80's, 90's growers?

These questions are more for the indoor growers who grew somewhat commercialy in those times.

I was wondering what was like growing in those times?

I'm sure with the internet its a whole new ballgame.


what kind of lights did you use, how did you learn, how did you get seeds ect ect.


I don't know maybe things were the same, I'm just curious to how the business in general were done in those time.

very little has changed except the serious over saturation of nutrient companies and all the grow junk available.
430w HPS was most popular with people I knew.
everyone had a phototron collecting dust somewhere, just like all the noobs have an aeorgarden now.
small growers didn't have all the nice tents that are out now, thats and improvement.
there were good grow books then just as now, just alot less resistance to "book learnin'"
now if it's not on the internet posted by a 12 year old it's not true.
perlite/vermiculite weren't bad words we knew rockwool was bad but it worked.
every idiot new grower wanted to see just how many T8 floro's they could fit in a small room. lines the walls with lights, man!
I started after the Seed Bank was around so, my 1st non bag seed grow was Northern Lights. We used mail order catalogs to get seeds.

I notice that weed back then tasted & smelled a lot stronger then now. I'm trying to find a good soil mix or something to have my bud tasting like the old school days...Cmon old schoolers.....Chime in>>>

OP

I tried growing a few plants in the 70's but grow knowledge was a scarce commodity back then. It wasn't until the arrival of High Times magazine in the mid seventies that information started to be available but unfortunately some of that was misinformation. Believe it or not the key to indoor growing for me was finding out about the photo-period.

I had my first successful grow in 1980, I only got about a quarter elbow but it was killer bud grown from some Hawaiin herb that I was buyin (I wish I had me some of those beans!). For lights I used four double row four foot florous, about a year or so later I got one of the first metal halide fixtures that I saw. It was a cheap pos with an exposed ballast and a tin reflector but it opened the door to the possibilities of hid lighting.

As far as beans go, you grew the best ones you could find, no seed banks back then and there weren't a hell of alot of other growers to trade with, at least not in my neck of the woods.

Medium, ferts etc you used what was available. Miracle Grow springs to mind, lol.

I happen to grow up at the right time to be immersed in the marijuana culture at its hey day[the just say yes period-early to mid 70ies].Took my first hit in 1975 and was growing with halides lites by 84..In our area there were many vetinam vets coming back who picked up seeds along the way ,then settled back into life and started growing so there was plenty of seed stock around......It wasnt as much about money as it was friends helping friends..Not like now where its turned into a cut throat business.
As for seed banks,The first one i ever saw was in 1985 called" the stativa seed club catolog"small full color brochure,many pretty pictures...Wish i still had it

stonedar said:

very little has changed except the serious over saturation of nutrient companies and all the grow junk available.
430w HPS was most popular with people I knew.
everyone had a phototron collecting dust somewhere, just like all the noobs have an aeorgarden now.
small growers didn't have all the nice tents that are out now, thats and improvement.
there were good grow books then just as now, just alot less resistance to "book learnin'"
now if it's not on the internet posted by a 12 year old it's not true.
perlite/vermiculite weren't bad words we knew rockwool was bad but it worked.
every idiot new grower wanted to see just how many T8 floro's they could fit in a small room. lines the walls with lights, man!
I started after the Seed Bank was around so, my 1st non bag seed grow was Northern Lights. We used mail order catalogs to get seeds.

Click to expand...

I still got an pt modified at 1 time but yes its collecting dust

Very cool thread. My first look at high times was that special addition where you could grow hydro on the cheap with half cut soda bottles in a wick system. I was 14...so it was about 92' or so.

Being really young, I knew that I loved it...but I didn't know anyone that did it. My first attempt at growing was with a regular lightbulb stuck inside of a shoebox. I almost burned my parents house down.

There was so little out there it seemed even back then...so I can just imagine what it must have been like in the 70's.

My first grows in the 80s and 90s were not mine, but my mom's. I got the pleasure of helping her in her garden, which was commercial. She used old halides, and floros out the wazoo. She grew in a soil mix that she said took her 14 years to perfect, kept it in an old binder and she oft referred to failed or off mixes to see what she could learn herself. Always trying to grow better herb. Her soil and nutrient mixtures though were always homeade because of her research.


Seeds she had, though not sure where she got the ones to start, probably from friends, but she had a binder full of older beans, all labeled, many of them her own crosses and a few back bred into her own strains. So regardless of where she got them to start at the end she was producing her own.


