freux:  It’s been one of the highest strains the last seven years.

 

Chip:  Yeah, it’s hot. It is, it’s a great strain to grow. It is phenotypically similar, it’s a good stretcher all the crosses that comes with it just become phenomenal.

 

Freux:  Yeah, that male he use, whatever male he breeds with I mean anything that Dosi touches turns to gold.

 

Chip:  Yeah, he does a lot of male work. That’s why his seeds are so good. I mean, this is starting to sound like an info commercial. No, no, he does a really good job. We plant a lots and lots of seeds and the Archive seeds always pop the best, pop the quickest, grow the fastest, are the strongest. And mostly it’s because he really selects that male, right? He’s done tons of work just to select the male alone and most of the other, you know, seed makers out there, they don’t really do that. They just, they get a pop of male, they force a herm, right, of whatever. And then they start their line.

 

Freux:  That seems to become a practice and that’s why a lot of you know, seed packs you get out there are kind of watered down now, you know?

 

Chip:  Oh, man.

 

Freux:  Nobody puts the time and effort into it. There’s very few people out there and you know, most of guys now are dropping, you know, so many different varieties so quick. I mean, they can’t possibly be, you know, R&D and taking where it needs to go, you know?

 

Chip:  Right, unless you’ve been doing it for years and years.

 

Freux:  Or yeah, unlesss –

 

Chip:  But most haven’t.

 

Freux:  Correct.

 

Chip:  Hmm. Alright so, back to our game. So you’re rolling up the Sherbet Dosidoe, and I’m gonna roll one of yours here. What do you, what do you got here?

 

Freux:  So I tried to bring what I had on hand. I got some GMO times Sherb Crasher. I’ve got some brand new Dungeon Vault I’ve got some actually, Dolato from Fletch. It’s a lot of 41 times Moonbow cross. I got one of our classics, Grandpa’s Breath and then I brought you a little bit of a pheno hunt we just went through. Sugar babies, which I’m really excited about. It’s Dungeon Vault Genetics, Sugar Babies is Runts times Sugar Daddy. Sugar Daddy is Wedding Cake and Grandpa’s Breath. And a bunch of interesting phenos has come out of that. But I want to say, other than the, you’ve definitely seen the Hot Rod and the Grandpa’s Breath. This is everything new right here. Got three different phenos of the Sugar Babies and then Brandywine GMO, Sherb Crasher, and then Dolato.

 

Chip:  Man, I think I’m gonna go for that Dolato.

 

Freux:  Go ahead.

 

Chip:  Alright, Dolato. Yeah, we were talking about this earlier. Fletch has an incredible like, naming strategy. I asked him the other day if he had a, if he had a book of names, right? And he’s like, “Nah, man, I just come right up with it.” He didn’t talk like that, but you know.

 

Freux:  Seems like when he names stuff too, you kind of like know what’s in the lineage a little bit you know. He’s kind of able to pair those together where it’s not like you know, what is that? Yeah.

 

Chip:  Wow, man. That’s, oh.

 

Freux:  It’s pretty serious stuff right there.

 

Chip:  Smells like Purple. No, it’s actually it smells like OG, it’s very Purple. This is great weed. I’ve been looking for this weed. Purple OG, right?

 

Freux:  Pretty much.

 

Chip:  It’s got super strong OG smell, right? Not the like, not the, not the classic OG but OG, nonetheless. Heavy OG, right. It’s a bit – because it’s sweeter.

 

Freux:  It is.

 

Chip:  There’s a sweeter part to it, right?

 

Freux:  It’s got that sweet almost like, Z from the Moonbow or whatnot. You can kind of smell that underlying in there.

 

Chip:  Dude, this is great weed, man.

 

Freux:  I appreciate that.

 

Chip:  Oh yeah dude. This is great weed. And your trimmers have gotten much better?

 

Freux:  Oh our trimmers, yeah. They’ve definitely stepped their game up lately. 

 

Chip:  Right? You’re smiling over there. 

 

Freux:  Not that they don’t do a bad job but I think they’ve been really on par in the last couple months. That’s one thing we’ve been trying to dial into, you know? Can’t have good weed without a good trim, you know?

 

Chip:  I can, I can, I can smell [inaudible 10:34].

 

Freux:  It’s coming out there poppies.

 

Chip:  Coming out, you know. And as I break the bud open, it’s purple on the inside, it’s purple on the outside. It’s got these small green you know, leaves and you know, anytime you get that in cannabis where you’ve got this purple and then light green color like, it really just like, looks phenomenal.

 

Freux:  Yeah, it looks awesome the way it just kind of combines with it.

 

Chip:  Because a lot of times you can get the green,  the purple leaf, but you don’t get the purple buds.

 

Freux:  With natural buds that’s really –

 

Chip:  Or like the you know, you cut the purple off all the leaves and the trim and it’s, there’s nothing, nothing purple.

 

Freux:  Yeah. But that bud, everything’s purple in there everything, even in the middle edges.

 

Chip:  Everything’s purple. Have you done, have you washed it?

 

Freux:  I have not. But that is actually one that we are going to, we kind of you know, got on something at the shop where as we pheno hunt and kind of you know, go through strands, we’re trying to wash everything to see what happens with you know, especially with [inaudible 11:32] being so popular now. You know, you want to find something that makes sense where you can you know, dedicate some space to washing, but we’re pretty much gonna run everything. You know, as we run it through the cycle to pick out what we want. We are going to you know, do the for R&D and wash them, see how that goes as well.

 

Chip:  Man, this just smells phenomenal. 

 

Freux:  But when it’s lineage I think you know, some strands that probably would wash well.

 

Chip:  Oh, that was, that was me. That was Kevin Colver from Cutting Edge.

 

Freux:  Nice.

 

Chip:  Speak of the devil.

 

Freux:  Speaking of the devil, I’m literally rolling on a Cutting Edge tray as we speak.

 

Chip:  Yeah, right, right.

 

Freux:  Shoutout John, huh?

 

Chip:  Yeah dude. Man, we have used John’s products and do tons of business with John, with Cutting Edge. If any growers out there are interested in you know, really like, stepping up the quality of the inputs that they put into their cannabis, to be enable to like dial in their own recipe like, Cutting Edge is the product to do it. It’s a base product of three parts. So you can like follow his directions, which are incredible. Or you can make your own, right?

 

Freux:  If you follow straight what’s on the on the jar bottle, you’re gonna get a very good end result, you know, even without tweaking it.

 

Chip:  Yeah, absolutely.

 

Freux:  Dialing into what you’re trying to accomplish.

 

Chip:  For the commercial grower, it’s a three part but it really is effective, because you can boost, you buy your three parts, you boost up on your grow and your micro during the vege. And then you know, when it’s just bloom, you don’t use so much of the grow, a little bit in the transitional formula, but then it’s just bloom and micro, right? And it’s like 8 micro 15 bloom, but you know, many people buy bloom enhancers. Well, you just add more bloom with Cutting Edge, right? And so you go 20 mLs to the gallon. And it is just like any other bloom enhancer on the market, but you can control the dose, right? It’s a customized it’s, it’s customized for you to make your own formulas, right? And do you use the supplements as well?

 

Freux:  I do. We use quite a bit of Cutting Edge. I mean, we use you know the Sugary, we use Bulletproof. I’m trying to think of what else we use like that Mag Amp. We use quite a few of his additives as well, especially the Uncle John, Uncle John blend.

 

Chip:  I love the Mag Amp. I love the Uncle John’s blend. Alright, so we’re gonna light these hooters up at the same time. Mmm. Well, hands down, hands down. You got the flavor on this over here for sure.

 

Freux:  It doesn’t really know got the flavor.

 

Chip:  It’s got the flavor, man. That’s one thing I’m really like lacking on our weed here is we haven’t really been able to get the flavor. We get the look in the greenhouse, but not this superior flavor, right? Part of it is you just can’t let it go till it’s actually done, right?You know, just a few greenhouses you can actually do that. And we’re at scale here such a large amount, right? With such a small workpool, it’s also difficult, right? To pick plants on time and right?

 

Freux:  Yeah no I hear you, man. This Sherbert Dosidoe man though, it’s got good flavor, man. I mean, you can definitely taste the Dosi, you can taste the Sherb in there, little bit of creaminess. You could definitely taste the Dosi I feel like, the Dosi is shining through in the taste.

 

Chip:  Yeah.

 

Freux:  Yeah, like the smell, you know, kind of maybe lead a little harder to like the Sherbert side. I kind of knew that creamy, you know, kind of like Sherbert-y, that type of smell but uh, but taste is very Dosi 4 with a little kind of Sherb on the back end or whatnot.

 

Chip:  You know, we planted it out maybe 2000 seeds of these and they all grew Dosi-like, right?

 

Freux:  The last time I was out here that was my, by far my favorite house.

 

Chip:  Oh yeah, yeah, that’s right. That’s right.

 

Freux:  Good color, got a good look, good smell.

 

Chip:  I think I even picked out the buds that you were like, “Oh, I like that plant, that plant. But I think I smoked those.”

 

Freux:  That figures, huh. What do you want to say to this again?

 

Chip:  Man the, yeah this Dolato, yeah, man this is uh, looks a lot better than the taste. It’s really harsh. I can’t smoke anymore of this. You should probably just leave that jar here with me.

 

Freux:  Oh yeah, huh?

 

Chip:  You know I really like tasting coffee – you ain’t got the COVID do you?

 

Freux:  Oh no. 

 

Chip:  Are you on the vax, man? You oka, did you check his warrant? I mean not warrant, his passport, passport in here. Oh okay, he came through processing. Now this is, this is really good man. Let me take another hit and shut up. I meaan I really, I really enjoy having a cup of tea.

 

Freux:  That’s why I got one when you offered, clear the palate. 

 

Chip:  I’ll get, we’ve got tea service here, I’ll get you one. Hold on. Hold on. It’ll be here in a minute.

 

Freux:  It’s like that, huh?

 

Chip:  It’s totally like that. Oh, it’s the magic of radio. So we were saying?

 

Freux:  No, I was asking you earlier, we’re talking about the you know, the taste or whatnot –

 

Chip:  Flavor.

 

Freux:  Flavor. I was asking you you know, how long are y’all curing that?

 

Chip:  Yeah that you know, the processing part was our problem, and we’re really lacking employees here and infrastructure. We got great people we work with but you know, we’re man, my eyes are bigger than my stomach, so I’m trying to grow more weed than I can actually handle.

 

Freux:  Yeah. I think that’s, I think that’s something a lot of Oklahoma’s out here are doing.

 

Chip:  Oh hell yeah, man. That’s the great part about Oklahoma.

 

Freux:  Go big or go home.

 

Chip:  I don’t think there’s been any other state we’ve been involved in where we’ve actually been able to grow more weed than we could handle.

 

Freux:  It’s a crazy concept.

 

Chip:  Fuck yeah, man.

 

Freux:  You never thought it was possible –

 

Chip:  Yeah, I know, man. You know, it’s so funny when we moved down here. You got it too. People were like, “Oklahoma?!”

 

Freux:  Oklahoma’s badass man. I mean it’s where it’s at right now. It’s where, it’s where everybody involved with cannabis wants to be right now.

 

Chip:  If you’re into ganja and really into the plant, this is one of the few places that you can actually like, do it. 

 

Freux:  That was beautiful man.

 

Chip:  Right? Right, man? It might be a difficult market you know, there’s definitely a lot of people here growing weed. There’s a ton of dispensaries here. You’re going to be in competition if you want to do that.

 

Freux:  But 7000 growers, 5000 disposers, something like that?

 

Chip:  Yeah, so many so many, but man, you can plan out however many seeds you want. You can have as many clones and as many plants and scale as fast as you want. You can you know, unlike California, you’re not required to like have certain markups at dispensaries. You can sell however you want. You can be the like, discount cheap person, you can sell it for the most money possible, right? Right, you can have the absolute best or absolute worst weed as your business model.

 

Freux:  Free market capitalism.

 

Chip:  It really is free market here. And if there’s any others, you know, people involved in legislation, involved in policy writing, there’s anybody involved – look, stop trying to regulate the plant so much. Stop trying to regulate the business of the plant so much, right? Just regulate the compliance of it. Just regulate, like, you know, in a simple metric track and trace, right? Just simple stuff. And the industry will grow beyond your belief in your community. But if you’re there over regulating California, it’s over regulated, and I’m starting to sound like a super conservative talk show. But no, it’s true, man, right? Like they’re that, we are a capitalist country. It is a free market society. We shouldn’t be regulated in this industry.

 

Freux:  I agree.

 

Chip:  Yeah, the people it gets sold to like, you know, 21 and up, like health concerns, absolutely. Pesticides concerns, input concerns, absolutely. Zoning, of course. 

 

Freux:  Yeah, all that stuff, yeah.

 

Chip:  But man, forcing me to pay 40 cents per plant tag.

 

Freux:  That’s ridiculous.

 

Chip:  That’s, that’s ridiculous, man. There should just be a simple track and trace system, or the state should pay for it.

 

Freux:  That’s a shakedown right there man. 

 

Chip:  Right? That’s a total shakedown. And you know, we’re talking about metric that’s one of the things going on here in Oklahoma, right? Oh, man, you should, we should rename this, what is it called? What is this weed called?

 

Freux:  It’s called Dolato but it’s spelled like d-o-l –

 

Chip:  Yeah, I got that dough, I got the do-do-do-dolato. Man. This is like Politico though. As soon as, as soon as I hit it, I started talking shit about the government.

 

Freux:  Straight up, huh?

 

Chip:  It will do that to you though, it really is a, it’s a, I mean, many people believe it to be a conservative or red state, which it may be all of those.

 

Freux:  I think it’s a little bit of Oklahoma’s got a great vibe and we almost kind of get the best of both sides, honestly.

 

Chip:  Man, we’ve had like one or two super, super, super conservative people, like try to preach their super conservative stuff, to us. One or two, that’s it. Right? Everybody else, they don’t care. Politics never comes up, right? Like you know.

 

Freux:  I’ve gotten the same vibe. I mean, everybody I’ve come across out here  issuper cool. Oklahomans are really cool people.

 

Chip:  They are. They respect your personal rights and property as a community outlook or as a community policy. There’s no interference in business, right?

 

Freux:  Yeah, I mean, they kind of let, they’re very pro business state and they want everybody to  succeed. I mean, they’re setting everybody up to succeed I feel like. I mean, if you’re running a good business model, you got a good product, you got a good you know, good thing going on. They kind of let it, they kind of let it happen, you know?

 

Chip:  Okay, okay. Well if you, if you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, then you know that I like potting soil, make potting soil – coco potting soil, specifically. And you know, I just wanted to talk to you about how much I love coco fiber and why you should use it, and why your plants should be in coco fiber and they’re gonna love it too. One man, my new product Cocos Growers HP is just an incredibly clean product and made for indoor cultivation. I mean, you can use it anywhere but man it is clean as you can get it. We try extremely hard to avoid all cross contamination, all bugs weeds in seeds, we keep it all inside this manufacturer, all inside. We treat it like a bakery, we start out clean, we end clean, we clean up while we’re going through the day. We really try to take a great effort to put this quality product together. So the number one reason you should use Growers HP is man, it is clean. Number two reason you should use Growers HP is man, this product we have developed it I mean almost specifically because we want to see like, just incredible root development and root growth. And that’s what this product does. You know, I used to be a die hard coco only guy, compost coco, and I just saw the benefits of peat. And we so we started putting small amounts of peat in it. Man, the roots take off. Coco and peat just blend together so well. So there’s the second reason that you should buy Growers HP is man, just an increased root development. Now, the third reason you should buy Coco HP is because man, it’s a really, a light potting soil. And when I mean light, I mean that like you can, most people can pick up four bags at once. Kind of no problem. It’s light like this, because of the way we make it, the way we can control how much water we put in it, we make it a really dry elevation, or really dry high elevation area in Colorado. So it dries out really nicely and when it gets in the bag, man, it’s as light it’s lighter than any potting soil of two cubic foot that you can get. So there’s the third reason man, that it’s a really light product that the moisture is controlled in it specifically. Now, the fourth reason, man, it’s real easy one man. It’s just because your friend, Chip: asked you to go support him, support The Real Dirt and buy some Growers HP. So there you have it, man. Top four reasons why you should use Growers HP in your garden. Hey guys, just quick break to tell you about Cultivate OKC, Cultivate Colorado. You know, I got into the hydroponic supply business from 2009. I had wanted to open up a retail hydroponic store for years and I was already making potting soil at that point, maybe some fertilizers and some other stuff I was into. You know, I hadn’t opened up a retail shop and I got this opportunity to open one up in California. Right as I was fixing to open up down in Riverside, Colorado came along. Ended up being better, bigger opportunity, opened up our Colorado stores. And you know, man, it’s just, we’ve been off to the races ever since. Now we’re in Colorado and in Oklahoma, we ship all over the country and even the world man. It’s amazing the people that call us, contact us that needs, that need some equipment to grow their fine cannabis with. So if you need any help, any equipment, you want to come to a great grow store where people don’t judge you. We’re not clique-oriented, we’re just there to help you grow. Man, come see us at Cultivate. Cultivate Colorado, we’re on Exit 206 after 25. We’re also on the Stapleton Monaco Exit there on I70. And down in Oklahoma City, our newest store and man probably our nicest showroom right now, is we’re right on the corner of 10th in Meridian. So come check us out, 1101 North meridian. Yeah, man. Got any questions about growing no matter if you’re big or small, just come on in. We’ll be glad to chat with you. So, I got carried away and we were talking about processing, which I’ve said over and over again, on The Real Dirt is one of the most important parts of cannabis. People ruin great intentions and great crops and great weed all the time through bad processing. And that’s what I did here too. I’m not saying it’s ruined, right? But I’m not, I’m also, it didn’t reach its full potential. Because of my inabilities to be able to give it that.

 

Freux:  Postharvest is almost as important as you know –

 

Chip:  It’s just as important, it’s just as important.

 

Freux:  I mean you could, you know, for sure.

 

Chip:  You know, the way I would like to do this is big leaf it moderately right before harvest. Two weeks, right? You know, this is outdoor greenhouse, it gets a little leafier than indoors. Hang it and dry it in something like a 70 degree room with, you know, the humidity goes from 90% down to 70, 65% by the time it’s all said and done, right? But it needs that whole swing. I want it to dry in like, 10 days to two weeks. And then I want to take it off the stem branch, the big branches, right? Take it – 

 

Freux:  Like buck it down?

 

Chip:  Yeah. But still like leaves stem on it. So it’s just small branches. 

 

Freux:  Ah, gotcha, gotcha.

 

Chip:  And put that in a food grade container, right? Because it’s still like slightly moist, then?

 

Freux:  Yeah.

 

Chip:  Right. And and, and let it, and then burn this container and let it dry, right? I leave the stems on it so it doesn’t compact, right? Because if you just cut it all off, the bud could tear. It goes into the bins, then it goes flat. Especially when you have a lot stacked on top. That’s why you can’t really fill them up all the way. And you cross stack the branches and you don’t fill them up all the way. We do like about half to three quarters. 

 

Freux:  Yeah.

 

Chip:  Right. And this is like the best, my best case scenario, right? And then that whole process right there and it takes about you know, that also could take a week to 10 days. Meanwhile maintaining the same like, you know 70, 60 tight bob? Right 70%, 60%. From there, we generally take the bucked up weed, either put it in a large like, Turkey bag or a large other, you know, food grade plastic bag of some sort, right? Tie it off, and it’s it’s stored until we can trim it. 

 

Freux:  Okay.

 

Chip:  Right. And then, you know, we trimmed to various different ways this year, we called an outside trim service. Did you use those guys?

 

Freux:  No, I talked to them. We talked to them. But um, we’ve had kind of like a, like an in house crew that’s been working with us for a while so we kind of just, you know, kind of handle that in house. 

 

Chip:  We were lucky enough to hire some people who came in with some awesome machinery, cleaned everything. We also have like, Green Bros, but there’s only a couple of us here. 

 

Freux:  I used to use Green Bros way back in the day.

 

Chip:  Yeah. And we still and we still do use it. But like, yeah you know, technique required. We had those guys just barely clean it. I shouldn’t say barely clean it, mostly clean it. And then we had after that people go by and ham trim it.

 

Freux:  So kind of just like run it through there and get the initial stuff off, and then clean it up.

 

Chip:  Yeah, yeah, totally. Totally. And then –

 

Freux:  Do you feel like that saves time than actually just hand trimming it? Do you feel like that saves time?

 

Chip:  I don’t know about time, but what it does –

 

Freux:  It’s labor.

 

Chip:  It’s labor.

 

Freux:  Yeah.

