Episode Transcript

Trevor: Kirk.  We're back.

Kirk: Yeah, we're back.

Trevor: We're back again. So, you got to talk to somebody who you might have read some of his written materials back in. The 80s, yeah.

Kirk: Well, it's interesting. The last two interviews have been European, and so Jorge Cervantes which is a pseudonym for George Van Patten, who has over 50 books out in gardening and the majority of those books are how to garden cannabis. So, this guy's been publishing books for as long as I've been nursing. And again, I've never, I've made no bones about this. My, introduction to cannabis was when I was in junior high school. So, I went to a lot of head shops in the late 70s and you know, I can remember the 1st edition of Heavy Metal magazine, the comic book and thinking this is a silly book, but I should have bought it, but I would sit for hours going through record stores in those days and head shop’s magazines and High Time magazines and fabulous Furry Freak Brothers magazines and how to grow your own cannabis magazines. And I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure it would have been one of this fellas cause, in the interview I described to him what I think his magazine looked like or his grow book looked like and he said it was and it was literally, back in the day, because cassettner on a piece of paper folded in half with staples, you know quite literally and I didn't know he was in Seattle, he was publishing in Seattle. And for just for the listeners to know that we talked about this in the interview and I got back to my, texted him back and. He was telling me he was telling me that more than likely, uh, let me go to the text. More than likely those books. Were brought up by the Hell's Angels, the bike gangs back in the day.

Trevor:  Tell me a little bit about the pseudonym before we got on Mic here. You're telling me a little bit about the pseudonym and some wigs and like just reiterate for people because sometimes it's hard to remember now that in the 80s This was not legal. Stuff he was writing about.

Kirk: No, no, this fella was so 1983 is when he when he was growing. So, I guess, I must have seen his book after I got back from Alberta. In 1983 he starting to write books about how to grow a schedule one drug. So, he isn't. He's got pictures of him wearing wigs and hats and sunglasses, and he's in marijuana fields and basically he's doing this all underground press. If you go to his web page, he tells stories about how friends of his are being arrested. He gets into a little bit of it in the episode. But you know, I was struggling. I was really struggling with this interview because I think I tell him, I tell him that I was quite overwhelmed. I did not know where to take this conversation because I'm talking to one of the gurus of growing cannabis in the world. There's no doubt in my mind anybody that has grown cannabis in the last 40 years has read one of his books, right? He's got over 50 books out. So, we're not a grow op program.  Go to our friends that are doing the podcast. We had the podcast that we talked to them “High on homegrown” Like go to those guys will teach you how to grow cannabis, our podcast isn't going to teach you to grow cannabis. So, as I was talking to George, to Jorge. I just realized this is a My Cannabis Story. So, as you listen to this episode. It's a“My Cannabis Story,” right? So that's what I got out of this and it's kind of cool when we stumble onto some of these people that are known in the industry and we get them on our little podcast and that's what I think that's kind of cool here is that we have, we have a fella that put himself out there back in the day and really in some justification you still cannot grow cannabis, right? So, it's we're just taking it for granted. We're well, Manitoba we're not to grow. We're not allowed to grow cannabis. Manitoba. I grow medicinal cannabis. But anyway, so that's what it is, Trevor. It's more of My Cannabis Story. I'm now rambling, I think.

Trevor: That's OK. No,  it was a good ramble. And let's get into Jorge and then we'll have quick chat afterwards.

Kirk: So how do you want to be introduced as, your alias your real name? how would you like to do this.

Jorge Cervantes: Either way, Jorge Cervantes, that’s the way everybody knows me and many people know my real name, you know,I released a few years ago because, well, it was just tired. I just got tired of hiding. Yeah. I'm proud of what I do, of what I do. I'm proud of who I am. Yeah. And I just, you know, but everybody, everybody knows me more Jorge Cervantes I don't. I try not to take stuff too seriously that he go stuff gets in my way.

Kirk: I'm just going to say, Sir, how's that? As I said to you on the phone, I am, completely overwhelmed by your resume. And when I was trying to plan for this interview, I have no clue on which way to go and this is a first for me. I usually come well researched. I have a thesis. I have a plan. I look at your resume. 35 years you've been publishing

Jorge Cervantes: 40 years

Kirk: OK, so as long as I've been nursing you've been publicizing How to Grow Cannabis. Marijuana. Hemp. Horticultural underground, above ground. Overground. Your friends have been arrested. So, I'm gonna just ask you for your story. Cause I'm gonna bet most of our listeners don't know your story. So, let's start from the very beginning. What you're story.

