 Welcome to Breeders Syndicate, the only cannabis show breaking down the myths and history in cannabis. I'm Matthew, seed maker for over a decade and a half, and this is my journey into finding my truth in this wild world of cannabis. I invite you to join me and the Canaluminati by strapping into the passenger seat. But be warned, it's not always pretty. With the invasion of corporate culture into cannabis, it's getting even more muddy. Which is why I've made it my mission to have a permanent record before all of the history is lost and buried under a pile of cookies. We're the traditional market. The syndicate is a collection of seed makers that want to push back against all of the smoking mirrors. In doing so, we will continue to ruffle the feathers of those who oppose. And my personal mission has become much bigger than myself. Welcome to the cannabis underground. This is the Revolution. Welcome to Breeders Syndicate. I'm Matthew with my co-host, Thousand Fold. And today we are honored to welcome not just my friend Kush the Giants from the Canaluminati, but the dawn of the Canaluminati, Mr. Denali. And it's probably one of our most requested ever episodes, believe it or not, D. So I'm really stoked to get into this with you guys. And without further ado, Thousand, you want to take it away? Yeah, we get, we even get Denali on the camera. That's amazing. I know, okay. You all have no idea how lucky you are. Yeah, so as Matt mentioned, you know, today we have a little round table on outdoor growing. And we, Matt and also I think typically have not covered growing that much. And so we thought we would ease our way there, talking to a good friend's Denali and Kush the Giants. What was that? What's the Missola? He's it in. It's not the knowledge joke. And yeah, I guess we start at the start. A little bit of an introduction from both of you, perhaps. Where, you know, where have you been growing if you can disclose there or in as much detail as you'd like to disclose? And how long have you been growing outdoors for? Go ahead, Dee. I'll let you take the first one. I figured you might. The first outdoor grow was 1980 in a creek bed, in a little creek bed that I just dug up the soil and removed some big rocks out of the hole. And planted a few seeds, one came up. So, and I used Miracle Grove. I used it back then. I think a lot of people did. Yeah, not a lot of options, right? No, no, not a lot of options. I think it was like 1985 or somewhere right about there that we started adding amendments and things like that to a blood meal, bone meal and stuff like that. But still never got into what they do nowadays. We weren't close to it. You kind of skipped over something. So your first indoor grows or outdoor grows you saw or what year? 1980, oh, that I saw. I didn't move up till up here till 79. And I did put a couple of seeds just like a half an inch in the ground, super hard soil. They didn't grow. Yeah. And at that time, I wasn't connected with anybody. It was it was very low key. Yeah, it would be hard to connect, right? Yeah, it was. It was hard to get we when I first got here. You know, just don't trust you. Fuck yeah. It was it was a bad scene back there getting caught. But how do you get into smoking during your era? I mean, because you're probably I would say two generations of growers aside as away from me. I was back in 1975. I girlfriend broke up with me. And I was bummed. And I can't buddy came by. And I remember Mike, he had a 1969 Camaro when we were going to cruise. And I was sitting in the back seat and Pat. He said, Hey, we're gonna fire up a joint. And I said, I never smoked it before. And he said, Well, you're going to take a hit. And I said, sure, I'll try it. And he said, Well, just go ahead and solo it. So I sat back there and I smoked half that joint. And I never got high. I did not get. But that was the very first time I smoked weed. And the third time I smoked weed that I did get high. And for me, I was I lived a sheltered life. You know, my dad, he wrote his congressman about playboy. They were totally against drugs. Oh yeah. All right. Mom got upset when I named my little hamster Hashimoto. Oh, no. Because it had hash. Whose story. And yeah, but that's how I started. But like the third time I got stoned. Man, I could talk to the girls and stuff like that. That that that was it for me. You know, I started smoking all the time or exactly after that, parties, things like that. That's funny. Never dated in high school or anything like that. You know, yeah. Knowing you, like it's funny because I can, I can probably count the number of times like rather than like, hey, you know, you want to try this and you're like, fuck, yeah, let's do it. Like you're always the first one that's down to just try whatever. I love it. Yeah. So the fact that you ever had a time period where you hadn't smoked weed and we're just like maybe, you know, funny. I was 19. That's so funny. Never in high school. You know, I got a couple of questions here for Denali. So you started growing in 1980. Did you take, have you taken in many breaks between then and now? Oh yeah. Yeah. I would get transferred with the company I was working with. And I wouldn't grow. And we moved to a association, HOA and you couldn't put up fences and things like that. And there was years I didn't grow, you know, I knew people that were growing. So it wasn't hard getting weed. Yeah. You're always kind of stayed in the scene. Yeah. Yeah. I'm that first time getting high. It's been forever. And that's why he's the Don right there. Right. What kind of, when you were first starting growing, what kind of information did you have access to about the plant? Zero. Absolutely. I didn't read any books or anything like that. I didn't talk to anybody. I just did what I saw. Yeah. And so you just figured it out as you went on, I guess. Oh yeah. And I've learned so much more since being in this group than I have in all those years prior. So you felt your way through it like making love to a man like your first time. You just kind of feel your way through it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that's right. Right. Did I miss this Denali? Did you tell us, you know, roughly where you were based? I mean, you don't have to, but yeah, it's no big deal. I think a lot of my ID pictures show where I'm at. I'm in Lake County in North California. North Cal baby. Yeah. Yeah. Since 79. All right. How about you? When did you start at the Giants? When did you start and where are you growing at the moment? So I started in 2008 when I turned 18. But since I was about 14 or 15, I was always in my brother's garden. He's the one who introduced me to the plant. And when he was watering or taking care of his stuff, I was always out there helping them and bullshitting with them. And I'm about 180 miles north of Denali in between Shasta and Lassen County in the Foothills of Lassen. For those of us who are like not super familiar with the geography there, how similar would you say the conditions are between you two growing, living? He's in the valley and he gets a higher heat index than I do. And I live on the side of a mountain. So we share a lot of the same similarities in our heat. But when it comes to things dealing with the cooling off at night, I think my temperatures drop off a lot more than people down in the valley at sea level do. Yeah. Yeah, nice. What elevation are you good? I'm at 3,400. Yeah, I'm like 13. Yeah. Well, Lake County also has an interesting aspect to it with the living next to the water. That's kind of my aspect. Sorry, I have to do it every time someone says that. I was wondering where that came from. I didn't realize. I was like, what the fuck? Caught me off guard for a second. I was like, wait, it's not so listening? He's here. He's under Matt's table. I think living right on the lake edge and growing right on in that area has a huge effect on your plants. I think it's a totally different environment than what I'm dealing with. Yeah, I mean, I guess we should say right off the bat that one obviously one of the biggest differences between growing outdoors and indoors is that you are very much constrained by your immediate environment. And in some ways that's going to be a running theme through this talk. Actually on that note, I did want to ask you to as well as part of this like intro. Have you two grown indoors much? I haven't first indoor grow. I had was 1988. And that was underneath the house. And buddy had a couple of clones that there's a story about and I grew them one year and went to a rehab. So I didn't grow any for another probably two years after that. But I never really got into indoor grown because the climate so good up here in that I could grow outside. Did you want to personally want to dip into that little story that you just mentioned? Well, you know, some people say bullshit, you know, but that's OK. That's the way it is. 1985 I met a guy. We started fishing together and he had a took me over his house and walked me out to a barn and went in the barn and here's all these pot plants growing. Just little bitty top tiny pot plants, maybe a foot tall and had them under lights and he was using CO2. He was taking his own clones. He was the lights. He was using metal halide and high-pressure sodium. So he was advanced for that year like doing CO2, everything. Yeah. High-pressure sodium lights were on a track. Wow. And he had this whole operation going on. And he told me the story of where he got these two cuts. And a friend of his was an electrician. I worked up in the Northwest at a university up there. And when he came back, his buddy started growing. Well, those two were friends because they're two ladies they were with went to high school together and they were best friends in high school. So that's how Tom and I'll call him Carlos met. And Tom turned him on to these cuts that he brought back from the Northwest. And one was green, one was a little bit purple. And he said that that's where they came from in 1985. It was the university up in Northwest. And he was growing in vermiculite and perlite. And I believe it was about his 70, 30, something like that in two gallon pots. And he would veg for 10 days. And he would take them at eight weeks. And just like clockwork. And that shit was so stony. The green one would stick to the bag. And the purple one wasn't as high. Didn't get the same high out of it. But it was still primo weed at the time. So I buddied up with him real quick. And to this day, we're still friends. 1985 with the early Afghanis. That's pretty impressive, you know, like it's an early time. You know, like the fact that you mentioned they stick to the bag stuff like that. That's a common thing that I've heard about how like people are so used to certain types of bud that when they found something that was like physically sticky, it would stick to things that really, really like freaked him out. It was a trip. And if anybody could tell me how he knew the story, about these two, one green, one purple from the university up in the Northwest, how did he know that story in 1985? Yeah. Okay. If somebody can tell me that, then I won't believe what he had was the UW. So what do you think you've had time with the PNW hash plant now? Yeah. Little bit. What did you think compared to comparatively? No. Pucky? I would say more like it. Yeah. It's not full of resin. At least not the way I grow it. But I'm not doing what he did. I've always wanted to take both those cuts and run them just like he did and see what they would do. It sounds like he was using like an early form of the hempy bucket system, which is just, you know, perlite and nutrients just constantly feeding. He used, I remember when I first met him, he was using violet food because it was variegated. Violet plant is variegated like a cannabis plant. Then he switched over to Jack's 2020. Oh, Jack's, yeah. Jack's 2020. And I think it was like 550, 18 or something like that. Jesus. That's funny. Yeah. Jack's makes sense. A lot of people use that too during that time. Yeah. I used it a few years ago. It still works. That's some great insight into the possible YouTube origins. And it's one of the better ones that we've seen where there's pictures and, you know, testimony about it that far back. Well, you know, I just, I know what he told me. Yeah. You know, that's it. That's all I know. And he couldn't have known that story without it happening. Yeah. And this dude's still around. