High 101 Essay, Research Paper

MARIJUANA HORTICULTURE:

Growing and Cultivating the Weed

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NEW 8/3/99! MARIJUANA FAQS!

* alt.hemp: from the newsgroup of the same name

* Bongs and Pipes: bongs, pipes, etc

* Gravity Bongs: gravity bongs

* Growlights: for marijuana

* Marijuana Consumption: more stuff on bongs, pipes, eating, etc

* Marijuana Eating: p.o. consumption of marijuana (butter, brownies,

etc…)

* Marijuana Law: state laws

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Have you been busted for weed-related offenses? Check out our free legal

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Marijuana is a deciduous plant which grows from seeds. The fibrous

sectionof the plant was once used to make rope.The flowering tops, leaves,

seeds, and resin of the plant isused by just about everyone to get HIGH.

Normally, the vegetable parts of the plant are smoked to produce

this”high,” but thay can also be eaten. The axtive ingredient in

marijuanaresin is THC (tetahydrocannabinol). Marijuana contains from 1 – 4

percent THC (4 per cent must be considered GOOD dope).

Marijuana grows wild in many parts of the world, and is cultivated

inMexice, Vietnam, Africa, Nepal, India, South America, etc.,etc.

Themarijuana sold in the United States comes primarily from, yes,

theUniited States.

It is estimated that at least 50 per cent of the grass on the streetsin

America is homegrown. The next largest bunch comes actoss theborders from

Mexico, with smaller amounts filtering in from Panama,occasionally South

America, and occasinally, Africa.

Hashish is the pure resin of the marijuana plant, which is scraped fromthe

flowering tops of the plant and lumped together. Ganja is theground-up tops

of the finest plants. (It is also the name given to anysort of marijuana in

Jamaica.)

Marijuana will deteriorate in about two years if exposed to light,air or

heat. It should always be stored in cool places.

Grass prices in the United States are a direct reflection of the lawsof

supply and demand (and you thought that high school economicswould never be

useful). A series of large border busts, a short growingseason, a bad crop,

any number of things can drive the price of marijuanaup. Demand still seems

to be on the increase in the U.S., so prices seldomfall below last year’s

level.

Each year a small seasonal drought occurs, as last year’s supply runslow,

and next year’s crop is not up yet. Prices usually rase about20 – 75 per

cent during this time and then fall back to “normal.”Unquestionably, a

large shortage of grass causes a percentage of smokersto turn to harder

drugs instead. For this reason, no grass controlprogram can ever be

beneficial or “successful.”

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GROWING IT!

[Image]Marijuana Growers G Deluxe

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There is one surefire way of avoiding high prices and the grass DT’s:Grow

your own. This is not as difficult as some “authorities” on thesubject

would make you believe. Marijuana is a weed, and a fairly vivacious one at

that, and it will grow almost in spite of you.

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OUTDOORS

[Image]Marijuana Grower’s Handbook: The Indoor High Yield Guide

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Contrary to popular belief, grass grows well in many place on theNorth

American continent. It will flourish even if the temperature doesnot raise

above 75 degrees.

The plants do need a minimum of eight hours of sunlight per day andshould

be planted in late April/early May, BUT DEFINITELY, after thelast frost of

the year.

Growing an outdoor, or “au naturel”, crop has been the favored methodover

the years, because grass seems to grow better without as muchattention when

in its natural habitat.

Of course, an outdoors setting requires special precautions not

encoun-tered with an indoors crop; you must be able to avoid detection,

both fromlaw enforcement freaks and common freaks, both of whom will take

yourweed and probably use it. Of course, one will also arrest you. You

mustalso have access to the area to prepare the soil and harvest the

crop.There are two schools of thought about starting the seeds. One says

youshould start the seedlings for about ten days in an indoor starter

box(see the indoor section) and then transplant. The other theory is

thatyou should just start them in the correct location. Fewer plants

willcome up with this method, but there is no shock of transplant tokill

some of the seedlings halfway through.

The soil should be preprepared for the little devils by turning itover a

couple of times and adding about one cup of hydrated lime persquare yard of

soil and a little bit (not too much, now) of good watersoluble nitrogen

fertilizer. The soil should now be watered severaltimes and left to sit

about one week.