Jorge Cervantes: What kind of a pull do you have anyway? I gotta look things up.

Kirk: Well, we are a very small podcast trying to get attention and we've been doing it for five years. Trevor is a pharmacist. I'm a registered nurse. Our audience, our audience, can be medical personnel because we challenge the system about medical cannabis, but we also have people that are outside the medical field.  We've 117 episodes and everything from deep down technical science to just human interest stories. Yeah. So when I saw that you were advertising your latest publication, I said, you know, we've been looking for horticulturist to come on our show for 5-6 years now because I've got all sorts of questions about the plant. So we'll spend half the conversation on that, but I just want to talk about your story, man. I mean, back in the early 80s, you were doing all this underground publication. I remember seeing your book in head shops back in the day, you know?

Jorge Cervantes: Like, yeah, pretty tough days. I have to say.

Kirk: Yeah. So if you don't mind, and I know you've done this a million times cause I've I even downloaded your media package and like I said, I am completely overwhelmed. I don't know where to begin. When I introduce you to our listeners, I'll go over what I've done, but I just figured the best way to get your story for our listeners is just let you tell it if you don't mind.

Jorge Cervantes: Ohh, OK yeah, sure I yeah.

Kirk: Are you a gardener? Like, how did you ohh yeah.

Jorge Cervantes: Of course, I've been gardening my whole life. I love gardens.  I grew up, you know, growing plants, I've always have.

Kirk: University educated college education or just growing.

Jorge Cervantes: No, no, no, not at all. Let's see, actually liberal arts, educated and well, yeah, I'm liberal arts educated. I'm not used to blowing my own horn. I'm used to giving information and helping people, that's kind of what really works for me. I mean, I like it's fun. I feel really useful and helpful when I do that. But as far as having a big ego and stuff that just that's not me.  I could care less, you know, all those guys with big egos really turned me off. I just. I just leave the room when they're around.

Kirk: What? What? What made you say to yourself? I'm going to write a book in 1980. Was it the first book?

Jorge Cervantes: 1983 actually is when it first came out.

Kirk: So what makes you say I'm going to write a book about growing cannabis?

