What was it like to grow before the Internet?

[justonetry]

The West Coast has been doing this for many years ,I've been around a long time and marijuana grows a lot like tomatoes

 

[Wacky Kush]

Somewhat similar to today in that we have hundreds of strains available many are very very similar to each other (Northern Lights based) and you could call X-Bud , F-Bud because nobody knows the difference. That's why that when I smoke,I prefer to smoke my own ! And then apply a name to it that I like. say, "ABUCKAQ" LOL...

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.

 

[justkeef]

It was a different time !! Not much interest in growing until soldiers came back from the jungle and headed for the hills. Some were in a fire fight one day an the next day tre back on the block-- we.didn't have P.T.S..S. -- It.was easier to smuggle but when coke hit - the same space could carry much more of value.,so the innocent left. After that we faced the same problems as today. Po-Po and rippers ,critters -- inside we fought the heat from those lights seems like the young would have found another way.

 

[SWvoodoo]

LOL first time I tried post-internet I had one book, the marijuana growers handbook, that just went way over my head at the time and a not so wise mate to guide me. Needless to say it all fell apart and I hadn't given it a go again until now. With all this guidance and technology its become easy!!!

 

[ZigZag69]

HAHAHA we got seed from the $5.00 bags of pot we could buy. Used what ever dirt happened to be there,add chicken shit for furtilizer,back packed water in. Fought off animals and rippers. God those were the good days.

 

[mk1903a3]

LOL my grandson asked me one day what cartoons i watched on t.v. when i was a boy, i told him we did not have t.v. when i was a boy, later he told his dad that pa was real poor when he was a boy because he did not have a t.v.
mountains of Va we grew any seed we could find and altho everyone grew no one discussed it, patches were way back in the mountains well hidden by a spring or along a creek.

 

[uptheholler]

For me it was alot of trial and error. Of course like most midwestern boys, it was cornfield and fence row grows. Then you would save your seeds from the best stuff that you had that year. As I got into college in Southern Ill we would look for different varieties. I had friends that played at a resort down in Jamaica brought us lambs bread we had never heard of it, I had a buddy that lived in Chi and at the ship yard got us some Thai and finally some Affy's from a guy that was hooking him up with black pickles of hash. Then we began crossing and experimenting. Mainly we tried to get earlier flowering plants that got you high. Everything else was just a bonus. The neatest part for me was being able to do bigger grows with less fear from above. As far as pollinating we would pick out stud plants with characteristics that we liked and transplant them into buckets and just take them out and let them sit with the girls that we wanted crossed. Of course when we learned about Sinsemilla that was the big word in the mid to late 70's and we were fanatical about it. The other big difference was the trim. we basically just cut off the fan leaves and major sections of stem and bagged it up. But of course a gallon baggie held an ounce and it was 100 bucks.

Now about this internet thing ..... Is that still around?

 

[geeman]

Back then, it was outside,now inside. Then, it would look like a Christmas tree farm. We got a little smarter, and tie the plants down.Seeds can from the best smoke . Back then, only grew half the year- not all year.

 

[Governmentchz]

Yep, for me, back in the 70's it was bagseed all the way. I really liked to fish and usually once a month I would bring a small bag of frozen fish guts/heads to my little remote patch of sunlight out in the middle of nowhere. It'd get stuffed into the ground next to the plants. Not much science involved though. It seemed more like black magic...lol. My Mom's Mother Earth News and a few well-worn copies of High Times was all I had. It was all about leaf back then too. We wanted the biggest trees we could get and the biggest fan leaves possible...lmao. All those pictures of female flowers covered in trichomes from Amsterdam was only a pipedream.

 

[TassieDevil]

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

That's an awesome question! For me was just like growing any other plant. Same basic principles. There wasn't any reference books specific to MJ, well there were but no one would be could dead ordering and paying in person at the local book shop for a book who's subject was illegal. So, application of known horticultural practices were the guide, or just plain dumb luck!

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

Bagseed. Always bagseed.

Unless again, somehow a mate of a mate could get a letter sent to an address which couldn't be traced to him in some covert operation. In which case your mate of a mate ordered a cataloge from a certain store in Amsterdam and then later ordered some seed to which now you are hunting the coveted "Dutch Delight", or "skunk" or "Amsterdam Asha" seed or some equally exotic name which you have to have.

Then and only then were you on a winner!!!!

Cloning had only really started being applied to agriculture as far as I remember in the 70's but by the late 70's if you could afford the cloning/rooting compound, a whole new world of possibilities started coming out.

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

As my dad used to say "Suck it and see". Which means give it a go, have a try. We knew for indoor, you needed lots of light. We knew the colour spectrum, it really now I think about it seemed to be common knowledge. Hang on, I just got a sense of the correct answer to your question.


If you grew up in the 60's and 70's say, the culture at least to some degree was more accepting of it's use at the time. I remember being taught things just by the fact I was in contact with people who did it. The application of standard horticultural practice was known, used and expected. But to answer your answer properly I think it is to say knowledge specific to MJ growing was handed down from generation to generation to some degree. I was always being shown stuff by someone older and with more experience.

WOW!!!! that's like way way old school traditional handing down of knowledge!!!
(Just realised this myself!)