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. He's the most arrogant piece of shit. I would get him on a show, but he would tell you how great he is. He sounds like he's pretty great though. You know, he's the elsewhere as he grows the best way in the world. Does he? Yeah, it's pretty good. I mean, the fact that he's running like light, lights on rails and shit. That's so advanced. That's so advanced. That's really cool. Yeah. He was taking it down to LA, getting rid of it like $4,000 a pound. Yeah. Oh my God. Whoa. He's murdering it. Yeah. I'm just going to butt in and say that even though this is a bit of a tangent, I think we want to get a few stories out of Denali because obviously he's witnessed a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Just a bit. It's been a fun ride. Fun ride. All right. Well, Kush of the Giants, like have you had much experience growing indoors? And why am I asking you both this is just so we can later on kind of, I want to get to teasing out, you know, some of the like differences. Yeah. So I play around a little bit indoors, but it's usually after my outdoor season is done. And in my section of the mountain, pretty much for about four months out of the year, we have a foot of snow on the ground or more. And so when that happens and I'm done with harvest and everything's taken care of, that's when I swap into indoor mode. And my indoor stuff is always playing around, trying new stuff, trying mediums, like trying pure cocoa or trying some DWC buckets. It's always been just, just something new and fresh to just play around and give something new a try. Yeah. So for you, your indoor is your kind of like yearly focus. I mean, sorry, your outdoor is like your main focus and your indoor is a bit of a like play around experiment. Right. Yes. And another reason why that is due to power outages. I live in such a rural area that I'm used to losing like 17, 18 days of power throughout my four month, five month winter. So a lot of my, yeah, dude, I've had a lot of runs where it's like, okay, well, today's day five without any lights. So I'm just runs over. So, you know. Wow. Do you have like generator backups? Yeah, I have generator backups and stuff, but I've never, like I said, the indoor grow is always like secondary. It's not my main focus. So I've never had that specific breaker panel set up on the automatic generator. It's in the garage, not on the main house. So, yeah, I get you. Yeah. Okay. I plan on eventually upgrading to where when we lose power, I can still have the tents running, but it's just not a main major priority for me right now. No, there would be a huge project in and of itself, I imagine. Yeah. I looked at getting the generator, the generators installed for auto swap over. And yeah, it's, it's a little expensive, but definitely worth it for, for the projects that I plan on doing in the future. I get you. Okay. Yeah. Well, thank you both for telling us a bit about, you know, how long you've been growing for, you know, your relative experience. I think one important thing that I've talked to, I think, Kush and maybe Matt as well, you know, in starting to approach growing information, I think we want to be quite careful about how we frame this information. Like we're, we're definitely not trying to tell people that like this is your, you know, quote unquote ultimate guide, you know, insert YouTube clickbait title here to growing or anything like that. I think for me, my idea is that we just try to share and be explicit about the diversity of environments and conditions that people, different people are growing in because different people have just very different growing situations. Okay. Well, we can actually get into a bit more of the core growing issues. And the first thing that stands out when we talk about outdoor growing is obviously going to be climate, I think for a lot of people. You two did touch on climate a little bit, but can you tell us again, you know, how do you describe the climate in your, where you're growing? So yeah, yeah, it's, it's airing hot and airing for like most of all of July, all of August, most of September. And then right around the end of September and the start of October, we get some pretty heavy showers. How, okay, maybe because you start how, how have you had to adapt to that or like how do you see your grow kind of being, I don't know, yeah, having, having evolved to deal with that. So my challenges with the climate have changed as my goals have changed with my garden. For instance, back when I was monocropping a single strain and trying to get as much weight as possible, I worried quite a bit about the climate and making sure that I harvest before a heavy rain comes. You know, I'm more worried about PM and Bud Rot and these things because, because weight is my main goal. But in the last three or four years, those goals have shifted because nobody's buying that weight anymore. And so now I, I don't worry about the climate as much if a plant is expressing some PM or expressing some mold, I'm not going to cut it down right away. I'm trying to see what this plant is natural resistances are. Like I'm going to harvest enough out of it to where I'm not worried about getting every ounce and every gram off of it. So I get to see some more expressions rather than worry about making sure I harvest every plant at its maximum weight potential. Nice. How about you, Denali? I don't remember what the question was. So I guess it was, yeah. First, a little bit about the climate that you're growing in and secondarily, how have you like dealt with that? Well, I've been trying to pick strains that just because someone's picking up a lot of background. Tell her we love her right back. Yeah. Love you, V. Yeah. She wanted to show you what she made. She made replicated the jalapeno poppers. They look exactly the same, too. Bro, I ate so many of those and he know my diet. I wasn't supposed to be eating that shit. That was so good. Bro. Those are coming again. Those are absolutely being made again. Yeah. It's dry and hotter than hell here. And it rained earlier today here. And so that was just a freak thing. But in September, it starts to cool down. We get a little more rain. And if it gets bad enough, you got to worry about the mold and things like that. For me, where I live, it's like every year I get a different kind of critter. It might be one year. It might be thrips one year. It might be white eyes one year. And you have to deal with them. And Do you have any good stories about this? God, I remember plants just covered. Yeah, just covered. Yeah. Not all of them. Some of them. Some are bug resistant. You know, just don't get on them. I've only had bad ones. Russets. I've only had one time. And I just any plant that had them, I cut it down and put them in my green barrel and got rid of them. And just didn't have that much that year. But I think it's damn near the perfect environment here for cannabis. For certain kinds. You know, there's those 19 weekers, Chamba. Yeah. Chamba. There's no way. I mean, on that topic of Pestinale, is there anything you do to try to mitigate against this? I use that three in one stuff. I don't want for anything in flower. But screen one is that and depending on the bug there's white fly stuff. I've used name. I don't like name personally. I can't stand the smell of it anymore. I can't stand the smell. It's so effective. Other than as a leaf shine. It's good for shining your leaves and that's about it. In my opinion. We have a lot of them. Cabbage moss here. And the caterpillar goes in. And caterpillar killer. It works good. It's been a sad. It's pretty much for that. That bug. Are you talking about Spinosad or BT? No, no BT. BT, yeah. Do you have to deal with any mammals? Like gophers. Yeah, I guess. Gophers are a big one. If you plant straight in the ground, that's a real issue. Where I'm living they brought this durian and packed it in here. And I haven't seen it go over here in 40 years. Oh my god. We've been dealing with them all like the last two years at this place. It's been nightmare. Anytime we plant something in the ground, whether it's a fig tree, cannabis, anything, it's just ravaged instantly. I don't know what it is. Raccoons mess with plants. Yeah. They're evil. Do you guys have raccoons in New Zealand? No. What's the closest thing that we've got to that? We've got kind of like stout or weasel type things. Yeah, raccoons are a nightmare. Trash pandas are the worst. They're mean too. They're vicious little shits. They don't fuck around. Yeah, there's a herd of them around here. But no, we don't have any gophers or molds or anything like that. I know guys in the valley they have garden and right in the soil and they have just hundreds of them. Geez. Tush might have ground rolls up there. I don't know if they have that. Yeah, every once in a while. So I've only had it happen once out of all the cultivars that I've grown. I had a train wreck across to a Salma Creek big bug and for some reason the gray squirrels literally ate the nugs off of the plant at about week four or five. And that's the only plant they touched. It was really weird. There was something about the turt profile or that specific plant that they liked enough to just literally gnaw on the tops of the plants like that. It was incredible. What about pests in general for you, Kush? What other things have you encountered? Bugs, other mammals, rodents? So in my area there's tons and tons of mule deer and black tails. And on my IG, on my photos every plant you'll see is an internal cage with about a three foot diameter and that cage not only provides structure for the plant but it protects from deer that want to come and chomp the plant down to the stalk. And if I didn't have those internal cages protecting them then all of those plants would get chomped down by deer. And as far as mammal goes that's the most mammals that I have to deal with. And then with these actual bugs thankfully I've never had to deal with mites and I've never had to deal with caterpillars but I do have to deal with aphids and my first year dealing with aphids was 2019 and I attacked the aphids instead of attacking the ants which the ants are symbiotic they carry the aphids onto the plant aphids drink the sucked life out of the plant they poop out this honeydew it's a whole symbiotic relationship and the second I started attacking the ants the aphids no longer became a problem and the best thing that I've found is food grade diatomaceous earth I sprinkle it in a heavy ring around the base of my pot and it acts as a barrier that they will not cross through. Yes sir. Wood rats up there? Well no, no issues with wood rats. Yeah, because they have them here and what they'll do is they'll just eat outside of your plant away just around in a circle at the base. I hate that when they girdle it. And that it'll kill them what a lot of guys do is they just put out bowls of water for them. Right, right. Yeah that's smart to save them from taking it yet. What do they do with the water? That's why they're at the plants. I always wondered like because I've had rats paratroop and indoor grows in like garages like we're 14 feet up and there's no way for them to get in. I've got chicken wire everywhere I think and they would come in through the tops and every time all they would do was girdle at the bottom base of the plant and nothing else and that was it. It would be done. One bite