Jorge Cervantes: Yeah, well. What happened is, you know, I got out of university. I've been to, I've done quite a bit there. I mean in university I went to university in Oregon and also in Spain and Mexico. And so I get out, I get out of school and I don't know what the hell to do. And I was quite good with gardening, you know? So, I started cutting trees. I mean, that's the only place you can make any money is climbing. And I've always been, you know, pretty strong and natural and stuff. So, I started climbing trees and taking trees out, trimming brush and all of that, but that got old and I could see that wasn't going anywhere and I kept cutting myself, you know, and chainsaws. Chainsaws were pretty rough. And I had several gardening businesses, but I started growing cannabis up in the up in hills behind Santa Barbara, California, Southern California. And ohh gosh I left there came, I traveled, for more than a year. We went to South America, you know, I talked Spanish. So, it's really easy for me. It's just easier to be there so and you know I have a lot of Latin friends too, but what happened was I was in Portland Oregon and that's right at the beginning when indoor growing just started when people had those great big halide lights. You know, the great big 1000 watter and actually indoor growing started in Seattle, Seattle and BC, but it technically started in Seattle. And a guy named Steve Murphy. I can really give him credit for being the first indoor garden store, indoor grow store and he's he used to be in the university district. He's a good friend of mine, has been for years. Yeah, I know all those guys up, over there in in Seattle. But what happened, I didn't know him back then. I met him a few years later because we all kind of, you know, have to get along. But yeah, he's a great guy, great guy. In fact, he’s been in business 52 years now, 52 years. I'm really pretty blown away by that and you know, saying the store is open 52 years now. He's son Sean runs it. They don't even sell lights anymore halide lights. They sell house plants now. He moved over to Ballard, Ballard Washington. And he's right on the canal. It's really, really nice place he's got. But what happened was everybody was growing indoors, and so I started growing indoors in Portland OR and I could see I mean, man, it was just mainly tough guys who were doing it. There's some old hippies or young hippies doing it now. They're now all old, but. Yeah, I could see that they were doing. They were, they were growing in indoors and then also bikers, there's tons of bikers. There's so many bikers, good people in general, you know, little rowdy sometimes, but good people in general. And anyway. Nobody seemed to know much. Nobody seemed to know much about gardening and there was a lot of just flatout bullshit going on. They would make things up and people would withhold information and information is power, but it just it just didn't seem right to me. You know that they, they would withhold information from other people and then they would also get a lot of things wrong. So, what I did was I made a survey. A few of the jobs I had in the summer. One of them was a survey research job and I did that and so I knew how to give surveys, you know, I mean, I knew how to make write an instrument. That's what they call them. A survey. It's an instrument to collect information. And then I aggregated the information and then it's right, right when the computer started. I bought a Capepro computer and I had also worked during high school in a printing company local newspaper. So I knew how to take photographs. I actually was pretty good at it and I could read and write, you know? So it was like gee what else do I need to know? I mean, I've got all the basic skills. So I wrote a book, wrote the first one. It was called Indoor Marijuana Horticulture. And after that. What the heck did I do? I went around, I shopped it around, tried to get somebody to publish it because, you know, I didn't know anything and nobody wanted to publish it. In fact, the biggest publisher back then was And/Or Press and they were in Berkeley, California, and they've since gone out of business. I'm still in business and any way, nobody would publish it, so I decided well, heck, I'll I don't know how to run a press. I'll just print it myself. And so that's what I did. I printed it myself. I rented time on a local well A Quick print place and printed out what, 1000 copies. Yeah, about 1000 copies and then uh. Then I tried to get those distributed. Nobody would distribute them. So, I just put them in my car and drove around and started to sell them, and most people wouldn't pay for them up front. I had to put them on consignment. I could sell them at head shops. I could sell them at a few indoor garden stores, but there's all those Rico Laws came into effect back then and that made things real tough because you can't put the, you know, the information with the lights, if you put them together then, then you're an ongoing criminal organization and later that came to well that came to that came to cause some real problem. One day about 120 people got arrested during Operation Green Merchant in October 1989. I forget the date. It was pretty traumatic for me that I'll tell you. Anyway, that's what I decided to do and it worked the first year I sold 6000 Books. And then so the next year I was able to make more books, but I could send them to actual printer or a web printer and stuff that that would put a spine on the books. I don't I just moved so I don't have any of the books with me or I have just I think one copy of the original book it's saddle stitched or it's got staples in it. It didn't even have a spine. But yeah, yeah, that was that's how I got started. And I just gave good information, told the truth that says I just tell the truth. That's all I did. And I had a they had a few hurdles to overcome, but.

Kirk: I bet. I grew up in Victoria.

Jorge Cervantes: OK, Victoria BC. OK. OK. Yeah. Yeah. Out there on the island.

Kirk: Yes, Sir. So I'm very familiar with that West Coast culture and the cannabis marijuana culture of the 70s and early 80s. And I remember your book.

Jorge Cervantes: Yes, yes.

Kirk: And I'm thinking of because I remember it was sort of on just normal paper folded in half with staples in it. I remember that book. So talking to you is I think we're about the same age.

Jorge Cervantes: Yes, yes, that's it, correct. Yeah, I'm 70 years old.

Kirk: Oh, well, OK, you got you got a few years on me. I'm 62. So, I just outted myself, I left Victoria in 82.

Jorge Cervantes: OK, OK.

Kirk: And went off and started a nursing career. But you know, let's jump because when I talk to Trevor, I can fill in the blank. So, let's talk about the plant. I want to know more about the plant because I grow, I grow medicinal cannabis for myself.

Jorge Cervantes: Where are you located now?.

Kirk: I'm in the center of the continent. I'm in a place called Dauphin, Manitoba.

Jorge Cervantes: OK. Ohh man, you're out there in the Prairie, man.

Kirk: Yes, Sir. Well, it's a little, it's the prairies. But we are between two hills that we call mountains, but we.

Jorge Cervantes: OK. OK. Yeah, yeah. You got real mountains there.

Kirk: Yeah, we and we have hemp farms all around us and we've done stories on the hemp farms and stuff. So as a grower myself, I want to know a couple basic things for our listeners. Sativa Indica, what's the difference?