 

Chip:  It’s significantly less labor costs per pound. If you can do it all at the same time, right? If you can do that, that quick pass with the machine and trim it right then, that’s the fastest absolute way to do it. 100%.

 

Freux:  So basically just cut it –

 

Chip:  The least amount.

 

Freux:  Even the machine one person, it’s in there kind of doing –

 

Chip:  And then like, 4, 5, 6, 20 however many people you need to clean it right then, right? Then you can, you can move and we were doing, you know, 80 pounds a day with the batch one. That’s what it was, batch one trimmer. 

 

Freux:  Dang, that’s a lot.

 

Chip:  Yeah, and you can go faster, you can absolutely go faster, right? You could do 300 pounds a day with the right weed? You could do 300 pounds a day, right? If you, if you just wanted to have it machine trimmed you yeah, you could. But, but we just were like running it through it to knock off all, most of the stuff. And then we just bend it up right then and then I had two guys go through it over the course of about a month. All in all, it equaled out like, one of the, one of the most affordable processes and way to do it. But I think we won yes if we have like, I would bet like, six people on the other side of that trimmer, we could trim 80 pounds in a day. Gotta have it bucked, so it takes, it took like four people bucking to do that 80. We could probably had six people buck in, six people trimming, right? And like, literally done 80 pounds in a day with 12 people.

 

Freux:  That’s pretty solid.

 

Chip:  You can see the trim job. I mean, it’s uh, yeah –

 

Freux:  It looks good.

 

Chip:  I mean, there’s there’s a leaf or two, or a stem or two, but like, you know, it doesn’t look round. It’s not beat up, all the buds have a different shape.

 

Freux:  No, it looks good. Looks super solid.

 

Chip:  We excelled at that part of it. But we didn’t excel at how fast we got the plants in the bins. So they got too dry before they went in the bins. They got, they were too wet before they in. We had too much so we couldn’t open and look at everything. right? We didn’t have enough like, trained you know, people to know like the feel and the touch of it all. And you know, it was starting to take hours and hours a day to just go through it and look at it all, right? And so that was really what started to bring the quality down, man. I couldn’t control the temperature either. I had some temperature problems in my dry room.

 

Freux:  Yeah, that yeah.

 

Chip:  That’s when we had that we had that big storm.

 

Freux:  Yeah, I mean, if – 

 

Chip:  A big storm, the power went out, it was fucking negative 10 for days on days. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Freux:  That’s the thing, I mean, if you can’t control the temperature in the dry and I mean you’re at a you know, definite disadvantage. But you know what you’re saying just a second ago, I mean, no one that perfect, you know?

 

Chip:  Oh, this is really good. I’m not gonna smoke any more of it. I’m gonna try another one. You want to you want to spin again? Let’s spin again? 

 

Freux:  Yeah, let’s go ahead.

 

Chip:  Spin again. Let’s see. Here, you pick out one for me. I’m going to pick out one for you. Because, yeah.

 

Freux:  Which one’s that?

 

Chip:  This is also one I’m partial for, is Cookies and Cream.

 

Freux:  Oh, that was the first one you showed me earlier. That’s awesome.

 

Chip: Look at the bag. I just wanted to hand pick out nuggets that I thought I would want to smoke for you. Okay, and what do we got here?

 

Freux:  Sugar Babies.

 

Chip:  Sugar Babies, uhuh? Aren’t you trying to get sued?

 

Freux:  That’s fine.

 

Chip:  The Skittles controversy, what do you think about that?

 

Freux:  I don’t know, it’s pretty crazy.

 

Chip:  Oh shit. Now damn, Sugar Babies. Here’s the thing, man. This is more like, this have more, has the original OG smell.

 

Freux:  Yeah.

 

Chip:  This right, I mean, oh yeah, this is more of like, like, like the OG.

 

Freux:  Honestly, it’s a truth that Sugar Baby is like my favorite thing smoking right now. It’s seriously just –

 

Chip:  Man, why didn’t you just say this to me first, man?

 

Freux:  Well, you picked earlier, you know?

 

Chip:  You know I like that LA. This is it right here. Man, this is great. Now tell me about this.

 

Freux:  Sugar Babies, it’s Dungeon Vault genetics. We had a pretty nice hunt of that, we probably popped about 80 seeds initially. 80 seeds went into like you know, it’s out to germinate. And then from there, we, I guess 80 or so? 23 to 28 females made it and then you know, that’s actually probably my favorite pheno right now. But the crosses Runts times Sugar Daddy, Sugar Daddy is Wedding Cake and Grandpa’s Breath.

 

Chip:  So Runts.

 

Freux:  Runts.

 

Chip:  Grandpa’s Breath –

 

Freux:  Grandpa’s Breath and Wedding Cake. Pretty nice little tree right there. Interesting combo.

 

Chip:  How did you, how did you sniff out this pheno?

 

Freux:  So to honestly tell you the truth, I’m the type of person when, to me, it had the craziest flavor. I mean, it looked good. I really liked the plant. ,

 

Chip:  Did you notice it growing?

 

Freux:  I did notice it growing. And it was kind of in the back of a room in the corner. And it was one of the last things –

 

Chip:  Shy girl in the corner, worked at the library on the weekend.

 

Freux:  It was, it was back in the corner. And I didn’t notice it right at the end, it was like the last thing kind of when I was you know, going through the room at the end that really caught my attention. But it’s really in the dry room and the taste because you know, you can never really tell on a plant. Sometimes that smell in the plant doesn’t really translate over to either the smell or the flavor. So it was one of the ones when I was smelling it really you know, caught my attention, but it was the flavor. The flavor was absolutely nuts to me. And then I was kind of going back and looking at some pictures I’d taken.  And I was like, “Oh another plant, looks really good.” It was kind of chunky. Because there’s so many plants you forget sometimes, you start kind of looking at your your logs or whatnot. But to me smells, smell and taste, that’s that’s what I like to select for.

 

Chip:  And there’s this great, like Granddaddy or Urkle smell.

 

Freux:  Yeah.

 

Chip:  Like it’s like a soft, I call it like, it feels it smells like baby powder feels. Feels soft.

 

Freux:  That’s awesome. Yeah, I mean, it’s got so much you know, Granddaddy Purp in the lineage, you know? Through some of the other you know, parent strains in there. To me it was, it had that like, Skittles Zest Candy but it was also like Cakey. Again, I guess coming from like the Runts.

 

Chip:  I’m just gonna put my shit away, man.

 

Freux:  I don’t know, it really it really caught my attention on the the flavor. I mean, pretty much it’s very, very rare you smoke weed and it gets better throughout the joint. It almost gets more flavorful like, the halfway through it. It comes back there like –

 

Chip:  You’re like ruining the movie for me. Telling me how, the plot. You know, the plot thickens. He speaks and tells me the end. He speaks and be like, “Oh and the road, it’s so good.” And then you’re out for hours. Hey, I just wanted to stop and say I’m having a really good time today on The Real Dirt podcast. And we’re laughing, this is like, our last podcast was like, March of last year right as COVID hit.

 

Freux:  Yeah, you’re right. We tried to do it outside too.

 

Chip:  Right, right, right. And yeah, yeah, that was our last, our last podcast. Right, right? And so it is, it’s a different world now.

 

Freux:  Oh, it is.

 

Chip:  Right? It’s a much lighter mood, there’s laughter in the air.

 

Freux:  Somewhat back to normal now, huh?

 

Chip:  Hahaha. It’s back to normal. I’m just gonna take a puff off this, there’s dry hidden in here. It’s got that, like I said that baby powdered soft feeling.

 

Freux:  Yeah.

 

Chip:  This guy has this other like, cheese.

 

Freux:  Cheese? You get cheese?

 

Chip:  Cheesy like, like, like Brie or cheese rind or something like that.

 

Freux:  There’s something in there –

 

Chip:  On the dry hit, on the dry hit. Almost like mmm, not the blue part of it. But the cheese of like Roquefort.

 

Freux:  That’s right.

 

Chip:  Right. What is this, where’s the Bob Marley lighter? Oh it’s Bob, Bob Marley.

 

Freux:  I don’t know, I’m always big on just like, I mean pretty much flavor to me. Smell and flavor, terps you know? Just interesting unique to me that it has something, there’s something in there that the combination of everything you can kind of like, everything like kind of blends together, and almost make it its own like, flavor. It’s super mouth coating. To me, it has flavor all the way to the puff, that last puff. And I get giggly on it. Like, I like to smoke and wake up smoke a joints to that, have a great day. I get the giggles often the more, I love it, it’s upbringing.

 

Chip:  Goddamn, that’s really good, good, good weed, man.

 

Freux:  I’m glad to hear that. I really appreciate it.

 

Chip:  Yeah, that’s the kind of weed I wanna smoke. Well, I guess the podcast is over now. Right, right, the sound crew is like, maybe I should try it. “Hey, can you pass the tray over, Chip:?” Yeah, they’re so enthusiastic. They’re moving all the old crumbs off the tray so they can get a fresh joint.

 

Freux:  Oh, that’s the way to do it. This was the Cookies and Cream. Definitely got that like, the kind of like, you know, Cookie-esque kinda like you know, sweet but like almost doughy.

 

Chip:  Very Vanilla.

 

Freux:  Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

 

Chip:  You know the ‘Nilla Wafer, you get that one?

 

Freux:  Vanilla Wafer? That’s the name of the strain? 

 

Chip:  Yeah.

 

Freux:  I don’t. Is it out there?

 

Chip:  Mhmm.

 

Freux:  People are definitely gonna have to start chasing the day on stuff like that, huh?

 

Chip:  No shit, no shit. I you know, I’m sure there’s a Vanilla Wafer out there. If not, I’m making one right now. The Nilla Wafer, Vanilla Wafer, a collab.

 

Freux:  We’ll do a collab. 

 

Chip:  Vanilla Wafer Collab.

 

Freux:  A little breeding project.

 

Chip:  Alright, so what would it be? What would it be? 

 

Freux:  Need something you know, kind of you know Cakey Doughy Cook-esque. We can start with that Cookies and Cream, and then maybe add something like, you almost need those, you know those OGs back in the day that were just like, almost like, I don’t even. Something like, it was something like, really gassy sometimes that’ll kind of cut the sweetness almost make it a little like, wafery enough.

 

Chip:  Yeah, totally. We need like, a Triangle.

 

Freux:  Yeah, there you go. A Triangle or a –

 

Chip:  Right. And a –

 

Freux:  Some are super gassy.

 

Chip:  Yes, some are just super gassy or an Alien, right? But it’s something like that, cross with one of the Cakes or the Cookies.

 

Freux:  Yep. It’d have to be a Cake or Cookie, something like that.

 

Chip:  I mean you know, if you’d like if you want a winner, a home winner would be like, like, Wedding Cake crossed with, with what was, what was that again? I got –

 

Freux:  Right there, what you’re smoking?

 

Chip:  What am I smoking again?

 

Freux:  Sugar Babies.

 

Chip:  I just got stoned in my sentence.

 

Freux:  It’ll do that to you, man.

 

Chip:  What are you pointing at me for? What? Oh, yeah, sure, man. Here. Oh yeah, I immediately got stoned, right? I like, hit it and like, like, the wave of stoneness came over me immediately. Like, this would sit down at elephant.

 

Freux:  It’s got some power too, you got to be careful on that.

 

Chip:  Mmm. And flavor, too. it is an old school flavor with that Urkle on it.

 

Freux:  Yeah.

 

Chip:  Right? The Og doesn’t come as much through as much as I wanted to, because it smells so OG, right?

 

Freux:  Yeah. You’re really getting like, kind of like old school like Purple Urkle flavor, that’s kind of what you’re getting out of there.

 

Chip:  There’s definitely like this lavender purple –

 

Freux:  It does, yeah.

 

Chip:  Purple, like but it’s, but it’s not the like, primary taste. It’s back taste. And the front taste is the gassiness, the OG, right? Both of them are real, it’s real soft. 

 

Freux:  Yeah, I could, I could see that.

 

Chip:  Mm hmm. You know this weed is for like them hardcore ladies right here.

 

Freux:  Straight up, huh?

 

Chip:  Right? They like, they want to be like, sexy but in the streets, you know? 

 

Freux:  Yeah. I got that.

 

Chip:  Whoop ass with tire iron, but wear a dress still.

 

Freux:  Straight up, huh? Yeah, honestly, to tell you the truth. That’s my hands down the favorite pack of seeds I ever rain in the last probably two years. Dungeons Vault man, he killed that, Dungeons Vault Genetics.

 

Chip:  So strong. So good. 

 

Freux:  Yeah. 

 

Chip:  So we were talking about our collab? And we came, what was said, Wedding Cake and what?

 

Freux:  We had to pick some super –

 

Chip:  Oh, Cookie.

 

Freux:  So many people have bred with the Wedding Cake though. It’s like, what we’d be thinking, it’s probably already been done. We’d have to pick something like, what’s like something, what’s something like, off the beaten path OG that’s like, super gassy. You would know better than me.

 

Chip:  Well, I mean, if we were talking Triangle and Wedding Cake, yes. Somebody’s already  done that, sure. Right? It seems like you know we get, we still stick with the OG, the Triangle and we just got to go with the pastry flavor, flavor of flour, butter and eggs, vanilla all rolled up into one.

 

Freux:  If somebody out there has got a vanilla strain, they ought to send it our way, you know? And then we can you know, it’s some sort of vanilla with that, you know?

 

Chip:  Yeah. I really love the GMO. And often I feel I get the – oh look, SMO. Look at that. Awesome the crosses of it have that like cake, or vanilla like taste of it. What is this?

 

Freux:  This GMO and basically Sherb Crasher, but just saying that made me want to get there. When you said GMO,  you got to put your nose in there. 

 

Chip:  Damn, Sugar Babies. Alright. Oh man, that’s so good. I don’t know if we’re gonna be able to beat that today. Hold on. I’m gonna have to clean my palate.

 

Freux:  That Sugar Baby’s my favorite weed right now.

 

Chip:  What do you think, sound guy?

 

Travis  It’s pretty good.

 

Chip:  Sound guy gives his thumb up

 

Freux: It’s got a good flame, huh?

 

Chip:  Mhmm. See, this needs the gas.

 

Freux:  Yeah.

 

Chip:  You put the gas on the GMO, who’s doing that?

 

Freux:  The gas GMO?

 

Chip:  Yeah.

 

Freux:  A lot of people are doing that right now.  

 

Chip:  How do you make some original shit? 

 

Freux:  No, I know. It’s hard these days.

 

Chip:  But you have to have your own original lines.

 

Freux:  You just got to start somewhere and make it yours.

 

Chip:  Right, right? If you’re, if you’re trying to talk about, if you’re talking about starting out seeds, there’s so many people doing it. You have to have original lines. 

 

Freux:  It’s gonna take a little while to even get there.

 

Chip:  It’s gonna take a little while to get there. You need to come out of the woodwork. I’ve been doing it for 10 years, and not just want to get into it right away.

 

Freux:  Ten years of prep work, huh?

 

Chip:  Mhm. Sherba – sherba dangle dingle? What was it?

 

Freux:  It doesn’t really have a name. It’s just the cross. The cross is GMO times Sherb Crasher. 

 

Chip:  Sherb Crasher.

 

Freux:  But um, when you mentioned GMO, it’s got that like GMO funk but a little sweet there too with the, with the Sherbert or the Sherb Crasher.

 

Chip:  It’s definitely got the GMO on it, man.

 

Freux:  Yeah, so that’s one of your favorite flavor profiles right now, is the GMO?

 

Chip:  I like how, I like when you cross it, it comes out with that cake or that butter type of taste.

 

Freux:  A lot of the GMO crosses you know, we’ve ran them. They’ve all been very GMO dominant. Like, pretty much are like you know, damn near overpowers everything it touches. Talking about washing, that’s a wash right there’s is GMO. 

 

Chip:  I bet this goes good outside. 

 

Freux:  I bet it does too. Why don’t we find out?

 

Chip:  Let’s do it. Test patch. Yeah, you’re talking about hoophouses earlier today?

 

Freux:  Yeah.

 

Chip:  Yeah, we just we just built a bunch today. 

 

Freux:  I’d love to go to see it.

 

Chip:  We’ll walk down there a little later and check out the hoophouses. That’ll be the hoophouse episode. Oh yeah, we’re gonna hang out all day. We’re gonna have like, Episode 47 of Freux, Chip:’s house.

 

Freux:  How many said y’all have corn right now?

 

Chip:  Man, we’ve got eight houses planted with auto flowers.

 

Freux:  Anything you’re excited about?

 

Chip:  Oh yeah, man we got some Cookie Dawg and some Cookie Dog Thin Mint cross autoflowers.

 

Freux:  Nice.

 

Chip:  And we’ve got more 3 Bears which we really love growing, it’s a great extractor and you know, everybody loves the extract on it.

 

Freux:  Everybody did like that one. 

 

Chip:  Looking good.

 

Freux:  You let me sample some of that. It had almost like a, like a pair of Starburst flavor to it. It kind of smelled like a, like a candy almost like a Starburst pair if that makes sense.

 

Chip:  Yeah, we dubbed it Papaya Frosting.

 

Freux:  I like that. I can see that, yeah.

 

Chip:  You know, you know dried fruit was –

 

Freux:  It definitely  had fruit.

 

Chip:  We all kept saying, “Oh it’s like dried fruit.” I’m allergic to papaya and mango, so I don’t really care for the stuff. Actually I love mangoes, just everytime I eat, it my mouth breaks out.

 

Freux:  Oh, that’s not good.

 

Chip:  It’s uncomfortable.

 

Freux:  Really taste the Cookie on this Cookies and Cream right here.

 

Chip:  Oh dude, this is a smoke out with Freux today. Yeah Freux, so tell me about what’s going on dude. You’re selling your shit all over now, huh? All over Oklahoma.

 

Freux:  Yeah, we’ve been fortunate enough to get out there and hit you know quite a bit of this data. I feel like we’re in you know a lot of good areas. We always like to expand them more.

 

Chip:  I know I should have gotten a zip code restriction dude.

 

Freux:  Straight.

 

Chip:  No, you’re totally expanding. I saw your grow room. The last time I was over there, you were just adding on, it was just starting to come online [inaudible 48:45]. And like, you’re starting to see the product all over Tulsa and OKC now.

 

Freux:  Yeah, Tulsa, OKC.

 

Chip:  You’re getting the outlying areas?

 

Freux:  We actually hit quite a bit of the outlying area. Like we got friends in like, like Sallisaw and trying to think like Roland, and [inaudible 49:09], Sparrow. I’m trying to think what else, can’t even think off the top of my head.

 

Chip:  Oh yeah, GMO.

 

Freux:  You have to come by, the last time you were, we were kind of just getting all that together, getting dialed in, you know?

 

Chip:  You were just transplanted some plants. You were a little behind or something. You were making the first run in one of the rooms and there, people were like, “Oh, I don’t know what we’re doing here.” People rolling joints over in the corner, turning weed in the other room, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah totally. Well, that’s great, dude. How’s the new building?

 

Freux:  The new building’s going good. It’s definitely to help us like, you know, meet the demand. When we first got started, we were you know, kind of limited and I’ve been able to, you know, build out and build more rooms on the last couple years. And yeah, we’ve been thankful for all of our accounts, all our dispo partners, all the patients, you know, we appreciate every one of them. You know, without them we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t be anything. 

 

Chip:  And is it, it’s Jive Cannabis?

 

Freux:  Yeah. Jive Cannabis Co. Just Jive, Jive Cannabis Co. Yeah, either or.

 

Chip:  Right.

 

Freux:  Yeah, you know, just kind of trying to dial in, keep our flavors fresh, you know, trying to, you know, stay with the, you know, the genetics. And we’ve always been quality over quantity, just trying to give everybody the experience that we would like, you know. We’re all, like I was saying the last time, we’re all kind of sewers, so we like to give everybody that stuff you know? Not a lot of people are really trying to, people are in it for different reasons, you know? People can be in it for money, you can be in it for this, but I know us personally, we’re just trying to give the best quality product. A lot of people aren’t really thinking about the end user, their patient. You know, a lot of people you know, cut corners when they can, you know? Dial in their plans, we’re all doing different stuff and we’re, you know, taking the time, taking the effort to try to just, you know, pump out the best, absolute best quality we can. And then we’re trying to be, you know, different than everybody else as far as like flavors, you know? You know, through we’ve talked about pheno hunting and like different things, you know? You know, acquisition of different like, you know, genetics or trades or, you know, different stuff like that. You know, we’re working with breeders, collaborating with different breeders, you know, kept collabing you know, just trying to stay ahead of the curve genetic wise. It’s been great you know, it’s been a you know, it’s been a process. A lot of time and effort goes into it but uh, you know, wouldn’t give it for the world. I mean, to be able to get up and do what you love every day is a blessing, you know, so.

