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Pot moves inside - on indoor Marijuana Cultivation
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POT MOVES INSIDE
IN THE LATE 1970s word reached the San FranciscoBay Area of a new strain of
Cannabis indica being grown in the Pacific Northwest. When the "Afghani"
from Seattle reached the Bay Area's shelves, if fetched nearly twice the
price then being paid for sativa varieties grown on California's sunny
slopes.
There was no mystery to the price differential. The indicas, likeAfghani,
have been cultivated for thousands of years for the chemical
tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Those millennia of cultural selection have
produced a cannabis genotype with an extremely high percentage of THC. The
sativas, on the other hand, have traditionally been cultivated for hemp
fiber and consequently contain a smaller percentage of THC. Since today's
consumers demand THC from their cannabis, it stands to reason that
cultivators can double their price by growing a cannabis variety with twice
as much THC.
The mystery was in the location. How could anyone grow plantsfrom the high,
dry deserts of Afghanistan in the rain-drenched forests of the Pacific
Northwest? Furthermore, how could they grow enough to export a surplus to
the Bay Area?
I began to think that a technological breakthrough had occurred,something
akin to the Israeli development of drip irrigation. So, after collecting a
couple of names, I packed my bags, notebooks, and cameras, and then headed
north up Interstate Five.
I met the "Preacher" in the office of a Seattle publisher. Aftera brief
introduction in a back room, the Preacher began his sermon: "Marijuana is a
sacrament," he said, "and marijuana gardens are churches. If people would
learn to smoke more sacrament the world would be a much better place." And
if the price of admission to the secret gardens was a sermon, I would sit
and listen.
The Preacher has surprising news when he and several of hislay assistants
picked me up at the motel that evening. My tour of the "churches" would
begin with a Super Sonics game at Seattle's Kingdome. We soon found
ourselves sitting high up in the press section with refreshments in hand.
Now, the Kingdome is one of those marvels of modern sportsarchitecture -- an
enclosed multipurpose stadium. Picture a small mountain of solid granite;
take about a million pounds of TNT and hollow it out; level the floor;
install seats up the sides; and there you have a Kingdome. And though cold,
dark, and dank, this Kingdome enables fans to enjoy sports right through
some of the longest rains in the USA.
"Why do you suppose we brought you here?" the Preacher asked. When I
shrugged, he squinted up into the light and said, "Check out the lamps.
They are the real miracle in this stadium." That was easy enough to see.
Without those lights, of which there were hundreds, the Super Sonics would
sustain many injuries tripping over stalagmites in the dark. "Each one of
those lights is a 1,000-watt metal halide lamp, so they use a lot of energy
and generate a lot of lumens.
"Now as you probably know," the Preachercontinued, "the big money in
professional sports comes from television revenue. And television cameras
are calibrated for sunshine. So, for a broadcast to be of good quality, the
lighting must closely match the frequency of sunshine. Those metal halides
were designed to do just that. People sitting at home with a beer in their
hand hardly notice that the game is being played in this big dark cave
because the lighting is so much like sunshine."
The Nine-Light Garden
After the game we headed toward theOlympic Peninsula where, I was promised,
we would visit a commercialsize grow-room. The Olympic Mountains receive up
to 150 inches of rainfall per year; we drove for a long time with windshield
wipers slapping back and forth.
"Funny thing about all this rain," thePreacher remarked. "There is so much
of it that we can't grow our sacrament outdoors like the growers in
California. Yet there is so much falling water that we have an abundant and
cheap source of electricity. So our clouds really do have a silver thing."
Finally, somewhere deep in the night, wepulled into a gravel driveway and
got out to stretch our legs. The clouds had parted to reveal the twinkle of
stars. It was cold. The green grass crunched beneath our feet as we walked
around a modest suburban home toward a detached two-car garage. The
Preacher opened a door and we entered a room filled with lawnmowers, tools,
gardening implements, and the other paraphernalia typically associates with
the average American dream. But after closing and locking the outside door,
the Preacher removed a padlock from an inside door leading to the other half
of the garage. He then turned and said, "Are you ready?"
"Yes," I replied. He swung the dooropen to Afghanistan at high noon.
My eyes, accustomed to the soft twinkleof starlight, revolted at the flood
of light which came pouring forth. The grow-room had been lined in
sheetrock and painted white. Eight 1,000-watt halide lamps, like those
which illuminated the Kingdome, were shining over a dense stand of mature
sweet-smelling sinsemilla. The room vibrated with the lights' buzzing
ballasts.
"They are an indica/sativa hybrid," the Preachersaid, pulling the top of a
plant down to his nose. "And they are almost ready for harvest."
I tried to count plants but they were so thickI couldn't see the entire
forest. "How many plants do you have in here?" I asked.
The resident grower, an administrator with alocal city government, replied,
"There are about thirty plants. We grow two crops per year and hope for a
yield of a half-pound per plant."
