Lacking the capital for expensive growing mediums, Uncle Buds took a low-tech approach and found success by using the fertile native soil of Eastern Washington
Story by Greg James
Photos by Ken Pedevilla, Byron Miller and Greg James
“Dirt weed” is not ordinarily a name associated with high-quality marijuana. In fact, if you asked most people familiar with the term, they’d say it was mostly used in the past to describe the least desirable grade of Mexican pot that was widely available in the 1970s.
Sold at $10 a lid (roughly an ounce), dirt weed was low potency, poorly cured, often moldy mixed-field cannabis from Central Mexico.
Dirt weed as used in this article is actually the opposite — a well-tended crop of good quality marijuana grown in the native soil of the Okanogan Valley a few miles north of Omak, Washington.
Byron Miller, the owner of Uncle Buds, had two major challenges when he planted this past spring. He had limited capital and lacked the resources to plant in expensive pre-mixed potting soil. And, like so many others, he got a relatively late start to the spring planting season. After some serious soul-searching, Byron decided he’d scale back his original plans and see what he could do using mostly native soil, limited cash and a smaller crop.
In early June 2015, Byron and several friends spent a week tilling and digging, tilling and digging, and tilling and digging some more. In the end, they managed to do a good job of turning and aerating close to an acre of native soil in an area on the west side of the Okanogan River. While the soil didn’t look ideal and had a much higher sand content than most cannabis growers would prefer, Byron knew surrounding farmers managed to produce some great orchard fruit and corn in the same area. Besides, he thought, the native bunchgrass, bitterbrush and sage already grew well on his plot of land. The trick, he reckoned, was to make sure the existing soil was properly prepared. Byron planted 800 female starts of various sizes on June 6, with the vast majority either planted straight into the existing soil, or in fabric pots that were mostly native soil with some higher quality potting soil on the bottom to act as a stabilizer and moisture retention agent.
Byron’s choice of strains included many of the usual suspects: Girl Scout Cookies, Blueberry Kush, Dutch Treat, Pineapple Kush, Blue Dream, Juicy Fruit and Purps, to name a few. When the initial planting was done, Byron installed a drip system for irrigation and nutrient delivery. He used a relatively simple design that utilized a standard stock tank with gravity-fed hoses and drip lines. The drip lines were manually controlled, but effective. Since money was tight, and ingenuity had to be substituted for capital, most of the equipment was bought at Home Depot and the local ranch supply store.
Byron Miller
Byron, who was originally from the Seattle area, sees his situation as typical among some business owners in the cannabis space: “I initially figured this would be a relatively simple process, but many of my original ideas and plans had to be modified, altered and scaled back along the way,” he said. “A lot of the problems I encountered would not have happened if the licensing process moved along faster.
“Like a lot of people, I thought we’d get things going last summer, but what turned out to be the most vexing issue was not the actual process of getting the grow license, but finding the right place to set up shop, and a land owner who was friendly and open-minded when it came to the new cannabis industry.”
It wasn’t easy. One promising location was nixed because of an infestation of mites among some local hop growers (hops are notorious mite nurseries). Another was passed over because of community opposition.
“In the end, I settled on a plot just north of Omak that had proven itself as a successful medical grow site,” Byron said. He connected with Lynette Key, who — along with Richard “Bud” Vest — was eager to get a state-licensed facility up and operational on Bud’s land. Bud and Lynette grew several strains of medical cannabis at the location, and many of those test plants produced more than four pounds of flower in 2014. Some of their biggest producers were planted in the local native soil.
Lynette has her own ideas why.
“Ideally all growers would love to plant in a specially mixed, high-quality potting soil,” she said.
“Sometimes, though, if you don’t have the cash, you go with what you have, and make do. I knew that this area had soil that would work because of all the orchards around us. They use native soil and produce lots of fruit. We decided to test it and see what would happen.
“We also knew we were not going to have the money of the big, well-financed growers and decided to embark on a different path that substituted hard work and sweat for capital expenditures.”
It worked.
Meanwhile, Byron is a pragmatist: “Without a lot of money and big financial backers, I knew I wasn’t going to produce a lot of AAA, top-shelf bud, so my goal and business model morphed into something a bit more realistic; I decided that I’d mostly produce for the oil and hash market, and sell off the crop to a processor who could then create other value-add products with a good supply of flower and relatively high-THC, sun-grown cannabis.”
When the first early maturing strains were harvested in mid-September, Byron and Lynette were pleasantly surprised.
“I was blown away,” Byron said. “Our Juicy Fruit came in at 27% THC, and turned out to be quite good. It wasn’t the stuff of legends, but I’ll take 27% THC any day, and for the cost per gram that I produced it for, I consider it to be a big success.”
Later harvests also proved to be overachievers and consistently came in at 22-27% THC.
Byron and Lynette are justifiably proud of the farm they named Uncle Buds in honor of Bud, who passed away in the spring of 2015 at the ripe old age of 89. Lynette is certain Bud would be proud of their crop.
”Bud never used marijuana, but he was always an open-minded guy, and thought that pot was probably no worse than the whiskey so many of his friends consumed,” she said. “Back in 2013, when word spread that he was going to allow a marijuana farm on his property, lots of his old friends shunned him. But he shrugged it off, and said they probably weren’t real friends anyway.”
Lynette’s words speak volumes about a wonderful, friendly man who lived a full life and loved visitors to his little ranch just off Highway 97 near Omak.
Together, Byron and Lynette have defied the odds. On a shoestring budget, they managed to grow a big field of cannabis that turned out to be much better than the naysayers predicted. And, in the process, they kept alive a promise made to Bud.