The plants should be planted at least three feet apart, getting toogreedy

and stacking them too close will result in stunted plants.The plants like

some water during their growing season, BUT not toomuch. This is especially

true around the roots, as too much water willrot the root system.

Grass grows well in corn or hops, and these plants will help providesome

camouflage. It does not grow well with rye, spinach, or pepperweed.It is

probally a good idea to plant in many small, broken patches, aspeople tend

to notice patterns.

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GENERAL GROWING INFO

[Image]Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts: A Review of the

Scientific Evidence

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Both the male and he female plant produce THC resin, although the maleis

not as strong as the female. In a good crop, the male will still beplenty

smokable and should not be thrown away under any circumstances.Marijuana

can reach a hight of twenty feet (or would you rather wish ona star) and

obtain a diameter of 4 1/2 inches. If normal, it has a sexratio of about

1:1, but this can be altered in several ways.

The male plant dies in the 12th week of growing, the female will

liveanother 3 – 5 weeks to produce her younguns. Females can weigh twice

asmuch as males when they are mature.

Marijuana soil should compact when you squeeze it, but should also

breakapart with a small pressure and absorb water well. A nice testfor

either indoor or outdoor growing is to add a bunch of worms to thesoil, if

they live and hang aroung, it is good soil, but if they don’t,well, change

it. Worms also help keep the soil loose enough for theplants to grow well.

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SEEDS

[Image]Marijuana Law

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To get good grass, you should start with the right seeds. A nice

startingpoint is to save the seeds form the best batch you have consumed.

Theseeds should be virile, that is, they should not be grey and

shiriveledup, but green, meaty, and healthy appearing. A nice test is to

drop theseeds on a hot frying pan. If they “CRACK,” they are probably good

forplanting purposes.

The seeds should be soaked in distilled water overnight before planting.BE

SURE to plant in the ground with the pointy end UP. Plant about 1/2″deep.

Healthy seeds will sprout in about five days.

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SPROUTING

[Image]Marijuana Flower Forcing: Secrets of Designer Growing

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The best all around sprouting method is probably to make a sprouting box(as

sold in nurseries) with a slated bottom or use paper cups with holespunched

in the bottoms. The sprouting soil should be a mixture of humus,soil, and

five sand with a bit of organic fertilizer and water mixedin about one week

before planting.

When ready to transplant, you must be sure and leave a ball of soilaround

the roots of each plant. This whole ball is dropped into abaseball-sized

hold in the permanent soil.

If you are growing/transplanting indoors, you should use a greensafe light

(purchased at nurseries) during the transplanting operation.If you are

transplanting outdoors, you should time it about twohours befor sunset to

avoid damage to the plant. Always wear cottongloves when handling the young

plants.

After the plants are set in the hole, you should water them. It is alsoa

good idea to use a commercial transplant chemical (also purchased

atnurseries) to help then overcome the shock.

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INDOOR GROWING

[Image]Marijuana Hydroponics

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Indoor growing has many advantages, besides the apparent fact that itis

much harder to have your crop “found,” you can control the

ambientconditions just exactly as you want them and get a guaranteed

“good”plant.

Plants grown indoors will not appear the same as their outdoor cousins.They

will be scrawnier appearing with a weak stems and may even requireyou to

tie them to a growing post to remain upright, BUT THEY WILL HAVEAS MUCH OR

MORE RESIN!

If growing in a room, you should put tar paper on the floors and thenbuy

sterilized bags of soil form a nursery. You will need about onecubic foot

of soil for eavh plant.

The plants will need about 150 ml. of water per plant/per week. Theywill

also need fresh air, so the room must be ventilated. (however,the fresh air

should contain NO TOBACCO smoke.)

At least eight hours of light a day must be provided. As you increasethe

light, the plants grow faster and show more females/less males.Sixteen

hours of light per day seems to be the best combination, beyondthis makes

little or no appreciable difference in the plant quality.Another idea is to

interrupt the night cycle with about one hour oflight. This gives you more

females.

The walls of your growing room should be painted white or covered

withaluminum foil to reflect the light.

