California Greening

By Grammy Green

I grew my first cannabis way back in 1970 in upstate New York.  The only pot we could get then was old moldy Mexican Green and Colombian Red.  Every baggy contained leaves, seeds, stems and dirt.  Rarely was there a bud.  We heard about Thai Sticks and Sensimilla,  but I never encountered those goodies until I arrived in California in 1976.  

My first grow started by collecting seeds from the baggy, sprouting them on a wet paper towel, and planting the sprouts directly in the soil of our backyard.  This was probably in early June. When mom asked what I was growing, I told her marigolds, because that's what the seedlings resembled to me.  She bought it.

When the seedlings got to about 5 - 6 inches in height, I dug them up, put them in a box, and my sister and I rode out in the local fields on her horse.  We found a nice spot by the side of a stream, planted the seedlings there and rode off.   We returned on horseback at the end of the summer, probably late August.  The plants were only a couple of feet high and had no buds, but since we had never seen buds, that didn't stop us.  Cold weather and short days come on fast in the Finger Lakes, so we pulled up the plants and rode back to the barn.

Drying and curing under the watchful eyes of mom was out of the question, plus, what did we know about it?  So we just popped the plants onto a cookie tray in the oven, guessed at a temperature, and toasted them until dry.  There wasn't much to show for the effort, but, golly gee, what a buzz!  Hard to believe it was the same old stuff.  That experience taught me a lesson that I have kept with me for the past 50 years.  There's nothing like fresh organic weed!