PERHAPS you have an older relative who entertains (or bores) you with tales of how in their day, they bought marijuana by the “lid,” and it had crazy names like Santa Marta Gold, Panama Red, and Thai stick. And it wasn’t just cheaper, it was better—it made you laugh for hours and didn’t cause overwhelming sleepiness. “The stuff today just makes me tired,” they grumble in their tie-dyed dashiki, reeking of patchouli.
But before you discount Captain Flower Power’s burnout ramblings, it’s worth examining how we went from Giggle Bud to Couch-Lock Kush.
In this column, we’ve previously looked at how cannabis became popular in the US, how most of it came from Mexico, and how, by the mid- to late 1970s, 90 percent of marijuana was imported from outside the country. Then the US began spraying the toxic herbicide paraquat on fields of cannabis grown in Mexico, in an effort to stem the flow into the States. Sure, some got onto food crops and livestock and people, but you know—America, fuck yeah!
At the same time, a “back to the land” movement was under way, and Haight-Ashbury refugees were buying cheap acreage in the Humboldt, California, area, later known as the Emerald Triangle. They plucked out the seeds they found in bags of pot they bought, and began their own outdoor grows. This also started the “sinsemilla” style of growing, in which male plants were yanked out early, allowing for “seedless weed,” which was stronger and commanded a higher price.
In 1983, CAMP was created—the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, a complex collection of over 110 local, state, and federal agencies with a specific mission to eradicate outdoor marijuana cultivation. It’s the largest law enforcement task force in the US and initially conducted its mission with the use of heavily armed drug warriors descending from helicopters.
Many people, not wishing to be shot to death for growing a plant, opted to take their grow ops indoors. The problem was that the strains they had been growing outdoors were primarily sativa—plants that grew 15 feet or taller, and took months to complete their growth cycles.
But globe-trekking hippies who had visited the Hindu Kush region—land that includes Afghanistan and Kashmir—discovered strains of cannabis that grew faster, remained a manageable height, and produced a more narcotic drowsy effect. These were indica plants.
Soon, these highly sought-after seeds became the strains to grow, and that in turn begat the legendary Humboldt weed. The region produced such high-quality cannabis that, by 2010, 79 percent of the marijuana consumed in the US came from California.
Now it seems that pendulum is slowly shifting back. With the widespread access of medicinal marijuana now in 23 states, there’s been a resurgence of the old-school-style sativa strains, domestically produced and paraquat free.
But no one calls it a “lid” anymore, Grandpa.
This is by far my favorite weekly column. Funny, informative, and relative. Keep it up, Jardine!
The term “Lid” harkens back to the day before the Freaks and probably back before the Featnicks. It was coined as a unit of measurement by taking a standard garbage can lid, covering the area with “Gage” before putting it in a bag. Baggies weren’t produced until the mid ’60s, so I’m not sure what sort of container was used way back when, but a Lid in volume is approximately one ounce in weight, depending upon density, oil, and water content.
There are hybrid strains nowadays, which have been bred to be compact, high yielding with high calyx to leaf ratio, and short flowering time, yet high in THC while low in CBD. Probably the crowning achievement of this, is Chocolope by DNA Genetics.
Chocolope needs to be super cropped when grown indoors and/or grown in smaller pots than outdoors, as it does tend to get quite large. Super cropping is bend the top end of calyxes rather then to cut it off. The affect is to stunt and slow the growth and allow more calyxes to more fully develop, resulting in even greater yields in a shorter plant. Figure about one gallon of soil for every foot of height you expect the plant reach or want the height to be limited to. Don’t start plants in small pots, as feeler roots quickly develop and sense the limit of the amount of soil in whatever size of pot.
Using the term Lid, keeps you from being held accountable for quantity.
Four fingers width in a single sammich sized Baggie is a fair sized Lid. Not the newer zip lock bags, but the old school folding flap style Baggie, where you roll the bag air tight, then lick the flap and fold it to the outside of the bag. The flap will stick from the spit.
Read that Beatnicks, of course. After all, the F and the B use the same typing finger.
Introducing the first portable music player
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5yvMExqKNA
You mention Santa Marta Gold, which actually in fact is an ancient, very stable hybrid. It has a relatively short flowering time, and is high in THC while low in CBD.
Stability. That’s a major issue with hybrids. In most hybrid strains, there is wide variation in phenotypes. You get a wide variety of different types of plants, in vast multiple combinations of characteristics from the parent plants. It takes many generations of selective breeding to stabilize a hybrid strain to the point where it will consistently produce the phenotype that you desire. Some seed companies spend time continuing to further stabilize, already famous strains, coming up with what they determine to be a superior phenotype. Sagarmatha especially does this sort of work on modern classic strains. Soma stabilizes his own custom strains. There are many other fine breeders, as well. Even in Santa Marta Gold Columbian there are two, distinct phenos. One, appears more Indica while the other appears more Sativa, but they both produce the same effects. It takes at least seven generations to produce a pure strain, but that’s no guarantee that the results will be the exact combination of traits that you want. It takes thousands of phenotypes of each generation to produce all the various combinations of characteristics to select from phenotypes.
Probably the three most stable of the modern hybrids, are Northern Lights, Skunk, and US Government, top secret weapons grade Cannabis, G 13, developed at Ole Miss and surreptitiously released to Neville Schoenmakers, the man who first sold Cannabis seeds via mail order, advertising in High Times Magazine.
Flying Dutchmen has a strain named G Force, which combines all three of these strong, stable hybrids. In fact David “Sam the Skunkman” Watson, is a founder of the company, and was a young intern working on the large collaborative project which developed the original Skunk strain in Northern, California. G Force is a strong, high yielding, compact plant, with a short flowering time, and a taste like hash.
Northern Lights is a cross between Thai Sativa and Afghan Indica. Skunk combines Acapulco Gold, Colombian of some sort, and Afghan Indica. G 13 is mostly if not entirely, Indica; probably Afghan. Bear in mind that it’s not only a matter of which strains are used, but each of the individual phenotypes discovered from cultivating thousands upon thousands of plants in order to find the exceptionally strong, or other wise unique and sometime mutant phenotypes to select as parents for further breeding. I’m not sure what the percentages of active Cannabinoids typically are for this strain. It’s probably high for both, but even if it’s an even ratio, CBD tends to counteract the psychedelic effects of THC.
Chocolope is much more trippy.
Michoacán is virtually extinct, due to paraquat, but is a contributing strain in Chocolope, along with Chocolate Thai, which is really Hawaiian. The Panama Red seeds commercially available are actually unstable hybrid, and Acapulco Gold seems only available in hybrid as well. There are very few, land race Sativas left on the planet.
The Real Seed Company offers a couple of pure Sativas from India, but they don’t ship to the USA, and most resellers don’t carry their full line. Ace Seeds has some probably pure Sativas, but most of them are fine hybrids of Sativa strains. Their Panama is from Cannabiogen, a good breeder, but the Panama has some Indica, evidenced in an occasional phenotype. Reeferman has some pure Sativas. Those too are wonderful hybrids of Sativa strains. The mission there is to create hybrids to maintain vigor and potency as commercial inbreeding results in a loss of that over time.
Even Nirvana and their spinoff company, Sativa Seedbank, sell only hybrid virtual Sativas. They will tell you if you ask them, but only if you ask them. They managed to get the flowering times down. The flavors, fragrance, and effects are virtually like the Sativa, name sake strains, but they have a base of Northern Lights.