 

Chip:  Oh, man, you’re so right. Man, this weed’s great. This is the SMO, and one of the things I got to say about it as I’m sitting here puffing on it here, it just drags so good.

 

Freux:  Yeah. Smokes very well.

 

Chip:  It just smokes very well. It’s like, it’s got, has the authentic GMO flavor, which is like leads to the Kim Dawg, right?

 

Freux:  That musty, stanky – 

 

Chip:  Yeah, exactly. It’s a lighter color though than Kim Dawg. But here’s what really thing I’m noticing. So you grow all this weed the same?

 

Freux:  Do I know?

 

Chip:  You grow all this weed the same?

 

Freux:  Yes.

 

Chip:  It’s all in the same room? It was all tried the same?

 

Freux:  Yes.

 

Chip:  Right, right. Man, look at that. Look at that, like white ash. 

 

Freux:  Yep.

 

Chip:  Right? One of those other strains didn’t quite have as much white ash, but it still had like, really good flavor. 

 

Freux:  Yeah.

 

Chip:  Right? But like, you know, this is the most flavorful one and it also has this like, white column of ash. I mean, it almost looks like a cigarette ash, right? Right? Look at that. And it comes off like a cigarette ash and this is the tastiest one, right? And other stuff tastes good too but, there’s something to that shit, right? I know it’s a huge debate. Oh, white ash doesn’t mean anything, right? But I just randomly noticed it, right?

 

Freux:  Yeah, I mean, I know there’s a, that like you said, a big debate going on whether it means this or it means that. I definitely prefer white ashes. Like you said, something about, seems like the strains and stuff like that, that seemed to smoke the best, always do burn kind of like white ash. Especially too I mean, depending on how you know, I guess obviously you grow it or take care of it too. But uh, I think a lot of it does just have to do with you know, proper care and you know, the way you take care of it. I mean sure, genetics probably does have something to play into it.

 

Chip:  You grew and dried all this weed about the same and I know individually it’s different, right? They all have different water requirements. They all take up nutrients differently, right? This is in the same room, and the ash looks different. 

 

Freux:  Yeah.

 

Chip:  Right? That’s the amazing part to me. That shows like, what’s really going on with the plant.

 

Freux:  Yeah.

 

Chip:  Right? And how like I’m continuing to learn about you know, cannabis and how it’s processed and grown, and more and more, it’s not just one way, that’s what I see.

 

Freux:  Oh, I got you.

 

Chip:  Right?

 

Freux:  There’s 1000 different ways to skin a cat, there’s no right or wrong way when it comes to cannabis, you know? Let’s do honey.

 

Chip:  That’s right. 12 minutes ago, we ordered tea from this shabby little restaurant off the North Canadian River. Wellston Oklahoma, Freux’s on the way, Freux’s on the way with another j and it’s okay. And it’s okay. Freux’s on the way, Freux’s on the way, Freux’s on the way with another j and it’s okay.

 

Freux:  All you need was your guitar for that one, huh?

 

Chip:  I can’t sing and play at the same time. I’ve been off the guitar, man, I really, you know, and I need to get back on it. That’s for sure. I need to get back on it. It’s so good for my brain. You know, even if I’m bad at it, right? 

 

Freux:  You get lost in the music, you know? It’s kind of a –

 

Chip:  Strum, strum, strumy-dee, strum, strummy, strum. Oh, excellent. Well, hey, man. I’m glad you got your tea here. Yeah.

 

Freux:  Really good. I didn’t really expect it.

 

Chip:  You’re able to cleanse your palate?

 

Freux:  Feels good now.

 

Chip:  Right. Wait, what are you puffing on over there? That looks like a giant goddamn bambam stick over there. It’s like Fred Flintstone rolled up a huge hooter out of a pterodactyl egg.

 

Freux:  That was those uh, those handpicked nuggs that you gave me for the Cookies and  Cream, yeah. The ones you said that you would want to smoke. 

 

Chip:  I would want to smoke, right.

 

Freux:  Good choice on it.

 

Chip:  Right. You know my first weed dealer turned me on to this, right? It’s like oh, when your friends come over, you give them the best nuggs out of the sack. And then you sell like normal people sack.

 

Freux:  Yeah. Straight up, huh? 

 

Chip:  Yes. Yeah, here’s to you, Ed. Thanks, bro. Gave me some great skills. I rolled in one day and he did all his business in the bathroom, right? And so you know if the cops came, you can wash it all down, right? Clean it all up so weed’s everywhere. We’re like doing the deal and I pull out like you know some weed to smoke and he goes, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, what’s going on man?” “I was just gonna roll up a joint.” And he’s like, “No, man. You just kept all those buds? You should smoke that, and put that trim back into the sack.”

 

Freux:  Taught you some valuable life lessons later in life, huh?

 

Chip:  Right then, he was like, we smok the best buds, right? Oh that’s right, that’s why we’re doing this. We want to smoke the best bud.

 

Freux:  Exactly. I’m totally guilty of it.

 

Chip:  Oh yeah. I see your personal sacks over here.

 

Freux:  Yeah, totally guilty.

 

Chip:  I know those don’t look like that. Just kidding, just kidding. I know they do, I know they do, I know they do. All in jest, all in jest. No man, it’s hard to get good quality pounds with the consistent nuggets. You know, my wife wants a dispensary in Dipcon Nursery in dispensary in Oklahoma City. And it’s hard to find growers that have like, consistent looking cannabis that know how to trim it, you know? And know how, what’s nuggets to put in the sack for sale, which one to put in the leaf bag and, you know, know how to dry and trim it like, that does not come across her desk much.

 

Freux:  And that’s that like postharvest care we were talking about earlier. And I know with us, we tried to um, you know, when we’re, you know, have like, you know, raw weight sitting there ready to be made into a pound, we try to take the best nugs off top. And, you know, those are the pounds going out. And then like the smalls or the you know, we’ll throw out like anything that might you know, stem or like break off. But then that little small nuggets is what we’re using for our pre-rolls. We kind of started a pre-roll line a couple months ago and it’s all nug pre-rolls. And that’s kind of where those little nuggets that you know people are trying to sell to like the stores in the shelf, other companies or whatnot, that’s what’s going into our pre-rolls instead of like, you know, shake or anything like that. So as I work on you know, doing that, we want to make sure all the accounts and you know, dispose get the the top quality nuggs that we would want to smoke and then you know, anything that kind of falls on the bottom, you know, goes to pre-rolls or whatnot.

 

Chip:  It’s all about the quality control. It’s about the curation of the sack, right? You know, that’s has as much to do with the end user presentation –

 

Freux:  Presentation’s everything, you know? To start off with.

 

Chip:  Right, right. And you know, I mean, you know, this is a perfect example of a boutique that sells, your weed sells it highest of the market, right? And then my greenhouse over here is like really good weed but you know, it’s just like, you know, Heineken or Import. It’s not like Budweiser, right? 

 

Freux:  That was a good one. 

 

Chip:  Like Guinness. Like Guinness. No, but it’s a , it’s a, it’s a totally different thing, right? Like, you know, this is at scale, there’s, it’s, we cover a bunch of square feet for sure there’s only a handful of people that do it all. It’s part of this whole mad scientist project I have, right? Totally different business plan, then what you have, right, which is like high in boutique, right? Strain select, branded product. And that’s what I really love about Oklahoma, right? It’s like, I can like plant thousands and thousands of seeds, because I’m, you know, searching for something or want to see how it grows. Or I’m trying to develop technology or a potting soil technique or a planting seed technique, or whatever it is, right? And I can do that here, right?

 

Freux:  Every time I talk to you, you’re planting seeds. Seriously every time we’re like, “Dang, it’s a little bigger this time. A little bigger and bigger, huh?

 

Chip:  Oh, man. I love it, dude. I love it man. You can do the branded you know, model, right? Because we just sell our cannabis mostly wholesale. It’s not what branded, we sell it all by the pound, right? I see yours in the shops, in jars with cool little labels and you know, it’s different. It’s a totally different like, way to enter the market. We’re not forced to do any way.

 

Freux:  Oh, not forced at all.

 

Chip:  Like in other states, you’re like, the growers have to package it all. It all has to show up branded and packaged in the marketplace. Right now, Oklahomans might demand that in the future, but like, that’s market-driven and we’re not made to do it.

 

Freux:  Yeah, most people just do in deli style shop, put a you know big old turkey bag and kind of go from there you know?

 

Chip:  Oh man. There should, somebody, so  if there’s a shop out there – I’m sure it is – it needs to be called Old School.

 

Freux:  Yeah.

 

Chip:  And you come in and you sit down on the couch, right?

 

Freux:  Little coffee table.

 

Chip:  Little coffee table in front of you.

 

Freux:  You got a duffel bag.

 

Chip:  Pitbull running around. Cool now. And you know, some turkey bags right rolled neatly out on the coffee table.

 

Freux:  Tie that little knot on the top so they’re easy to open and close, huh?

 

Chip:  You mean the little plastic thing that it comes with? No, I don’t like, I got I got my twist technique down.

 

Freux:  There’s an art form to that.

 

Chip:  Mhm, there is. You gotta like, you really have to feel the weight and balance  of the football. Yeah, man. It’s been a great day dude. I think, I think you got me stoned, man. We have any like like, you know, like idea of what happened today? We started with so much good intentions. 

 

Freux:  Just kind of rolled with it, you know? Literally.

 

Chip:  Well, let’s recap the cannabis that we reviewed today. Today, we reviewed the –

 

Freux:  Dolato?

 

Chip:  Dolato right? 

 

Freux:  Sugar Babies.

 

Chip:  Yeah, the Sugar Babies, mmm. The SMO. 

 

Freux:  Yeah, the GMO Sherb Crasher.

 

Chip:  Which is the GMO Sherb Crasher.

 

Freux:  Looked at your Sherbert Dosidoe.

 

Chip:  The Sherbert Dosi Dosidoe, right. 

 

Freux:  And the Cookies and Cream.

 

Chip:  And Cookies and Cream? Yeah, wow.

 

Freux:  It was a nice little lineup right there. 

 

Chip:  We did see a lineup today, man. Wow, like, I haven’t had one of these in a while. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, man. We need to do this more often. You know what we need, you know what we need to do? Oh shit. Alright, I got it. We’re gonna start bringing in guest weed people to bring in, we to smoke us all out on.

 

Freux:  I would love to do. A little kind of honest review type deal. Just kinda, you know.

 

Chip:  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know get their story. Let’s see what’s going on. Like, you know, and like, and we get to smoke out. Alright, here it is. We’re looking for the top cannabis producers, growers, growers, the top don’t, I mean, you know, if you think you’re the best, you have to know you’re the best. We want the best. Only the best quality. We can show up here, right?

 

Freux:  Full flavor.

 

Chip:  Full flavor, right? And, you know, we would never be rude or mean or bash everybody, right? But you know, a completely honest and open smoke out and storytelling time of the strains, right? We can like, find out about the genetics and where they came from, and how the plants grow. And it’ll be like, if Mr. Rogers meets good old house. 

 

Freux:  I like that. That was clever right there. 

 

Chip:  No, seriously –

 

Freux:  No, I would love –

 

Chip:  I told you, yeah. We should have, we should have okay smoke out. Okay smoke out, right? We’ll get some, we’ll line a couple people up, 4.2 people up in over the course a year. This way, I can formally keep up with you and everything’s going on, you can bring more Sugar Babies back over, right? I can tell you about like all the seeds I killed, or the genetics that didn’t work out ,or the stuff I didn’t, I’m like “No, no.”  Oh and uh, and Travis over here, he can just continue like, you know, smoking joints and twisting the knobs to make it happen.

 

Freux:  You need that.

 

Chip:  Have you been doing any special effects on our voices today?

 

Travis  You’ll find out.

 

Freux:  Anytime we get good people, good company, good weed around, there’s bound to have good conversations, whether it’s cannabis related or not, you know?

 

Chip:  Oh, good times. Good times, and we’re gonna call it there on this episode of The Real Dirt. Thanks for joining. Please check out other episodes on YouTube. That is The Real Dirt on YouTube. We have many of the episodes on there. This episode will be on there. Some are video, lots of audio. You can also download any episode on iTunes, subscribe. You can get it on Spotify and all the major suppliers of your favorite podcast and hey, if you just want to check us out, come to therealdirt.com. This has been The Real Dirt, thanks again.

The Real Dirt on Permaculture and Cannabis Tourism

The Real Dirt on Permaculture and Cannabis Tourism

permaculture and regenerative cannabis cultivation
Notice: This episode was recorded before the forest fires in California began.

Restorative agriculture is no joke.

As cannabis cultivators, we are all stewards of the environment. Our actions can directly impact our local ecosystems, and as cannabis cultivation spreads across the nation, that impact can grow rapidly.

Restorative agriculture, or permaculture, is the act of farming while trying to prevent as many environmentally harmful practices as possible. Water usage, nutrients, soil beds, and farm design are just some of the aspects that go into restorative cannabis cultivation, and Sol Spirit Farm is doing it all.

Judi Nelson and Walter Wood are the owners of Sol Spirit Farm, a licensed 10k square foot regenerative cannabis farm in Trinity County, CA and Sol Spirit Retreats, a cannabis tourism-focused, farm stay hospitality business. Walter has been cultivating cannabis since 1996, and his passion for improving the environmental footprint of his cannabis cultivation is what drives every cultivation decision.

Judi and Walter started Sol Spirit Retreats in 2019 after meeting a lot of people, even people working in the cannabis industry, who had never seen a cannabis plant growing in the ground under the full sunshine. They wanted to share the experience of being in the Emerald Triangle on a cannabis farm, and show off how regenerative farming, permaculture principles, and appropriate technology can enhance the cannabis we bring to market, while improving the health of our land.

In this episode of The Real Dirt with Chip Baker, Judi and Walter take Chip through their grow processes and how they maintain their restorative cannabis cultivation practices. They also dive in to the new world of cannabis tourism and the many challenges, especially the legal hurdles, that the two had to overcome just to operate.

While still small and driven mostly by word-of-mouth, Sol Spirit Retreats has drawn in a lot of people trying to experience the northern California life. Judi hopes that one day it will be just like a winery and orchard, where visitors won’t just be able to tour, but also taste the cannabis on the farm!

Check out this episode on our new YouTube channel or go to your favorite podcast platform to listen on the go! TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Connect with Judi and Walter

Instagram

Facebook

Sol Spirit Farms

Follow and Subscribe to The Real Dirt Podcast:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therealdirtpodcast/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealdirtpodcast/

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-real-dirt-with-chip-baker/id1173559750

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1tC6OyqCJfUWsmGYovqlQP

Get great deals on grow gear:

CultivateColorado.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cultivatecolorado/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cultivatecolorado/

Transcript

 

Chip: Oh, here we are, The Real Dirt. Today at The Real Dirt, I have some peoples from one of my favorite place in the world, Trinity County, California. Man, Trinity and Humboldt, and along the border there, is one of the most beautiful and rugged places in the world. And I have Judi Nelson and Walter Wood of Sol Spirit Farms and Retreats. Say hey, Judi and Walter.

 

Walter: Hello!

 

Judi: Hey, Chip!

 

Chip: Oh, man, I just love that whole area you guys are in, outside Willow Creek all the way to Hayford. I’ve got some really great friends over there. Little Hill Farms is over there, and man, you guys are just in paradise.

 

Walter: Definitely, definitely. We love it. We have been out there for about 20 years now and I don’t know, we hardly leave. It’s home. It’s a magic place.

 

Chip: So are you guys on the mountain, or the river?

 

Walter : We’re about 300 feet up from the river floor. So we’re just out of the river fog, but at the same time, we’re not up on the hilltop. So it’s a nice kind of in-between. We’re in the valley, but we get about 12 hours of sun so it just works out perfect.

 

Chip: Oh man, it sounds beautiful. Yeah, that river fog can plague you. I lived over in, off the Vandusen for a number of years. Man, the fog just creep right in on you.

 

Walter: I had no idea how bad it was until one day, we just took a little drone up and it was like, 10 o’clock in the morning. We’d been in the sun for hours and the whole valley was fogged in just below our shelf.

 

Chip: Oh yeah, there’s places like that all over. You know I lived in, up in Kneeland right outside Arcata for a number of years. And we’re at the 3500 block, which is 3.5 miles up that hill. And if you went just a half a mile further, you’re gonna have enough fog. Almost every single day like, hours before you know, we got out of the fog.

 

Walter: Luckily, we were living in the area for a few years before we bought the property, and we had a pretty good idea what the [2:18 inaudible] were. Permaculture course really helped nail in what exactly makes a good piece of property for homesteading, and growing some fine medicines.

 

Chip: Well, man, you guys are in the homesteading capital of the world, that’s for sure. And you mentioned permaculture, and you know, we talked about regenerative farming earlier. You guys have a unique cannabis business. You know, many people just have a, they cultivate, or extract, or are packaging something, but you have this cultivation that you integrate with a farm stay. Tell me how that works.

 

Judi: Well, so we have been inviting guests up to the farm. The [2:59 inaudible] as legalization of recreational hemp in California, we started going to a bunch of different trade shows. And it was kind of amazing to meet people who are in the cannabis industry who have never seen a cannabis plant growing in the ground. And it really surprised me, because obviously, we’ve been sort of up in our little bubble here for the past 20 years, and I just didn’t realize it. And so, we just really wanted to be able to bring people like that up, and be like, “Hey, check this out. This is this way that this can be done that’s not taking a lot of resources.” We’re actually trying to make our piece of property and the land that we’re working with in a better state than when we found it. And in order to do that, we have some bell tents, which are these beautiful canvas tents. And people come up, and they generally spend two nights in the tents. And we raise pigs and chickens on the farm, as well as vegetables and fruit, and so we’re able to do farm-to-table meals. And then Walter takes them on a really nice farm tour, and shows them all the different techniques that we’re using. And we usually take them rafting on the Trinity or on the South Fork, depending on what time of year it is. And it’s just been really great, because I think to people who are suffering nature deficit, nature connection deficit, it’s a really rejuvenating experience I think for people.  Especially if they’re coming from a city, to come up and just chill out, smoke some good medicine, and connect with nature. And it’s been really rewarding for us too, and hopefully for them.

 

Chip: That sounds so fun. But you guys don’t have a normal cultivation or I shouldn’t say a normal, but it should be normal. But you guys use permaculture and regenerative farming techniques.  Many people have heard organic or maybe living soil, and those are kind of part of regenerative farming and permaculture a bit. And I know it’s a huge question to ask, but man, can you like, tell me how it applies to cannabis?

 

Walter: Well, we’re working on a whole bunch of different angles and we did this, we have transitioned substantially in the last few years. We were doing the full season plants up until almost legalization, and then we switched over to the light dep, and so we’re getting all that worked out. And so we’ve now got about six and a half thousand square feet of, we got living soil beds which for us that means we don’t till them, we don’t broadfork them or anything. We did originally broadfork them to just loosen them up a little bit, but not to actually turn the soil. There is a living clover cover crop growing year-round, it’s a little bit died back right now, because they were associated out by the ladies on the first round. We just replaced the spot where the plant itself was potted in, or the pot went in into the ground. And so the rest of it’s all connected, all natural, all living. Tilling really disrupts the biology of the soil and releases a lot of CO2 into the air. With this, the clover cover crop, we didn’t have to import any nitrogen this year. All’s we’ve been feeding has been compost fees, most of that’s made with onsite compost, we’ve been doing various KNF type things, which we are importing some sugar to make our nutrients. So that’s just about it. It’s all natural farming, just trying to to make as many nutrients as we can at home to import as little as possible, and just build that soil. 

 

Chip: When you say beds, describe what your beds look like.

 

Walter: Well, so I mean we are on a little bit of a slope. It’s pretty mellow, but it does slope so we went across that hillside.  And when we broadforked it and all that out, we leveled out a six foot bed going across the hillside, it’s tied right into the soil. There’s no cage around it or anything like that, it’s just directly in the earth. And then, we’re going to be putting up some wood edges on the downhill side to just help retain that edge. It’s grown right in the earth. It’s super important to me. We don’t have to feed as much, and the plants have access to what they want. They can make choices, and they’re not stuck in a little tiny soil spot, they have access to the whole area.

 

Chip: What did you have to do to your soil to prep it? What did you add to it at the beginning, and what are kind of the things that you add to it now?

