Supernatural sprouts in living TLO soil mix. Photo courtesy The Rev.
Once in a while, a person comes along who inspires others to higher standards. It could be a teacher at school, who through engaging lessons inspires students to learn, or a spiritual leader who enlightens pupils toward the correct path.
Known only to his admirers as The Rev, this master all-natural grower and breeder has been converting the masses to the benefits of using a living soil-mix to unlock the full potential of cannabis for decades. He is the He uses his own descriptive monikers such as “micro-beasties” in place of microbial life, and his brand of cultivation methodology is called True Living Organics. Between breeding world-class genetics, and spreading his love through the pages of his books and as the cultivation editor of Skunk Magazine, Marijuana Venture’s Chris Bayley caught up with The Rev to see what’s cooking.
Marijuana Venture: The Cannabis world has made remarkable strides over the last five years, but especially in the last two years with Washington and Colorado opening the doors for adult recreational use. It looks as though Oregon is not far behind. How would you like to see the state implement its system?
The Rev: Carefully. Very carefully. There’s always some greedy mofos ready to pounce on anything like this and wreck it with their ignorance. I despise most corporate thinking and I am really a believer in the artisan growers — large or small don’t matter — just so there are lots of them that understand what real elegant cannabis is and how to grow it, pure.
MV: What’s your hope for the industry, on the national level looking into the future?
The Rev: Well, I think it will eventually make it to the same place liquor is, and I guess that wouldn’t be so bad. As long as the artisans can freely grow it still. Legally, I mean. Growing cannabis to unlock its genetic potential is absolutely a skill. Not a lot of growers possess this level of savvy, in my opinion; however, that number is growing.
MV: Do you see cannabis eventually segueing into a commercial-like state with a few large companies dominating the scene, or do think there are enough cannabis connoisseurs to support the craft growers within the industry?
The Rev: There will always be the artisans; you can’t stop them even if you try very hard. There will of course be a lot of ubiquitous crap everywhere backed up by massive marketing and hype, but this is sadly the case with just about anything. If you know where to look, or pursue it tenaciously, you will find the quality you seek. Truth.
MV: Your book, True Living Organics, was manna from heaven for organic growers. Most cannabis growing books have somewhat of a reoccurring theme that leaves you having to read between the lines when it comes to fertilizing schedules. Your step-by-step process of how to grow cannabis through the different stages of cultivation has been a first. Was the decision to spell it all out like you did important for you?
The Rev: Well, I am partially disabled, and when I first started all-natural style TLO growing in containers I could get really nice yields. However, in order to pull this off I needed to flower in fairly large containers. This was hard for me to lug around and move these big containers so I endeavored to persevere a way I could do it all in smaller containers while keeping my yields fat. While my book does show you a step-by-step, it is really full of options, as far as teas, spikes, layers, etc., and is meant to be used partially or fully as your particular environment dictates.
MV: The process of building a growing container through using layers and spikes is fascinating. The idea, it sounds like, is to develop a very biologically-diverse growing medium in which a smorgasbord of nutrients become highly available to the plant. It’s simply magnificent. Tell us how much time went into developing the TLO growing system?
The Rev: Right. TLO packs a lot of food into a fairly small container, using a powerful, living supernatural soil-mix. The “cooking” (fast composting) process essentially bonds up all those nutrients with other elements making them unavailable (or immobilized) for the most part, until the plant working with the micro-beasties frees them up, at the plant’s “request” as the plant manipulates the microbial life, like a puppet master would.
I have been refining TLO for about a decade now, and the hardest thing about learning to grow this way is unlearning all the BS the nutrient corporations have “taught you” regarding how plants grow and thrive, because in reality, it’s a whole paradigm shift in thinking. TLO is actually a “just add water” (good water) style of growing, and the philosophy of TLO assumes the plant knows best how to take care of the plant, and as the human in the equation, you let the plant grow and allow her to do what she does so well. All us humans do is set the stage correctly with all the options/elements the plant will want access to.
The heightened metabolism in container growing by adding aeration via perlite, and getting all the nutrients “cooked” into the soil so they won’t be reacting to each other, is really the power-hammer part of the style. TLO works with nature here, leveraging the high metabolism of the living soil-mix and the plant to have the supernatural effects; using a living soil-mix, I would always try to use a fuller spectrum in flowering, and while HPS (high-pressure sodium) lights do work, they fall short of results you could get under a more natural spectrum like when using an Eye Blue metal halide to flower with. I wouldn’t steer you wrong, this is all personal experience speaking here, and I have been growing cannabis for a minute.