Jorge Cervantes: OK. Well, I don't know. I mean, see the way all that stuff started, it started back this, this guy named Linnaeus, a Swedish guy. Yeah, I think Swedish. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, he was the one that classified the plant Kingdom back for about 1870-1876. No, no, in 1776. And during that, that was before that was when they only had sail boats, sail ships and all they did that before the steam engine, and they didn't have the communication was real slow. So, what he did is he classified everything as Cannabis Sativa, everything, all the plants. But he didn't know about all the plants. He only knew about the ones that he had access to and Sativa just means uh cultivated, like a wild wild, you know, like a volunteer or wild. But it just means common wild plant. Yeah. So that's why it called it Cannabis Sativa and most of the ones that he saw were narrow, long leafed. But then later some years later, the brits they were over in China, and India. Mainly India and they came up with the cannabis indica or Indian hemp they called. So there was the main distinction to two different basic types of plants. And one came from the West and one came from the east. And it's where they originate. So, it's really been a big problem of nomenclature. And they're just about ready to throw the two out because there's so many, so many similarities between the two.  In general nowadays, the Sativa plant is considered taller and more distance between the plant inner nodes and the leaves are generally considered larger with a big root, and they also have a huge root system. That's really key because you know you can make a grafting, you can make grafting on the root start from the sativa to an indica type or short squat plant. But basically, it's the origin of the plant and it's important to remember the history, how that happened. Because if it weren't for the history and the communications, the classification would have been much different. And for years I've been a garden writer. And well I was until the Internet came around and then nobody would buy your garden writing stuff or words. But what happened is with that there's all people do is argue about who found what plant and what the name should be. There's like, I don't know, probably 5% of all varietals plants, especially, well old ones, new ones, they all, they always argue about who's right and what name it should actually have in Latin. So, this is not a new thing. In fact, I look for it to get more pronounced as we go forward. Yeah, they're looking to classify it in a different way, but in general today, like I said, the Indica. Oh, I didn't say this yet. The Indica is short and squat, less distance between the inner nodes. It's usually heavier, heavier smell. It usually becomes ripe early or it's ready to harvest earlier. Late August September. Where the sativa plants they can go, and generally they're more tropical and like I say, Linnaeus started all this so and the Brits too with India. It can go long. Well, some of them really don't become ripe at all. They can just keep flowering and flowering up for up for three years. The 12-hour ones. Yeah. Yeah.

Kirk: So this whole in the recreational field and medicinal cannabis, the whole in the couch, Indica and Sativas, the upper and just keeping the hybrids away for a moment. As a grower, do you believe that there's such a thing as if you like Indica seems to be a more medicinal cannabis than the Sativa. Do you do you buy into that?

Jorge Cervantes: No, I can't really say that. I can say you may have different effects on them, but medicinal. See, that's where I'm really not an expert. I don't have a good a good medicinal history background. If I did, I'd have a strong opinion, but if I'm supposed to be an expert, I got an opinion.

Kirk: Fair enough.

Jorge Cervantes: But I don't know if it's real valid.

Kirk: Well, I guess I'm looking at this interview as a grower and you know, and as a horticulturalist because I guess in the 40 years that you've been growing, you've become an expert of cannabis. So, let's talk more about just growing cannabis, what's easier to grow Indica or Sativa?

Jorge Cervantes: Well, it depends on where you're at and within that it depends on the varieties that you've got. Some plants are very easy to grow. For example, one of the hybrids that was still real popular some years back was Blue Dream. In fact, it's still around and it's quite easy to grow. It's in fact it's hard to kill. But then you look at other plants like haze, the haze type plants, the HAZE, it's. And it's also a cross. Dave Watson was the guy that really did that one that started the HAZE and he's well, it's real difficult to grow, it's real fidgety. It's real susceptible to over fertilization. It's fidgety for temperature and water, so it really depends on the specific cultivar you're growing. In general, I remember before we started, I was real fortunate to know a lot of original guys, you know.  We all grew up together. We're all alive at the same time. We didn't actually grow up together. But like for example, the Northern Lights and was a real good one to grow, it's more like the heavy Indica type. Actually, it came from the mountains up there above India and then the other ones, Big Bud was the real, real easy one to grow. But those were indoor plants. And in general, it's way easier to grow outdoors or in a greenhouse because that's what plants want. Wwith the lights today, you've got these LED lights, you can literally dial in, and there's so much more information now about LED's and plants and the specific photons that they'll that they require. It blows me away. How much information there is. In fact, it's beyond me. I could, I could say things but there's people that are way, way better verse than me. On a lot of this stuff.