The lights themselves can be either bulbs of fluorescent. Figure about75

watts per plant or one plant per two feet of flouresent tube.

The fluorescents are the best, but do not use “cool white” types. Thelight

sources should be an average of twenty inches from theplant and NEVER

closer than 14 inches. They may be mounted on a rack and moved every few

days as the plants grow.

The very best light sources are those made by Sylvania and othersespecially

for growing plants (such as the “gro lux” types).

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HARVESTING AND DRYING

[Image]Marijuana Cultivators Handbook

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The male plants will be taller and have about five green or yellow

sepals,which will split open to fertilize the female plant with pollen.The

female plant is shorter and has a small pistillate flower, whichreally

doesn’t look like a flower at all but rather a small bunch ofleaves in a

cluster.

If you don’t want any seeds, just good dope, you should pick the

malesbefore they shed their pollen as the female will use some of her

resinto make the seeds.

After another three to five weeks, after the males are gone, the

femaleswill begin to wither and die (from loneliness?), this is the time to

pick.In some nefarious Middle Eastren countries, farmers reportedly put

theirbeehives next to fiels of marijuana. The little devils collect the

grasspollen for their honey, which is supposed to contain a fair dosageof

THC.

The honey is then enjoyed by conventional methods or made into ambrosia.If

you want seeds – let the males shed his pollen then pick him. Letthe female

go another month and pick her.

To cure the plants, they must be dried. On large crops, this isaccomplished

by constructing a drying box or drying room.You must have a heat source

(such as an electric heater) which will makethe box/room each 130 degrees.

The box/room must be ventilatedto carry off the water-vapor-laden air and

replace it with fresh.A good box can be constructed from an orange crate

with fiberglassinsulated walls, vents in the tops, and screen shelves to

hold the leaves.There must be a baffle between the leaves and the heat

source.A quick cure for smaller amounts is to: cut the plant at the soil

leveland wrap it in a cloth so as not to loose any leavs. Take out any

seedsby hand and store. Place all the leaves on a cookie sheet or

aluminumfoil and put them in the middle sheld of the oven, which is set on

“broil.”In a few seconds, the leaves will smoke and curl up, stir them

around andgive another ten seconds before you take them out.

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TO INCREASE THE GOOD STUFF

[Image]Marijuana Herbal Cookbook: Recipes for Recreation & Health

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There are several tricks to increase the number of females, or the

THCcontent of plants:

You can make the plants mature in 36 days if you are in a hurry, by

cuttingback on the light to about 14 hours, but the plants will not be as

big.You should gradually shorten the light cycle until you reach

fourteenhours.

You can stop any watering as the plants begin to bake the resin rise tothe

flowers. This will increse the resin a bit.

You can use a sunlamp on the plants as they begin to develop flower

stalks.You can snip off the flower, right at the spot where it joins the

plant,and a new flower will form in a couple of weeks.

This can be repeated two or three times to get several times more

flowersthan usual.

If the plants are sprayed with Ethrel early in their growing stage,

theywill produce almost all female plants. This usually speeds up the

floweringalso, it may happen in as little as two weeks.

You can employ a growth changer called colchicine. This is a bit hard toget

and expensive. (Should be ordered through a lab of some sort andcosts about

$35 a gram.)

To use the colchicine, you should prepare your presoaking solution

ofdistilled water with about 0.10 per cent colchicine. This will causemany

of the seeds to die and not germinate, but the ones that do comeup will be

polyploid plants. This is the accepted difference betweensuch strains as

“gold” and normal grass, and yours will DEFINITELYbe superweed.

The problem here is that colchicine is a posion in larger quanities andmay

be poisonous in the first generation of plants. Bill Frake, authorof

CONNOISSEUR’S HANDBOOK OF MARIJUANA runs a very complete

colchicinetreatment down and warns against smoking the first generation

plants(all succeeding generations will also be polyploid) bacause of

thispoisonous quality.

However, the Medical Index shows colchicine being given in very

smallquantities to people for treatment if various ailments. Although

thesequantities are small, they would appear to be larger than any you

couldrecive form smoaking a seed-treated plant.