"But you have to use a propagation light toget two good harvest per year,"
added the Preacher. "We have another halide out in a shed that we use for
starting seeds and making cuttings. Then, when we harvest this crop, we
have another already started and ready to grow out."
"You have spring out in the shed and autumnin here. How do you regulate the
growing seasons?" I asked.
"The most important element in controllinggrowth is the photoperiod," the
administrator answered. "And controlling the photoperiod of these halied is
really easy with automatic timers. We run the lights here in the grow-room
for twelve hours a day to initiate flowering. We run the propagation light
eighteen hours a day to initiate vegetative growth."
"How much electricity do you use?" I asked.
"Followme," said the administrator. We walkedback outside into the cold and
dark and headed toward the house. He stopped at the side of the house and
shined a light on the electricity meter. I glanced at the meter and saw it
spinning with the enthusiasm of a child's toy top. "Each of those lights
burns about as much electricity as two twenty-one-inch color televisions.
That's a lot of juice."
"Doesn't somebody wonder about all of thatelectricity?" I asked.
"We run the lights at night so the meter readerwon't see the meter spinning
so wildly," the administrator replied. "And we are going to install an
electric pottery kiln for camouflage. But there aren't many people running
this many lights, so the authorities aren't really watching closely, we
hope!"
The administrator and I hustled back into thewarmth of the grow-room, where
the Preacher had decided it was time for a small harvest. "We do about
three harvests for each crop," he said. "First we take the top 'solas'
because they are next to the lights and more developed. Then in another
week or so we harvest the rest of the colas from the top half of the plant.
Then we harvest what's left on the bottom half of the plant. This technique
allows each flowering node access to light and ensures maximum production of
flowers."
I shot photographs as they snipped their wayfrom plant to plant. "What is
the biggest problem you had to overcome to grow indoors?" I asked.
"Our biggest problem at this location was allthe moisture," the Preacher
answered. "We started with a pure Afghani indica, but when the buds got big
and tightly packed they started melting away with botrytis. We called it
'The Great Bud Rot.' So we crossed the indica with a sativa from Colombia
that had a good resistance to botrytis. Now we have a strain with a high
THC content and a resistance to rot."
On the way back into town I asked the Preacherif there were any real big
grow-rooms. "You know, ones with a hundred lights?"
"None that I know," he replied. "The logisticsof keeping something like
that secret would be nearly impossible. So if I did know of one, I wouldn't
breathe a word about it to anyone. But I do know of one real efficient
operation and the growers just might let you in for a look."
The Twelve-Light Garden
Jack" and "Jill" were professional indoorgrowers who survived by moving
their operation from location to location in the back of U-Haul trucks.
"They can change houses and identities in less than one week," the Preacher
said.
Like deer in hunting season, Jack and Jill werenot easily approached. It
took many phone calls to set up a meeting and a great deal of talking to
gain their confidence. Finally, their professional pride opened the door
and I went in for a visit.
They were, at the time, located in an olderhouse somewhere in Seattle's
University District. Their neighbors were suspicious; when I arrived late
in the afternoon they peeked out from behind their window blinds.
It was dark inside the house. When my eyesbecame accustomed to the gloom, I
saw that Jack and Jill did not enjoy many creature comforts. Their living
room had only two old overstuffed chairs and one reading light. Old
newspapers and magazines were scattered about the floor. When I was ushered
into an unlit kitchen for a cup of coffee, I asked why they didn't turn on a
light. "We are into energy conservation," Jill answered, "and every little
bit helps."
After a few moments of coffee and conversation,I discovered what she was
taling about. Suddenly the floor started vibrating like the deck of an
aircraft carrier on a high-speed run. "What is that?" I asked.
"Just the lights," Jack answered. "We run themat night because we don't
want the power company to read the meter when the lights are running." Jill
turned on a kitchen light (25 watt), locked the front door, and then we went
downstairs.
The basements, about 800 square feet, was extremelyactive. I counted ten
1,000-watt halide lamps and two banks of fluorescents. They were separated
into two growing areas by a large furnace. The walls of the largest room
were covered with a reflective tinfoil insulation. Cannabis indica was
everywhere; there must have been a thousand plants in various stages of
growth. Transpired particulates saturated the air with a skunklike
fragrance. The entire basement vibrated with the buzz of halide ballasts.
It was not a comfortable environment. The airwas charged and felt as though
bolts of electricity were about to jump from floor to ceiling.
We stood on the stairs for a while and justlooked. Finally, I asked why
they had two growing areas.
"One area is spring, and the other autumn,"Jill replied. "Come down and
I'll show you what I mean." She led the way into a corner of the basement
which contained the fluorescents and two halides.