Kirk: So as a grower, if somebody is looking to start growing, what would you recommend? Soil. Hydroponics. Medium. What would you recommend to somebody just starting out to grow their first crop?

Jorge Cervantes: Well, if just starting out, I've always loved soil and you know, getting good potting soil from a nursery or good rich potting soil that you may want something that's fortified with a little bit of fertilizer in it. But I'd stay with the organic fertilizer and I'm just really strong with the organic because I like it. It's natural. And you're putting this stuff in your body, so you should be careful. But definitely organic soil and the main reason for the organic soil, they call it living soil now.   It’s kind of a buzz word, living soil, but in a container. If you're going to grow indoors in a container or outdoors in a container, there's really not a big enough volume. The soil to practice organic methods where you actually make the soil live and you nurse the soil and you, nurse it along to keep it going. Basically, what you can do is you get soil and you can feed organic nutrients to the top of it and wash it out because it's totally an environment that you can't do much with other than keep it the container and growing, but definitely soil.

Kirk: One of one of my friends is a I call him sensei he's been growing in medium. He grows good plants and he likes to grow in a medium and he  talks about one of the disadvantages of living soil is the bugs and if you get bugs in your grow room then you toasted but yet I've interviewed another fella that has a composter right in his grow room and his soil come and everything happens in his grow room so. I'm not sure. I just buy a bag of soil and throw it in and sterilize soil, so that's how I try to do.

Jorge Cervantes: Yeah, it depends, it really depends on who you talk to. I mean when you talk about bugs, bugs, insects, soil insects, soil life in general, it's best to stay away from like really strong soil. I mean. Well, a lot of life in your soil. It's not the most pleasant thing to say, but you know take your hints from the greenhouse growers that are growing bedding plants. Look at the guys that are going well right now, the Christmas season’s past. But look at the Poinsettia. See there is the Poinsettia is a short-day plant. And for example, what do they grow in? They grow in usually something similar that you see mix, which is basically a mix of what do you call it, soiless mix, soiless mix. You know you got a perlite. peat and peat is becoming out of favor because, well.

Kirk: Coconut people are using coconut.

Jorge Cervantes: yeah, everybody grows to coconut now, and the cocoa core. Or cocoa fiber, which is really good stuff, I have to say because it retains a lot of moisture and as well it also retains air because you got to have that mix of air and water with nutrients. It's really important. So, soil life you really gotta watch that indoors.  I'd be careful with that. I personally like soil. But because you can do a lot with it, but it's quite forgiving. See, and that's the thing I like about it. It's naturally buffered.

Kirk: OK. What do you think about Scrogging?

Jorge Cervantes: Scrogging works really great. One of my buddies is like our Internet buddy we haven’t met face to face is Northern Scrogger and that's been really, really successful because one of the reasons why is you can get so many plants under a lamp and if you're paying for electricity, you know and your lamp say it covers, let's call it a  three by three area or a six by six. That's three by three. The area, it's like confined any of that light that hits the that doesn't hit a green matter, green leaf, is wasted. So the closer those pants are the better and here's the other thing that's really important. How long you keep those plants growing indoors, the shorter time you keep them in under those conditions, which are totally artificial, the better off you are.

Kirk: So the vegetative state, so keep them indoors for the vegetative state and then move them outside for the flower.

Jorge Cervantes: Well, if you can, anytime you can grow outdoors, do it.  I'm totally a proponent of growing outdoors. You can control a lot more indoors or in a greenhouse, actually preferably in a greenhouse. But you've got a lot of dynamics here. In the greenhouse, you know, they're hard to keep the temperature consistent and hard to keep the humidity consistent. You've got some real, dynamic stuff, you know, outside temperature, inside temperature and sunlight. So you can you can open up the greenhouse in the morning and it can be like 100°F or you know say thirty 35 - 40°C. That's and that's just too darn hot. Plants don't do so well, but if you will grow indoors, it's real, especially underground or in in a basement, you can keep plants growing evenly. It's a real, even temperature, you know, going up and down indoors or in the greenhouses. It's a little difficult. Yeah. OK.