It would be a good idea to buy a copy of CONNOISSEUR’S, if you are

planningto attempt this, and read Mr. Drake’s complete instructions.Another

still-experimental process to increase the resin it to pinch offthe leaf

tips as soon as they appear from the time the plant is in theseedling stage

on through its entire life-span. This produces a distorted,wrecked-looking

plant which would be very difficuly to recognize asmarijuana. Of course,

there is less substance to this plant, but suchwrecked creatures have been

known to produve so much resin that itcrystallizes a strong hash all over

the surface of the plant – mightbe wise to try it on a plant or two and see

what happens.

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PLANT PROBLEM CHART

[Image]Click Here

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Always check the overall enviromental conditions prior to passingjudgment -

soil aroung 7 pH or slightly less – plenty of water, light,fresh air, loose

soil, no water standing in pools.

SYMPTOM PROBABLY PROBLEM/CURE

Larger leaves turning yellow – Nitrogen deficiency – add nitrate of

smaller leaves still green. soda or organic fertilizer.

Older leaves will curl at edges,

turn dark, possibaly with a purple Phosphorsus deficiency – add

cast. commercial phosphate.

Mature leaves develop a yellowish Magnesium deficiency – add commercial

cast to least veinal areas. fertilizer with a magnesium content.

Mature leaves turn yellow become

spotted with edge areas turning Potassium deficiency – add muriate of

dark grey. potash.

Cracked stems, no healthy support Boron deficiency – add any plant food

tissue. containing boron.

Small wrinkled leaves with yelloish Zinc deficiency – add commercial

vein systems. plant food containing zinc.

Young leaves become deformed, Molybendum deficiency – use any plant

possibly yellowing. food with a bit of molybendum in it.

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EXTRA SECTION: BAD WEED/GOOD WEED

[Image]Marijuana Growing Tips

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Can you turn bad weed into good weed? Surprisingly enough, the answerto

this oft-asked inquiry is, yes!

Like most other things in life, the amount of good you are goingto do

relates directly to how much effort you are going to put into it.There are

no instant, supermarket products which you can spray on Kansascatnip and

have wonderweed, but there are a number of simplified,inexpensive processes

(Gee, Mr. Wizard!) thich will enhance mediocregrass somewhat, ant there are

a couple of fairly involved processeswhich will do up even almost-parsley

weed into something worth writinghome about.

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EASES

[Image]Marijuana Growers Handbook: Indoor – Greenhouse Edition

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1. Place the dope in a container which allows air to enter in a

restrictedfashion (such as a can with nail holes punched in its lid)

and add abunch of dry ice, and the place the whole shebang in the

freezer for afew days. This process will add a certain amount of

potency to the product,however, this only works with dry ice, if you

use normal, everydayfreezer ice, you will end up with a soggy mess…

2. Take a quantity of grass and dampen it, place in a baggie or

anothersocially acceptable container, and store it in a dark, dampish

placefor a couple of weeks (burying it also seems to work). The grass

willdevelop a mold which tastes a bit harsh, a and burns a tiny bit

funny,but does increase the potency.

3. Expose the grass to the high intensity light of a sunlamp for a

fullday or so. Personally, I don’t feel that this is worth the effort,

butif you just spent $400 of your friend’s money for this brick

ofsuper-Colombian, right-from-the-President’s-personal-stash,and it

turns out to be Missouri weed, and you’re packing your bags toleave

town before the people arrive for their shares, well, you mightat

least try it. Can’t hurt.

4. Take the undisirable portions of our stash (stems, seeds, weak

weed,worms, etc.) and place them in a covered pot, with enough

rubbingalchol to cover everything.

Now CAREFULLY boil the mixture on an ELECTRIC stove or lab burner. DONOT

USE GAS – the alchol is too flammable. After 45 minutes of heat,remove the

pot and strain the solids out, SAVING THE ALCOHOL.Now, repeat the process

with the same residuals, but fresh alchol.When the second boil is over,

remove the solids again, combine the twoquantities of alcohol and reboil

until you have a syrupy mixture.Now, this syrupy mixture will contain much

of the THC formerly hiddenin the stems and such. One simply takes this

syrup the throughlycombines it with the grass that one wishes to improve

upon.

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