 

Walter: Well, so this year, like I said, we actually, we did not add anything besides wood cover crop (7:50). And then we also did bring in forest duff from the hillside above of the patch. And so we brought in a couple inches of the leaf litter and stuff that’s just starting to break down a little bit, so that brought in our indigenous microorganisms or IMOs, as they’re known sometimes. So we covered the beds with a six inch layer of that which completely covered that clover for a little bit, then that cover crop burst right back through that, and basically just incorporated all of that leaf matter right away. And so previously, when we first did prep those beds, we did bring in some manure. I think that was about it. I’m so scared to bring in even from outside anything because our tests, our flower’s tested to the parts per billion on these pesticides, and what if I’m bringing in some straw or something, and if it were to have something? So we avoid bringing in anything. We like to keep everything from on-site, that way we know it’s clean.

 

Chip: These aren’t like, beds that normal people think of that have wooden sides, their area is that you’ve built in the soil, grown in and added your own ingredients, local ingredients.

 

Walter: Exactly, exactly.

Chip: When you talk to people about cannabis techniques and grow techniques, a bed means so much different, so many different things. You know, in the indoor world, it can mean something, it’s totally different than the outdoor world.

 

Walter: We are directly in the ground for sure.

 

Chip: You’re directly in the ground and you say you do light dep, is it under plastic? Or is it under natural sunlight during the day?

 

Walter: So yeah, we do not have the clear covers on the greenhouses, so they are open to the natural sunlight. It makes it simpler. We don’t need as many fans, things like that, because it is open. And then yeah, we roll down some tarps over it at night, give us the 12 hour cycle.

 

Chip: Oh yeah, absolutely, man. I’m just envisioning your garden here as we’re talking about it. I mean, I’ve been in quite a few Humboldt and Trinity Gardens on the hillside. I feel like I know, I feel like I’ve been to your place before.

 

Walter: One thing that’s a little unusual is each bed is on its own, a foot higher than the next, because it’s sloping down the hillside. So then the bottom of the greenhouse has just some leg extensions to level it out. And so once again, just trying to simplify, keep things as minimal, and environmentally friendly as possible.

 

Chip: That’s the name of the game. And you know, the interesting thing about everything we’re talking about, is there’s no cost in doing this. Like you virtually have, I mean, you have very low input costs. 

 

Walter: Yeah, comparing it to an indoor scene it is very drastically reduced. I would do only two runs a year. So we have very little lighting, very little inputs, and that way, the light dep is significantly more labor I find than the full season was. And you know, just pruning up all these plants and anything when you multiply it by 1800 or 2400 pound a run, all of a sudden like, just a few [11:13 inaudible] here and there adds up.

 

Judi: There is an increased labor cost, you know, you’re just trading going out into the forest and having to collect these inputs. That’s a labor cost, right? So you’re trading maybe some increased labor cost on going out and sourcing the nutrients ourselves compared to like, just going to the store and buying something that somebody else made in a bottle. So it’s a little bit of a trade-off. It’s not like there’s no cost associated. There’s no material cost, but there is a labor cost for sure.

 

Chip: Wait, wait a second. I thought that’s where the farm stay came in. Don’t you have the guests doing that for you?

 

Judi: I gotta make that work out, right? That’s the next step.

 

Chip: Sounds like you guys got a great trim camp. You really need to be hustling guests here in October, huh?

 

Judi: Right. Yes, come pay to trim our weed. That sounds like a great plan. I gotta get to work on that.

 

Chip: You would be the first person to try to implement that one.

 

Judi: I’ll let you know how it goes.

 

Walter: We’ll outdo what everyone else has [12:16 inaudible].

 

Chip: You know, not too many places have cannatourism, and that’s what we’re talking about here. And this is so akin to, I mean, wine tourism or fishing tourism. Like, this is like, a brand new thing. And how has it been perceived?

 

Judi: Well, you know, it’s been a little bit of a challenge just working out all the legalities of doing it, obviously because cannabis is so highly regulated. That’s, I would say been the most challenging part, is just trying figure out and make sure I’m not breaking any rules. And one thing that I mean, the people who have found it and have come out,  we sort of kept it a little just word of mouth so far, but the people that have come out have all had a great experience. And I think that, especially in Trinity County, and in Humboldt, like, it’s a huge thing if we can make it so that it’s easy for farms to do this, and to show it. There’s a huge demand for people who want to come and have this experience. It’s like, legendary, this area. There’s lots of people that want to come have the experience. So it’s been really well-received by the people who have come so far. We’re just trying to make it better all the time. And someday too, what we hope is like, just like wine, it would be amazing if we can get to the point with the state laws and the local laws that I could actually allow people to purchase cannabis at the farm when they come, you know, be able to buy our flower on our farm. So far that’s not allowed, but I really do hope that one of these days soon, the various involved agencies do allow us to do that, just like you can at a winery. And do tastings, and do that whole thing, because that would be amazing.

 

Chip: Absolutely man. They’ll treat us like adults one day.

 

Judi: Someday.

 

Walter: Maybe, I sure hope so. We know it’s come a long way.

 

Chip: It’s amazing, you know, Humboldt and Trinity County has such long-standing history, but there’s just always been this fight against cannabis there, and it just still remains. It’s one of the most difficult places to get licensing to this day. They’re really missing out on so much great culture. And this huge brain trust is there of people like yourselves, and living environment, sacrificing to grow cannabis, and cannabis growing them in return. It’s just an untapped resource, and they just haven’t used it well enough, that’s for sure.

 

Judi: Especially in Trinity where, you know, there was logging and mining, and that’s kind of what everything was built upon. But that’s been gone for decades now. And there’s not a lot else going on in Trinity. And I do think it’s changing. You know, we were able just recently, the Trinity County Agriculture Alliance, of which we are members, which is a group of licensed cultivators in Trinity. And we actually proposed our own cannabis commercial, cannabis tax measure, like, to tax ourselves. Because up to that point, Trinity didn’t have one and, you know, we all want to see our community services happen. And, we were able in five days to collect 10% of the registered voter signatures in the county to get our measure on the ballot.  And you know, who would have thought that that would ever happen in Trinity County? But it just did, so it’s coming around, it’s happening. You know, we’re getting more organized, and as people can kind of come out of the closet a little bit, I think that’s only just gonna increase.

 

Chip: Yeah, ’cause people are still scared to talk about cannabis there, even legal cannabis owners. They’re scared to talk about cannabis. They’re scared to bring it up to their neighbors. It’s still taboo in so many communities, in so many places.

 

Judi: Yeah, it’s true. I think that for me, that’s been one of the best parts about recreational happening in California. It’s just like, “Okay, you know what? We’re here. We’ve been here the whole time, but now we’re letting you know.”

 

Chip: So tell me about this tax initiative.

 

Judi: Well, so there was a tax measure proposed on the March election by a group of people who really actually just wanted to put all of – my perception – was that their tax basically was just to put everybody out of business. And so this, the Trinity County Agricultural Alliance came up with one that is much more small farm friendly, because in Trinity County, almost everybody has 10,000 square feet or less because of the way that the ordinance was written. There’s only a few people who have more than 10,000 square feet. And so basically, the TCAA came up with this proposal where it’s all based on sales, right? So for instance, in Humboldt County, you have this square footage tax where you’re charged per square foot, kind of regardless on whether you grow anything or make any money or not, which personally, I don’t think is the best way to do it.

 

Chip: Oh, it sucks.

 

Judi: I think that like these other industries, you should be taxed once you make money, right? And so luckily, we kind of had time to look at all these other counties and be like, “Okay, what’s good, what’s not good?” And so this tax, it’s like, for your first hundred pounds, you’re taxed at this rate. And I can’t quote you the exact numbers, but you’re taxed at a lower rate. So if you’re a very small producer, those first hundred pounds you grow is taxed at a low rate. And then it goes up, like okay, and then the next 200, I think, and it goes up from there until like, over I think a thousand pounds, you’re paying, I believe it’s $15 a pound in cultivation tax to the county, basically. And, you know, there’s some other things in there about different businesses, there is no retail in Trinity County yet at this point. And so they’re not, you know, they’re missing that, again, they’re not collecting any tax revenue because they’re not allowing anybody to sell retail, which hopefully, again, they’re gonna get that together. But this initiative mostly is for taxation on cultivators, because I think that’s appropriate as long as you wait to tax them. Wait until I’ve made some money, I’m very happy to contribute to the county coffers to do roadwork and, public safety, and things like that, and schools. And so, we just wanted to show as an industry like , “Look, here we are, we want to contribute, but don’t try to put us out of business.” Because that’s not going to be good for the county long-term.

 

Chip: Yeah, there’s so much green greed, it comes from every place. The counties get it for sure, and the state governments get it for sure. Well man, I salute you guys, for working so hard to put it together. Trinity was considered one of the harder places when it all started, I think Humboldt’s shown that it’s the hardest place right now. I mean, Mendocino might not be so easy either, but it hasn’t been any easier anywhere in the Triangle.

 

Walter: I think the triangle has some like, 60 or 80% of the permit since, it’s a large number.

 

Chip: More like 15, 16,000 people in Humboldt with commercial grows, you know, before all this has happened. And to say that you have like, and to say that you have 500 people or 600 people with licensing? Man, I just don’t think that’s a good enough attempt to get people out of the private market industry, and get them into tax. Because literally for Humboldt, it’s billions of dollars. They would convert all of that private grow – sorry guys, you should probably pay some taxes, all of my private grow friends that are out there just growing in the hills. I love you guys, you should pay more taxes. If they would incorporate all those guys into it, it would like really, really change. I mean, my local school, Trinidad Union School District, man they’re failing, they don’t have any money, right? Like, COVID’s hit them so hard like, there’s like, just so much stuff, and through Humboldt and Trinity County an educational loan that needs to be worked on. And you know if they played their cards right, like, cannabis could totally bring the whole Emerald Triangle out of all of their problems, right? It could help with the fire suppression issues. It could help with all the drug problems, it can help with all the homelessness, it can help with all of the educational stuff. I mean, it’s just such a wasted resource. It’s just kind of frustrating when we see as there.

 

Judi: Yeah, I think some of that is not necessarily seeing the legal market in California. And it is a challenge right now to, when you compare just all the hoops you have to jump through, all the money you have to pay. And yet, I personally think, because the state especially is taxing the end product so hard, they just have this huge black market that’s still going, and it’s hard to not look at that and be like, “Wow, that was so much easier back in the day.” But again, now it’s all changing and it’s the time to like, get together and move forward into the light.

 

Chip: No, it’s the responsible thing to do. And I mean, I don’t know about Trinity County, but Humboldt County per capita always had more people contributing to fundraising than anyplace else, you know? And that was because all the cash dollars from the fishing, the logging and the cannabis. And now the fishing and the logging, it’s like next to nothing compared to what it used to be, and it’s just cannabis. If they could just, open up their arms, just embrace it.

 

Walter: Relax a bit.

 

Chip: Yeah, relax, relax a bit. I know you have such a special place and inviting people out there. Tell me about some of the people that have come in and visited you.

 

Judi: So last year, we mostly focused on some different folks who either own, or manage, or the buyers for various retail shops in California. Again, because there’s no better way for someone to learn where this particular brand, our Sol Spirit brand of flower comes from. And, the lot of them had never been to the Emerald Triangle. So last year, it was a lot of retailers. And most of them were so stressed out when they arrived, because they’re jumping through their own set of hoops. And that job, I can’t even imagine trying to pull that off. And so, it was just super relaxing and rejuvenating for them. And most of them, you could just like, see their faces change by the third day where they were just like, “Oh, okay, we’ve let go of the stress. We’re here. ” And also getting to see the way that we farm, I think really opened their eyes to like, it’s not all the same. So like, indoor has its thing and then people with like, really large grows who are maybe putting out more mid-quality stuff, but in volume, that’s a whole different thing. And then our particular craft, regenerative way of doing it, it’s like, you’re actually talking kind of about different products, right? And so I think it was great for them to be able to see, like, “Oh, yeah, the next time somebody comes in and tries to sell me a regenerative craft cannabis, I’m not going to compare it to this $8 eighth in a mylar bag that came from a 12-acre scene in Salinas,” or something, you know. So that I think is like, an education piece that’s super important to us. And so there’s that, and like, that really, I think, changed a lot of their perspectives. And then this year, we’ve had more just regular folks. It’s been interesting with COVID to kind of work that all out, and so we had a bit of a slow start just making sure that we could keep everybody safe. And now I feel like we’ve got that down. And it’s been, I feel like even more rewarding, because we’ve had several people from the Bay Area come up, and some of them have been stuck in their apartment for months. So to be able to come out and of course, the beautiful cannabis medicine also helps with their mindset. And we had a couple of people come out where they sort of like, changed their whole life trajectory over the weekend, because they were able to just kind of step out of their normal life and gain some perspective on what they were doing which of course the cannabis is also really helpful for.

 

Walter: Yeah. The hills of Humboldt County and Trinity County have a way of doing that.

 

Judi: It’s been really great. We’ve had all kinds of different people, yes. Yeah. You know, you get used to where you live, and you kind of stop seeing it, I think sometimes. And being able to have all these different people come and see it from their perspective and out of their eyes, it really refreshes our love of the place as well.

 

Chip: Oh man, you know that’s the thing that people don’t understand or know about that area, Northern California is it has the least light pollution I’m pretty sure of any place else in the US. Right, maybe even the continental US. I mean, it is you get to see this guy.

 

Judi: Yeah, it’s pretty amazing.

 

Chip: It’s been great chatting with you guys. If people want to come to Sol Spirit Retreats, how do they get in touch with you guys? Can they follow you on Instagram? Or how does it work?

 

Judi: Well, they can follow us on Instagram. We have two different Instagrams, so one for the farm and one for the farm stay. And they’re, Sol Spirit Farm, s-o – like the sun, Sol Spirit Farm and Sol Spirit Retreats. And then our websites are the same, solspiritfarm.com and solspiritretreats.com.

 

Chip: Yeah, well, hey, thanks for joining me and man, smell some of that good Trinity County here for me. God, I wish I was there right now with you.

Pheno-Hunting and the Quest for the Best Cannabis

Pheno-Hunting and the Quest for the Best Cannabis

jive cannabis co oklahoma medical marijuana

Through decades of perfecting growing techniques, Jive Cannabis Co. is creating a product of top quality.

They enjoy spending time in the greenhouse, ensuring every plant is beautiful. The perfection of the plant is found not only in the pounds it produces but also in the nose, tricome structure, and overall beauty. 

In this segment, we’ll hear from Freaux, one of the owners of Jive Cannabis Co, the importance of pheno-hunting, how they do it, and choosing the best seeds for their customers. Don’t miss out!

The state we wanted to get involved in and through a total team effort of my partners and me were able to make it happen. We all bring our little own unique things to the table to make Jive Cannabis Co. happen, and it worked out great so far. – Freaux

Download The Episode Companion For This Episode

Some Topics We Discussed Include

2:16 – Jive Cannabis Co.’s mission
10:55 – Pheno-hunting
21:17 – Choosing the best seed company
28:25 – Great seed breeders
33:46 – Seed lot and organizing
56:58 –  Naming your weed
1:04:01 – Where to find them

People Mentioned / Resources

Connect with Jive Cannabis Co.

Connect with  Chip Baker

Transcript

Chip: Hey, this is Chip from The Real Dirt on this episode of The Real Dirt we talk about fino hunting the genetic quest for greatness. That’s right. You know, fortunately, there’s so many seed companies that you can access these days through the internet, through some of the changes in the laws and you can pretty much have access to the greatest genetics and seeds on the planet. That’s never happened before in cannabis. 

So man if you want to learn about planting seeds about pheno hunting, listen to this great episode. I’ve got my good buddy Freaux from Jive Cannabis Company, and we talk about all of it, man. We talked about how to select a seed company, we talk about how to plant the seeds, we talk about how to pick the strains, we talk about how we label them. We talked about kind of how we test them. We go through like a couple of his fino selections and criticize them a little bit and talk about the differences between each of them. So it’s a great episode, if you’re into it, if you’ve never fino hunted before, if you’ve never planted seeds out before in order to choose or select clone mother, listen to this episode and enjoy The Real Dirt podcast.

Hey, this is Chip with The Real Dirt, in today’s dirt, I’ve got Freaux with Jive Cannabis Company. How’s it going, Freaux? 

Freaux: It’s going well going, how about you Chip? Thank you for having me on, man. 

Chip: Oh, man. Seems like deja vu. I’ve been trying to get you on here for a while and we finally made it. 

Freaux: Yeah, I’m glad we’re finally able in our busy schedules to kind of link up and get the podcast on and– 

Chip: So Freaux you’re– Freaux is a longtime customer of ours with Cultivate Colorado and he moved down here. He’s one of the first wave of people to move into Oklahoma to start up, you know, a cannabis business. And we’re really excited when we moved down here because we knew that Freaux was going to bring great, great weed with you. 

Jive Cannabis Co.’s Mission

Freaux: I appreciate that man, you know, coming from you, that means a lot. I’m glad that you think that we have good weed and enjoy it. That’s what we aim to do, to please and really try to put good weed out there in front of the patients. 

Chip: Man, that’s a that’s the attitude that we were talking about earlier about how are you bringing great weed to the market, bringing great weed to people and not so much that like, I have great weed, you know, and it when you do it that way just takes the whole ego out of it? 

Freaux: Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, we’re all humble people. We don’t try to get any kind of egos involved. I mean, we’re just trying to come with great quality cannabis, clean tested cannabis that we can bring to the patients and have them enjoy. We enjoy good weed at the end of the day, I mean, me and my partners were connoisseurs, we enjoy good weed. We just want the patients to be able to enjoy good weed that we smoke, kind of give them like a genuine experience. 

Chip: So, you’ve been involved in medical cannabis for a number of years. And you teamed up with a group of friends to come down here and start this business. 

Freaux: Yeah, so I’m one of four owner operators. There are four of us that all work hard is at the full team effort to do this and make this happen. Some of my partners are originally from Oklahoma, there’s some who spent multiple years out here but it was something when we heard that there was a vote happening and there is going to be able to the possibility of medical cannabis out here. There’s some surefire you know, the state we wanted to get involved in and through a total team effort of me and my partners were able to make it happen and we all kind of bring our little own unique things to the table to make Jive Cannabis Co. happen and it’s worked out great so far. And we’re just going to hopefully continue to strive to do better and bring the best quality marijuana to the patients out here, man. 

We’re just going to hopefully continue to strive, do better and bring the best quality marijuana to the patients – Freaux

Chip: You know, and one of the one of the things that strikes me about the way you’ve built the company is you’re not a huge company. You’re not like– okay, let me step back. There’s this fear in Oklahoma that like big out of state people are gonna come in here and ruin it, right. But we’re both came from out of state. We both now live in Oklahoma. But it’s not big people. It’s small, just normal people. Right. We’re not really corporations. 

Freaux: Yeah, I mean, probably the furthest thing from a corporation at the moment. And that’s kind of the way we want to keep it. I mean, we are, I guess you could say your traditional kind of mom and pop grow. We all do everything in house. There’s four of us total, and we all do it everything from the cultivation of business to whatever it takes sales whatever it takes to make it happen. Yeah, we’re definitely just a group of friends, that all have a common goal and we’re just trying to be out here and compete. And you know, it’s fortunate enough that in the great state of Oklahoma, it’s given the opportunity to do what we love, you know? 

We’re a group of friends that all have a common goal, and we’re just trying to be out here and compete. – Freaux

Chip: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, the real interesting part about Oklahoma to me is there’s a lot of weed smokers here, a lot of medical cannabis users. But before a year or so ago, there wasn’t so much cannabis culture, right people didn’t really have the access to the flavors, they might have been sold product, but you had no idea if it was Sour Diesel, Blue Dream, Bubble Gum, making up a name. It’s like whatever high times a month cookies was, that’s what they got sold to the level of education isn’t so– it hasn’t been, the level of cultural knowledge hasn’t really progressed, because it was such a private market state forever. I mean, it was one of the strictest cannabis law states in the country. 

Freaux: Yeah, I’d say so I mean, definitely. So it’s kind of crazy though because like, we get out and we’ll go to [inaudible]

 or go to like sessions or [inaudible] be along with other patients. And there is like, a, definitely a big interest. And there’s a lot of people who are learning, but there’s also a lot of people who do have an interest and, you know, with the internet and social media and kind of being able to, you know, follow different things. There’s a lot of interest, and a lot of people out here are receptive to it. And I know people out here do like, good pot. It’s one of those things where, you know, there are a lot of people who are still kind of learning or whatnot. But the interest out here is huge. And, you know, there’s a lot of people out here who know their stuff. I mean, there’s quite a few people out here, you’re not going to be able to pull the wool over their head. I mean, they’re going to know if you don’t have, you tell them it’s something that’s not what it is or you’re probably going to call you out in or not wanting to buy it. 