 

[Adaptist]

its not to hard to explain some noted names were just names last week was lazy susan didnt sell so well so re name it jumping mary even though it was all the same stuff. truth of the matter was in fact hydro and the term pirate cuttings has been around since my mom was growing but indoor was risky lights were loud and only good way to scrub the air was fuel oil soaked rag in the pipe until voc laws changed how paint fumes were exausted thats when carbon filters really hit the market but alot related to human nature. we are all naturally lazy and to just toss the seeds in the ground and hope for the best nobody really cared to document except a few and good quality was only at best thc of 8 now 16 is low almost everything was mail order or you hid under a farm account to by stuff ect making nutes consisted of hours of labor in like nine steps using stuff that would put lead in your pencil and ec dang that was an ok report card for me but over all all the information was out there if you dared look and be seen showing interest and it was like half written get rich books

 

[oldchuck]

I grew the same bagseed for 20 years or more, generation after generation from the same 1/2 Oz bag. Weed was weed and it just grew. I was totally shocked a very few years ago when I discovered you could buy all different kinds of seeds over the internet and pay with a credit card.

 

[WildRosebud]

Before internet we got our info from Cannabis trading cards and discussions , trial and errors. I had no idea that there were products aimed at cannabis growing till I discover internet. Heck I use to use HID "Yard Lights" for pete sakes lol

 

[TrysHard]

My first experience with good home grown weed was in the late 70's. A friend of mine grew some bag seed in his back yard. He was pretty innovative for a 25 YO rookie as he had gotten some maui wowie and he decided to grow in Lava Pummice based soil and it came out incredible. Later in the early eighties we built a room in the garage and did a DWC hydro bubbler system. It was really crude but it was a commercial system designed to grow veggys. We had a 600W HPS light which at that point I'd only seen them on tennis courts.
We also had fans and CO2. We had saved some seeds that came from some good sens. In those days even the really good bud would occasionally have seeds. Anyway to this day, it was the best weed I ever smoked. It was Orange and had an incredible fruity flavor. Smoked it at the bottom of the Grand Canyon for one of the best days of my life. Oh the memories!

It just goes to show that following the fundamentals and pay attention and you can do well, and it is still true today.

 

[WildRosebud]

I failed to mention the book "Closet Cultivator" by Ed Rosenthal , I had the old paper back version in black and white... You got it all in there too from LST , HST , Stake training , Light setups with old school FL's , grow room diagrams , plant spacing and planning , sea of green and some of the cheezy pics in it remind me totally of Fluxy lady and other flux grows lol Ed Use to be quite the clever fella haha

 

[Nyhm Reaper]

Growing up in North MS in the late 70's / Early 80's you can imagine I was exposed to a lot of the herb and drug culture. My Pops and Uncles always had plants going here and there, nothing big or fancy. Usually just a couple plants in an open grove in the woods or a single plant in a 5 gallon bucket that was manually moved to where ever might be the best spot for sunlight at that time. Reading all this reminded me of a time when I was a kid about 10 years old.

We lived in the country so riding my bike along the levee was one of my main past times. One day I rode off the levee and down a creek. When I crested up over a hill I was staring at a field that ended up being about 30 yds by 30 yds. This field was full of plants that stood about 6 - 8ft, covered in buds. I rode back home, told my dad and that night him and my uncles and a few of their friends went out to the field and filled trash bags, paper sacks, pockets, anywhere they could stuff buds. No clue how much they ended up with but when we got up the next morning we could see smoke. I rode over to see what it was and there were cop cars and the field was on fire. They were chopping and burning it. I had seem them remove plants before but never chop and burn right there. Found out later that the property owner saw them leaving that night and called the cops cause of people trespassing. By the time the cops got there all they found was a field half full off weed....

P.S. Property owner had no clue the field was there. He was about 70 and owned many acres so he had prob never ever set foot in that little grove...LOL

 

[Bangabong]

In the seventies I and others would save seeds we found in our favorite weeds like Columbian, Jamaican, Panama red and so forth. All my grows were out doors and I just learned by trial and error. I stumbled across the techniques of cropping, training and fertilizing correctly by screwing up a lot of good weed. Now, you can find all of that info on the internet in no time, perhaps too much info sometimes. Never be afraid to experiment, those are lessons that you will not forget.

 

[oiuhdfukg]

Back in the early 90s a buddy of mine was a semi-major seller in Ottawa. He supplied the Hells Angels among others. I always hated when those guys showed up cuz they scared the hell out of me. Anyway, around '94 or '95 he decided to start growing his own in order to maximize profits. So I learned a bit from this, though I didn't get around to doing it myself for another 20 years lol. Back then you either learned from an experienced grower if you knew any or you learned the hard way by trial and error. I mean, back then nobody knew anything about different strains or even that there was a difference between male and female plants. You just started and if you ended up with bud, you were happy.

We used to read High Times and pick up a few pointers there and from some of the other pot magazines that were popping up in the 90s. Bagseed was the norm. It's so much different now. If you have a question you get instant answers via google or youtube. I hope you young guys know how good you have it.

 

[GroundControl]

Only had access to bag seeds.

and tons of them.

 

[High yogi]

You tried.lol... but the indoor scene once hydroponics arrived it took off. Before that, pull over to pay phone, call friends ask around, drop five dollars in the tank and go! Because somebody was holding and that beat wasting summer growing deer treats... hightimes.. for us that was THE exotic source of info, shining a light on what could be done got a lot of us on track before that, honestly, I didn't know a flower period from a class period. Ah well, youth in the 70s.(personality didnt see HT till the eighties, didnt mean to conflate w 70s era shenanigans)