"We run these lights eighteen hours a day tokeep the plants in their
vegetative cycle," Jill said. Then, pointing to a row of large plants
against the wall, she continued, "These are our mother plants. They are
variations we developed from an Afghani strain we call 'Big Momma.' This
one is a Thai/Afghani hybrid; this one is an African/Afghani hybrid. We
take cuttings from these mother plants and root them under the fluorescents
and then grow them under the halides. Then we sell the rooted cuttings to
other growers or move them into the autumn room for flowering."
"What price do you get for the cuttings?"
"We get from forty to one hundred dollarsapiece, depending on the size of
the order," Jack answered. "Since there is as much risk in selling ten as
in selling a hundred, we charge a lot for an order of ten."
The tinfoil-covered autumn room was filledwith one-and-a-half-foot cuttings
in eight-inch pots. "We don't grow tall plants like they do outdoors," said
Jill. "We just grow them up to about two feet and then switch the light
cycle back to 12 hours a day to initiate flowering. Each of the cuttings
will produce about two ounces of sinsemilla buds."
"What price do you get for the flowers?"
"We wholesale them for $200 an ounce. Ourcustomers break the ounces down
into grams and then sell each gram for about twelve to fifteen dollars."
"What about the electricity? Doesn't the utilitycompany wonder about the
size of your bill?"
"Each halide costs about thirty dollars a monthto operate," Jack answered.
"It adds up to about $300 a month, which we figure is about as far as we can
go and still remain respectable. We installed a hot tub out back, but of
course we never heat it. We are also thinking about getting a
propane-powered generator with a custom-built muffler. It would sure help."
"What about the smell?" I asked. "Surely yourneighbors can smell the
plants."
"We don't ventilate until the neighbors areasleep, which is usually around
one o'clock in the morning. And we use negative-ion generators," Jill
replied, pointing to a small black box. "They cause the odor-bearing
particles to fall to the ground instead of floating out with the exhaust."
"It seems as though you have solved the basicproblems," I commented. "But
how do you keep everything under control all of the time? What about the
gossip of the neighbors or an unexpected visit by the landlord?"
To my nervous questions, Jacn and Jill smiled,toked, and said," ... 'ere."
Supply And Demand
The Preacher was right about Californiagrowers: they did, and do, grow their
sinsemilla under the sun. If you consider the resources with which they
operate -- the ample sunshine, the hills covered in native vegetation, the
'0-acre ranchettes -- you can readily understand why. But something
happened between the late '70s and the middle '80s; a new industry blossomed
into life.
Today there are approximately 35 retail storeson the West Coast, and five in
the Sand Francisco Bay region alone, which cater to indoor growers. They
are hybrid enterprises, half light store and half garden supply store.
Furthermore, growers can simply purchase their halide from a conventional
lighting store. ("I, ahh, need a bright light for my back yard.")
To get a handle on the scope of this industry,I decided to ask the light
manufacturers just how well their business is doing these days. Though most
refused to disclose details, a cooperative gentleman from
Phillips-Westinghouse said that 1977, his company manufactured 1,600,000
metal halide lamps, and in 1984, it manufactured 3,100,000.
Law enforcement sees the indoor gardens as avictory of sorts. When I asked
Jack Beecham, director of California's Campaign Against Marijuana Planting
(CAMPe, about the phenomenon of growers moving indoors, he replied, "There's
no question that a portion of it (cultivation activity) has been forced
indoors. Just how much we really don't know at this point. We see this as
a victory because it probably costs about ten to twelve times more to
cultivate indoors than it does outdoors. And by forcing it indoors we see a
prime target for asset seizure. It's going to be difficult for anyone to
deny the fact of a marijuana garden in their bedrom or living room."
"What strategy will CAMP use for finding theindoor gardens?" I asked.
"We think through traditional informationsources, like informants, we will
be able to target many of the growing operations," he answered.
"It would seem that one easy way to find thegrowers would be through a
search of electricity bills. Does CAMP monitor electricity bills?" I
asked.
"I know some local agencies and the DEA havedone some of that," he answered.
" can't speak with any real authority, but it is my understanding that there
may be an invasion-of-privacy problem. One of our most knowledgeable agents
says that we can't just randomly search utility bills. We have to have
grounds to do that, like information from informants."
"I have heard rumors that the DEA is consideringusing infrared scanners to
check houses for abnormal heat leaks. Does CAMP use such scanners?"
"There is nothing Star Wars-y about what wedo: we just do it with the naked
eye. At this point in time indoor growing is not our priority. Our
priority is the outdoor operation, and we have plenty of those to go
around."
Imagine fifty more years of Cannabis Prohibition:to catch the cultivators,
authorities use an infrared scanning device capable of detecting a single
marijuana plant from a geosynchronous orbit twenty thousand miles above the
Earth. To resolve their dilemma, cultivators grow a strain of cannabis so
potent that one six-inch sinsemilla plant, growing under a twenty-five-watt
lamp in a lead-lined box, can supply the entire demand of a city the size of
San Francisco...
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