Hello Friends

Smoke3js

New Member
Greetings and Salutations fellow cannabis enthusiasts! :)

I'm new to posting here, but I've been lurking/reading this forum ever since I was diagnosed with Hepatitis C a few years back and discovered that cannabis helps knock back the nausea I suffer on a daily basis. Cannabis has cut the number of episodes per day in half, so clearly, I'm a lifer with this cultivation thing. So, who am I?

I'm a 51 year old Corporate I.T. Department Manager and a former I.V. drug addict - I've not touched a narcotic drug in well over 20 years. But it's definitely what led to my disease. It's progressed to the point that I am about to undergo a form of chemo-therapy using a drug called peginterferon alfa-2b (marketed as "PegIntron" or "Pegasys").

I'm not trolling for sympathy here, just giving you some context. The truth is, I've been smoking cannabis since I was about 14 years old. I love marijuana. And I use it for recreational purposes, much the same way a person who comes home from a long day at work will pour themselves a glass of their favorite adult beverage. So, up until recently, when marijuana was legalized for medical use, I had been purchasing it (illegally) for many, many years, a quarter of of a pound (4 ounces) at a time. Mostly mid-grade commercial weed, grown guerrilla-style in Mexico or in the thick forests of the northwest US (Oregon, Washington, northern California). The quality of this stuff is pretty "meh." It works as expected, but tastes like you're smoking dirt, smells like dirt and is typically delivered in one small extremely compressed block. That's what's generally available in the underground markets, unless you want to pay top dollar for what is commonly referred to around here as "hydro."

Anyway, when the nausea began escalating about a year ago I asked my doctors for something to help. They prescribed a couple of different drugs that did not help at all. It was around this time that Ron, my brother-in-law (who is also my best friend) started growing his own. This was what planted the seed :icon_cool of the idea in my mind. I had to keep it somewhat stealth-like because my wife and I both have family and friends who have young children (nieces and nephews) coming over to the house and even though we don't really care who knows about our cannabis cultivation and use, we also don't think it would be OK to try explaining it to a 10 year old.

So, last August I bought a grow cabinet. I decided on LED because I believe the future of lighting is going in that direction, but also because of the difference in cost to run it compared to similar cabinets with Metal Halide or HPS. I didn't journal my first or second grows. Both were moderately successful. I grew 16 plants. Two of them did not thrive at all. I'm still not sure why, but the rest of that grow went surprisingly well and in the end I pulled about 10 ounces of quality dried nugs out of it and still had plenty of sugar and popcorn for making hash and/or hash-oil.

The original plan was to try and harvest 3 times each year, but with my insane busy schedule I don't have an awful lot of free time to care for the plants, so I decided to see if there was any truth to the advertised claims made on the Herbie's Head Shop web site about the Heavyweight Fast & Vast strain. I grew 4 of those and ended up killing one of them somehow and another one of the remaining 3 didn't thrive at all, but the other two absolutely exploded with growth -especially in the last 2 weeks- and :yikes: !BAM! :yikes: Just 2 plants netted me almost 4 ounces dry.

So I am now growing 8 of the same strain. I haven't completely made up my mind just yet about whether or not I prefer to grow Auto Flowering plants or photo-period (regular) plants. The quick turnaround with these F&V plants is just incredible. 60 to 65 days and she's finished.

Anyway, that's a bit more than an introduction, but I got on a roll and just went with it.

I am happy to be here with all of you fine folks. I absolutely love the positive vibe emanating from this forum! Big respect to the mods and admins for running such a clean, spam-free, flame-war free forum.

Peace, Love and Respect
Smoke3js
 
:welcome: Smoke3js to the number 1 site on the web for cannabis awareness!
Hope all is well in your world.
If you intend to grow, I recommend starting a grow journal so our most experienced growers can find and assist you! Here are some links that may be of assistance to you:

New Member Start Links
Frequently Asked Questions
How to Grow Marijuana - Everything You Need to Know
How to Resize, Upload, & Post Photos

There are other links below in my signature that you may also find useful.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
We are truly grateful that you have joined us!

Greenest Regards,

:green_heart: :Namaste:
Beateo
 
Welcome my friend. Good luck in your recovery. Seems you've kicked it, don't go back, please. Stick to erb!!

I am curious to see what you do with the fast and vast. I had one of those but I killed it. I had to much going on at the time and made a poor decision to uncover it for the night as a seedling. Next morning it was fried. Oh well. I hear they produce and from the sounds of it, they do.

I too wonder about just doing autos, they are intriguing, especially the size of my operation.

Good luck, happt to hear you are doing better. One day at a time, bro.

Good Luck, I'll be watching
 
Welcome to the site! I see you joined a few months ago, so we are glad to see you stop by and say hello. Cannabis is an amazing medicine and I am glad to hear that it is helping with your nausea. I see you have a journal going, so I'll head over and check it out

:thumb:
 
Welcome man. Like Pete said. Stay to the herb brother. And Dans videos, visual aids, back rubs, picture taking tips and grow tips follow. Check out bateos links as well
 
petergreen said:
Welcome my friend. Good luck in your recovery. Seems you've kicked it, don't go back, please. Stick to erb!!
Thanks, petergreen :) One thing I learned a long time ago, (only speaking for myself here) after a few relapses in my early recovery days is this: We don't beat addiction, there's no cure for it, so my only hope was to hitch my wagon to a 12-step program, which is what I did. And it worked for me for a very long time. And the guiding principles of that program inform my words and deeds today. After about 15 years or so I started drifting away from that crowd. Not because I wanted to go drink and do drugs, it just...happened. Life happened. I lived, I learned, I moved on. Now I know I can't touch anything with the potential for physical addiction, especially opiates and alcohol. Drinking alcohol with HepC is like throwing gasoline on a fire. As you wrote, petergreen, I just stick with the herb and I'm AOK :lot-o-toke:



petergreen said:
I am curious to see what you do with the fast and vast. I had one of those but I killed it. I had to much going on at the time and made a poor decision to uncover it for the night as a seedling. Next morning it was fried. Oh well. I hear they produce and from the sounds of it, they do.
Yes, they DO produce. Big time. I am anticipating a harvest nearing 8 ounces from 8 plants. Keep in mind, now, we're talking about a plant that grows to full maturity in about 65 days from germination.

petergreen said:
I too wonder about just doing autos, they are intriguing, especially the size of my operation.
My operation is quite small as well. I have the 2' x 2' x 5' grow cabinet in my spare bedroom. That's it. It's got two chambers, I use the small upper chamber to germinate and let them establish roots, then I move 'em down into the main chamber until they finish.

petergreen said:
Good luck, happt to hear you are doing better. One day at a time, bro.

Good Luck, I'll be watching
Thank you, kind sir.
 
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