What was it like to grow before the Internet?

[doopie]

As I'm growing for the first time, it's amazing how much information is available on literally any topic and question one could have about growing cannabis.

So, today I wondered what it was like growing before the Internet was around.

Starting with such things as getting seeds. Seedbanks were probably non-existent?

Where would you get your equipment? How did you learn all the things, like veg/flowering time, lights, PH,...?


Are there any veterans around, that can tell us?

 

[yooper rex]

Many tries, with little success. Sometimes it looked the blind leading the blind. Seeds came from your last ounce, be them good, bad or ugly. Most grows were outside then.

Peace & Great Growin`
YR

 

[doopie]

So you were mostly just growing bagseed?

 

[JJ Bones]

Lonely.

 

[yooper rex]

So you were mostly just growing bagseed?

Not mostly, only. Some of the famous old strains were around, but who`s to say what it really is. Always went by whether it kicked my ass or not. A name is just a name.

Peace & Great Growin`
YR

 

[elious]

I'm a third generation grower and my grandfather, uncles, and father have told me all about how shit was back when weed was grass. Like yooper said, it was a lot of plant what you could come up with but my dad and gist brothers had a more established network of growers to rely on for "quality" seeds. But, again, like yooper said, it was just a name and only god knew what the hell it actually was. I do know that my dad and three growers of that time were pioneering cross breeding and strain development. So my dad would score good seeds from other growers that selected the best plants to make these good strains. It wasn't like today though, where there's all these crazy names, ak-47, blue mystic, white widow, etc. They were more like, "this shit will kick your ass!".
My grandfather told me aboutnhow he used to keep a single male, cut the pollen balls from the plant, take them away where he would break them open and apply the pollen to a paint brush. Then he would wait for a calm morning to pollenate small portions of a few of his best plants. I thought that sound really risky but he was telling me that the weed back then was expected to have a seed here and there. I guess they weren't nearly as picky as we are today. That is unless you go to L.A. Holy shit man, they smoke the stems and leaves that have been pressed into what looks like hockey pucks... God awful if you ask me. Here in the emerald triangle, we throw that crop away!
My grandpa used to keep that male in his garden to keep the girls from turning into hermies too. I guess it was more of a problem back then.

 

[doopie]

Thanks for sharing, elious!

I absolutely love stories like these

 

[The General]

In the early 70's I could get 100 seeds out of an ounce of weed. LOL For me it was plant them outside and let them do their thing.

 

[Resin Raver]

Reading cannabis grow books was where I started off before the interweb was born. And also some Jamaican friends grow knowledge helped too. I've only been growing for around 20 years, a lot less than some, and England being so close to Holland getting very good quality seeds wasn't a problem. The best way of learning to grow was just getting stuck in and learning from mistakes though lol. These days you cant even talk to people about growing because the dirty back stabbers will kick your door in and take your crop, well try

RR....

 

[What is sober]

remember life before the internet ?

 

[FrankFoster]

The info that newbies get after 100 hours of research was all int eh books back in the day...
The real advancments is in the indoor scene....

 

[Aelool]

Interesting question worth pondering...

What I see going on in the MM cultivation community is like what went on a century or more ago breeding chickens (and many other breeds of domesticated livestock). Let's take the Rhode Island Red, one of the most popular chicken breeds in the US.

Rhode Island Reds did not exist in nature before the 1930's. RIR's are the product of very careful selection and breeding of specific hens and cocks of very different breeds of chicken. The red color comes from a final cross with a Red Malay cock that is crossed with a hen bred from several different distinct breeds of bird.

The goal was to produce a chicken that would be good for meat and eggs...something that was not common among breeds of chickens known at that time. In those days your hens laid eggs and the birds were all but inedible, or, your meat birds were pretty tasty but they didn't lay eggs worth a darn. Dedicated breeders in New England spent decades making careful written records and sharing breeding stock among themselves in order to produce what was ultimately the Rhode Island Red, a completely new stand-alone species of chicken that was capable of reproducing itself. There are many other examples out there as well...Black Orphingtons, Golden Sex Links, Rhode Island Whites, Black's Jersey Giants....lots of very useful birds created by "amateur" biologists who ended up writing the book(s) on how to do such things.

In biology, creation of a new species is an enormous accomplishment. but that has been done essentially underground since the 1980's in marijuana cultivation and I cannot hazard a guess at how many new stand-alone strains have been created in just a few years. Computers and automated equipment have helped tremendously, and certainly the internet has helped the amateur grower do what was impossible not all that long ago.

Of course, we have all of those college students who graduated from college with a Master's in Botany and Horticulture to thank as well. Their parent's money was not wasted sending them to college after all...

Progress is often difficult to track as it is being made. Very often you have to look back in order to see what has been accomplished.

 

[imominous]

We used real dirt and cow shit. W3rd!

 

[trichomes]

High Times magazine subscription and the "Growers Handbook" by Ed Rosenthal. Buds were just as big w/ internet!

 

[Fish4Fun420]

We used real dirt and cow shit. W3rd!

That's what I'm rocking for my current grow, the same shit I grow my veggies and the rest of my yard. I'd say 9/10 times if you can't get something to grow add some cow manure in it and BAM good to go.

 

[Wacky Kush]

Ask Ed.

High Times magazine subscription and the "Growers Handbook" by Ed Rosenthal. Buds were just as big w/ internet!

 

[doopie]

Okay so the knowledge was around... Still how did you get seeds? (except for those with an Afghanistan connection

 

[The General]

Okay so the knowledge was around... Still how did you get seeds? (except for those with an Afghanistan connection

I got them a couple ways. 1. Bag seed 2. Friends

 

[Wacky Kush]

Sensimilla was elusive at times and very sought after, there were many more seeds way back then. I remember pulling an ounce and a half of seeds and a half z of stems from a Q using my KISS double live platinum LP cover. wow , vinyl.... I can still smell the seeds burning listing to live at Budokan.

Mother told me, yes, she told me I'd meet girls like you.
She also told me, "Stay away, you'll never know what you'll catch."
Well just the other day I heard of a soldier's falling off
Some Indonesian junk that's going round.

Mommy's alright, Daddy's alright, they just seem a little weird.
Surrender, surrender, but don't give yourself away, ay, aaaaaaaay.

Father says, "Your mother's right, she's really up on things."
"Before we married, Mommy served in the WACS in the Philippines."
Now, I had heard the WACS recruited old maids for the war.
But mommy isn't one of those, I've known her all these years.

Mommy's alright, Daddy's alright, they just seem a little weird.
Surrender, surrender, but don't give yourself away, ay, aaaaaaaay.

Whatever happened to all this season's losers of the year?
Every time I got to thinking, where'd they disappear?
When I woke up, Mom and Dad are rolling on the couch.
Rolling numbers, rock and rollin, got my Kiss records out.

Mommy's alright, Daddy's alright, they just seem a little weird.
Surrender, surrender, but don't give yourself away, ay, aaaaaaaay.

Don't get me wrong , good budz , but the quality control just isn't what it is today.

Okay so the knowledge was around... Still how did you get seeds? (except for those with an Afghanistan connection

 

[bozzo420]

Had a friend that sold pot. Sitting at his house one day. A guy comes in and asked what he had. He said some columbian. The guy bought a bag. The next guy comes in and said he had heard that some good jamacian was in town........yep ,my friend said "i have some of that.......lol same shit.......what ever you wanted to call it...the good old days.