There are a lot of classic breeds that for a variety of reasons have become clone-only strains, but almost every strain is capable of selective breeding toward seed homozygous(ness). Most strains are hybridized against their filial (F1, F2, …) counterpart for generations to be considered an “inbred line” usually after 5 generations which are able to produce consistent gentics from seeds, and then can be backcrossed against a parental strain which further stabilizes the line for whatever the desired trait originally was.
I always made capsules. Coconut oil is solid at room temperature but melts easily. I’d cook up some oil with finely ground bud, then use a cheap capsule press.
I have many seeds from dispensary purchased flower and then made my own by collecting pollen and selectively pollinating some branches.
NM. Answered in 2021.
“Chinese foreign nationals are exploiting Maine’s lax marijuana laws, the Biden Administration’s immigration policies, and cheap real estate in rural Maine to grow a fortune using exploited illegal alien laborers.”
Interesting and nicely documented story. I have doubts about this:
Given the climate in interior Maine and what’s spent on electricity and heating in winter plus other expenses, you suspect that profits are way way less than $4.37 billion.*
Regardless, legal growers must be mightily pissed off. The state’s tax collections would also be suffering.
*if it’s such a windfall you’d expect lobstermen to stay home and reap the benefits.
Maybe. Back when my state legalized grow ops and dispensaries I looked into what it would take to score a grow op license. I don’t remember all the requirements, but the big killer for me was that I would have to have several millions in liquid assets before they would even look at my application.
It looks like Maine is one of the cheapest states to operate in - licensing fee of $9/plant for small outdoor grows. Not the longest growing season, though.
In New Mexico, you’re allowed to cultivate up to six mature plants for your own use. However, I’ve seen what it takes to successfully grow pot plants, and I’d rather buy products from the experts.
Here in Colorado it’s legal to grow your own, and since we own a home with a large yard, we could grow it outside (for smell mitigation) or possibly inside our lizard/snake room where we already have separate supplemental heat, humidity and UV lights.
But I don’t.
For myself, I tried MJ enough times in College to figure out how it affected me. It made me feel heavy, tired/sleepy, and almost uncomfortably relaxed. Considering the tension headaches I have from time to time, it could be of use, but I have enough control freak tendencies that I was very uncomfortable with the constrained and slightly out of control feeling. Same way I don’t generally drink more than a tiny bit of booze to relax.
My wife doesn’t for two reasons. The first would be negated by the premise of the thread: if nationally legal, she wouldn’t have to worry about it affecting her employment (my employer treats it as a non-issue as long as you don’t smell of it or are affected by it at work). But the second is that she considers herself to have an addictive personality. She enjoys booze immensely and has to be careful as she worries about drinking too much.
My mother and father in law, who live in town, use CBD oil for muscle pain and aches, and are quite happy with it, but show no interest in using it recreationally. Booze is their drug of choice, although well within what I would consider reasonable recreational use (generally one or two drinks a day as a maximum, many days without any).
Interestingly, the person I know who wants to use it the most would be my mother. Arthritis gallops in my maternal family members, and when I was a teen she frequently reminisced about using MJ when she was in college and a young adult. Her advice to me was to try it in college, and if I liked it, to use it in safe and controlled circumstances and to enjoy it but not let it become the center of my life. Pretty hip! It actually blew my then girlfriend, now wife of 22 years mind when she got to spend a bit of time with my mom and she talked about such things openly: specifically how she hoped that when she got old that it would be legal so she could take it for arthritis pain! (my wife’s family is/was substantially more ‘traditional’ in outlook and values than mine)
But she lives in Texas, so she can be close to my younger brother and my niece nephew (her grandkids) - so she isn’t so blessed.
If I lived somewhere it was legal, I’d constantly have the limit of plants running. I’ve grown it before. It’s one of the easier plants to grow, and well taken care of home grown with good genetics is generally excellent - at least the equal of what you’d get a dispensary. What I grew was a lot better than what I’ve gotten at dispensaries in other states, at least.*
There were three things that made growing it myself a less than ideal experience. 1) Keeping my grubby little hands off the plants while they were growing took a lot of self control. I’d have other weed available, but couldn’t resist sampling the poor plants long before they were actually ready. 2) Drying and curing the weed properly is actually kind of a pain in the ass, and also takes some patience. 3) The odor while flowering is a bit crazy. My wife doesn’t smoke, so she was understandably put off by the odor, despite my efforts to contain/control it.