Kirk: I got about 5 minutes left with you according to my zoom here. What do you like people to know about you? What story would you want our listeners to know most about you?

Jorge Cervantes: I'd like to tell people to help others. That's what I want to say. You know, share your information, share the best information you have and be good. Just be good. Help other people. That's the big thing. And don't worry about being wrong. Make mistakes. That's the way you're going to learn. Well, hopefully you will learn.

Kirk: You've got how many books out? Fifty books.

Jorge Cervantes: 50 I couldn't believe it. I couldn't, My technical guy says how he yes, he says. Look, you got to write this down for the website. How many web, how? How many books do you have? And I thought it was about 35, but I added everything up. It's more than 50. And and.

Kirk: Now, now here's a question, and it may be personal and you and what I've, what I've learned from you in reading your history, that you do give back and you have given knowledge to people about how to grow cannabis. Have you made a living off of this man? Have you? You've stayed out of jail, right?

Jorge Cervantes: Knock on wood. Yeah, that's still true.

Kirk: And some of your buddies, some of your buddies, according to your bio, weren't so fortunate. But like, have you made a living out of being a cannabis grower?

Jorge Cervantes: Actually, as a grower, yeah, I did for a few years, but what happened was I talked to my wife and she said, yeah, I said, look, I got a few choices. I can either go to Canada and well, or I can go to Switzerland and grow. This was when things were really ripping in Switzerland late 90. And she said, or I could continue to write, but that's going to be a hard road and it's going to be tough. And so she decided that I should write instead of grow. Well, so that's what I decided to do. And I've moved quite a few times. I've lived in a lot of places in well, BC. I lived up there, actually, in Burnaby right next to Vancouver. And then also in the Netherlands, I lived in Amsterdam. And now I'm in Spain. And I've traveled extensively as well, Latin America and as well, Australia, Japan. Yeah. So I guess I hope that answers the question.

Kirk: And when you travel, do you specifically go to cannabis places to learn how to grow cannabis from other people? Because you do have other books than just cannabis growing?

Jorge Cervantes: Oh yeah, I've got a whole I've got garden books, vegetable books, flower books. Hydroponic books, but yeah, indoor garden books. Yeah of other plants. Yeah. Specifically, yeah. Because it seems like everybody in the whole world knows me. I mean, it's really weird. They know me in Russia, they know me in Japan, I mean and I'm literally recognize. In Latin America everywhere I'm the only guy that talks Spanish, you know. And so there's like, close to me. I get in fact just last week they want me to come to Ecuador, you know, they pay all the bills. They pay all my bills. I said no it's so far to go and I get tired now. Yeah. Yeah. And it's too much.

Kirk: Fair enough. I went into this conversation not knowing how to start and I don't know how to end because I don't feel I've even given you enough space to tell your story. I guess for me we got about a minute left. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you suspected I would ask you?

Jorge Cervantes: No, not at all. I mean, I could go on and on like it's, I just don't blow my own horn very much. It's a bit difficult to talk about myself. Yeah, I've done a ton of other stuff though. Been a lot of places, but I don't know. I mean, I'm just one of many people, a lot of people have been way more than me, you know.

Kirk: But you got 50 books out there, buddy. And how to grow cannabis and the world and the world is changing. I'm going to lose you here right away. I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for giving people the knowledge about growing Cannabis because I'm going to read your book.

Jorge Cervantes: Oh, I know the one thing I want to say this book here, we translate the cannabis encyclopedia. So there is 600 pages. It's really big. OK, this book I we have translated into eight different languages, eight different languages, all five European languages. It's obviously in English because this is your, but it's free on my website marijuanagrowing.com that's important. I want to flog that. But you can get it free. Please go there and please, it's even in Russian and Japanese. In Japanese, it's allowed to be put it again.

Trevor: So, Kirk, before we do anything else, because I think it might be the most sort of useful thing from all of these that Jorge was talking about talk a little bit about I think I. Got this right. The Encyclopedia of Cannabis and how it's in nine different languages and free is touch on. That a little bit, yeah.