on that fucker and it would be done. It was so painful. I had no clue. I had no clue. I was tripping on my own glue traps and shit. You got to be kind to your guests. You got to leave them provisions and talk with your shit. Like the Santa Claus. One other thing I'd like to add with pests is there's a really cool insect called a green lace wing. And introducing those to my garden has been one of the coolest symbiotic things I've ever seen in my garden. Their life cycle is to literally kill aphids and reproduce into these really cool flying insects that are really quite beautiful. And for people who don't have ants but have aphids they usually resort to lady bugs and if you're buying lady bugs to protect your plants I highly suggest buying green lace wings as well either in their larva form or in the egg form and then getting them on your plants. That's a great tip. It's really cool to study the life cycle and understand how they work and it's really one of the most brutal aspects of nature I've ever seen because the larva form of this insect it's literally a miniature grub with a giant spike on its head and it rams the aphid holds it above its head and it drinks the fluid as it's draining the blood out of it and it takes a spike on its head and then it throws the corpse on its back and uses it as a disguise so that other aphids don't know that it's a predator. It literally disguises itself. They're called aphid lions when they're in that stage and if you look up some YouTube videos on them it's one of the coolest things in nature one of the most brutal things in nature I've ever seen. Nature is metal. It really is. That's amazing. I'm actually going and buying these right now because I've had problems also because I don't do a lot of outdoor I haven't done like even when I was doing outdoor it was usually greenhouse because something messed up with the greenhouse we ended up on the back of the hill so trying to do outdoors has been really budding my head against a wall when it comes to pests be it aphids do you guys have any tips for thrips? So ever since I've been in the same valley within the same like 3-400 yards in this little valley growing for the past since 2008 and every year on like 1% of my fanleafs I see thrip damage but it's so minuscule that I've never seen it as an issue where I have to tackle it I've never had such a thrip infestation that it becomes a huge problem especially when I'm looking at a very small amount of fanleafs that have the little bit of damage sure yeah it's not as big of a deal at that point right I had thrips one year and in flower late in flower I didn't do a shit thing about them nothing about them all I could spray my buds or anything they've been brutal here I think that's one thing with outdoor growing is you're never going to have a plant that's like at least in my subjective experience I've never had a plant that's like what's the word I'm looking for impervious to pests when you're growing outdoor in that environment your plants are going to have something on them at some point it's been hard trying to explain this to my chick because she's seen my indoor grows and she's used to seeing like no pests and outdoors she's like what is going on why can't it look like that it's trying to explain like how much you have to stay on top of spring how much you have to stay on top of all this just to have those kind of perfect leaves and everything it's just it's hard to stay on top of it's hard what's funny is way back in the 80s I don't remember bugs I do not remember passing bugs wow you know they introduce a lot of bugs in the states like I know here they put spider mites on the edges of freeways like in the garden area there to take care of whatever bugs they have there but of course these all end up in your grows here it's just it's really hard everywhere depending on what your city uses for its own pest management or if like you're in an agricultural valley like us where you have all these big crops of grapes almonds all this other stuff around bringing in all these other types of bugs too it's wild to try to deal with we have wineries here yeah they bring in all kinds of crap one other thing that I'd like to talk about is with pests I've noticed that some cultivars have a natural pest resistance not a complete resistance but where you know I've had plants side by side where one was covered in aphids and one wasn't and they're literally three feet away from each other where you know they should have and a collective like a collective comparison that I've noticed between them is a lot of them have peppery, cushy like carfinaline they have that potent pepper kind of smell to them and those plants like the living dead girl that has the PCK in it it was very peppery and those plants had little to no pest intrusion on them whatsoever interesting do you think that you can only know which plants will do well by actually trying them out in your particular environment I think you can get a good baseline from seeing other peoples outdoor grow but the expressions will vary depending on your specific environment this is I put up a picture of the green lace wing just so people can see and it's a larval form I think it's on rice holes or something what great color just randomly because Matt you asked me about land mammals in New Zealand so just a bit of preview New Zealand historically actually has no native land mammals apart from bats so humans introduced the first land mammals to the country I think maybe 700-800 years ago and those were rats and then later on we got possum weasel stoats I believe you guys got access deer on some sort of goat as well yeah we've got goat in deer now as well but before humans there were only nice birds and bats so yeah it makes sense that rats would have been one of the first because of the ships and the cargo ships and different pests and mammals that got aboard that way yeah unfortunately I cannot speak to growing outdoors here so maybe in the future someone could but that's not me for now I mean we could basically ask an Australian same shit right they have, oh man no their creatures are different I just told you you're an Aussie yeah I know it's easy right we need to get booze on we need to get booze on at some point right right okay is there anything else that you all wanted to say about pests in your outdoor growths what I will say yes not so no there's not much more I mean most of the pests that we encounter outdoors we kind of went over so I got a question in this room real quick if you could pick maybe two things from your toolbox that you think that are just essential for outdoor growing for pests for IPM what are the two things that you would advise people to at least take a look at to cushion the giants first the two things that I mentioned the diatomaceous earth the food grade specifically so you're not causing any issues with your plant consumption and the other one is using natural methods ladybugs green lace wings using nematodes using natural predators because they're essentially going to do more work than you can with your hands and they're better at it so yeah yeah two things I'm not without is avid morbid I know you can't forget eagle 22 that's the third most data BT green one and the gallon pillar that handles most of my problem yeah leaving your pests bowls of water so they're comfortable bowls of water yes bowls of water for the wood rats you know those cabbage loopers too out here are just nightmarish there's no time I can get away with the grow without seeing those they're always the first thing to attack my plants cabbage loopers yeah it gets hot down by you 111 something today alright well I wanted to move on to I don't know just for fun a bit of drama like what about human piss tweakers Denali have you had to deal with many human piss tweakers tweakers do you have any good stories yeah I do I have one for Denali that you can mention there was a tweaker that got him to take well never mind they take care of his veg garden for a while but never mind hey yo he over watered but uh no I was I was ripped off my first year I grew and I think I went maybe 38 39 years never got ripped off and uh somebody came in and ripped my one plan off I remember that P91 yeah it was coming down that night but I believe that was my neighbor across the street is uh normally he'd get something from me at Christmas and that Christmas he didn't oh you bastard yeah so I truly believe it was his kids and he went for the P91 bro yeah oh yeah oh god it was so good that year too I'm very proud of it yeah that's a good one could you look him in the eye after that uh yeah I had no problem he got a little fidgety I bet he probably moved uh three months later yeah yeah yeah nobody knew yeah we'll get to him later Dylan does not allow this the bad thing is is uh the house straight across the street two story it's a rental as far as weekends so they're like everybody knew all the time coming in there yeah but nobody that's what I mean that or not do you I mean despite not having too many experiences in that context do you take any precautions I recommend punchy sticks and claymores yep claymores and then like those things where you you know you dig a hole in the ground you put spikes in and then cover it a pitfall trap yeah those are really really really effective smear poop on the spikes yeah absolutely watch our home alone for more inspiration I was thinking more yellow jackets those little girls got wild with the spikes oh yeah I'll let them grow if they start in a plant I'll let them make their little hive in there and everything else remember not to stick my hand in there I saw that picture yesterday of the yellow jackets up in there yeah okay so Denali's talking about literal yellow jackets yes Matt's talking about a tv show yes little girls but yeah I saw that picture yesterday of wasps in his garden yeah they're not sure if they're yellow jackets or hornets I know I got hit eight times one year oh my god yeah but I remember Indra he told me I needed to hang a fish hook to right at eye level treble hook I like that I like that idea Indra's brutal oh god they would be shout out to Indra we miss it yeah we do we do and definitely miss it how about you Kush human taste so the spot that I'm at it's pretty rural the little valley that it's in so if a person's trespassing they know they're on private property and thankfully I haven't had any issues with people you know randos showing up looking through the garden but I still take precautions I check my camera setup I check the dirt to and from the grow every day for footprints if you know I'm also checking for game sign but you know you're always taking precautions to make sure you're the only one in and out of there and other than that the really the only people that were worried about up here is helicopters looking for your grow something on the mountain that we've kind of noticed is they'll check out everybody's grow and it's not just the bus people who have like a hundred plants or if you have the type of property that looks like they can make some money from the civil forfeiture we've seen the helicopters fly through and then the next day the bus go off and it's generally only the people who have like 300 400 500 plants so and it's weird with our county too they flip flop voting every year one year it's legal to grow outdoors one year it's not legal and everybody on the mountain who's doing like me 10 12 plants we just grow it anyways and you know expect the worst or best to happen I'll use baby monitors and anybody who's used trellis knows how bad that is if you get it in your feet and I'll put a bunch of that out on my back deck with some hands tied to it and yeah you can't walk through that trellis and not get your foot hung in that shit at night dark and you're not going to have no damn flashlight going yeah so yeah there's little things you can do and one thing I know since we're all in California none