I feel like there is a lot of culture starting and I’d say so with started with Oklahoma to been interested in weed before this happened and then a lot of people come in from other states where it’s been either medical or recreational we’re coming in here and kind of adding to that and kind of making Oklahoma its own unique place and I think it’s awesome where it’s heading and honestly I think down the road it’s gonna be a place where there’s gonna be so much mortgage Morgan like you know, kind of melting pot kind of a cultures where it’s gonna be I think it’s gonna be great and you know what I’m saying. 

Chip: I agree with you man. At Cultivate Colorado and Cultivate OKC, we see all types of growers that come in there. I really get a great gauge of what’s going on in the area. You know, as there’s regions of the state where the larger commercial outdoor and greenhouse growers seem to come from. There’s lots of mom and pops in Oklahoma City and in Tulsa. There’s lots of people who’ve just done it or just doing it for the first time or they maybe they’ve been grown in a closet for years but haven’t quite scaled to commercial operation. 

There’s most people have 200 amps 400 amps worth of power that they’re working with. And those aren’t all negative things. Those are just like the reality of it. And the beauty is this, though, is there are no preconceived notions on what people should do. 

Freaux: Yeah, that’s awesome. I would totally agree right there. Right. Yeah, it’s kind of just, it’s a blank canvas. And everybody that’s involved in everything right now is kind of painting its own picture. Nobody’s telling you what you have to do. It really is kind of a free market where, everybody collectively is, you know, painting the picture to make it its own. You know, there’s nobody telling you what you need to do. And it’s kind of one of the things people are actually able to come out here and you know innovate or do different things or whatnot.

Chip: One of the things that we’ve seen people do is plant all types of seeds. You know, there wasn’t a cutting culture here and we saw the same thing in Colorado in 2009 is initially they only allowed like, you know, I don’t know 70 or 77 strains into the initial database for Colorado. And so everybody had those 77 clone strains right. And nothing was new, and the laws changed a little bit or you able to manipulate the situation a little bit or maybe breeding may have happened but in Oklahoma, in pretty much plant whatever seeds you want, you can bring it into the legal system easily. And we see people planting all kinds of stuff. Unfortunately, most lovers fucking crap and then and they’ve just been sold like this bad, bad, bad seed. And that’s kind of what our topic is today. The topic for today, is pheno hunting and the genetic quest for great cannabis. Oh, wow, that sounds great, doesn’t it? 

Freaux: It sure does man. 

Chip: Man so one of the reasons I had you in here because I’ve seen you plant seeds, you pick great phenoes and many people don’t even know what pheno hunting or how the whole seed thing works and I really want to like start on the like super child’s style and start from the beginning of like picking us breeder buying seeds, planting seeds, organizing the seeds, track and trace in the T seeds, testing the clones, cataloging it all and like how you guys really go about like pheno-hunting. 

Pheno-Hunting

Freaux: Yeah, no doubt, I’d love to do that. I mean, that’s a one of our biggest interests at Jive is pheno-hunting planting seeds finding new unique flavors, new [inaudible] profiles, and then just really just getting able to see have a good look at that gene pool man just being able to get in there and pick it because when you do get a clone, you kind of just stuck with what you got, there’s nothing you could do. But if there’s something you’re interested in, you get edible quality seeds of it; you get pretty much get to run through it and find what you want what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for smell and taste, if you’re looking for resin for the hash, there’s so much different stuff and what’s better so many different genetic possibilities where if you are actually you know, taking the time, popping the beans and seeds or whatnot you can get something special. I’ve always been a firm believer that I mean, I’ve been fortunate in some cases where you know, friends have done work and pass along you know, different genetics to me, vice versa. But to truly get some superheat fire, you got to go out there and find it. A lot of people aren’t just bestowing your blessing you with a gift. You have to be kind of proactive on it or whatnot, you know? 

To truly get some superheat fire, you got to go out there and find it. – FreauxCLICK TO TWEET

Chip: Yeah, absolutely and you know man, I tell you there’s no way we can have this conversation without you opening up one of these fine jars that you pheno hunted here and rolling up a tater as we would love to but let’s examine one of these like pick one that you picked out from seed. 

Freaux: So sure we have actually a Sunshine Lime, I’ve got two different phenos

Chip: Where’d that come from? 

Freaux: It came from Archives Seed Bank– [inaudible] This was a fine from him. This is our number one. So the genetics on that is Sunset Sherbert times Lemonheads.

Chip: Oh man, that is incredible. Like I mean it’s both sides of the coin, it’s earthy and citrus and usually don’t find that but like is that kush like but then on the lemon too. 

Freaux: I like to kind of describe it as like it’s kind of like a tropical real fruity overturn, but kind of like almost like a burnt rubber OG gas at the end. There’s Lemon G industry and the lemon tea just kind of shine in it. This is a this is another fino of it this is our number three. It’s same strain a little bit different you’ll be able to tell the nodes look of it similar but different. 

Chip: It’s as darker for sure had a lot more the sherbert side to it. 

Freaux: That’s I would say that’s definitely sherbert leader. 

Chip: Yeah, no, it’s still good but like I see like the other one definitely the expression of the terpene expression, is greater than the other one. 

Freaux: The terpene expression is greater, the nugs came out a little bit tighter. It’s just a little bit more unique to me. I mean that has a good unique smell but the number one when we were kind of you know hunting in or selecting it you know me and my partner’s, it’s a one that kind of stood off rip. It was the first one that started getting a good news, week four, week five and it just kind of came with it and there’s a couple other selections. We had another one that was pretty good as well too but out of the one in 3– 

Chip: But pretty good doesn’t make it. 

Freaux: Pretty good does not make it.

Chip: Yeah, so you have to be merciless in the pheno hunt, right.

Freaux: You really do and I noticed like traditional people say that you should run it twice before you give up on it. I am a firm believer in that, it’s kind of good to give it a second look but a lot of times if it was like you know super trash or first run [inaudible] on the second run and then– 

Chip: Now, you should give it a second run if it’s good. If it’s bad, I just say throw it away. Unless you fucked up somehow or something wasn’t correct with it. Like you know, we’ve got some Bubba S1 from CSI right now. Same thing. You know, we grew them out and didn’t have like the best flower. And we just decided to keep all the phenos, right so we could rerun it. Yeah, right. 

Freaux: Yeah. And then you know, sometimes too, you never know what happens in that thing whether it got you know, didn’t get to best real state under the lights or if environmental was bad you know an AC went out during a [inaudible] time– Maybe you didn’t give a good dry so it’s always good to give it a second look. But you can really tell and I think a lot of people too that you see around the state or even on national too, they buy a pack of beans from a breeder somebody well known. They run the seeds they get the first female they get, that’s like boom that’s it, they don’t really understand that there’s a little bit more you have to do and then you have to have kind of the courage to give it up I know growing and you love your plants you never want to like holding out and stuff like that. If you find something that maybe it’s borderline, maybe you gift it to a buddy or something to kind of hold around, and see maybe he could do something different but at the end of day if it’s not gonna cut what you’re looking for, you know, checking all the boxes that you’re looking for. It’s got to go and you move on and there’s so much variety about it, right.

Chip: You got to be pick the best, there is only one. Yeah, you paid money for those seeds, but really you paid money for the clone that you want to pull out of that seed pack. Not each individual seed. 

Freaux: Exactly. And it’s like a lottery ticket, you’ll scratch off you’ll have a winner, sometime you won’t. But sometimes you find some, sometimes you don’t, it’s part of the game, but that’s kind of what you know, finding new flavors and new phenos and being able as like a company to have that specific flavor and even in depth that specific pheno kind of has it. Where it’s kind of cool to have that nobody in the world has is female except us. You know I’m saying? I think that’s pretty cool.

Chip: Man, I think this is the perfect time for two things to happen. One, for you to crack open one of those jars and let’s roll a fat one here and we’ll have a commercial break while we do it. 

Freaux: Yeah, sounds good. Is there something you want to try? We got like the– we got the Kush Mints– [inaudible] 

Chip: Let’s have a back to back Sunshine Lime. When we come back, we’ll talk about how to pick a seedcompany. 

Freaux: Sounds great to me. 

Chip: Awesome.

Hey guys hope you’re enjoying the episode here with Freaux I just want to do chat with you a minute about our organic seminar that we’re having here in Oklahoma City on March 21st It’s just next week but this episode is going to come out right now if you’re in town for the episode– for the seminar, you should definitely come and get a ticket. We’re selling compost tea brewers that man like a third the price of what they should be. And you know, we’re going to have a ton of great information. Today is going to start with us talking about soil formulation and how to make sure organic soil, we’re going to have a good provided lunch. Then John Piccirilli from Cutting Edge Nutrients is going to talk about how to make proper compost tea and in all the applications from biological life to IPM. And then we’re going to end the day at 4/20 with a roundtable on how to actually grow organic, the systems the mechanisms, the how commercial people do it. So if you’re in town man definitely get a ticket and come by and see it and hey, you know if you’re not man, we’re going to like re-broadcast has this on a webinar. So definitely if you hear this episode, and it’s not March 2020, and you want to check out the organic seminar, just look for it on on on therealdirt.com. But if you’re in town, man, definitely stop by, get a ticket. Check us out on an event bright. It’s the organic seminar, compost tea brew sessions. That’s right.

Oh, man. Well, you may quick work of that– What is it again? Which one?– 

Freaux: This is actually the Sunshine Lime one.

Chip: The Sunshine Lime one. So this is the true keeper man. You say you’re gonna come to my compost tea, my compost tea class? 

Freaux: Yeah, I just kind of heard you talking about that– I’m definitely interested in and I’m definitely gonna come and I heard you mentioned that John Cutting Edge is going to be there. I tell you what, I got the opportunity. He came to our facility several months back, got the opportunity to sit there and talk with him. I mean, the knowledge that was coming out of him was crazy. I was like– 

Chip: So much experience man, holy shit. 

Freaux: Yeah. After I had a conversation with him, I was like, when we left the conversation. The first thing I thought it was, I wish I could have recorded that. Just the knowledge coming out of his mind was great. I really enjoyed and I love to hear more about it especially you know, [inaudible] going on. 

Chip: Yeah, man John is a– He almost like you tap into his brain when he speaks. It’s not like how other people talk. He, somehow has some type of psychic communication that he could you know what I’m saying? [inaudible] Like you really learn. He’s an incredible instructor a great teacher like you know, you’ve learned so much dude so much. He’s able to break it down. But yeah, so we’re stoked to have him on our organic seminar March 21st. I think this episode’s just going to barely come out in time for it so– 

Freaux: Well, I’m looking forward to and you could definitely count me in there man. 

Chip: Alright, so this is the Sherbert Lime? 

Freaux: The Sunshine Lime. 

Chip: Sunshine Lime. 

Freaux 20:46  

Sherbert times Lemonheads

Chip: Definitely has that citrusy, Cali O type initial taste but Mc kush [inaudible] Yeah, totally. It’s really super bowl flavors. 

Freaux: Yeah, it’s got that flavor that coach your tongue. Kind of keeps it even when you’re done smoking the joint taste it right to the very end but coats your mouth really gives good flavor. very aromatic.

Choosing the Best Seed Company

Chip: A bit down to around the tip. Yeah, that’s great, man. That’s great. So man, the like, problem people– So it starts with the seed company that you choose. Let’s talk about all the bullshit seed breeders and how to avoid those first off on this pheno hunting roadshow.

Freaux: When you put it like that, I mean I know there is a lot of, you know, breeders out there who don’t necessarily like work online or like test it. They try to put stuff out really quick. Nobody really comes off the top of my head as being like I can’t really think off the top of my head is being like–

Chip: Well I don’t want to call anybody out. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying this is that everyone should know this is many people are out there breeding solely for cash, and they don’t really know what’s going on with the cannabis plant and they haven’t really picked mothers and fathers so well, they’re just plant fucking, they’re not really breeders. And so my kind of my question was like, man, how can you see it? How can you avoid it? 

Freaux: So I don’t know, with me. I usually reputable breeders that are dealing with certain type of genetics that are verified and know that they actually have it. Especially breeders to who aren’t like, you know, pumping out a new line a couple times a quarter, I’m not really too familiar with that aspect, but I know like breeders who maybe do like a big drop once a year, once every other year, you know, work their lines pretty hard where you can actually get you know stable lines where you [inaudible] a bunch of herms or mutants are, you actually get there where you’re looking at your plants you have multiple plants to select from where you’re sitting there and maybe you get a 12 pack, you’re like wow I’m looking at six fairly stable female plants at hey I’m having trouble picking the keeper or whatnot

I think it comes down to I mean I know there’s a lot of talented people out there that might not have as much like following and stuff like that, but really with me, it came down to, did I have success running them before? Did my friends that are good growers have sex or success running them before? So with me, it kind of starts off with me like word of mouth kind of like– 

Chip: The reputation. 

Freaux: Yeah, like like– 

Chip: First off look for the reputation. 

Freaux: Yeah, reputation, especially too. If you have friends who have ran their gear and have had success, I think that’s a good place to start. I know there’s a lot of talented breeders out there. There’s a couple I kind of tend to go to keep really good eye when they’re doing new jobs having new stuff come out but I would say with you know, with us, we try to at least stick to like people that have a good reputation like certain genetics and those are [inaudible] genetics or working with there’s a lot of people out there, like you said, that are just taking random things, putting it together and not really working and you don’t even know if that is what it is. And it kind of really messes up the gene pool for people who aren’t doing it right, you know? 

Chip: Yeah, you’re absolutely right, man. Yeah. It’s a such an odd one because people see these catalogs and they think it’s like Converse or Nike. Or they can just say, Oh, I want that and it’s gonna be exactly what the description is, or they like the name somebody put out is, you know– Have you just randomly bought seeds from anyone.

Freaux: I’ve never actually randomly bought seeds. I usually go off of like, I mean, like I said before, I usually go off for kind of like success. People have had running different packs. Especially people who are talented know what they’re doing when you get in– 

Chip: This is so good, man. 

Freaux: Yeah, it’s got a good little flavor. But yeah, I mean, I’ve never just randomly bought packs. I’ve had people recently like give me packs that I give a run to or try out and see what’s going on. But I know a lot of it when I try to look is like you start looking at everything’s cross and everything now on what I kind of try to do is kind of like, peel back in the lineage to try to see like, where those originally cuts came from and who bred them and the right time to start with their stuff. You know, especially people who have been doing it for a while.  

Chip: What are the parents? Do you hear that? 

Freaux: Yeah, I do hear that. 

Chip: I have this little French Bulldog we got here Rocky. He’s always pushing me around. Hold on. Hey, he wants in on this sesh, we’re firing this joint up. Let me grab him. Rocky say how to Freaux 

Freaux: What’s up to Rocky?

Chip: Yeah, he doesn’t like to be alone.

Freaux: Nah, I hear that.

Chip: That’s right, buddy. You just sit back. I’m sorry I interrupted you. Rocky interrupted us.

Freaux: No, it is all good. I kind of even forgot. [inaudible]

Chip: So we got you got to look at and do a little research and see one, if they have a reputation. Two, if other friends of planted it or you know and I even like just look at their exterior of what they’re trying to sell, try to find pictures of their packaging. But then it’s like you need that that cultural knowledge like what do they have? Do they have original parent clone? Do they have original parent strains or they just have one offs or bullshit– 

Freaux: Or where did these other guys sources from, you know what I’m saying? 

Chip: Yeah, exactly. I would suggest people to like look through Instagram. See what was going on six months ago or a year ago and see if you can, like follow the breeding of a plant, right. Somebody’s gonna come out, you know by a strain. It’s like look them up a little bit. 

Freaux: I think it’s also good too and I kind of try to do too, especially like if I you know, on vacation you go to some like West Coast states, especially California let’s go to the clubs and put your nose in a jar, like I actually go there. And check out the genetics because a lot of people see it. And then there’ll be either hype strains, or really popular strands and you know, they are warranted for the height and popularity, but a lot of people have never like either smoked them, taste them or tried them. 

You do have the opportunity to travel or go to clubs where either breeders or people have different trends in the clubs go there, try them out, put your nose in them, smoke them get to be familiar with the strain to see if that’s something you even want to run. I think that’s something too like a lot of people are just picking flavors and running them and be like, Well, I didn’t like that. It’s like wait have you even tried it or even been, gotta you know [inaudible] or whatnot, it’s just kind of you’re at that point just kind of going off of like crazy names or crosses, but I think it’s good to do a little r&b and that’s why it’s good. You know, have friends that are growers or just in general make it out there and try to try different stuff and become familiar with the genetics that you’re actually buying. You know, think that’s a good place too.

Great Seed Breeders

Chip: So we’ve, I mean, both of our quests in this life is to spread great cannabis. So let’s, you have some suggestions of some great seed breeders out there.

Freaux: Yes, I do. So I’m going to tell you some people that I personally like and at Jive, the whole team likes is definitely Dungeons Vault Genetics. Dungeons Vault Genetics he’s got some great gear. He’s actually– his Grandpa’s Breath is a strain that is pretty popular for us. He has really good genetics. We actually– We partnered with them on a couple ventures actually out here in Oklahoma we’re gonna have like a whole bunch of online with a bunch of his breeder cuts. 

So patients can actually see you know what the actual strain is coming straight from the breeder. It’s his genetics. It’s not something somebody else, you know, is making up or saying like that it’s actually coming from the company. I think he’s a great one to look at Dungeons Vault. Big fan of Archive, we bought a ton of archive seeds. 

Chip: Oh yeah, Fletcher man he is one of the best breeders on the planet right now. 

Freaux: Yeah, he’s got some really cool stuff. And you know, he’s one of the ones who has like a crazy catalogue of all that old school stuff.

Chip: You know, here’s the thing about Fletcher and this one I said, look up the Instagram history because he has been doing it for such a long time now. And man, he’s a young guy, dude. He’s a young guy. He’s been doing it for his whole adult life. And he has gathered such an awesome, awesome collection that the catalog really is crazy, right. Everything might not be available all the time and some stuff or just spurts it’s like, Oh, that one went out of favor that one didn’t do so well. But that’s what makes like his history you know? So a man except legitimate, right. That’s what makes a seed lawn so legitimate is because of the history.

Freaux: Yeah, you know, he’s a he’s another good one we’ve– He currently hunting a bunch of his packs. We like you know, [inaudible] we got some flavors from him. You know, JBZ’s has always got a bunch of interesting stuff. He’s killing it right now. Seed Junky. There’s a bunch of other great people out there that we’re trying, after medicating a little bit. I’m trying to think of all we have there so much– 

Chip: You have tried some Capulator stuff? 

Freaux: So we have tried some Capulator’s stuff. We actually, we had a Jungle Mac, we’ve made some really good water hash. That’s the only pack we really ran from him besides a freebie we got at the expo in Oklahoma City several months, I guess it was probably been about almost a year now. But his Mac Riddler. We ran that, you know, both of them were good plants. When we’re looking at it for like, the profiles we’re looking for. And then especially with some past companies we partnered with, they were looking at it and like Wow, those are like awesome plants are running the hash, which, you know, that’s what we ended up doing with the Capulater gear or whatnot.

Chip: Right, awesome man. [inaudible]

Freaux: I have grown some stuff in the years past. We don’t have anything from him currently right now, but he’s somebody I definitely want to run some of his packs. I was actually looking at his Instagram the other day as a couple real interesting things that I think I’m gonna reach out to. What we try to do is, we actually have like a whole set of lights that’s strictly for r&b where we, you know, constantly on a cycle going to be popping, you know, packs and beans and trying to find the most interesting flavors and he’s definitely on the list of people who are gonna, you know, go to. There’s so much. There’s so much stuff. [inaudible] We haven’t personally. It’s nothing we’ve ran. You know, he’s somebody we definitely give a try to. I just haven’t ran anything from him.

But I’m trying to think of some other people that’s kind of the main ones we’re hunting through right now. I think we have some, I think we have some Midwest Best and Green Flora, Watermelon Granita. We’re hunting we have some JBZ stuff, Koma the Grower, Pacific Seed Company. What else is there–

Chip: Any cookie stuff? 

Freaux: We don’t have any cookie stuff right this second that we’re hunting. I mean we do have some of their you know, strains from the past we’re hunting some old Cali connection pack some SVOG and some time trying to find you know some old school. OGs, I’m trying to think off the top of my head we have some exotic genetics that we’re hunting, he has some really solid gear, [inaudible] up in my head well I–got some dying breed seeds, some Ozzy– There’s so many more I’d have to blow out my phone, but there’s a ton of different stuff that we’re given a run to right now.

Seed Lot and Organizing

Chip: When you’re planning out like, Okay, so what’s a typical seed lot for you? Let’s start right there at the beginning you decided to buy your seeds, you got your seeds, how many seeds you plant now?