When I was 16 I stole the aforementioned binder of knowledge and seeds from her closet like a dumbass, took her seeds out of vac seal like a dumbass, tried to grow them using her knowledge and failing like a dumbass, and got caught by her like a dumbass.....sad part is the moment she found out she was mad, but then she told me had I asked she would have helped since the old binder was collecting dust in her old "hippie days" box. Sometime after getting caught, the binder; having never been returned to its proper box; got lost. In the end twas I who cost my mother that knowledge, the rest of the box...she still has, but not her binder.


How I wish I had those beans. My mom was once a Sativa goddess of Mountain California, her and her friends had some amazing skunk crosses that I have yet to see a match for. And I ruined all those old genetics by being a teenager.



Now though it is me who helps her, she has lost the magic touch simply by losing touch to the modern world. The internet is not something she is fond of and checking her email is about all she does. So now it is me who helps her with nutrient schedules, links and excerpts from my own digging, information on new equipment or new techniques.


Tables turn as time passes and eventually the torch is passed; but looking back I must say it was amazing what my mom was producing in quantity with nothing but homeade soil mixes and homeade nutes using lights we would consider weak or non ideal....



Sorry for the ramble just got to reminiscing.



Alexis
*smiles*

Damn, ramble on. Good stuff.

Indoors in was scary as hell... paranoid about anything and everything..
we were so paranoid we would rent rental cars to go to the hydro store .. lol
there wasnt many hydro foods at time i remember using Xtra till GH came out
We would use any HPS or MH we could get our hands on from local colleges path way 70 watters to street lights lol

There were a few golden rules most still apply today , as some done really matter as much any more
Dont tell anyone no one natta not even you cat or dog
Dont take ANY pics the photo places would narc you off back in the day, they loved to do it ..

1 seedling could get you serious time even in 90 is was way sketchy

I popped my first seeds in the mid-late 70s.
Most people thought you were CRAZY trying to grow your own herb, home-grown was a dirty word!

still runnin 430w magnetic ballasts...and 1992 clone !!

still runnin 430w magnetic ballasts...and 1992 clone !!

1980's at 'indoor garden centers' had Grodan Rockwool as the main strata for hydroponics - ebb and flow was popular. Then came the NFT systems that didn't last too long.

Potting soil in the Pacific Northwest was all about Black Gold - heh. Before that it was a product called 'Super Soil' which is was not but the name was cool.

Parabolic hoods were the norm with horizontal fixtures arriving in the late 1980's or so unless you were running the P.L. Light Systems' fixtures out of Holland - the professional greenhouse supplemental lighting systems - 400w HPS was the only model that they made for several years - 1976 to the mid 1990's - then parabolic was the deal.

Nutes were pretty much limited to Eco-Grow (who later sold their line to American Agriculture in Portland and is now sold under the name of 'Vita Grow' - one of the first 3-part 'nute' programs). Dyna-Gro and Dyna-Bloom were also popular as well as General Hydroponics product line.

And of course the liquid bat guano products from the boys down in Southern Oregon - Budswell - which is still sold today as hard as that is to believe.

CC

Lol , I had a phototron in 1989. haha sphagnum moss. I recall the old growing arguments were around then too, just no forums, as well as all the misinfo perpetuated by Mong stoners. I got most info from Robert C Clarkes "Marijuana Botany" and High times as well as topping my year in biology at school, from zero to hero because of weed. Picked up on Ed Rosenthals indoor lighting and 12/12 photoperiod in 1990, took my first trip to amsterdam in 1992, bought shitloads of seeds, smuggled back in my undies. Skunk #1 and Northern Lights were the penultimate shit.
Weed led me to be a horticulturalist for the gubmint, which further led to architecture, which has further led to home business in architecture and growing weed.

i have a 430 grow sun in storage FTW, found some seriously old grow gear after my friend passed and i was asked to help clear out his place, green air products nutes i gave him that was from 1990, good stuff like that

here is a photo of him pre-millennium running gear I bred and some pre-millennium ear from Sensi

RIP still thinking about you when I toke still keeping the memory alive

To friends we've lost and friends we've gained RIP

Thanks for sharing Weird, that photo is striking something about the eyes.

he always wanted to send it into high times, but was never had the chance

figured it would get appreciation here

thanks

thats mighty unfortunate Weird. spark one for the homies

LastWaltz said:

To friends we've lost and friends we've gained RIP

Thanks for sharing Weird, that photo is striking something about the eyes.

Click to expand...

I agree

whaaa

whaaa

WhoDair
no nutes... no water...??? how did i miss that strain from the 80's LOL

Its Air fed like a Orchid? lol