of us would ever own a weapon to protect ourselves that's for sure nope what is a weapon I've never heard of one nope I thought a paintball gun would be good yeah I bet it would but we would never even own one because it looks too close to what about a super soaker too close to a real one probably gets killed it's just one of those things in California where actually the United States where they make it kind of extra charges if you get caught with any kind of weapon despite the fact that they know that indoor growers are targets for being raw probably needing outdoor indoor doesn't really matter you know and they need to be able to protect themselves probably more than most other home businesses being with their businesses and they actually make it illegal for you to do so at least in California you have to sign paperwork saying that you do not grow yeah when purchasing a firearm I see okay well if you all are happy to move on from this topic I thought another one that's like really fundamental you two take it for granted more or less by now but I do want to ask about like your vaging window your flowering window how you strategize around that Denali do you want to start well I pretty much let the sun do all the work you know and the implants are going to flower when they want to flower and you just run them out till they start but generally that's in August you know you might get a few earning flowers in July but then it depends on the plant you know some you take that 10 weeks and if you get that window of opportunity with the weather some of them you are shorter they get taken in September but I would say the majority in October yeah kind of a general rule of thumb that my brother taught me and pretty much what I noticed a lot of the growers go by is outdoors by Mother's Day get your plants outdoors by Mother's Day if you want to get like a 6 or an 8 foot tall plant and generally August 1st is when we would expect stretch and the initial signs of flower to come and that's kind of for pretty much everybody that I talked to in Northern California that's a pretty baseline statement that I hear from most people I personally don't do Mother's Day anymore on June 1st because I've had days before where snow dropped and I had plants outdoors and I was like well shit you know I don't I got little seedlings getting drowned out by snow and late spring snow storms that hit randomly so now I wait a little bit later and I go outdoors on June 1st and I usually put 12 to 14 inch tall seedlings out expecting something between the 6 and the 8 or 9 foot range which is about the size of plant that I prefer working on I don't like when they get much bigger than that I go in much later than you with tweakers and things like that you can't grow an 8 foot 9 foot plant here you have it below the fence and I've tied them down and I kept them below the fence but I generally don't go in until July just so they don't get so big and I personally think a smaller plant might be better I need to say that but I do than in giant plants right some of my dwarf plants I'm years where I grow and a plant will dwarf out and it will only go for like the Snow S1 from last year one of my smallest plants one of the most potent, hardest hitting longest lasting smokes out of the 13 cultivars that I grew and it was a little dwarf thing that was no different than the other plants that were all 12 to 14 inches when they went outdoors yeah I don't I know there's talk about how smaller plants will produce more resin the energy is all focused on a much smaller structure so it gives it more benefits but I've never done the test personally myself I'd love to take the cutting of the same plant and grow a big one and a small one and side by side and test them that'd be a really fun project yeah cool I mean anything else on like plant size that you guys wanted to throw in there since that's like an interesting little topic um it's uh you know plant size is interesting sometimes like some plants that I think will not have a long stretch phase end up stretching like crazy I know with some of these plants um and something else that I think we kind of touched on earlier is like selecting the specific cultivars for your environment over the years I've unconsciously leaned towards Afghani genetics and I realize that where I'm growing is very similar to high altitude Afghanistan if you look at photos and videos it's high desert pine with red clay soil and that's exactly where I live and I noticed a relationship between the Afghani cultivars that just basically grew themselves in my environment and I kept leaning towards them naturally because they they performed the best in my area yeah so often you know it's about finding good fit right that's like a general principle I imagine of growing outdoors finding the right plants to fit your environment as well right absolutely I think two better plants I ever grew was in 82 and I was living in a fifth wheel in a trailer park and I put up a 8 by 10 little uh you know those sears storage heads you know with the metal doors and uh put up the fiberglass roofing on it and uh Buddy and I started these nine plants in there and uh they grew and it was one that just stayed super short it didn't probably get 3 feet tall but these other ones you know hell they're up against the top of the roof and you can perfectly see a cannabis leaf and uh so that wouldn't work so I went to the uh boarding good store about all these you know one two ounce lead sinkers and uh fish hooks uh snail fish hooks and I put these weights on them and that's how I kept all these plants in that 8 by 10 storage head been over and not touching the top was with weights and sinkers and then after they butted in that God what a mess it was with all that weights and sinkers banging into your opinion and stuff like this two plants that came out of there and one of them is super short didn't grow very big bushy uh but it's now just like 7 up and it tasted just like 7 up and uh then there was this one that grew and it grew really weird it grew like a rose you know with the leaves there wasn't a lot of hairs on it you remember what it was you know you know these are all seeds it would just get out of bags gotcha you know and uh you know but I've seen it grow I've seen that rose petal like what I call it uh one time in spring valley and it was probably five years ago and uh I didn't see it till it was damn near ready to cut and I probably should have took it cutting and just you know uh try uh to uh uh get it to grow when you say rose are you talking about bud formation or leaf formation uh yeah it's leaf it's actually the leaf formation okay the leaf comes around interesting the way absolute I think urkel can do that sometimes poodle nuts has some look like that too yeah it can rose top or flower top almost yeah it was ready of weird very weird but it was strong and it was uh super crystal and sticky nice well this is actually touching on the question I wanted to get to anyway which is about what have some of your favorite plants been to grow outdoors don't know you can you can keep going if you want uh for orange yeah what what what about it what about it do you like uh growing outdoors it's got a a crazy different smell at least the one I have um got a crazy different smell it's um got a great high as far as for me you know and we'd sub you know subjectable I guess it would be you know might not give you as high as it does me but um I don't know man that's the one that like I think everybody like pretty much agrees that it's as strong as Kim D or close to it like no ceiling type high I have to say I like not so deep too I bet you do that's just tasty haha haha right so both of those plants do well outdoors for you Denali yeah they do they do yeah um is there anything about them you think that lends them to that um is it the structure is it you know what is it uh I might get more loving I might have a little bit more that's true oh so it's because you like them more that like you pampered them more of course yeah of course yeah there's always some in the garden that that that way for sure for me I gotta say I gotta thank not so very much for uh uh sharing that with me yeah for slipping you to D yeah yeah you're what one of two people in our group he's ever passed something to you you are the Don Don uh DAWN haha yeah how about you so yeah over the years um it's definitely a personal taste and I think it's from like a nostalgic purpose too because the first weed that I smoked that got me really really really high was my brother's Bubba Cush and from then on out it just set kind of like a precedent and I noticed in my outdoor gardens continually the first bag to go or the first jar to go is something that leans OG like I would grow a plethora of stuff and over the years um just the the white fire OG, Fire OG Tahoe, Skywalker Candy Cush Larry OG, the Orange Cush the Obama Cush the Dosey Dough like all of this stuff for me personally just hits my favorite stuff and a big part of that is um just just nice pain relief um I think there's something in the OG that has great um inflammation um it helps with inflammation I think it has a great amount of anti-inflammatory to it it just it helps me with everything when I smoke an OG so one thing with OG that I've noticed like looking at test results um and it has the same effect for me too even with anti-anxiety I don't normally get anxiety with OGs despite the high potency um is that they're both super high in mercy like really high even though it's totally different smells um and I know there's more components obviously that have been a bit more embarrassing that they both like blueberry and nursing or blueberry and OG tests super high for mercy right now I always thought that was interesting for the for the pain relief and um positive aspect yeah yeah I do a no you go sorry I was I was just gonna say like the pain relief is probably one of my main uh one of my main goals that I'm looking for in some of the cultivars um body. So at the end of the day, I'm looking to smoke something that fuck that takes away all the pain that that I accumulated throughout the day doing shit. I probably shouldn't have. Yeah, for sure. Another growing was a resin's cut. Yeah, the kush. Yeah, I really like growing that one, too. Yeah, that you've that that does really well outdoor with you. Like the Terps everything is just Yeah, the first normally plant I reversed. Wow. Yeah, with your with your spray. That's right. Reversed it got balls and then they were getting real close and I cut the branches down. Yeah, you were just test reversing it right. I just wanted to see if I can do it. I can do it do it right there. You definitely can. Yeah. Um, as I want to ask, so you mentioned that you like those plants for, you know, various reasons, pain relief, one of them. Are there any features of those plants. You think that lend themselves to growing outdoors. Well, Yeah, stocky structure, they hold up their own weight. I don't have to tie up many branches. They don't. They don't have a structure where I'm worried about their weight causing issues with them, which is a lot of the issues in late season with my with my setup and how big my plants are is how I'm going to support weak armed or weak branched plants and with those OGs and those types of plants. They basically grow themselves. I don't have to do a whole lot of external work to them. That's cool. Um, because my segue was actually going to be into plant training and whether either of you have to do much training on your outdoor plants. It's very, very subjective between the cultivars. Some you have to tie up every branch. Some I don't have to tie up a branch at all. Some plants like last year I had the Albert Walker to the bubble gum. She was so heavily weighted down and had such spindly branches that I did a secondary outer cage and tied them to that cage as well. Without that support, every branch would have literally just snapped at the first inch or two of snow. Um, yeah, it's very, very subjective between cultivars. Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah, there's some you don't need to. Some years they get really involved and I'll pound stakes in and I'll run trellis to links, you know. Yeah. The thing to trellis through it and trellis is such a pain in the ass when you go to take it off. One thing you didn't mention was using trellis for caterpillars. Oh, oh, the bird netting. That's what it is. Yeah. Yeah, bird netting. Can you talk about that real quick? Yeah, just one year I happened to have put it over my vegetable garden and I've seen one of them cabbage moss bounce off of it. And I said, well, yeah, I painted the house, but I'll put that bird netting over my plants. And as long as you keep it where there are no holes, you're great. If one gets in there, he can't get out. Yeah. It bounces around, but no, it works. It's flawless. They don't get through. That is amazing. That's such good tech. Yeah, caterpillars. Then you don't have to worry about any spraying or anything else. Yeah. And that was good. That was good then with that trellis. Yeah. I had never seen that before, but that really, really shocked me that the caterpillars actually, or the moths bounce off or whatever's going on. Yeah. Are the holes just too small for them to enter? I think they're like 5-8s. Gotcha. I think they're, yeah, they're pretty small. And, you know, with those wings out, yeah, they're not going to. That's right. But the biggest pieces I'd found, you know, locally was like 28 by 28. So I'd have to put a couple of them together. Yeah. Yeah, it seemed to work well though. Yeah, it does. If you can do that. Yeah. And like you said, it's a pain in the ass to get the trellis out once you're harvesting sometimes, right? Yeah. Yeah, everything going through it. You know, you've generally got a long way to pop everything. Yeah. Nothing on the bottom. Just tops coming up. Yeah. I want to loop back for a sec on to back to your favorite plants for just for a moment, because I remembered one more thing I want to ask, which is, have you two gotten the chance to try the same, you know, clones, cultivars, both the indoor grown versus outdoor grown? Sorry, that was a kind of garbled question. But I think you got a couple of the stuff that I've played around with indoors. We ran outdoors. I did a Cindy 99 cut that leaned pineapple and it performed really great indoors and tasted really amazing. But when we grew it outdoors, she lost a lot of her pineapple terps and she didn't hold up structure very well for a big outdoor plant. Same thing with the ATF, but the Alaskan Thunderfuck performed better outdoors than it did indoors, in my opinion. Yeah, I think it did a lot better outdoors than it did on the indoors. What was your, I always ask people this, and I mentioned Alaskan Thunderfuck or Matt Niske Valley Thunderfuck. In your experience, what did it taste and smell like? A unique blend of anise, like this weird, yeah, it's like anise is a part of it. But the other part of it is almost a chemically something that's hard to, like I don't have the palate or the exact impact smell to describe it perfectly. But it was a... Since memory doesn't exist for it. Right, right. But I would say it's somewhere in between chemical and one of the volatiles. Like a stringent acrid? Oh, acrid. Acrid's perfect. There you go. I would say acrid, yeah. Perfect. Yeah, that's interesting because even with old dudes from Alaska, rarely do I ever see two people describe Alaskan Thunderfuck the same way. So I always ask them to hear it. Yeah, I just got it from a dispensary in like 2012. Yeah. I have no clue about the... I just remember the brightest, orangist hares I've ever seen on a green bud with like perfect triangular buds. Like when you would trim them up, you could just roll the bud in your hand and hold it and just cut with the scissors perfectly. Oh, that's nice. This is perfect triangular bud formation. I love that. It makes it easy. Especially when it's uniform from the top to the bottom. Yeah. I love those kush genetics where it's like golf ball nugs from the top to the bottom. Yeah. Yeah. That's my favorite structure. I think that's one of the only things I like about cookies is how easy it is to trim. Yeah. I said you're thinking about the question of my favorite plants and I just start thinking of one after another after another. But as far as... Lay them out. Right? Yeah, let's hear them. Yeah. God, it was the chamba back in 80. I remember just, you know, a bunch of ungrown plants, you know, tie stick. That was... If I could go back and have one thing, it would be one of them killer's tie sticks. Mm-hmm. Like that. Yeah. It was actually... We used a one-hit bowl. That was it. Wow. And that's all you did. Just a little snapper and it would be enough, huh? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we may as well... You may as well tell us about the chamba since we're here. That was... I got transferred and I happened to be in Bakersfield. We're in Bakersfield substation right next to the old ice plant. Yeah. The ice house. Yeah, the ice house. And that was 1980. Was this before Matt was born? I believe so. What year was it? 1980. Yeah, I wouldn't have been born yet. Yeah, I was 81. But the guy lived in the place where we worked. Everybody was being transferred from different places. Sure. And there was a few guys that lived over Santa Cruz area. And he brought this stuff over before Christmas. And that's why he called it chamba. And man, it was just beautiful, but $55.00 and eight. And back then it was like screaming. You know, robbing. Yeah. But, oh yeah. Was that like $150.00 today? Something like that? An eight? Oh God, for an eight? Yeah. Is that what you were getting? An eight for 55? An eight for 55 bucks. Yeah. That would be about, I think, 130, 155 today. Yeah. But it would just kill her butt and it was a triangular. It looked like Christmas tree. It's exactly what it looked like. It was about that green color. And they weren't stiff and hard buds, but they were just nice, compact buds. Yeah. And that's it. You don't remember anything about this? I know it's so long to ask about smell or any of that stuff. Any of that stick? It had a sweet smell. Okay. It wasn't, you know, a hard smell at all. I remember that. But yeah, just take a small hit and it would span. Blow your lungs up. Yeah. Yeah. My older brother, that was the last time he ever smoked weed is when he smoked Chamba. Oh yeah? The older brother got some? Yeah. I went down for Christmas and smoked with some friends and my brother happened to be there. He wasn't a big smoker. Yeah. But he got this super panic attack. Thought he was going to die and everything. And he scared himself so bad he hadn't smoked since. That happens a lot with people. One negative experience, if it's bad enough, like a serious panic attack can really turn people off from weed for good. Right. Good weed can do that. But plants that I really like that I grew indoors and outdoors was, and they happen to both be mad, my clockwork orange, I found that indoor run and riot berry hash plant. I found an indoor run. That's right. That's right. It's a big panic attack too. And blueberry never does that. But it was riot berry Bubba G13 hash plant. That's the whole thing was. Yeah. You know, while I have you here, do you want to tell the story or do you want me to tell the story about how we met and you bought those fucking clockwork seeds? Oh, no. I'll be glad to tell it. Yeah, please do. Okay. Well, it was at the Sonoma County Cannabis Cup. Emerald Cup. Emerald Cup. And I knew you were going to be there. We had talked over the, you know, because you would started doing your podcast or, you know. Yeah, likely. Yeah. And so I knew you were going to be there. And I was really excited to meet you and I wanted to meet you. What a bummer, huh? Yeah. I've seen you sitting there. And so I got a line. There was a big line waiting to see you in that review. And I think they were getting clones there also. Yeah. But so I got in line and I came with a buddy. We'll just call him the butcher. And I was standing in line. I got this great idea of what I wanted to do. And I told my buddy what I'm going to do. And he said, I'm out of here. I'm not going to be around if you're going to do that. So I'm going to do it. I waited in line. I got up there and I, you know, probably wrong, but I acted like a deaf mute. And I had a pad of paper with me. I had in my little pad. There's no way. I had a paper out and I didn't have a pen. So I went and pretended like riding on this, you know, and that guy didn't hand me a pen. And I wrote there. I was interested in, what were they? Maybe a banana riot buried crops. Maybe. Yeah. I don't know what it would have been that time. And so, you know, wrote out, you know, I was interested in that. And he, he said, you know, held up five fingers. And I, oh, no, I gave him a week. No. And I went full 50. And now I said it again. And he said, okay, 450. So I gave him the 450. He gave me the chain. I stuck my hand out. I said, please make you miss riding my name. And then he walked off and then he walked off. And just like, I'm like, Eddie. Eddie. Eddie. Yeah, that's how we met. That's an amazing story. The last part was that he came up to me and was like, okay, so the extra 50 bucks you want me to put it in the fire fund or do you want it in the fire fund? He was going to pay it. And I was like, okay. I was like, okay. I was like, okay. I got an option to take it back or put it in the fire fund. I could never forget that, dude. Like, this dude, I mean, I was sold on it that he was this deaf mute. And I was like, oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. You know, just, okay. Nice to meet you. I'm Denali. Talk about a first impression. Yeah. And ended up best friends after that as well. Yeah. That's a beautiful story. And who'd have known that he was the one that impregnated my mom. It's so weird. Yeah. Yeah. Small company. Yep. Small company. It was, it was indeed. You know, in thinking about these plants that you grew both indoor and outdoor, what were some of the main differences that you saw in the indoor expressions versus the outdoor ones? Clockwork. I don't get as much a resident in that as I did indoors. Right. Barry. I lost. So that's not around. But both of them were, they grew different. They looked different than the ones that I had indoors. I've grown one of the, one of the guys plants. It was a two 36. Yeah. And I grew, you know, put it outside. And when I sent him a picture, he said, what's that? And I said, that's your two 36. He said, you're kidding. It doesn't look anything like it. And it just didn't. How did it do outdoor? What's that? How did you 36 fair outdoor? It was good. It was red. It was, it was, I thought it was fruity myself or tropical. Did it mold a lot? No, it did not. Wow. That is a dense plant. I have a picture with the two 36 and the D. And it beautiful picture. They both look great. But. You've done indoor and out. Yeah. My now. No. No. You haven't done D in North. No. I, I, you know, since. Our friend was around and as he parted. That's right. I just been. Really flowering anything. I tried to do. I ever get some, some. Local. Some local would grow. What is that? Or something like that. Daza. Daza. Yeah. Like Apple forever or something like that. Apple shitter. Yeah. Yeah. I, I did it in indoors in a 10 and air conditioning went out in the house and it just cooked it. Yeah, I bet. It really cooked it. Yeah. That plant does not have a lot of resistance. We're learning a lot about it. I haven't flowered anything. I plan on it. Coming up. You're going to have to do Chamba indoor. Yeah. I'm going to have to bring Chamba indoors. Yeah. Is probably what I'm going to have to do. Yeah. Long flower. Is it the one from Pac? Yeah. Yeah. That's a