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By
Nona
Dead Rebel Of The Week
~ overgrow.com ~
The Internet has created many new and bizarre communities filled with groups of anonymous strangers having a common interest. Few have been as large, as closely-knit, or as long-lasting as the message community at Overgrow.com. Hundreds of mom-and-pop pot farmers logged in each day to share experiences, growing tips, seed hybrids, and photographic grow diaries. The philosophy of the site was simple: if you use pot, grow your own, and encourage all your friends to grow theirs as well. Spread the word to as many users as possible that waiting around for the drug laws to change while you spend too much money on bags is futile, and the only way to enact real change in the drug laws is to “overgrow the government”. If you don’t have a place to grow, then make like fucking Johnny Appleseed and go across the country throwing seeds onto the ground everywhere you stop. The site also offered helpful tips for concealment of one’s “garden”, thereby taking a tacit but aggressive stance against law enforcement on the issue. People responded to the message and the community grew at a rate of about 20% each year. Over the years Overgrow had attached itself to a seed clearinghouse in Canada and was discreetly aiding pot “breeders” in circulating their wares. The community was international; though overwhelmingly white and western, it was a clearinghouse for growers the world over.
Sometime around the beginning of 2006, Overgrow.com disappeared. Posters and diarists logged in to find everything – the front page, the boards, the clearinghouse – gone. Rumors have abounded on other sites that sprang up in Overgrow’s wake as to where it went. In true paranoid pothead fashion, the most prevalent one is that the site founders were pressured to give up the IP addresses of board users to the US government in order to avoid DEA prosecution themselves. This seems a little silly to me, but I can understand the reasoning behind it. The US government decided a long time ago to completely forsake pot. It remains on a list of banned substances with strong psycho-agents like LSD and addictive analgesics like heroin. Efforts to control its use for medical purposes in local and state law have been bitterly resisted by the Feds. Our president has even publicly chided Canada for considering medical marijuana use. Because so many high-dollar lobbying groups – textile, tobacco and pharmaceutical concerns chief among them – have the potential to be hurt by legitimizing pot, the US government has jealously kept pot illegal and has aggressively defended its interests against the rise in popular use of the drug over the past fifty years.
But enough about all of that. Overgrow changed my life, and as such this piece is meant primarily as a sort of eulogy – or, really, a tribute. Therefore, I want to pass on a little piece of Overgrow’s legacy and share a few of the best indoor-growing tips I’ve found on the site over the years. May this information never be lost to the masses.
Let There be Light
First off, know what kind of light and light cycle you’re going to need. If you are growing pot in artificial light, a large bank of florescent lights is okay to start with, but will not yield anywhere near the size or weight of blooming plant as an HPS. How much wattage you can go with depends on how light-tight your grow space is, how big it is, and how many plants you have in your grow. The disadvantage to using one powerful light over several smaller weaker ones is that all your plants will be constantly reaching toward the one light source, causing them to establish a grow pattern of stretching upwards. You don’t want that. You want them to produce a lot of bud and grow OUTWARDS. This can be accomplished by lining your grow space with plenty of Mylar and creating a way of allowing your light to be raised and lowered. Thus, your light source is accommodating the growth pattern of your plants rather than the other way around.
You’ll have to leave the lights on for a full 24 hours a day during the vegetative phase of plant growth. You do want SOME height to your plants, and you can control that aspect of it with the length of your 24-hour phase. Some people go back to 24 hours at the end of a grow to add some height to their plants, too, but I’ve never seen the point of this – it diverts energy from maturing the active tricomes (THC-producing secretions) on the bud, possibly compromising the potency of the harvest. The average length of an indoor 24-hour phase is about three weeks or so.
Once you’ve achieved the desired height of your seedlings (which you can put directly into dirt or sprout wrapped in a damp paper towel ahead of time – your choice) you’re ready to go to 12-12 – twelve hours of light and twelve hours of darkness, simulating the light patterns of an outdoor growing season. During the twelve hours of darkness you must do your best to keep your grow environment light-tight and as close to complete darkness as possible, to avoid stressing the plants and causing the defensive reaction of hermaphroditism (more on that later). Because of our work schedules, at my house this usually means that the twelve hours of light in our grow chamber will be at night, so I have to schedule household chores accordingly. This is a pain but totally worth it.
We never experience enough of a difference in our electric bill to alert the power company to any sudden spike in power usage, but results vary for everyone, so be careful, especially during the 24-hour phase.
The Dirt
We happen to have very fertile soil in our small backyard, so we often use our own dirt along with some potting soil purchased at Wal-Mart (a shout-out’s in order here for the retail giant for its crucial help in our illegal growing endeavor – thanks guys!) but this can be risky as it can import parasites you don’t want in your controlled environment. We use five-gallon buckets for the grow medium itself, but any largish container will do according to how many plants you’re planning to grow. Our soil seems especially vulnerable to spider mites, so for the past couple of grows we’ve stuck strictly to bag soil. Again, you don’t need to seek out any special kind of soil, the kind you can get at Wally world or any discount hardware store is fine. Save your money for plant food, and a bag or two of worm castings (earthworm shit). By mere visual inspection of our backyard dirt we were able to determine that part of what makes it so fertile is a large volume of worm shit in the soil. In order to yield the benefit of the enzymes and added mineral content of worm shit without worry of importing unwanted parasites, we decided to purchase bags of castings despite their rather prohibitive cost (fifteen dollars for five pounds). Since we usually stick to small grows of two to six plants, one bag usually suffices for a grow. Worm castings are available at agricultural stores like Agway, Farmway, or gardening specialty stores.
SEX
Within a week of going to a 12-12 light cycle sex will appear on the seedlings. Unless you’re growing from clones or attempting to breed, you will have to watch for and uproot as soon as possible any male (seed-producing) plants. They’re easy to spot once you know what to look for – sexual manifestation on a male will resemble tiny green testicles growing at the base of leaf junctures. Females, the desirable flowering plants, will display stamen, small white hairlike structures, at the base of leaf junctures. Hermaphrodites are common in hemp plants, and nearly as undesirable as males because they divert energy from flowering into producing seeds. Their seeds aren’t any good either, because they will only produce more hermies. Usually, hermies are made, not born, so by taking care not to stress your plants you can avoid them. But sometimes they do occur naturally, so keep an eye on your plants even after stamen appear on them. If they develop “balls” as well, yank ‘em.
Care and Feeding
Here’s where my own knowledge gets a little sketchy, because my husband usually handles most of this. Usually, you will need to water every day until you’re nearing the end of your grow cycle, which will vary in length according to the breed of the plant. Indica-based (Eastern origin, high-potency) weed will have a far shorter cycle, about ninety days, than a sativa-based (South American, warm-climate-favoring) weed, which can linger into twenty weeks before reaching the proper level of tricome maturity for optimum harvest conditions. Because of their tendency to stretch, sativas are a bigger pain to feed and have wildly mixed quality results. This is why most indoor growers vastly favor indica. Toward the end of a grow, when tricomes turn from clear to cloudy (visible with a pocket microscope), parching your soil helps to increase THC production and produces a more potent plant. But it’s risky; even as late as a week or so prior to your projected harvest date, parching can stress the plant and turn it hermie. So can nutrient burn from too much feeding; if you are feeding them every three days or so, keep your eyes peeled for scorched leaf tips. If you spot some, cool it with the plant food.
There’s a lot more to it than this, but this is just as brief an overview of a grow as I can manage. Maybe someday the powers-that-be will see fit to resurrect this dead rebel who changed my life and freed me from the shakedown artists of the black market, but until that day, I’ll keep the torch lit and spread the word.
Grow your own.
