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80's, 90's growers?

G

guest121295

Hrpuffunkush is right it was straight out scary growing indoors in the 80's.I stole my moms credit card and bought my 1st 2 400W lamps in 86' and grew for a whole summer from a spiral bound "Marijuana Growers Bible" by Mel Frank and Ed Rosenthal.Little did I know that UPS was handing all their delivery info over to the DEA, I was back at college when they showed at my place only to find no grow and other people renting it!! That one basically put me on the family shit list forever.Weed was not the joke it is now, they would bust your ass from Cali to Maine and spend 50K to do it.I had all my grow shit sent by friends in LA after the Green Merchant went down.HOWEVER...if you were growing green or bringing the good shit out from the west you were "the man" no 2 ways around it.I never ran over 2k and was very nearly busted many times over.The dumbass shit we (all of us older ones here) used to pull to have fresh dope...The weed in Ca was real good and setting the standard and forcing others in the country to say hey! I can do that back home!! We did.I look at all this canna biz shit today and "caregivers" and "patients", back then it was "inmate"!!!:)
 
Weird

Weird

3rd-Eye Jedi
Veteran
operation green merchant was no fucking joke

apparently they also busted legitimate (and wealthy) orchid growers and they spent many years in litigation there after

still it has always left me thinking, whens this gonna happen again
 
Lone Wolf

Lone Wolf

Active member
Veteran
good thread.... i love hearing shit like this....

i was born in 1979 and grew up during this time, and i KNOW damn well that my father was in the commercial marijuana game ... i know this because I walked into the kitchen really early one morning as a young kid before he had gone to work ... anyways the guy must have been totally stoned because he had left 3 large ziplocks of marijuana out on the kitchen table :D . At the time I had no clue what the fuck it was, but as years went by and i started figuring out what "MARIJUANA" was I began to relate that weird green shit in a bag with what my friends were offering me to smoke HAHA... I think i poured myself a bowl of cereal, watched some early morning cartoons, and passed the fuck back out and when i woke back up for school the shit was missing off the table... [funny fuckin guy, thats some shit i would do]

As i started to get older, my aunt and uncles who knew my dad the best would tell me stories about how he was "THE MAN.."... He owned a Comic book and baseball card shop in the late 80's early 90's back when that shit was BIG TIME collectable and I guess they had a whole operation going on in the basement of that place according to stories I heard through my relatives. I find it very funny that my mom or pops have NEVER brought it up to me to this day....


Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
 
Z

zwh

Member
Lone Wolf said:
good thread.... i love hearing shit like this....

i was born in 1979 and grew up during this time, and i KNOW damn well that my father was in the commercial marijuana game ... i know this because I walked into the kitchen really early one morning as a young kid before he had gone to work ... anyways the guy must have been totally stoned because he had left 3 large ziplocks of marijuana out on the kitchen table :D . At the time I had no clue what the fuck it was, but as years went by and i started figuring out what "MARIJUANA" was I began to relate that weird green shit in a bag with what my friends were offering me to smoke HAHA... I think i poured myself a bowl of cereal, watched some early morning cartoons, and passed the fuck back out and when i woke back up for school the shit was missing off the table... [funny fuckin guy, thats some shit i would do]

As i started to get older, my aunt and uncles who knew my dad the best would tell me stories about how he was "THE MAN.."... He owned a Comic book and baseball card shop in the late 80's early 90's back when that shit was BIG TIME collectable and I guess they had a whole operation going on in the basement of that place according to stories I heard through my relatives. I find it very funny that my mom or pops have NEVER brought it up to me to this day....


Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Click to expand...


Wow, that is pretty funny. I wonder if it will ever be brought up?

Leave it to Neil Young to explain it all...
 
Captain Ginyu

Captain Ginyu

Member
I remember those damn Phototrons back in the 80's, when I was in highschool. What amazed me, was those things were selling for 300-400 bucks. What even amazed me more was the amount of people that actually bought those things.
As for me, I always have & continue to keep it simple: Potting mix + some perlite + Miracle Grow(for tomatoes) + sunlight = Nice big buds!
 
Hrpuffnkush

Hrpuffnkush

Golden Coast
Veteran
CHACO said:
grew for a whole summer from a spiral bound "Marijuana Growers Bible" by Mel Frank and Ed Rosenthal.
Click to expand...

CLASSSSIC Brother we were on the same Page at the same time "literally" LOL i still have my spiral bound , And 15 years later i got it signed by MF lol
That book made it possible for me get the Cover of HT anniversary Lucky#13 issue ....
picture.php



Mel is an awesome guy and really knows his stuff.. :thank you:
 
G

guest121295

Mel has always been my hero.He was always there for me from the start...:)
 
B

buddymate

I remember getting over a kilo of seeds from kashmir,I was contemplating what to do with them when a friend suggested selling them,another friend Tony piped up with an all-time understatement......................."Dont be fu**ing stupid,no one would ever buy cannabis seeds"
:laughing:
 
mean mr.mustard

mean mr.mustard

I Pass Satellites
Veteran
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...