long flowering bitch. Yeah. 19 weeks. I know. I'm going to try to reverse it. You're wild. Yeah. Yeah. It probably will. It probably will reverse. See if I just get some male pollen and maybe hit it with something a little shorter. That's smart. Hit, hit some of those Afghanis. Yeah. Indie stuff like that. Short squash. Yeah. Very cool. But no, I want to run indoors. Although I suck running indoors. I'd much rather run outdoors myself. It's pretty cool to be able to walk in and have that, you know, when they're flowering and the smell in there and that. Yeah. It is a beautiful smell. Yeah. Well, I got a couple more practical questions for you two. One, I actually got to talk to Kush of the Giants a little bit about beforehand, but I wanted to hear again the story. So what are your considerations? Well, okay. Sorry. First of all, do you all grow in containers or like bags? Or are you growing in the ground? And what are your considerations slash experiences around, you know, growing in the ground versus growing in containers or bags outdoors? Kush, do you want to start first? Yeah. So I currently grow mostly in 65 gallon fabric pots, and it's generally for ease of access. If I had my preference, they would all be in the ground. But the property is continually being worked on, cleared for fire danger. And I've had to move my little manzanita patch three times now. So, yeah, it's, what was the question again? Containers versus being in the ground. Right. Why are your considerations? Yeah. So, and in previous years, I would take the containers and bring them all up to the top of the plot and mix my soil up there. And so it was easier to keep things contained in the soil in these fabric pots. This year, I experimented and dug a hole in the ground where I found an old petrified stump. And the new spot that I cut out of the patch this year, I'm feeling is more permanent. And I'm probably going to be doing a lot more holes in the ground rather than the 65 gallon fabric pots. The 65 gallons are kind of restraining and constricting some of the plants natural want to grow a bigger root system. So I do like the pots for their accessibility. Being able to move them is really nice, especially when you're not in growing in the same exact area every year. But I would much rather prefer the ground. Fascinating. Thank you. How about you, Denali? I used to grow in a hundred gallon pot. Then I personally thought that wasn't, I didn't need to use that much. Soil and all that other stuff that I can still grow plenty big enough plant. And then I dropped to 65s. And right now I'm at 30s. And with me planting late, like I said, my plants just don't get that big. But I've always used fabric pots at least now in the last eight, 10 years. And I find them, I don't know, I find them better, much better than plastic. Plastic, you get it, the sun hits it, and just it cooks outside of it. I leave my train of thought. You all do that. On one of these days, you guys all do this. Dude, it just happened to me five minutes ago. I think I'm the youngest person here. No, it happens to everyone. It's normal. Denon, what about growing in the grounds? I would much rather grow in the ground. Absolutely. Yeah, some of the best plants I grew were my uncles in early 2000. And we had dug right in the ground where his dad had his own worm beds and out on Acre land. And that was just prime soil and they grew so nice. I bet. You know, there's one thing that I do know, the only thing I know about outdoor that I've learned from other people that I didn't know because growing indoor in plots, you don't really learn this, is that cannabis plants like to grow about what, a foot and a half, two feet deep, and then go outwards. Yeah. Is that correct? Yeah, they prefer the horizontal growth. Yeah, that's interesting. And their roots like to get as wide as they are going to be as bush-wise. Is that correct, too? Absolutely. It changes for some. Like last year, that pure OG Kush, Kim Dog, Irene hybrid was like 400%, 500% wider than the 65-gallon pot. Holy ass. Yeah, the logistics behind it, when I look at the photo, I don't understand how that big of a plant came out of a 65-gallon pot. But in general, most plants like to stay within the curbed area that their roots, unless you train them or purposely pull them out. But a general rule of thumb is, yeah, they like to stay around the diameter of the pot. Yeah, because I was wondering, like, you dig deeper? What if you dug six feet deep, and I think the CSI was telling me, no, it's kind of pointless at that point because they like to spread outward. So going super deep doesn't do as much. Yeah, there's some dudes like Nuggy Nick and there's a couple other IG cats. They have just two-by-fours. It's not even two feet tall, and it's like a 10-by-10 box with less than a foot and a half of soil. And they're growing 20-foot tall plants. Jesus. Yeah, the plants are super healthy, super happy. Yeah. I just wanted to ask Denali because he mentioned that he would prefer to grow in the ground. So are your considerations growing in pots the same as Cush of the Giants? More convenient, more accessible, security reasons? Yeah. You know, this ground is awful damn hard. Yeah. And all that. In fact, I actually thought about having somebody come in and trench it. You know, just long strips. Yeah. But it's just so easy with those fabric pots, you know, and if you need to, you know, that's a consideration. You know, because we get red flagged here, you know, you got five days to get your shit out. Yeah. You're in the ground and you just might as well cut them. Yeah. At least in pots, you might have a chance. Yeah. Yeah, that's another big consideration why I'm not in the ground completely. My substrate is lithified clay and volcanic rock. It takes me an hour or two to get an inch down. Like, and it's not shoveling. It's pickaxe work. I have to pickaxe it apart and then shovel out the rubble. So you live in concrete. Basically, yeah. This is why you didn't want to play Minecraft for this. Right? Yeah. Play Minecraft in real life, play Minecraft at home. You'd rather play the quarry anyways. Super meta. That's really cool. Okay. That was a good insight, both of you. Thank you. This is kind of like the last like quite practical question that I've got before it opens up a bit. So how do you all feed slash amend? Denial, do you want to go first? Sure. I have a big little barrel. I'll fill up and depending on what I'm using, you know, some years I've gone into gun bottles and liquid formula and pH and all that other stuff. And I have to be able to pick a barrel I use and put a pump down in and I'll pump water out to the plants with a garden hose. They haven't just used it to try amendment and nature's tried and they have a grow and they have a bloom and it's really easy and it doesn't clump up and stuff. As far as as far as amendments, I've used happy frog and save green, I believe it is and mix them too and then I'll add other stuff to it, BU blends and just other nutrients, a bunch of stuff insect grass and all that kind of stuff. I've watched Caleb enough and seen he'll put out what he puts in his stuff. You just have to catch the post. Matt, you're muted. I have two different mute buttons so I have to check. He's very transparent about that. It's very nice. It's helped me a lot when I'm learning about organic growing. I've never grown that way in my life. I've always been a bottle person and it's nice to be able to brush up on that stuff when someone actually knows it real well. He's honest. He's just being real honest, and he's a good dude. He's like you, Matt. He's just a good dude. A lot of people don't know you're one of the reasons me and Caleb even became friends. Denali was the link between that him and Resemlong both kind of pushed us together to be more collaborative. I appreciate that. I don't take no credit for nothing. I don't take no credit for nothing. I don't take no credit for nothing. I don't take no credit for nothing. How about you, Cush of the Giants? Feeding amendments? Yeah, so for me personally what works really well for me when I pile all my soil up together it's around 650 or 700 gallons of soil and every three or four years I refresh it with slow breakdown amendments. I do a 50 pound bag of blood meal, bone meal, kelp meal, alfalfa meal, crab meal and a 30 pound bag of humic acid. And then all through veg I'm essentially just adding water and if the plants are showing that they want more nitrogen or if there's not enough readily available nutrients then I will brew some activated compost teas to spike some nitrogen and get things heated back up in the soil. And with the size of plants that I grow I notice that about every two or three years they suck those pots dry and deplete pretty much everything out of them. The ladies fade pretty hard in a lot of my photos. And if I need more than that if I need more than the activated aerated compost teas on top of the pre amendments in the soil sometimes I will top dress with a pellet a chicken shit pellet. I use only one type that's from Nutra Rich. It's like a 4-2-2 chicken pellet, it's a really hard pellet and when you scatter it across the top of your soil and water it down it breaks down and tight of a muddy slur and beyond that in flower if I notice some liming up a little bit or asking for some more nutrients I'll go to something like the Gaia Green Earth the flowering stuff some Maxi or some earth juice and I'll do very little amounts of that if the plants are asking for it but generally mostly just having the soil pre amended and doing the activated compost teas does plenty of work on these plants. Nice. Anything anyone else wanted to say about feeding, amending folias anyone? I'd like to know from the Cush how often do you look down on the tops of your plants? Well right around August I stopped being able to look over them they're the ones looking over me right now especially Matt's blue resin Cush oh my god man. I want to say 10 but I could be wrong maybe the top top spear is 10 I'm going to have to get on a ladder I'm going to have to get on a ladder Do they make ladders bigger than you? Yeah got some contractor ladders that I'll have to bring down there that lady that she's she's just doing all sorts of things that I like and I did not expect her to express in the way that she did that's awesome but I'm happy that she's going for the sky right now I think she's the tallest out of everybody right now that's so wild. Afghani blueberry with the fan leaves I think you saw the post I did just the other day those two fan leaves those things the legacy fan leaves on the second and third node insane how big those are yeah that's wild it reminds me of the below cheese or whatever it was I had the big fucking Jurassic fern style stuff the kush used in that was the one that Denali was referring to earlier it came from our buddy resin lung and it was the one that his crew had held since they were running the old mansions back in the day in LA pushing noji kush out of the mansions that's where that cut came from everything in that blue resin kush is testing super high like 3% plus in turps but up to like 7 crazy numbers so I'm really really interested to see what she does outdoor yeah she smells wonderful right now just like sweet sweet citrus blueberry oh that's nice yeah so if nothing else I have a couple of like more open-ended questions to round out our conversation today Matt also wants to leave a bit of time for a little review at the end that you two can join us witnessing so okay the first open question is I wanted to hear about your kind of worst experiences outdoors partly because it's entertaining partly because it's also informative for other people Denali do you I mean we mentioned Pess earlier and some stories around that do you have anything comes to mind when I say worst experiences outdoors I guess when I found out a neighbor across the street her son was a sheriff