But if it were legal, I’d gladly jump back into the hobby. I’d probably start and run them through the vegetative stage inside and have a greenhouse for flowering. Can’t run the lights 24 hours a day at that point, anyway.
Or who knows, if it was legal I might just grow a long-finishing sativa. Back in the day of carburetors, one of my sister’s crazier friends had one of those growing in her back yard. I have no idea if that plant ever got into the “finishing” stage of flowering, because they were crazy and I stopped going back there. I figure it was probably 18-24 months old when I saw it. It was about 25’ tall, covered in buds that weren’t quite ripe, and you could see it in the backyard from the street. She’d randomly harvest and sell ounces off of it. Some of the nicest outdoor weed I’d ever had, but she was crazy to grow it that way back in the era of prohibition.
*For that matter, what I get on the black market is usually actually better quality than what I get from dispensaries (though at a higher price), but that’s a completely different subject.
It’s funny - now that it’s legal recreationally here, I’m mainly using it medicinally. One 10 mg edible makes it possible for me to fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up without grogginess. It’s almost completely eliminated the need for Ambien, which did make me wake up groggy. I occasionally take it for arthritis pain, but I want to be sure it keeps working for me, so I don’t usually take it at all during the day.
Nope.
I don’t grow and slaughter my own pigs, beeves, or chickens neither.
I don’t have the equipment, the interest, or the knowledge to raise and cultivate plants.
But, I suppose, with enough money, that old dude from The Big Sleep, maybe it wouldn’t be orchids but rare specimens. Sitting in a wheelchair “enjoying” the aroma of faint smoke and disapproving of my family’s affairs and goings-on.
I don’t indulge, but I do like the look of the plant.
I would try a bonsai version if I could locate the right seeds. It is legal where I live.
Also, from when I did indulge, weed is the easiest plant to grow… that name is for a reason. Obviously there are specialized techiques for increasing potency, yields etc, but just tossing a couple of seeds into a flower bed works pretty well.
At one point I had a 10x10 foot room filled with horribly stinky plants. I ran air cooled hooded lights with a big Dayton blower forcing air through a carbon filter and out through the wall.
It was illegal at the time and I kept it a secret. Totally stealth. People would be in my home and yard for cookouts yet nobody ever knew.
It’s completely legal here in Canada to have up to four plants. No interest in trying it.
[Sidebar] When I mentioned the four plant allowance for personal consumption to a friend, he laughed and said that no-one could use the output from four plants just for “personal consumption”. Is that right?
Maryland. Allowed 2 plants for non-medical use. Last summer I decided to give it a go just for shits and giggles.
Have a basement bathtub/shower I wasn’t using for anything, the tub faucet doesn’t even run, but the drain works just fine, so I dropped a 3-gallon pot in there, filled it with potting soil, got a couple of auto-flowering seeds and a grow light with a timer and saw what happened.
Well, what happened was my first light wasn’t strong enough and I ended up with a scrawny little thing that kept growing too tall and falling over. I kept winding the too-long stem down and covering with soil, but by the time I got a stronger light it was too late for that guy. It topped out at about just 6-7 inches and developed a single tiny little bud that looked amazing, bright green and covered in crystals, but it never got any bigger than about a pencil eraser before the whole thing just kinda shriveled up and died. I think I could have made it work over time, but I suspect the auto-flowering seeds fucked me. The other seed never germinated.
I’m going to try again this spring, see if I can’t get better results with a better setup.
I know someone that grew in his basement with hydroponics 20 years ago and he said he could get an ounce/plant. An ounce can last me 18 months but I know people that go through an ounce a month. So your mileage may vary.
Four big ass plants, almost certainly not. Four smallish plants and there are people who could over the course of a year. Generally true though.