Freaux: So We usually like to do in the like the five pack range. Right now, we’re trying to find like a vast variety of different flavors. So we’re usually just getting like one pack of flavor which usually it’s 10 to 12 seeds we’ll go ahead, we’ll germinate the seeds, you know, some stuff has a really good germination rate makes it to the dirt, some stuff doesn’t but, we’re doing about you know, 50 to 60 at a time and then from there that actually make it into flower. I mean, you’re gonna weed a lot of stuff out in beds as you know, either male or crazy to form a new users we and then–

Chip: So that’s 50 or 60 seeds of one type? Did you just plant a pack when you pheno hunt–

Freaux: Usually right now we’re just doing a pack at a time– 

Chip: To see if it’s worth it. 

Freaux: Yeah, to see if it’s worth it. You know, something if I might give it a second try if we didn’t find anything. We’re going to try to start doing bigger pheno hunts have like one strand. Right now. We’re just kind of trying to find like a big you know, variety of stuff so we’re just kind of seeing when what happens with that. Sometimes you’re successful sometimes you’re not but– 

Chip: You can’t always get a winner.

Freaux: Yeah, you don’t always get a winner you definitely don’t. 

Chip: Right. It is kind of like the claw machine though. Right. Like you’re going for those nice pair Ray Bans in the back. Right But you don’t get it, you know, said you get a key chain. Yeah, so you’re managing 50 plants though at a time, so it might be like five packs, or yeah, maybe more.

Freaux: Yeah. So we actually the way we kind of have our like room staggered right now we actually have like a small hunt going in and each one of our rooms and we actually just wanted a huge pheno hunt which was, you know, much bigger than we’ve ever done before. Especially out here, you don’t have like a limitation on plants or anything. So you can kind of just really run through pheno hunts and stuff like that. Which, it was a lot bigger than we normally would generally go on. But I would say something for us that’s manageable with the space we have and actually just strictly keeping up with it. Because sometimes you’ve got so much stuff going on, it just becomes, too much to deal with everything else going on in life and deepen, you know–

Chip: Oh, it’s hard, man. It’s hard to keep it all organized. So how do you how do you do it, man? How do you track and trace it? How do you how do you organize it?

Freaux: So basically, with us, we’re just basically label each one of the pots. You know, pretty much when a seed goes–

Chip: You label the actual pot? 

Freaux: Just to tag, well sometimes, but you know, just like a tag on the plant, you know, seed to sale system and stuff like that everything has like a little tag on it. So it’s just like instance Sunshine Lime one, I’ll just have a little tag on it or whatever. And then– But ends up turning into like a mail or something that just doesn’t make it you know, it gets axed out or whatnot. And yeah, pretty much we try to keep we’re trying to get better organized right now it’s just kind of real low tech, pretty much write it down on a piece of paper to know that we have. We tried to like taking notes if we can, if we remember, like, you know, what was really good and like vege maybe something to flower.

Chip: We always do something like this? Yeah, like a, like a board setup. We got a white board set up with some and we just start taking notes on the whiteboard.

Freaux: Yeah. And that’s, that’s we just recently got whiteboards that our facility so we’ll probably put them to use like you got him right there. But um, yeah, pretty much just labeling them and just trying to keep up with them and then you know, try to take notes of stuff that– We try to throw the plants into our, you know, whole program, just right off– Give it like our feeds and our temperatures and throw them in our rooms are actually flowering in keeping the same environment even in like an r&b room so we can see if those genetics actually make it in what we do. So if we run it in our setup and it doesn’t like like we’re giving it certain, different variables [inaudible]

Chip: That bomb threat Bubba is a matter of fact, we’re talking about extremely hard to grow, right. Doesn’t produce much, but like, if you like, do it just right, like the buds are great if you do it wrong. They’re just leafy can be and as doesn’t have a taste at all. You know, it’s, I mean, it’s all weed doesn’t act the same.[inaudible] grow the same. 

Freaux: And that’s very true right there.

Chip: Yeah, it’s a living breathing plant and every single seed is different and that’s why we pheno-hunt. You should not buy a pack of seeds, plant them out and pick one or pick them all as your clone mothers, right it’s just not it’s not the best way to do it, right. You got to try it out–

It’s a living breathing plant, and every single seed is different, and that’s why we pheno-hunt. – Chip

Freaux: Exactly so like what we’ll do is we’ll just take the actual from seeds grown in the flower room and make sure we get cut– 

Chip: From seed you throw it in the flower 

Freaux: Yeah, okay, well we’ll throw in the flower–

Chip: I’ma see got too many people like you know say the that they throw the seed away and take it like Fletcher from Archive as a matter of fact he says that he throws the seed away and just takes a cutting right and then flowers the cutting.

Freaux: Yeah, I mean, that’s one way to do it. I mean, I I think with us reason why we do it is just for time because you want to see is it gonna be something– Sometimes that’ll take just like a few extra weeks where sometimes you don’t have those weeks and you’re just kind of trying to get it done and get it quick so as–. 

Chip: If you plant a seed on the same day, you take your clone for your crop, you can stay on that same pattern. 

Freaux: Yeah, definitely. So yeah we would just throw it in there let it flower see if we’re gonna keep it where some cuttings behind and then we’ll either like [inaudible] you know those cuttings or just keep floating from that and then obviously if it’s something we’re not going to keep maybe we’ll give it a second run but– And there are also cases to especially when you go in these big hunts and tags fall out or get lost you know, the new thing that a lot of people are doing now is a whole revege. I mean–

Chip: That’s not new– I’ve been doing that one for years–[inaudible] Oh, this is so good. Do we ever have it?There’s a bottom left out there in the field.

Freaux: And just to me, I mean, I’m learning stuff. You know, every day I just recently in the last year learned about the whole revenge just nothing I knew about whatsoever.

Chip: You got any revenge secrets? I’m interested since it’s new to you. Maybe you got different approach.

Freaux: I don’t have any revenge secrets. It’s something that I’m just kind of learning and bettering myself. But it’s something where you know, something if we cut doesn’t make it or you know, just any, you know, little thing happens where you don’t have a gun and you get it mislabeled and we’re gonna, you know, try to do a revision, it’s gonna be harder to grow up. So make something as I do, I could let you know how it went,

Chip: You know, people I’ve had people complain and tell me it doesn’t come out. Right, but I’ve done it. I’ve had to do it many times over, you know, 30 years ago and gotcha. And yeah, man, pinch off all the bugs try to leave as much leaf is possible. Switch to that high nitrogen batch fertilizer, it veges back easily. It might take a month or so for it to get normal leafs, but it absolutely will come back.

Freaux: And that’s awesome. And that’s, that’s something that, you know, we’re gonna play around with if it comes down to that, you know, yeah, yeah, you just have to.

Chip: Yeah, I mean, that’s the back. That’s what you shouldn’t do, because what you should do is label the pot, labeled the plant labeled the soil and try to keep up with it. And then if like one of the three labels washes off, or there’s still, you know, one of the three labels left,

Freaux: And you know how it is, I mean, anything.

Chip: It is man enough, so I have seen it, man, I’ve done it. You know, not all keep trying, but Okay, uh, writing on the side of the pot, that works great except with the pots is touching another pot, then it can get wiped off, you know, over time, even if it’s a sharpie. Right and that, you know, SD one, you look at it eight months later after the sun has hit down is like, is that a DB?

Freaux: Yeah, that type. Yeah, exactly. We’re kind of dealing with some of that right now. Like looking like a two or three, you know?

Chip: Yeah, we’re just started looking at Baker’s medical, the clone nursery. My wife, Jessica operates in Oklahoma City, he’s just looking into getting a label, like a printed label maker. So that we can keep things organized even more so than we do because we write all the labels out by hand right now. And I mean, they’re going through 3000 cuttings a week, they can definitely need a label maker. 

Freaux: Oh, yeah, they will make that’s a lot right there.

Chip: Yeah, totally. But it’s important. You got to keep everything organized. You know, when you’re clone nursery like that’s, you know, clone nurseries have a couple, a handful of things that fail for them. They give out bad genetics, right? They give out bad bugs. Right? And they fuck up the labeling.

It’s important that you got to keep everything organized. – Chip

Freaux: You think something and it ends up being that little surprise something else?

Chip: I mean as long as it’s good no big deal, but like if it’s some experiment, you know, then it’s— [inaudible]Yeah, totally. Hey man, I think this is a great time. Take a break. Let’s uh Hey, let’s roll up that other SL two there and self three SL three. All right. Hey, we’re gonna take another break. We’ll be right back real dirt Baker and fro.

And we’re back. Had to get some peanuts and cons, a little snack. Freaux rolled up get another large medical marijuana delivery device. So, you guys a soil grower, soilless growers. 

Freaux: Ah Coco. 

Chip: Oh, yeah, you use my product growers. 

Freaux: We shared it. 

Chip: Yeah, man. You know how you like it.

Freaux: We love it. We love it.We switched over to it a while back. It’s been great. Plants have looked healthier, so much cleaner product and some stuff we’re using before. Doesn’t come wet. So dry. Don’t have all kinds of stuff growing and some you know what else coca? No,

Chip: You didn’t use peat before, right? 

Freaux: I did not. 

Chip: Yeah. And were you a little leery about having a coco peat blend,

Freaux: Just something I wasn’t familiar with. And it’s kind of one of the things and I know us we kind of fall into that stuff too. Even though we like to try new stuff and experiment you get kind of creature of habit. So when something’s working good, it’s kind of hard to, you know, make the switch, but when we did, it’s been great.

Chip: Yeah, absolutely. People talk to me all the time about it because you know, I’m a cocoa guy. 100% Man, I am four years straight cocoa like a proponent and I still think that’s the best way to grow the planet and for production. But that’s a whole nother story but man, it’s hard to get that shit right. When it’s straight cocoa it’s hard to get it right and the P just makes it easier. right hands down. I like I started looking at people around me crushing it with these blends of cocoa and P man I just I just just realism hit me. It’s like fuck, dude. Pete Absolutely works. I had to bite some of my swallow some of my previous said words. But a man blending in peat with coco with the right ratio really makes perfect growing medium.

Freaux: I would definitely have to agree. We’ve been definitely pleased with it. Yeah, and

Chip: Yeah, and how many?plants you guys plan up normally when you plan up a plant, I mean plant you use the product.

Freaux: So normally we go through our rooms we have tons, not a ton, but we have several 20 light rooms and normally do about 205 gallons. apart so that’s pretty much almost a full pallet roughly 60 bags ish, we usually like right there maybe right there at a couple bags. But um, that’s usually about where, man though

Chip: Now, I built this product. I built it out of us because I wanted people recognize the problems people were having when they were planting up cannabis when they were buying soil. Tell me what you noticed the first thing when you went to plan up those first 200 pods?

Freaux: As far as just in general? 

Chip: In general about the soil. 

Freaux: That’s super heavy. I mean, it’s Yeah, I mean, it’s tiring after you get through the first. 

Chip: Yeah, it’s tiring right the first time you do it, and that was that’s that’s one of the things that you know, I really wanted to focus on is have the right moisture content in the bag of potting so when you get it, so the growers are like is really light. Yeah, really, really, truly right. You can pick up like four it’s four bags at a time, right? You

Freaux: When we we switched over that was a thing because sometimes we have to carry carry bags long ways and then you know, loading and unloading it but like, Oh wait, you know instead of one I can pick up two at a time as

Chip: Well getting that moisture level right to also like solve the other problem people have with with getting potting soil and bring it into indoor environments.

Freaux: That was the thing with some other brands out there. It’s hard man–

Chip: I’ve been making so like most of my adult life, it’s hard to make potting soil without bugs. But man, I don’t see any in my current product and haven’t seen any and–

Freaux: I can tell you right now that was the biggest thing for us was the cleanliness of it. You know, that’s something I know y’all pride yourselves on as far as the way you know, you know, practice as far as the way you make it, store it, you know, that type of stuff, but that’s the thing. We never see any issues were in you know, previous years and stuff like that or you know, previous times You know you get those little things but I think you’ve done a great job of mitigating all those issues that come with that type —

Chip: Thanks man. I really did build it because I wanted the best product on the market for shipping, for picking it up, for application and for interaction with people, for interaction with the plant. I wanted a high performance potting soil that the plants really took off immediately, you know– I asked Fletcher good friend of mine, right with the Archive. I asked him like what’s– where he just gave me some advice years ago, right when I had bad potting soil. This was maybe 10 years ago, it’s like man, people want to plant in their media. And when they pull out it just like the roots just blow out and they just take off immediately and that didn’t happen with this batch of soil, right and because I will had problems with it, those problems with the compost, there’s problems with the nutrient delivery, right? It wasn’t the best potting soil. I thought about that forever. It’s like Yeah, when people plant up in your potting soil, they’re gonna immediately like the next day go in and want like, you know this, Oh, moment, right. and that’s what I really tried to deliver with growers right the growers HP and I think y’all doing [inaudible] Well man I tell you, this a number three– 

Freaux: What do you think? 

Chip: It has a softer taste, but I think it actually, like smokes a little bit better, right. It’s smoother, right. We’ll see as we get down here on the road, but the the, I’m not saying the flavor went away after the first like, second or third puff of the original one. But this one seems like the flavors holding a little longer.This one also like It smells more like it tastes. 

Freaux: Yeah I got you. 

Chip: Right. Where the other one, it. It tastes more of the earthy cushy side. No, I’m sorry, it tastes, it tastes, smelled more of the earthy cushy side and had a really good citrus flavor.

Freaux: And I mean, that’s what I’m saying, you know, back to we’re kind of talking about what you know, and sometimes there something that you just don’t want to let go, you know, and that’s kind of where we are with.

Chip: I get that.

Freaux: I think they’re both, you know, good enough to keep around. Yeah.

Chip: Yeah, absolutely. But they’re so closely related, though. It’s hard. And it’s going to end up in my experience ends up being like, oh, which is the better grower. You know, which one’s the highest producer? Which one looks the best which one’s the easiest to grow? Which one’s the easy to vege, does often went out in a case like this 

Freaux: And I’d have to agree. 

Chip: Right. It is a shame though because, you know the first one we spoke up it was the true hybrid, right and you could taste you know all sides of the plant it was fully, full flavored you know, kushy too citrus. Yeah.I have this the other the other plant though is its man the Roman The air is different. Yeah. Right at you know, it almost Tingley like pepper citrus Petrus orange pepper orange tree pepper Arn. Right. You know, it’s totally a different vibe. It’s like you’re giggling you got a smile, you know, so I thought dude, but it’s hard to keep them both together, right?

Freaux: Yeah. For sure.

Chip: Sometimes, you just have to keep them and it’s the number one and two pheno. And we see that number one and three pheno right. And we see that all the time with stuff like Gelato 33. You know are 33. 

Freaux: I love Gelato 33, the creaminess–

Chip: Yeah, totally man, creaminess. And, you know, or, man. What’s the good does he do the great does he do?

Freaux: I know there’s so many good dish so many good ones,

Chip: Man, like 22 that’s all I was gonna say. But 22 yeah, that’s a great one. Well, that’s one people talk about frequently. And you know what we refer to these numbers as it’s just like the number of plant that you put down, right.You just got lucky. It was the number one the number three.

Freaux: Yeah, and that’s what we’re not

Chip: So do you number at 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 from the beginning? 

Freaux: We do. 

Chip: Okay, sweet. What I usually do is I like to plant a lot at once and shotgun effect a little bit. So I’ll plant like 50 or 25 of one strain and just labeled the whole flat. When they come up and I transplant them, then I’ll 12345 them. But I do it in like, Oh, I like this one the most number one– 

Freaux: I know a lot people do that yeah– 

Chip: Like this is number two. And it goes all the way down the line but you know what, hey, over and over again that, early like selection that mean shit. Yeah. When they’re that young, it just does not mean anything. And I’ve want a couple of times, but mostly is like, oh, the number 22 I thought it was gonna be great. It wasn’t you know, but– so yeah, then we label them. Man sometimes we’ll even relabel them again right after like we make a cut, right. Just to keep the numbers organized a little bit. Right. 

So the overall notes over time might not be the best but because designations change, but we once we like make that cut into the secondary round of flowering there, they always have a set you know, they always have set, but if we might just take it right back if we like for instance if we plant out 50, 40 seeds come up and look good we transplant those out and we label them 1-40 and then we flower those out and 25 are male we just throw those away. Right, and you know mostly sometimes we’ll keep them. And the rest of them we’ll keep, we’ll decide like, four of them are good, then we’ll take those four, and sometimes we’ll relabel those two just 1 2 3 4. Cuz then you just back to keeping it like that’s the number one. That’s the number two. That’s number three–

Freaux: Kind of like what was right where it started with, you know, get in the beginning or not. 

Chip: And, you know, even sometimes we’ve even kept the numbers just because like from an numerological standpoint, they were good numbers. Right, like, you know– But so like, it doesn’t have to be like the Dewey Decimal System. Yeah, right. You just have to keep it organized. 

Freaux: Yeah, just yeah. 

Chip: Yeah, just keep it organized. And do you do literally do it? D on your tag? Do you write the full name? Do you make abbreviations Do you do ABCD 1234. We love–

Naming your Weed

Freaux: For abbreviations. And most are sets or, you know, like, five packs or whatever, it’s all pop on the same day. We’ll just take [inaudible] like on the whiteboard, on the phone or whatever. When we started the process, but um, yeah, normally it’s all abbreviations and numbers, and then sometimes you get messed up because you’ll have some of the same abbreviations and we’ll just try to make back a little, you know, label add x or abbreviation or assign or something on it, just to keep it all, you know, separate because that’s the thing is just when you’re spending the time and effort to do this, you want to do it right. And so just whatever works, any kind of labeling that we find, you know, we can abbreviate for the Sunshine Lime, SL, and then you know, the number worked well. But, um,

Chip: Yeah, you can see some of our jars behind you, and we always just abbreviate DB, SD, G– You know we then we nickname shit too, right. Currently we’ve got the– Our current nickname of the gills nails great strain by the swamp boys wasn’t familiar with it just randomly got into it very straight great strain great strain don’t really like the name but like we always smoke it in the morning so we call it pistols at dawn but it’s spelled like flour pistols and not like Colt 45

Freaux: That’s a good one. That’s pretty great. All

Chip: That Wife High Sunset Sherbert cross we have that we’ve we’ve dubbed that Oklahoma sunset. Nice because it’s definitely an evening weed. And you know, we always you know, you’re you’re here at the ranch where we’re out here in the evenings and go for a little walk see the sunset smokes and want to find sunset sherbert Which is a mouthful. Yeah. Right? Which is a mouthful so so even though like you know at the shop we call everything by its, you know genetic history or it’s given name by the breeder and then we’ll often dub it something else. When do you feel it’s your license to rename nick name a clone or of something of that that persuasion?

Freaux: So I think that’s a pretty interesting question right there. And I’d say a lot of people you talk to would probably have like a different opinion. I know us it’d be something that we’d probably you know, want to if we were going to do that we haven’t you know, re nicknamed anything or anything like that yet or a female we select that, you know, debate a different name, just so you know, I think if that’s something we were going to do, we probably want to reach out to the breeder. Make sure it’s okay and tell them like hey, you know, give them this. prompts and it’s a word because we, you know, create the genetics or anything. We just found the pheno–

Chip: I think as long as you nickname the clone, it’s fine. I feel good about it. Right? Like, the Wife High Sunset Sherbert like it’s just a big bucket name, but like it for the geeks like us, we like okay, it’s Yes, you know? Yes, the equation that’s in there, and we want to see that but, you know, then there’s just how like, you refer to your cutting or you can refer to it in nicknames change over time, too. And, you know, we often call it sunset, but like, that’s just not quite the right designation. And so it’s hard for that one. And when

Freaux: We have a lot of like, in house nicknames we’ll, you know, dub the different females we haven’t like actually marketed or–

Chip: Put it out and that’s how this all came about. Right? Is is like designating it some name. Just to We’ve used family member names we mean any, any anything that’s that would have been

Freaux: A little inside joke about it. Yeah.

Chip: Yeah, you have to get into it and I know there’s a certain amount of science involved into it. But I mean, there really is communication with the plant and enjoying it and actually experiencing life with these plants. Like that’s the joy of it all, right. The communication, just like what we’re doing right now. It’s like when we go out in the garden. You know, like we’re looking at the plants, talking to them, asking them what they need. And you know, it’s not literal. It’s like checklist in our head, right? I’m sure you have yours, you know, walk into a room. How does it feel to me? Is it hot? Right? Like, how do the plants look? Are they you know, standing up. What’s the color of them you know, the cleanliness like all of it you know what are the problems, do they bottomed out or they not bottomed out or they crowded in, do they have as much room as there’s a big enough container and a small too small container they’re overgrown you know like whatever it is, there something the plant has to say some story every plant has to tell you, right. There’s Rocky one back in the studio, I swear, man I think he just likes to hang out here in the smoke. 