and this is a no-gro zone and so yeah though he's a sheriff here in the county and I met him and I was really worried he was going to tell me you know I can't do this every year I was worried about he was going to change he kept going up in the ranks he never bothered me but I worried about that worried about that a lot I bet yeah yeah that sucks yeah you never know like which way cops are going to go especially their neighbors you just don't know some of them will be growing right next to you and you know arresting people during their day job it's wild up there yeah there was a guy that had one of these dispensaries that they deliver in that and he was the ex head mucky muck of the department of fishing game for Cal. Jesus busting busting outdoor illegal grows and shit yeah his guys he go out and you know cut down plants and things like that but you know he's funding it and he did it for one of the senators or something that had the money but of course he could why fucking hate politicians that's disgusting yeah it's super disgusting it's abundant okay how about you kush worst experiences fail stories worst experiences man honestly the the real big one comes to mind is topping some cultivars that should not have been topped and what it does to them I had it happen twice twice and it happened with the deep chunk yeah yeah I topped it outdoors and then I also did it with the salma creek big bud and it it created such a short stocky jungly bushy plant that it became a chore to every day go in and clean out the inner growth make sure she could breathe make sure she's literally not choking herself out because she's like intertwined in the cage and intertwined in herself yeah like some of my biggest fail stories would be like just you know treating a plant not letting it naturally grow and learning which cultivars will do that and looking for the telltale signs good example of that was this year I popped some cream bag seed from my old super cropping it's a black cherry soda hybrid that I'm very very ensconced with and as it's growing and as it's as its stock is shooting up and I'm looking at this thing that's like four inches in diameter I'm like I can't top this if I top this the same exact thing is going to happen that happened to the deep chunk and so I just let it naturally Christmas tree profile out and it's performing much better than if I had topped it so it was a fail but it was a lesson that later taught me to pay attention to these things for these outdoor plants that hey man don't top that that's going to be a problem yeah that's a good point it does release certain hormones into the plant when you top that you know some plants will react well to you some won't you know and you just never know till you do it but yeah one of the key things like if you know like indoor if you want to know if a plant out gore will react bad if you top it and it goes straight up with two poles like straight up next to each other it's going to be one of the ones that probably does not do well outdoors probably yep I had the what is that big sir holy weed triangle Kush last year yeah I topped it and it bifurcated the stock and straight up in the air I called it twin towers it literally was funny just identical branches all the way up yep exactly yeah another fail was like one year I think it was 2018 when I was growing some lemon party or maybe in 2019 I was growing lemon party s ones and it was like week two of flower week three of flower and I was like man I want to hit these with some kelp I just thought that they could use the the the boost and I hit them with too much kelp and they got burnt and they never really recovered from that so that's that's another thing that I've learned is like if they're happy and they look okay you don't have to you don't have to force feed them you know sometimes sometimes with the outdoor grow just letting the plants be helps in a lot of situations rather than trying to over particularly worry about every little thing with them I mean that's kind of a perfect segue because the next question was going to be about how have you both like observed your approach to have changed over the years and obviously in talking about fails and all that sometimes these are going to be the turning points or the major learning points that allow you to progress Denali you know you've been going what like that's like for you know 40 years or so like how do you see your progress or journey as a grower and how is your approach changed over the years I still don't think I grow very good weed now I don't think I get like 75% I think it's always got something more to give that plant I don't know that I've ever seen a perfect grow and I don't know where I'm going with this like like how how does your journey changed I mean like in the past even five years it was well got well it changed immensely computer yeah okay you know there wasn't information back then it was a few books in that but yeah it wasn't readily talked about there was nothing like this you know I didn't even when the forums came out I didn't get involved with them because I just thought these guys are crazy for talking about this stuff over this thing that somebody has to be listening or being able to you know what's going where and who's done and I just stayed away from a couple times I logged on to them and I just was like nah no way but um so much has changed in all the same years you know from Miracle Grow to all this stuff they have nowadays in that you know you go into one of them nurseries and you better be smart you better know what you want because you use cars you use shoe store yeah there's some for everything and multiple of it yeah no I still think you can grow good weed just with basic amendments I really do yeah I think a lot of people over thinking you know and uh they're looking for that uh perfect and uh I don't know if it's attainable I think this plant always has something more to give always a curve ball yeah I mean there's something pretty damn good now yeah you know but uh I don't know I just uh yeah Denali's staying humble you know after 40 years he's still learning yeah oh that's a lesson in of itself yeah I uh I forgot a lot of stuff you know but I have this place here to come to and questions and I still ask some basic questions yeah because these guys know these guys are good growers they really are and uh anybody can't learn from them well you know I don't know I learn every Jake from and I really I really you know thank Matt for starting this and getting this going and introducing me to these guys um yeah love you it's a big change big change all right very nice how about you kush um just essentially a whole hearted agreement um just like stay humble and like over the years I've I've always said that like cannabis next to bass fishing and deer hunting are three of the most subjective topics that I've ever encountered and everybody thinks that their way is the right way to do it and that's an empirical fact and I've found my success by taking the subjectivity out of it and and looking at people who are successful seeing that they're doing something different than me trying that method and if it works for my garden then I continue to apply it if it doesn't then I don't apply it to my garden and I've been doing that since day one with an open mind and I feel like that's probably the best way to tackle it is just always always think that you know you're probably there's something more that you could be doing because it is so in depth and it is so subjective I feel personally I could spend lifetimes and learning about this plant and still come up short in considering myself an expert and I think as long as we keep that attitude like and keep our minds open to the possibilities it's the best position that you could be especially for an outdoor grower with the X factor of your environment or the multiple X factors of your environment yeah yeah and that you know it's back to my earlier disclaimer about grow information and how it's often framed on the internet people like to pretend that they have the authoritative or you know ultimate guide to whatever and that's often these videos on youtube I'm not an expert I am not a fucking expert I'm a noob at this dude I've been growing since 2008 like I don't know shit compared to a lot there's a lot of people who could be sitting here instead of me well I think what's important you know and what we covered today is again just exposing how diverse the approaches can be how diverse the environments can be and the challenges that come with them and there's never going to be you know like Matt and I have been saying even throughout the breeding episodes like there's no silver bullet you just have to like Koshia and Denali have both said essentially try stuff out iterate again and keep iterating like forever because that's just dial it in yeah just every year dial it in it'll get better every year if you pay attention nice yeah well I mean any time you turn out a fish big fella you just get a hold of me alright yeah I'm thinking this fall me and you we gotta do a double date we'll hit your lake and then we'll hit my lake okay and then we can hit the Curl River oh yeah alright yeah that's a bad river it is man people swimming that all the time still despite all the signs everywhere stay the fuck out at the beginning of the Canyon Road there's a sign there with how many deaths there are each year yeah and I remember when I believe it was in the 30s and it's in the 200 and something is now have died in that river yeah we have our scooter rallies out right next to the river at a french campground out there I know where it is yeah and each year we go out there and this year it was the first time we've seen that river above like almost hitting the banks it was it was insane people worried about the dam flooding and stuff so yeah rivers flooded oh yeah that's a bad river yeah nice tangent huh you know one of the things that I really want to talk about before we are done with Cush of the Giants is the cream you mentioned it very briefly this is the breeder syndicate let's just give a brief I'm not even brief let's just talk about your fascination with this strain called black cherry soda and the cream so sometime around 2010 I had a friend from the bay area she was a breeder and she offered me some of her clones to try outdoors and I got to try the black cherry soda and I got to try this hybrid that she just called cream and it was black cherry soda across to triple threat and as far as I can research it's and the cream really just kind of it was one of those things that just fell into your lap and you don't know what you have and how good it is until you lose it it's literally a plant that grew itself it had no external needs it just did its thing in my environment very easily and I would have buyers that would buy every crumb of it flowered out really fast early in flower you'd get this beautiful like vanilla strong vanilla extract smell and then week four or five this citrus orange would come in mandarin orange where you'd get the you know the old 50-50 ice cream bars that's the exact smell you would get out of this whoo yeah just one of my favorite profiles and I think I super cropped that or monocropped that 2010 to about 2019 there was nine years where I grew 14 of those outdoor every year trying to get two pounds off of each plant and the buyer would literally buy every crumb off of it it was yeah and I didn't realize and that's the other thing that's funny too is I smoked mostly cream during that session two not really I try stuff here and there and try a single off shoot plant in the garden but I was mainly smoking that cream just being super complacent not realizing that I had such a a fantastic plant that I could smoke it for so long and not get tired of it yeah and then the second I lost it it became super apparent to me how much how fantastic she was yeah so so in losing her you started