This is quite possibly one of the best posts I've read all year.

If were any truer it would be burnt :D
 
E

emerald city

Mid 80ies-operation green merchant...man...those were not good times....But it made us think about being safe....
The biggest jump in technology of that period that stands out to me [besides halides] was when we all discovered the art of "cloning"..The jump from:Everyone growing from seed[one crop every 6 months to 90 day wonder's at the end] To keeping a "mother" around to use as stock for a perpetual garden was a revolutionary idea at the time...It changed everything.The ability to produce a consistant end product in a shorter period of time.A new business model was born :blowbubbles:
 
M

mrpotatohead

Member
The biggest difference I see is back then, I made my own teas from different guanos and blood/bone meal. It was messy and it stunk. Now you have 100 different nute lines to choose from. I know I'm going to catch hell for this but I don't think 2010 bud is any better than what was going around mid-90's.
 
T

Two-Dogs

Member
Captain Ginyu said:
I remember those damn Phototrons back in the 80's, when I was in highschool. What amazed me, was those things were selling for 300-400 bucks. What even amazed me more was the amount of people that actually bought those things.
As for me, I always have & continue to keep it simple: Potting mix + some perlite + Miracle Grow(for tomatoes) + sunlight = Nice big buds!
Click to expand...

I live in Australia, they were retailing for $1200 back in 89, had to postal order it from the states though. I got mine from a mate who bought it but never used it, I got it for $800.
in 1990 in Aus you could get $600-$800 an ounce of bushweed, these days im lucky to offload one for $280 of primo white rhino
 
F

Frankinsensi

Member
We used to buy 70 watt HPS lamps at hardware stores. They were street lights. I think they cost about $100 each.
I think back to some of the crazy shit I did back then... like growing in a condo that had a coin operated washer and dryer that the landlord collected from every month. No odor control... the place reeking. Potting soil from Kmart, miracle grow and a dog-eared copy of the grower's bible. I still think about that book once in awhile and wonder if the dude I loaned it to still has it, lol.
So many good memories associated with cannabis.. There was the time I tried growing plants in a terrarium with lizards and told my mom the lizards needed the plants to eat. Man I could go on with the stories, lol.
 
bobman

bobman

Member
so nobody else used 1000 watt hps floodlights from grainger supply and wired them for a 110 outlet. boy that was fun and safe. had to rewire it about every 6 months because it would burn the cord up. fuckers weighed a ton and they had the light spread of a flashlight. still got .5-.6 grams per watt. two major differences i see today is that everyone knows strain names. good pot was good pot back then.nobody knew its name and nobody cared. i grew a clone for 2 years from a friend and still do not know what strain it was. never thought to ask. also genetics were more consistent and better, in my opinion, back then. people keep telling me the stuff i grew back then was much better than it is now. very frustrating.
 
bobman

bobman

Member
i quit growing for ten years but they did not stop smoking. i have heard this comment from a few friends a few times. sure nostalgia plays a role but I just think a grower today is handicapped when starting from seed. back then there was a handful of really well worked lines. you got what you payed for. maybe i was just just lucky or maybe i have just been unlucky today but i think a few things happened. number one there was a huge explosion in demand and number two the dutch started enforcing new laws.
 
swampy_nz

swampy_nz

Member
I started out in 93 as a teenager after reading hightimes and normal mags in newzealand.I bought eds indoor growing guide and never looked back.430 son t agros were the rage but you could only really get outdoor sative,no indica around then.got my first indo beans in 95 and whoah,what a differance that made.negative ion generators were the big thing for getting rid of the smell,tho my fiends still smelt my weed at the end of the driveway.I grew in a block of flats that had parties every weekend and alot of drunk people sneeking in for a look.lol.I got busted and gave up growing for a few years but it didnt take long to get back into it,far to addictive.:)have seen the massive influx of new nutes and gizzmos buying for the hearts and minds of growers, but in the end good old common sense and experiance will win out every time.
 
B

BobbySparkle

New member
I remember being around 14 or 15 yrs old when I found Mel Frank and Ed Rosenthal' book.
My aunt and uncle, old woodstock hippies, had it stashed up in the WALK-IN closet. I read that book faithfully for about a month. When I finally got it all figure out I turned that walk-in closet into my own lab. After that point, everyone knew where I was, " he is in the closet with those stupid plants again." Good memories!
 
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