Kirk: He's his new publications online and it's free and this is, this is really important to him. And this is what he wants from us is that we put this link on our web page, and it will be there. It's an award-winning cannabis encyclopedia. It's a distinctive guide to medical marijuana cultivation and consumption. It explains all the essential techniques to grow indoors, outdoors, and in greenhouses. All gardening practices are well researched and illustrate with easy step by step examples and instructions. More than 2000 beautiful colored images illustrated in 596 page book. It's it, I mean the book. It looks like back in the day when you when you had the world encyclopedias. And every year you would get the component. It's like that it's it looks like a textbook actually. So this there will be a link on a web page. I will be reading it. I'm going to be starting a crop here in the next little while and I will be reading this book and that is the that is the big story here and if you go to his web page again there'll be links to our on our on our web page. It's a fascinating story. What did you think of the interview.

Trevor: Oh it was really good because I know it's something that you've talked with many people about and I don't know if you got a definitive answer, but you finally got him to talk about soil versus media. And then because this is a legitimate question, you asked many experts. I've been there, you know, both on and off the thing about what's the right way to do things? And so it sounds like for a beginner he's leaning soil, but I and I'll throw in my two. I think one of the ways you can tell, OK, A, he's really humble, but B one of the ways you can tell he really is an expert. You know, if you ask somebody a question and they know a little bit about a topic, they've got an answer right away. If you talk to somebody who studied their whole life, there's always. Well, yeah, it's a little this, a little that, you know, it might be this, but you know, could be a little bit of that. So, what do you think about his answer about whether or not you should go soil?

Kirk:. Yeah. Yeah. No. Well. I when I listened back to the episode, you know, he's talking about soil like he really likes to grow outdoors, so his living soil, and you'll remember we talked to the Green Beaver, Paul Martin, way way back in the episodes. And I went into his basement and we called, I think we called It the Basement Tapes. We learned from Paul how he grew in live soil, like Paul literally had a composter in his basement and when you walked into his basement it was moist. It was a moist environment and he was growing in soil, I think Jorge was basically talking about living soil outside because.

Trevor: Yeah, well, he did mention that a couple of times that you can't do true organic inside, but he I don't think he was against soil, but again he had he knew all the pros and cons. He because he knows so much it's hard for him to say definitively one over the other.

Kirk: Well, I have, sensei. I have a fellow in town that helps me grow. And Sensei is always hit me over the head because I grow in soil. I like growing in soil because I think growing in soil is it's more forgiving and it's interesting because Jorge said, that it's more forgiving, right, growing in medium, you have to be really be on the nutrients you really have to be on the light and stuff and you know, I'm pretty laid back with most things I do and I don't like to get, I mean, my fermentation, I'm a little hot on that, but I just don't want to get really deep into feeding my plants every stinking day. I don't want that. I mean the whole idea for me is relax and I'll throw a little water in it, give it a little mist, you know, do a little trim. So, I think, I like the fact that he will says soil and like I said to you, I think I can tell a difference. But I mean, I don't know. But I think that when I taste something grown in soil, it just tastes different to me.

Trevor: The terroir, the terroir, with the wine people would say.

Kirk:. Yeah. And I guess you know more than likely because I haven't bought commercial weed in such a long time because I have my own and so when I am past a pre-roll. Post COVID I do have my vaccines. I do share. I just outted myself that, you know when you have something grown in chemical. Just I don't know if it has the same taste or mouth feel, is just something different it harsher. I usually end up coughing and whereas my stuff I don't cough with it and it's I don't know. I just so that. So I think soil is better only because I think it's more forgiving. It matches my style. Now I don't use live compost, I did one year actually I did one year use my compost from my backyard and it was bug ridden so I had bugs in my tent. So I had to spend a lot of time getting rid of those bugs and a lot of I told you so some sensei.

Trevor: Fair enough. Fair enough.

Kirk: So I will be buying sterilized soil next time. So.

Trevor: Well, we should throw this out because we always forget to the end. I'm Trevor Shewfelt. I'm the Pharmacist you are.

Kirk: Hi, I'm Kirk Nyquist. I am the registered nurse. We are found at Reefer Medness - The Podcast  found at Reefermed.ca. Please go to our web page. Please go to Jorge’s web page, go to our web page and click on it and check out his Encyclopedia. He will teach you how to grow good cannabis and really if you want to sustainable world you know homegrown tomatoes have always been the best right, and I think homegrown cannabis is the way it should be. Also, so off you.

Trevor: Go. I think that's a good place as any to wrap that up. It was another good one and. We'll talk to everybody later.