your journey trying to recapture that in seed form yeah it got me into literally put my nose right into the reader syndicate episodes about reversal sprays and taking your lines and making the generations last at the time that I had the cream I was very complacent just cloning remothering and just super cropping this plant in the back of my mind I was never thinking about propagating this plant and I didn't think that recloning it and remothering it so much would cause genetic issues later down the line it just wasn't in my mind it wasn't something I was paying attention to and yeah so it got me looking into what I should be doing as far as breeding and in case I run into something like that again in the future and luckily I found some old trim I got some bag seed of the old cream from 2016 and I had a male and a female come up this year I took out the male but took clones of it all the clones are rooted they're waiting I took clones of the female so I got this bag seed representation and yeah she's she's a little chunkier than what I'm used to and that you know she's got a different phenotypical expression a little bit but she has that vanilla we're in week two almost two and a half weeks of flower and that vanilla it's literally emanating vanilla smell so I'm in nostalgia heaven right now with this plant you know two strains that I immediately think of when you talk about it are west coast dog which is popular up in your area very very much like vanilla bean smelling I believe someone renamed it we asked our vanilla bean for a while and Agent Orange a few times I've seen a seed line that produced 50-50 bar turps that's a name I haven't heard in a while yeah yeah PGA Agent Orange people often confuse my clockwork orange with it so people would be like you had the dude who made Agent Orange and I'd have to disappoint and be like no no I made the clockwork orange and they're like oh I don't know what that is fuck that but no it had a beautiful 50-50 bar taste and smell and that's something that's always stood out to me in the world of oranges I'm not a huge fan unless it is that 50-50 bar sweet orange green that's beautiful most of the citrus that I run into it's not my favorite I don't find a lot of pure orange citrus strong as compared to lemon citrus or lime citrus much much different than the orange citrus sure absolutely I like Calli Orange you like the Callio? I like the Callio when I first time I smelled the guy came in and it just reeked and I just thought that was some of the best stuff I have an old pack that I found from Dutch Passion at California Orange you should pop it see if you like them that's old I haven't had that in years and years I think the last orange I had was your orange cookies oh yeah yeah that's right that was mostly cookies dominant that was good though yeah it was good you did good with that one my buddy did the California Gold Rush from Caleb last year the Callio to Trainwreck oh how was that? it was a monster it was an amalgamation of really large buds and just terpenaline and citrus orange it was a heady plant big buds but airy not real dense he made a lemon party Callio to which I was like oh my god that's going to be almost offensively citrus to the point where it might not even be smokable anybody who's after lemon terps go to the lemon party S1s everything that I popped just starburst yellow not bubba head the lemon head candy terps were there and my favorite was one that leaned a little sativa and it was like black tea and lemon it was like a hashy hazy tea black tea mixed in with a lemon I thought like lemon black tea every time I smelled this plant that's beautiful alrighty I mean is that is that us before the review Matt anything else yeah I guess we could do the review since we're talking about lemon right and recently we had a we had a person join our our server briefly very briefly that talked about a cut called lemon cherry gelato and he was talking about how this cut just one cups it's the bomb another gelato so lately I've been on my quest to update my knowledge of current availability of flower strains and flower form in the hype market you know strains that I normally wouldn't pay attention to or smoke I've been trying to force myself into learning about maybe opening my eyes broadening my horizons as it were to see what some of the kids are smoking these days so I decided lemon cherry gelato would be the next choice and I wrote down some notes real quick when I was smoking it on not first the scent the flavor profile the high anything like that when I get a strain called lemon cherry that's going to be the first thing that I'm looking for when I smoke it or even smell the bud right what does it smell like does Mike lemon or cherry does the name infer anything like that smelling it I mean it had a decent scent it wasn't like unscented it was I could tell that had some kind of OG in it but the dominant scent was mostly gelato not really sweet as I first I smoked it with a lighter and I was getting from the flavors earthy chocolate for a second some floor cleaner like OG hopsy not unpleasant interesting for a gelato but it tasted exactly like a well-grown OG which from the smell I knew that would be in there I did not think that would be the dominant flavor when combusted was just like smoking a really good OG kush with that said there was no lemon or cherry of any sort combusting it for me personally in this grow of it obviously depends who grows it how they grow it etc it did have a unique almost woodsy smell with a sweet earthy chocolate almost like Bubba in the background like how Bubba can be kind of a chocolatey but yeah tasted like OG kush all the way and the most important part of it would be the high which lasted a total of 13 minutes it may be the the least I think the high because I could feel I was high at first it was not like it did not hit at all it was not like a blackberry kush it was not existent I counted it I marked it down within 13 minutes it was totally gone and I had to smoke again that is a problem I have been sitting here with the rip vaping this throughout the episode because ripping it gives you a whole different flavor profile all of it you are getting a lot of the volatiles that burn up immediately when you combust that you will never taste you taste them this way what I wrote down the loudest flavor by far is the lemon I tasted no lemon nothing this tasted completely like lemon all up front lemon floor cleaner like OG kush wood lemon the lemon name is accurate per vaping to be honest the high was much brighter, clearer and more energetic I really liked the high from it but it lasted like 10-13 minutes I am just curious at this point with Denali and kush here do you two what are your primary modes of interesting like joints glass as well joints I like water filtered yeah I got a prototype shower head glass piece that I really enjoy I have smoked out a lot of pieces but nothing beats the shower head perk system nice I was just saying I was just going to say that it is interesting what Matt is pointing out vaping can be quite a different experience especially when it comes to the smell and flavor and high high is so different I can't even explain to you how different the high is from using the brick versus combustion some people say that vaping doesn't get them high at all whereas I think it gets me so much more so much more high it's way more complex way more complex of a high like I said it had a decent high but it wasn't anything better than normal gelato vaping was much more energetic it was clear headed but it was obviously there and it was pleasant, kind of giggly it's a totally different experience I highly recommend everybody give both a try yeah fascinating do we have a rating system yet do we want stars do we want buds four or five where are we going guys I need to start a rating system guys help me out five stars five buds five stars we can think of what else it can be I will give this a three out of five because it got me high it was a decent high but it loses two stars for lasting 10 to 15 minutes like I already wanted to have some diamonds or something you know what I mean that's my review on lemon cherry gelato the best strain ever according to the system that's cool I mean thank you both so much for coming on the show it was a really cool conversation and I think we covered a lot of territory shout out to rings poor guy he was meant to join us I think we'll take that L we messed up a bit with the coordination but we hope to have him on again I think it was clear from just talking to you both today that you know there's so much that we could say this may not be the last time we have this conversation so hopefully we can get rings back but otherwise yeah again great to have Denali on finally finally and yeah great to hear from Chris of the Giants as well like fantastic information from both of you do you want to give any shout outs to anyone in the syndicate on the syndicate discord because I know that there are people there who absolutely love you is there anyone you want to shout out our whole crew you know everybody in it and I don't know I kind of got a liking for this Carlos guy Carlos isn't bad he's not a bad guy I like that guy a lot and Indo he's a good dude yeah but they're all good over there man a lot of knowledgeable people over there you know sheets I can't not love the sheets but yeah there's a lot of good people you put together and meeting Cush at the party he's a giant but he's a sweetheart like I'm already short and he really oh yeah and he can alright Chris of the Giants you got anything you want to shout out just a big thank you to everybody in the syndicate and especially to you Matt for bringing me into the fold and you know just treating me like family it's been a huge reminder and I said this before but it's a huge reminder of how important community is I was very complacent in past years and now that I'm brushing shoulders with some of these guys it's like hey you need to step your game up you could be doing better and I like when I get motivated to do more because the people around me are just as excited and endeavored into this thing that we all love it's an iron sharpening iron for me and I love it yeah everybody in that group it would be a better person that's for sure it would be a better human being for everyone around me that's something special absolutely alright with that thank you bastards thank you so much for taking your time and both of you it's been an absolute pleasure and yeah you got anything thousand you want to say no I think I said everything I wanted to say maybe we'll see you two back at some point yeah for sure yeah anytime you need both back in alright save some diamonds for me I stocked up I stocked up so you better get here with that be sure to join our patreon discord go check it out patreon.com what else we have riotseeds.com that we've been talking about this episode and seeds from some of the other kanaluma naughty members we're about to add Ms. Jill's year to the site which I'm sure a lot of people that know me think that is the most ironic weird thing but Ms. Jill and me have been very good friends for many years now and very very privileged and proud to add her to the team and that's it alright next week same shit you want to sit at the table with the syndicate check out our patreon and our link tree or description below our merch site is officially live we have all sorts of shirts hoodies and goodies to sort you out and shipping is super fast and most importantly the quality is top notch I've been saving old designs for years for this purpose so please check it out syndicategear.com we also have an underground syndicate discord where we get together and solve old strain history together daily it's an amazing community of learning away from IG and it's an amazing resource for old catalogs and knowledge we hope you join our union of breeders and growers come check it out