Freaux: He is cool dog. 

Chip: Rock is a bad ass little dog. Well French Bulldog you’ll be might see him on Instagram occasionally. You know, let him in. He’s gonna keep scratching. I really liked the like rough cut pneus of the whole real dirt. And we do a little polishing of it all but like I like to give people who like show how it happened. But you know, and it’s it’s not edited so much it is a free for all experience. And if you’re listening to this now and you haven’t subscribed to the real dirt iTunes, please man, go there and subscribe. And if you’re not following me on instagram like man, Instagram doesn’t like weed and weed education so much. 

So like they don’t really show our Instagram out to new people. So if you’re not following us, please follow us on Instagram, and we’ll keep you up to date on all of the new newest releases all the private releases come in this next year. And anything cool we’re doing with classes with, you know, events, you know, it’ll keep you up to date. So definitely join us at the real dirt podcast on Instagram. Hey, for what how do we get in touch with you if somebody wants to follow you guys on Instagram? How do they do it?

Where to Find Them

Freaux: So we have an Instagram, our Instagram is jive.cannabisco and we also have like a second one kind of like a backup kind of like you said with you know it’s good to have like one or two just in case, so @jive.cannabisco or @jivefarms those both those counts are associated with us you know now would be the best way to probably get in touch with us or whatnot would probably be like, you know

Chip: Yeah, man, Oklahoma’s a great place to be. I’m glad you made it here man. 

Freaux: I’m happy to be here– 

Chip: Oh, dude. Totally a great spot man. And man, people like really want great, great weed–

Freaux: They really do. That’s what’s awesome about a man.

Chip: They want good weed, they might not even know they want it. They might even know that what they have is not great weed but if you see Jive Cannabis Co on any dispensary shelf, you should try it out. Personal endorsement by me Chip Baker. Whatever that means, man. So you don’t you do any trade shows? You do anything in the future like–

Freaux: I mean we’re always open to whatever seeing what’s in the area or whatnot but um, nothing on the schedule or anything. But I’m definitely gonna try to go to that little seminar y’all are put on or whatnot. 

Chip: Oh, yeah, yeah, our organic cultivation seminar, March 21st 2020. In Oklahoma City, if you’re around, you should go. And if it’s after that date, man, look it up. It’ll probably be a webinar or something like that in the future.

Freaux: Sounds good. Looking forward to that one. 

Chip: Man, I appreciate having you on here. Anything else we like you got like a tip for our growers out there. Some sort of tip for planting seeds or fino hunting just one specific thing. Ah,

Freaux: Man, I mean really just, I would say for somebody who’s never done it, definitely give it a try. Especially– 

Chip: If you’ve never planted seeds before, plant some seeds.

Freaux: If you’ve never planted seeds before, definitely plant some seeds and give it a try, man. I think you’ll be surprised with the results you see. And it’s definitely enjoyable.

Chip: Yeah, absolutely man. Go out there, buy some seeds. Do some research. You know, really like hunt it down. The more expensive seeds generally are the better seeds just how it kind of rolls. Maybe not always, but good luck, man. Enjoy your pheno-hunt. And hey, Thanks Freaux man, we appreciate you coming here, dude. 

Freaux: I appreciate you having me on. 

Chip: Yeah, man, it was great. We’re gonna sit back while you guys enjoy the exit music and we’re gonna smoke another large joint here on the realtor.

Man, that was a great episode. Man, I feel like almost feel like right now even have more questions than I had at the beginning of the episode when we script this whole thing out. So we’re probably going to have to have a part three or four or two or three or four with Freaux on this whole subject. But I know I learned some stuff. I learned about how Freaux does it, and man, they have an eye for it. And it does take the eye, and it makes the experience and the ability to be able just to go out there and actually try to plant some seeds. So, yeah, man, thanks for joining me. I always am grateful that you spend your time listening to me where you could be doing other stuff. 

If you’re ever in Oklahoma City or in Denver, stop by Cultivate Colorado, man, if you’re in Cultivate Oklahoma, Cultivate OKC ask for Chris or ask for Chip. Man. I’m in there all the time. Love to chat with you. And find out about what you’re interested in and what may be the next episode of The Real Dirt should be. So stay tuned. We’ve got a great season. Join us on Instagram at the real dirt podcast. Follow us on Facebook at The Real Dirt podcast. And yeah, man, definitely therealdirt.com where you can find out about all the latest episodes about everything—going on with us about all our special events. We’re having a bunch of special events this year. So thanks again for joining me and we will see you next time on The Real Dirt.

Subscribe & Review

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The Real Dirt. Don’t miss an episode, click here to subscribe on iTunes and let me know what you love about this show.

A Conversation with an Average Medical Cannabis User

A Conversation with an Average Medical Cannabis User

medical marijuana patient interviewThe use of cannabis as medicine has not been rigorously tested due to production and governmental restrictions, resulting in limited clinical research to define the safety and efficacy of using cannabis to treat diseases. Preliminary evidence suggests that cannabis can reduce nausea and vomiting during chemotherapy, improve appetite in people with HIV/AIDS, reduces chronic pain and muscle spasms, and treats severe forms of epilepsy.

In today’s episode, Chip’s good friend, Greg Davidson, an average medical cannabis user, shares his insights and experiences on cannabis. He and Chip have smoked out many times “recreationally”.

In 1984 Greg was paralyzed in an automobile accident, and has used medical cannabis almost continuously since to control the spasms in his legs. And just about two years ago, he was diagnosed with bladder cancer and used medical cannabis and CBD to beat cancer.

Stay tune on Greg’s life-changing experience together with the help of his canna-friends who supported him from developing programs to solving growing problems.


There’s nothing like the feeling of a doctor walking in and saying you’ve got cancer. – Greg Davidson


Download The Episode Companion For This Episode

Some Topics We Discussed Include

0:31 – Finding new friends in cannabis
5:17 – Salad joint kinda guy
9:18 – Proposition 64
24:01 – Greg’s first encounter with cannabis
41:42 –Average medical cannabis consumer
43:23 –Message for the regulators, commercial growers, extractors
56:49 –Weather problems

People Mentioned / Resources

Connect with  Chip Baker

Transcript

Chip Baker: Once again, you have reached The Real Dirt. In today’s dirt have my good buddy, Greg Davidson. Hey you say Greg. 

Greg Davidson: Hey, Chip, how are you doing? Hey listeners of The Real Dirt.

Finding New Friends in Cannabis

Chip Baker: Real Dirty-ans, Greg’s one of my oldest and best friends. I, he, and his wife Elaine, are dear people to us. And the interesting thing about Greg is, in many ways, you’re average medical marijuana patient. He grows a little weed, he smokes a lot of weed, goes to the grow store, goes to the dispensary, he buys vape pens, and I feel like you’re just real average consumer, right? You may be smoke a little bit more average, but I mean you use medical marijuana and medical cannabis. So that’s why I wanted to have you on the show. Plus, we always have really good conversations when we’re on the phone anyway. So you’re a good conversationalist. 

Greg Davidson: I love rubbing with each other. 

Chip Baker: Yeah, it’s always fun. Yeah. Greg, I met you must have been 2004?

Greg Davidson: Ah, no, I was going to say three. So three or four. 

Chip Baker: It was pre, Santa Cruz, for me?

Greg Davidson: You were up in Willow. You were actually the first time I met you, you were a self-proclaimed dirty hippie, and you had pitched attempts at early.

Chip Baker: Oh, okay. It was at one of the cannabis worlds.

Greg Davidson: I actually met you when I was trimming. That’s when I was an itinerant termer. 

Chip Baker: Oh, trimmer. Yeah. I was camping out of Charlie’s funny. Well, we met through cannabis world or something. Right, which was an online group. We’ve talked about this in the past. And it was set up as part of a seed bay. So you could talk to breeders and growers about buying cannabis seeds, and then you could go buy them online at this seed auction site.

Greg Davidson: Yeah, it was up a loose affiliation of growers, breeders, kind people and as many of us as could a met once or twice a year up in Northern California. 

Chip Baker: You and Charlie were some of my first internet friends, you, Charlie and Shanti Baba Mr. Nice Seeds were awesome offers internet friends. 

Greg Davidson: Yeah, back in the day. I can I tell the listeners, my first impression of Chip was I knew that we had a different cat on our hands. Chip had all of his weed and mason jars. Chip was the very first guy to have his weed and make some dirt, that back when we all let it dry out in ziplock bags, and I was like, wow, this guy hightech cuz he’s got mason jars. 

Chip Baker: Oh man years probably still smoking Mexican weed back then. 

Greg Davidson: No we’re getting from–

Chip Baker: Yeah, no first names! 

Greg Davidson: Oh yeah.

Chip Baker: Now he is your medical cannabis supplier, right?

Greg Davidson: Ah, yeah, exactly. I trained him for medical cannabis, that’s how it works.

Chip Baker: Right. So man what puts, what are you smoking on today?

Greg Davidson: I just– Well, I saw that you sched to your part of [inaudible] in progress. I snuck outside real quick and booked to join a gelato. And then I’ve got a couple of canns here. And in my left hand, I’ve got some tandy. In my right hand here, I’ve got what they call Chi up, punch. This is a Rog garden, live resin and I’ve talked about live resin before–

Chip Baker: Yeah, totally love it. 

Greg Davidson: Yeah, the taste is right on. What are you smoking?

Salad Joint Kinda Guy

Chip Baker: Man you know I’ve been kind of bored with our weed lately but right now, I’ve been working on a salad that I like, which is a Mimosa and Gilz Nilz. Right. Gilz Nilz is a Swamp Boys Seed and yeah, man. We really like this weed. I mean, I didn’t think I was it– I don’t know, it doesn’t have like, to me like this drawing smell or appearance. It looks good. Don’t get me wrong and it smells great. But like I was totally proved wrong by this weed, Greg. Right. 

I immediately saw it, and I was like, oh man, commercial producer. And because it gets big, it grows easy. It doesn’t have any problems. And then like it has an older look because it is Georgia pine and cross the wide. So it’s an older plant, a place or something that they’re not telling us what the Georgia Pine is. Swamp Boys Seeds, actually get them on here and talk about it but they– so I liked smoking this weed, right it’s great outdoor, great greenhouse weed. And we mix that with the Mimosa, which you know, it has a citrus kush you know, taste so yeah I blend them.

Greg Davidson: [inaudible] you’ve been a salad joint kinda guy.

Chip Baker: Yeah, like salads for sure. Yeah, you know, salads are such a good way to, like, tell potential genetic combinations to– right. Something that like could be there or might be there. But yeah, like pure joints too. I’m just kind of bored with our weed right now. 

Greg Davidson: I remember back in the day when we were smoking a lot of arcade a train wreck, to get, we would get tired of that creosote taste and you’d mix in a little of that lavender. Oh, that was a nice salad.

Chip Baker: That is a good fond memory, you know, we planted some of those train wreck back crosses, we had, T three, T fours. Just recently, we’ve got a great fino that’s a train wreck, you know, that not carbon copy, but like really, really close. So, yeah, we’re excited for that this show this outdoor season.

Greg Davidson: Alright, so now that we know both know what we’re smoking, mysterious back to. When we first met–

Chip Baker: Yeah, okay. 

I’ve been using medical marijuana for the spasms in my legs associated with my paralysis. – Greg Davidson

Greg Davidson: I really liked you right off, back then you were just off your activist days down in Georgia. And that impressed me that impressed me. I really liked that about you. But yeah, at that point, I’ve been using medical marijuana for the spasms in my legs associated with my paralysis, and it’s really, back then your doctors would always ask, you know, are there be forms to fill out? And of course, I was always, no because you didn’t want your doctors to know. If you had a medical condition, you didn’t want your doctors to know. But this is before 1996. So at that point, I’ve been using it for 12 years medicinally. 

Preposition 64

Then 96 came along, and it kind of loosened up, got a little bit better. And has gradually, you know, you followed the legislation as close as anybody it’s gotten a little bit better, but it’s still not right. I’m conflicted about proposition 64 pretty much removed the whole medical marijuana scene. I mean, I don’t need to go to the dispensaries rather than the vape cartridges. But I’ve noticed that there’s maybe one place left that will ask if you’ve got a medical card, and I think they’d give some break on the tax maybe. But that’s about it; there’s no compassion and the compassionate care act anymore. It’s all about money. 

All the places are really good about either a disabled person or veteran discount, which I’m both– which is nice because they’re pretty much wiped out– your discount pretty much wipes out the excise tax that they’re charging. And the other thing that I really and I talked to Jessica about this is proposition 64 just exploded the one use single-use plastic market so we can just choke this planet even faster on plastic. I mean everything, yeah it just it’s really bad used to be able to go into a dispensary. They break out one of those big extra big mason jars and a set of tongs, and you could pull a bud out, you couldn’t touch them, but you could pull a bud out you could look around, and there’d be nice looking buds in there. Now everything is packaged in a– got my props ready here, Chip. Now we’re making a glass jar or plastic jar like this? You can’t see through it. So you can’t see what you’re getting. And of course, because of the size of the jar, everything is just mids. I wonder– and you know some people might know the answer to this. What happened? Yeah, I know you know some people. What happened to the big buds? Where’d they go? 

Chip Baker: What happened to the big buds? Where did they go? I feel a song coming on here. What happened to the big buds, where did they go–

Greg Davidson: Now I go to my dispensary. All I get is bids, Oh show there we’ve just wrote a song.

Chip Baker: Yeah, you used to be my dealer had big buds, the dispensary is getting nothing but meds.

Greg Davidson: What happened? What happened to these top cool? Where’d they go?

Chip Baker: Man, okay, I’ll tell you this dude, is in California and the rest of the country. Yeah, everybody’s buying grams and [inaudible]

 right? And the board, the dispensary, or the buyer should have a consistent nugget size in a sack of weed as opposed to like trophy nuggets how we all used to have. Yeah, right. And people talk all the weed used to be better, the weed used to be better, you know, and it’s like, well, man back when like, we all had trophy nuggets, back when that was a thing because you know, the pounds would have small to large nuggets and it was a different story. 

Here in Oklahoma and kind of in Colorado a little bit, they shove everything in the bag, right? And Colorado is changing a bit, but here it’s still everything goes in the bag, big nugget, the small nugget, but they’re often cut up dude. [inaudible] are often cut up. It’s better for everybody if they’re– because of the packaging and you know the way people buy it. Because it’s not like potatoes we go and buy this potato that potato three potato four potato you know, and each [inaudible] is bigger, different size, and then you weigh it all and it’s like oh, that’s point nine three pounds, and you pay six bucks or whatever. Right? And we’ve talked about this for a long time too. You know is I would like to go into a dispensary and just buy nugget, buy it by the nugget, buy the gram just like– that 4.6-gram nugget and that 2.8-gram nugget. 

Greg Davidson: Right.

Chip Baker: Commercial, commercialism.

Greg Davidson: I’ve had a– and they’ll talk to, you know the bud tenders and, and even the owners of the dispensary will talk to you and tell you that they get and this is just amazing to me. They have people come in every day,

Chip Baker: Every day. Yeah. At Jessica’s dispensary Baker’s Medical. We got people that come in every day about an eighth. Every day and buy two joints every day.

Greg Davidson: Yeah, why not save up your money and come in once a week and buy an ounce I don’t get it. 

Chip Baker: Oh, I mean, Well, I’ll tell you what, that’s going to happen more and more in the social interaction. It is definitely going to change. So the people that used to show up and buy an eighth a day–

Greg Davidson: We have this thing at the local grocery store; he mixes a compost tea every week. And then on Sunday, people who are customers can come in and get through their two gallons of compost tea for free and it always turns into a circle out in the back have three or four joints going around, and we call it church 

Chip Baker: Church, teachers.

Greg Davidson: In the past couple of weeks, church has been canceled. And on the last week of it everybody got their own joints we didn’t have to ask to join around. This episode’s been forwarded well I’m in the county, I’m in California we’re under stay at home orders.

Chip Baker: So yeah, weird. I see you’ve got your orange jumpsuit on there. [inaudible] log lot now.

Greg Davidson: We got a safety orange in case things go wild.

Chip Baker: Yeah, man.

Greg Davidson: I’ve got enough weed in the freezer from I had a really good year this year. We’re because of Proposition 64. We’re finally able to blow it up in the backyard and with Chip’s help, I gotta say with Chip’s help through a couple of rough patches. I turned out a really nice crop this year.

Chip Baker: Awesome, man.

Greg Davidson: I went out right before the lockdown and bought eight packs of rolling papers, looking at me like I was crazy after accident papers and notes.

Chip Baker: I’ve got a couple cases my shits gonna happen. Now we’re trying to stay really positive doing it all taking it as seriously as we should regardless of like how we might feel about the whole scenario and you know, it is definitely a good time like just take a second back man, you know, actually dude, I’ve been doing podcasts left and right literally I’ve had two others today. I’ve got two tomorrow at three yesterday at a webinar yesterday and then all the rest of the stuff that we decided we wanted to do. But yeah, man, we’re just kicking it down the road and just staying home. You know, this is my new home studio here at the ranch.

Greg Davidson: Yeah. Pretty fancy. 

Chip Baker: And I– were just sitting back starting a big garden. Taking care of all of our business. It’s amazing how much work that you can do from a home office and I’ve been home office in for a long time. And I know you do, too. You guys have worked at home for years. But when you use this tool like Zoom, like what we’re using right now or Google Hangouts or, man, it changes everything. Yeah. Man, I think it’s really good time to like, be with your family, and talk to some friends here and there. And, yeah, I enjoy one another’s company.

I think it’s really good time to like, be with your family, and talk to some friends here and there. And, yeah, I enjoy one another’s company. – Chip Baker

Greg Davidson: I wanted to be on The Real Dirt since you started it. Yeah–

Chip Baker: Man. We’re on. We’re on today. Well, hey, you know what, I think this is a perfect time to take a break. We’ll sit back we’ll roll up a joint. We’ll have a little break and we’ll come back and we’ll talk about medical cannabis. Right. This is Chip with The Real Dirt, Chip and Greg. 

Greg Davidson: Thanks.

Chip Baker: Hey, this is Chip from The Real Dirt, today is like March 25th 2020. And if you’re like most of the country, while you’re kind of concerned about what’s going on in the world. Well, hey, don’t be alarmed. The Real Dirt is a safe place to gather and listen and enjoy this episode and others if you’re interested in more episodes of The Real Dirt, download them at therealdirt.com or on iTunes. Subscribe and listen to all the episodes that we have there. Some are better than others, but I tell you what, there’s something great in every single one. So if you’re sitting back bored just downloads more episodes of The Real Dirt, therealdirt.com.

Chip Baker: So you want those vape pens huh?

Greg Davidson: I do. 

Chip Baker: Yeah, the vaping crisis didn’t scare you none man?

Greg Davidson: As long as you’re buying tested, that’s the good thing about 64. That’s one of the good things about 64. Got a little can’t see this but there’s a there’s a sticker right here that is mandated by the state of California to go on these larger dinos right? So no I never had it and with the weather changing I’m able to get outside and get back to smoking flower. In fact we’ve got another prop for y’all here. This is what I do when I’m locked out. Can’t get out these are all joints that are rolled here and see so– time comes and I can just boom out the door.

Chip Baker: Oh, that should go-bag. 

Greg Davidson: Yeah. That’s my go-bag.

Chip Baker: Let me see a picture that go-bag again. That was great! That’s awesome. You’ll have to take a picture that send it to me. Yeah, look for Greg Davidson’s go-bag.

Greg Davidson: My go-bag.

Chip Baker: That’s great.

Greg Davidson: I learned from you that you don’t want to have a shortage of [inaudible] No, because, you know, you’ll be cruising along. Life’s cool, and then you get like a paper cut. And you can’t roll– I hate that. Oh, God. 

Chip Baker: Fortunately, my wife is pretty good roller.

Greg Davidson: Yeah, she’s decent.

Chip Baker: She’s decent. She’s not great like me.

Greg Davidson: You are so far too much credit. I’ve smoked some of the pregnant guppies that you rolled,

Chip Baker: Hey, sometimes it’s just function, you know.

Greg Davidson: So anyway, we’re gonna try and steer this back–

Greg’s First Encounter with Cannabis

Chip Baker: Oh, this that’s right. This isn’t just like a play conversation. Hey listen Greg, I want to have you on to talk about medical cannabis. When did you get– tell me your cannabis story, when you got first involved with medical cannabis?

Greg Davidson: Oh, man first time I got involved with medical cannabis is first time I got high.

Chip Baker: Well i mean it’s really two different things. I think you’re in medical cannabis user, how did you– Okay, here we go. What was the lightbulb moment when you realize weed was medicine?

Greg Davidson: Ah, okay. February or March of 1985 when I gotten out of the hospital after my back injury. So I first realized cannabis was medicine was in February or March of 1985 after I’d been released from the hospital, and I was living with my dad and stepmom in Sacramento. And had finally gotten to where I was comfortable going out of the house, going out and getting some fresh air, getting some exercise started getting back in touch with old friends and got a sack from one of them. And was being Mr. Sly going out in the garage and rolling up a quick one to take on my exercise journey. Yeah, let me think of like 26 years old, and my dad busts me I get busted by my dad right? And he’s like, you know, you can just roll that up in the house and take it with you. So obviously wasn’t us [inaudible]

Chip Baker: Your mom and dad are like, Just go out there and tell him he can do it in the house?

Greg Davidson: Tell him he can do it in the house. Exactly. So I was smoking, not with the idea of cannabis as medicine. But I noticed that when I would smoke, my the spasms in my legs would really calm down. And I noticed that the more I smoked, the more the spasms in my legs would lead up. Then I thought, you know, maybe I don’t need to take all these liver-killing medicines that the doctors have prescribed for me if I can replace it with what at the time was medicine [inaudible] So I was a medical marijuana patient when you were still running around in three corner pants. 

Chip Baker: Dude I was playing weed in 1985.

Greg Davidson: Okay, all right, but you get my point. You get my point. It’s been a long time– 

Chip Baker: I was just out of diapers. 

Greg Davidson: So I thought, you know, I had to keep it from my doctors back then.

Chip Baker: Right? You can keep are [inaudible]–

Greg Davidson: Yeah, it was a robot–

Chip Baker: You were in the VA at that time. I mean, you were going to VA hospitals–

Greg Davidson: [inaudible] State University of California system. Which has hospitals in various campuses around the state.

Chip Baker: Some may have understood, but you know, it’s not something–

Greg Davidson: I went through different doctors and I know that my first doctor would have been like, good for you, you know, and then he moved on and the next doctor would have been I’m calling the police said oh you just get a vibe, you get a vibe from people. And then I had a doctor for a long long time that I think she heard listen to anything that I said anyway, but I don’t think that she would have been up or down about it. 

So then we’re gonna we’re gonna jump forward a long, long time and I got bladder cancer in 2018 was diagnosed with bladder cancer in like February of 2018. And, man, there’s nothing like the feeling of a doctor walking in and saying you’ve got cancer. But at the same time, he was really good doctor and I realized right then in his office that I was gonna beat it. Underneath this shirt, I’ve got a whole slew of tattoos and I think that they– one of them’s the chemical symbol for THC and one’s a chemical symbol for CBD and the doctor is always key on those right away and you know when you know what that is like– 

Chip Baker: This guy’s for real.

Greg Davidson: I think they know not to ask their questions anymore. But the guy said to me, amongst other things, he said if you use marijuana, he said use more. He says if you don’t use it now start, and if you do use it, use more. 

Chip Baker: I like this guy–

Greg Davidson: So that’s how the just fast forward thing. That’s how the attitude amongst the doctors in the UC system changed over the years. We have mutual friend in Colorado, who does real high grade CBD oil. I got tons of that from him. And talk to Jessica and you about how I developed the three legged stool for my recovery. And it was Western medicine which involves surgery and chemotherapy combined with some other various medicines. 

The second leg of the stool was Eastern medicine and a big shout out to Jessica Baker. She was my rock. Right there. She developed a program for me of herbs, proprietary herbs that came from a place in Berkeley. She started; there’s my wife Elaine that made the Reishi mushroom tea and the Chaga root tea that tasted just horrible. And I had a friend can I give a shout out to a friend back in Matthew no last names– 

Chip Baker: Matthew no last names

Greg Davidson: You know who you are? He’s a healer, he’s a chiropractor and a Chaga root hunter. It turned out– duty he goes out and he any harvest chaga roots and send me. So that was my– they know each other. So that was my second leg of the stool, and then the third leg of the stool was all about cannabis it’s all about cannabis, man. I smoked —

Chip Baker: Propping up on weed. 

Greg Davidson: I smoked, I ate, I use drops. I use poultice I think I used everything except those [inaudible] shouldn’t go–

Chip Baker: Oh, man, you know when you really got to get up in there right?

Greg Davidson: Any [inaudible] method that you could? And I really think that those three things Western medicine, Eastern medicine and then the power of medical marijuana.

Chip Baker: So now you can bring it up to anyone. You can talk about that you use medical marijuana to anyone now.

Greg Davidson: Yeah, right. In fact this past year when I knew that I was going to grow big. I went around to all the neighbors and I you know, fest up tonight. A year–

Chip Baker: For the past you were nervous about it. 

I went from door to door at around the neighbors and told them I’m gonna be growing. – Greg Davidson

Greg Davidson: I was I’d be very careful. Although we have really good neighbors and we’ve known them for a long time. You know you don’t want to offend anybody. You don’t know their feelings about it. And so I went from door to door at around the neighbors and told them I’m gonna be growing. And I said, and they were all fine with it. They were all great with it. And I said, by the way, did you know that I’d been growing outlaw style for years, none of them had a clue. So yeah, I was able to grow my own medicine this year, and the state makes it really easy. There’s real good nursery that has high quality clones. Chip knows who I’m talking about. I used a nutrient line that was a lot harder than it needed to be. But I think it was worth it and I grew and grew in one [inaudible]–

Chip Baker: Oregon zone nectar the gods that are what she is right?

Greg Davidson: Yeah. Nectar for the gods. Yeah, it was like an 11 [inaudible]

Chip Baker: Great product, too complicated for– 

Greg Davidson: Yeah, I had to contact you a couple of times and say, why am I giving my plants carbon?

Chip Baker: There’s only instruction just follow it.

Greg Davidson: Yeah.

Chip Baker: Now they got a good product, man. You know, it’s they do have 14 pieces to the puzzle though.

Greg Davidson: I turned out some really, really nice medical marijuana and I’m sad I mean if the you know if this is a zombie apocalypse, man I’m good, I got jars sealed up out there. Do you remember the legendary APK we call it All their Point Kush?

Chip Baker: I do remember it but but I was never that– I wasn’t that into that one, but it just never crossed my path the same way as it did you guys, I remember it?

Greg Davidson: I broke out a jar that has been sealed up for 15 years. 

Chip Baker: No way! Holy shit.

Greg Davidson: And I smoked it with our mutual friend

Chip Baker: In the freezer, had you forgotten about it or purposely it was back there?

Greg Davidson: I totally knew and I knew at some– I was gonna smoke with our friend and own the seed bank. Can I give him a shout out?

Chip Baker: Absolutely. 

Greg Davidson: Oh man. Oh cool! 

Chip Baker: Who’s our friend? That into seed bank?

Greg Davidson: My best friend–

Chip Baker: Oh Sha, 707 Seeds yeah totally got some of his 707 kush going on down here in the 405–

Greg Davidson: So he and I’ve been friends for a long time. He actually got me the cutting of that all good point kush. So I broke it open, roll the joint smok it with him, and then told him what it was, and showed him the jar. It was it had lost a little bit of he used to have a really nice spicy smell. Now just kind of had a flat smell, but as far as taste and getting you high, it had lost nothing, and it been in my freezer for 15 years.

Chip Baker: Well that’s awesome. We smoke some a Fletcher’s Malawi and oh five haze recently though, that we had, it was in the back of the frigerator for 18 months maybe more. And it lost his color a little bit. Didn’t have an initial smell but you broke it open and there was a smell and it smoked just fine.

Greg Davidson: Have you sealed it and then put it in– 

Chip Baker: Just in a jar, dried, right? tight. I am putting the one cooler.

Greg Davidson: Buy yourselves a vacuum sealer. Good. 

Chip Baker: So I’ve got a vacuum sealer, there’s just you know, like, we got too much weed. We just put this in here.

Greg Davidson: And we don’t have– That was a funny experience. So that’s what I did with this year’s model. I have a nice mix of SFV OGs, Chip knows I’m one of those fuel oil, kind of guys. And then with Jessica’s help, I was able to develop the terpene profile.

Chip Baker: Yeah, what’s your what’s your ter[inaudible]? 

Greg Davidson: Man, I got to have the limonene,a little of that. You know what works out strain wise for me and money because it’s one I’ve always loved is Sour Diesel. And then the– anything like that [inaudible] the real dank OG. My favorite OG is Tahoe OG, I couldn’t find that but it I grew some really nice SFV OG. And my garden star was a replacement plant. I had a Venom OG, that was not working. And I sent my boy Chip a picture of it. And he says pull it up. It was pretty late in the season, but I was able to get the same nursery. Some [inaudible] And man–

Chip Baker: The great. Yeah.

Greg Davidson: It was great. It was super easy to grow. Super easy to trim and just chunky rock hard buds that taste of you can taste the cookie influence but also, you can get that limonene but, man, I wish we could get a hold of some genius. Remember?

Chip Baker: Oh, you know what we actually just planted a seed run of the Apollo 11, I think looking for that genius fino and man I think we came close. I think we came close man. I think you’d be impressed. Yeah some my favorite weed genius. Oh my god. Just great.

Greg Davidson: Yeah.

Chip Baker: It’s great. So man, let me ask you a couple medical marijuana questions. 

Greg Davidson: All right, yo.

Average Medical Cannabis Consumer

Chip Baker: You are an average consumer, if you could say anything to the dispensaries what it was. If you have all the dispensaries in the country listening to you because you very well could. What do you want to tell them?

Greg Davidson: Wow!

Chip Baker: As an average medical cannabis consumer.

Greg Davidson: This is going to sound harsh. 

Chip Baker: It’s good criticism–

Greg Davidson: [inaudible] with the bait and switch. Yeah, it’s bad problem, too bad problem. No show.

Bait and switch work this way, and they put a bud into a clear lucite jar that has a magnifying glass built into the lid. And the bud is just dank. Yeah, frosty. Perfect, you can tell it’s got a perfect mixture to it. So you buy an eight of that, and you bring it home, and it’s not even the same weed. It’s sad but true and one a would-be, man we’ve got to cut down on the plastic.

Chip Baker: How is it works? Have to cut down the plastic.

Greg Davidson: Yeah, yeah.

Message for the Regulators, Commercial Growers, Extractors

Chip Baker: I was gonna ask you what you would say to the legislators if they were listening to this and the regulators because they are they’re out there, man.

Greg Davidson: Oh, that’s easy one, I don’t even have to think on that one, legalize it.

Chip Baker: Well, one of the things is less plastic. You just told me that.

Greg Davidson: Yeah, definitely require less plastic. I get what you’re trying to do. But people are responsible, patients are responsible enough and you know, I hesitate to use the word patient anymore. Let’s just say users, users are reliable enough that you can put it in a paper bag and staple it closed. You know, we don’t need everything that we’re buying in one plastic or glass jar. And then put it inside of I meant to have one of those ready, but you know what? single black ziplock–

Chip Baker: Exit container, a secure exit container.

Greg Davidson: Thank you. I knew they had a name. The exit container, what can you do with those afterward?

Chip Baker: Now, the waste is tremendous.

Greg Davidson: Yeah. And now our recycling, our recycling won’t accept that kind of stuff.

Chip Baker: All right. So dispensary owners legislation, what do you want to say to the commercial growers, the people that are growing this stuff?

Greg Davidson: Learn how to cure your cannabis properly. Man, I hate to keep banging in your drum, because your heads are not going to fit in the studio. But Chip taught me more good cannabis gets ruined and the curing process that any other point. It’s not easy to grow great weed, but it’s not super hard. You can trim it. You can dry it and you know the merits of wet trimming versus dry trimming. I mean I’m a dry trimmer, I always have been. 

But then there’s that last step that brings out to taste brings out the flavor profile. And that’s curing, so you growers out there, I know you’re trying to get your product to market as fast as you can you know you’ve gone through all the hoops I know what they all are and then you want to get your product to the dispensary. But take a little bit extra time and give it a nice cure. Chip told me in Colorado, and I didn’t know this Colorado is a super dry state super hard to dry and get a proper cure. So here in California where we’ve got the proper climate court do it. Next question, please?

Chip Baker: Next question. All right, well, extractors there’s the next thing. As a medical cannabis consumer, what do you have to say to the extractors? Because this is perfect information for all of these guys, what is my average consumer?

Greg Davidson: I see a drop off in the wax and resin and that kind of product and a better job being done with these things. And I know it’s hard. Not everybody can do it, but if you can do it, think about becoming a live resin extractor. Adjust the flavor, you don’t have to add terpenes back end because they’re there. So ask me long question Chip so I can hit this, waving it around like–

Chip Baker: Man now I think those are I got what I want and really you know, the grower the extractor, the distributor, the legislator, I mean we you know talk about, how you can talk about it now. You snuck talk about it you talk to your neighbors about it you know make how regulations actually really made you feel better about it. And there’s– we’ve both talked about this though there’s it, man it’s harder to get great, great product.

Greg Davidson: Yeah it really is — It’s easy to get good extracts.

Chip Baker: Yes, it’s so easy for somebody to make an SOP of an extract. It’s really easy to be like, Oh, if you treat this weed this way and you put in a recipe with growing ganjas not exactly the same every time.

Greg Davidson: It’s so hard to do it right. To do it right is– one thing you told me a Chip seems to have enjoyed smoking my cannabis over the years. 

Chip Baker: I’ve smoked as much of Greg’s weed as I can. 

Greg Davidson: Quite a bit I gotta say, which is quite a bit. One thing you always said and I appreciated you saying this was because of my situation, I’m able to be with my plants every day and give them love and that makes up for a lot of things.

Chip Baker: Oh yeah, absolutely you don’t need a bunch of care to grow weed. I mean of course no I love it don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t take much. As long as you got a pot, and some soil and a little bit of fertilizer, and some seed or a clone like water, right?

Greg Davidson: There are so many seed companies out there now. Like Fletcher’s just turn it out some crazy good stuff.

Chip Baker: I mean, he’s hands down one of the top breeders in the world. I’m proud to know him call him, bro.

Greg Davidson: Me too. I knew him.

Chip Baker: I knew him when he was like 15 [inaudible] to be it as the parties we were at.

Greg Davidson: Right, you’d look over there and you’d be like, Who’s that kid? 

Chip Baker: I never can tell how old anybody–

Greg Davidson: Where did he get that crazy good weed sitting in front of. 

Chip Baker: Yeah, man. He’s got he’s got a fucking $60,000 car too, so he must be 21. Right? He wouldn’t even old enough to drive. Somebody else drove him–

Greg Davidson: We know a lot of characters back in our day, Eddie, remember Eddie. 

Chip Baker: Yeah. He just came up yesterday in conversation Eddie Lap. I’d love to get Eddie Lap on the show, man. Oh, my God. He’s got some of the best stories ever.

Greg Davidson: Yeah, I said, we had a friend that this is going back to our CWGA days. That had a party for all of us at the end of the year. And that’s where I met Jessica, for the first time I was walking, for you were there, and there was this girl just tearing up foosball table and you said, that’s Jessica. And since the four of us my wife Elaine, Chip and Jessica and I have been become really good friends, we’ve got some great stories. Chip eating pecan pie with chopsticks. Still makes us laugh. We’d been up there for the weekend, and all the silverware was gone. But there was still and Chip showed us his chopsticks.

Chip Baker: I got mad chopsticks– you know, that’s an off the grid living on the road item like their chopsticks. That’s how I’ve got such a good usage of them [inaudible] off the grid, use chopsticks–

Greg Davidson: And the rest of us did not go without entertainment.

Chip Baker: Good time. Good times. Oh, so, man, what kind of weed you’re looking to plant this next year?

Greg Davidson: You know I’m interested in doing some Affies. I listened to your show about affies and I did put in a lot of time last year and I don’t want to put in as much time this year. So you’ve kind of sold me your show kind of sold me on doing some feminized Affies. In fact, we meet we need to talk about seed source.

Chip Baker: Man, I tell you, you need to contact Caleb over CSI, man. He’s got all the genetic that perfect for short, slow growers. A lot of that purple and that stuff you know, this basis of a lot of his crosses in the past and then he’s got some straight Afghanistan and yeah, I think he’s a great person to talk to you. Great.

Greg Davidson: Cool. Well at some point is going to pass and we want to be able to go on some day trips, maybe some overnight trips, this coming year, when–

Chip Baker: What will less solve your problem? What was your, you had to water them? 

Greg Davidson: Well, I can just like count backward from a certain date and know when to plant them, instead of going getting some clones and worrying from I’ve got a lot of the infrastructure and now I’m looking at my pots that are out there.

Chip Baker: What keeps you being home so much? Is it because they need to be watered?

Greg Davidson: Yeah, they need to be watered and then mix it up nutrients so there’s no way I’m going to use the same new track and 

Chip Baker: I can solve all those problems for you. Yeah.

Greg Davidson: Okay, yeah.

Chip Baker: Your problems are simply solved. One is use some sort of pre-mixed organic nutrient or make your own that you add to the soil that you’re using. There’s coming recipes we could talk about, and then put in a simple drip system that just comes off your water hose and it’s just water. You occasionally want to feed it with something, then make up some jugs and nutrients and feed your plants.

Greg Davidson: That was my– this year because we’re prone to some really, where I live is at the upper end of the San Joaquin beginning–

Chip Baker: Do you know exactly how much your plants are drinking with water I bet

Greg Davidson: Oh, and there was a point where the ones in the half wind girls where they were getting 10 gallons of water a day. We had a freakish– 

Chip Baker: Simple drip system. We can make all that happen.

Greg Davidson: Yeah, we had a freakish heatwave that we see temperatures in the hundred and teams. Day after day. And it was– 

Chip Baker: We had that here last year too. Yeah.

Greg Davidson: Yeah, I know you have 90–

Chip Baker: It was 91 degrees here yesterday.

Wheather Problems

Greg Davidson: I know you weather problems. You got a late start and I saw your post today about bugs. 

Chip Baker: Have to be honest [inaudible] 

Greg Davidson: Here, cabbage loopers. I guess I need to put some cabbage in, because they have a problem with cabbage looper bugs.

Chip Baker: Yeah, a companion planting can help you guys for sure. And you know, there are some simple pheromone boxes to draw the bugs there, the cabbage loopers they’re actually, I believe they live in the soil. They come out the soil, right. So you could like [inaudible] somehow–

Greg Davidson: I think the bug that you– the worm that you posted today, that might have been a cabbage looper. They come on a small white mark like maybe the size of a nickel you’ll see these white mods flying around your grow. And then a few days later, the classic sign a few brown leaves on the outside and you don’t pull on them. And the whole top of the bud comes off.

Chip Baker: Yeah, right. They’re ugly, there’s a few different versions we have down here. We’ve got the tomato hookworm, we’ve got the quote-unquote, garden worm. But they’re they’re fairly large. Yeah, you can burn the ground, and it burns off any of those. Any of them that are in the ground over the winter.

Greg Davidson: Yeah.

Chip Baker: Right. And then pheromone boxes attract the moths. So then they catch the moths in the pheromone boxes instead of on your buds. Then you gotta pick that shit out and look for it daily.

Greg Davidson: But it’s something that you know, I wish more people, I don’t want to put the dispensaries out of business that’s not m– But I’d like to see more people growing their own. I’d like to see more people at the grow stores– Every grow store owner that I’ve ever known is willing to just talk with you for as long as it takes you know–

Chip Baker: We’re good at that

Greg Davidson: Yeah, they are, all you guys. I mean Chip our friendship goes so deep that I can call him with a quote-unquote emergency in the crop and he’ll get back to me within six hours and has solved everyone.

Chip Baker: You’re my six hour list. 

Greg Davidson: Six hour call back. But yeah, it is something that I would like to see the legislators who are listening to your show and may come in the future I’d like to see them work towards a uniform thing. Because even here in California it’s not very uniformed. You know, it changes from town to town. 

Chip Baker: [inaudible] Oklahoma State law. Right state laws so the individual countless cities can’t manipulate it quite as much as other places like California. Well, Greg, I have appreciated this little conversation we had, man. To me it felt like almost any other phone call we’ve had.

Greg Davidson: It’s gone a little longer than our usual phone call. 

Chip Baker: Maybe a little bit. We talk about 40 minutes, I think. But yeah, thanks for having me having me on your show.

Greg Davidson: Thanks for having me on your show.

Chip Baker: Thanks for having me on your show. This has been another fine, no wasted hour of your time by listening to The Real Dirt. My name is Chip Baker and this has been The Real Dirt.

Subscribe & Review

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The Real Dirt. Don’t miss an episode, click here to subscribe on iTunes and let me know what you love about this show.