MV: On the topic of TLO soil implementation, how can producers utilize these
principles on a large scale?
The Rev: I get asked this question often, and my answer has always been consistent and true. First, you need to actually “get” the TLO philosophy. And once this happens, trust me, the answer is obvious and actually easily accomplished. It is basically a sustainable system; you just need to let it happen. As your size grows, so will your supplies grow; waste nothing; play into Mother Nature’s strengths of knowing what the hell she is doing when it comes to growing plants; and leverage the powers of evolution by recycling your soil-mix. Your micro-beasties grow, populate, and yes, evolve into being better and better at your particular environment.
MV: When it comes to the world of human nutrition, the term locavore refers to sourcing your food from within a hundred-mile radius. Borrowing from this philosophy, is it possible for producers to implement TLO gardening practices while sourcing out dry fertilizer amendments within their own state?
The Rev: Without a doubt, and you can get fully Bohemian with the style if you like, harvesting your own kelp, drying your own fish, having worm pits or worm farms, composting your plant matter along with native plant matter, having bat houses, or chickens, rabbits, cattle… The list is endless and all you need do is have an actual understanding of how nature really works, and seriously, it’s not complicated at all. In fact, it all makes perfect sense and everything just kind of falls into place once you have a grip on actual TLO all-natural growing. It is simply how everything works already; corporations mostly try to skew your view of this reality, and this is where the unlearning is so very important.
In containers you have no clay for the roots to grab minerals from, so I think it’s important to get your minerals lined up from a good source; just do a little homework yourself to investigate the actual quality.
If you were on the farm, say, and outdoors, with animals, chickens, etc. and a good water source, well then, that would actually be the easiest of all. Outdoors all-natural style can use several TLO tricks like spikes, top-down style feeding, etc., to very inexpensively grow a lot of great herb. Water source would be my primary concern in this scenario.
MV: When it comes to the topic of water, you’re adamant about using reverse osmosis water. Tell us why.
The Rev: Great question. I can’t say enough good things about quality water, and by quality, I mostly mean minus any crap peeps have added to it, but I also mean not too dense with unknown dissolved minerals/salts (at varying ratios seasonally) as well, like many groundwater sources offer. City tap water kills life. It is meant to, so obviously this will suck using a system that relies on life.
In any location in nature the water is essentially consistent: rain and groundwater. Using reverse osmosis (R/O) water starts you out with basically pure H2O (not unlike rain water) and then we add a set value/ratio of good minerals (calcium and magnesium) to emulate groundwater, and I bring my PPM (parts per million) up to between 70-90 PPM, measured using a TDS meter, with a liquid product by General Organics called CaMg+ and all it is is calcium, magnesium and a little tiny bit of simple sugars. Not too unlike molasses.
Consistency is a huge thing, and keeping your water always the same allows the plant and the soil life to evolve around it. There is some water, like in the Mount Shasta area in California that has beautiful water straight out of the mountain springs; however, these places are very rare and most groundwater sources like wells, or city tap water are totally counterproductive if playing into the strengths of Mother Nature and going for supernatural results.
I use a little three-stage countertop R/O unit with two carbon filters to remove the chloramine and an R/O membrane to remove all the other crap from my city tap water. You could use rain water, or distilled water in place of the R/O water, no worries, and if you wanted to just use pure rain, R/O or distilled water without adding anything, you would only need to up the levels of dolomite lime in your soil-mix; there’s always a way — wink.
MV: Your seed company, Kingdom Organic Seeds (KOS), kicked off around the mid-1990s. How’s the seed business going?
The Rev: Well man, when I first decided to really start breeding for more than myself and a few friends, I saw that the industry of genetics was going in a bad direction, in my opinion. You had a sudden slew of breeders that weren’t breeders at all, renaming everything and pollinating without actually selecting for things, or to avoid things, or even knowing what those things actually were. It seemed to me that so many peeps were basically all crossing and recrossing the same five basic old lines. Yuuuk! So I really just wanted to make some of the stuff I really loved and sell it to whoever shared my tastes in fine cannabis.
I never got into it to make a million (dollars), more like to support my further breeding and growing endeavors. I do things differently than many others and I breed for selected special qualities within my own gene stock basically, which is like 10,000 beans from all over the world and some of the old school breeders of yesteryear. I’m not really a marketing guy, and I think my product can speak for itself, and as I expand I have to be careful not to grow too fast, in order to maintain the high standards my artisan craft demands.
KOS is starting to get dug-in now in Washington State and also in Colorado a bit too now. Pretty soon I will need to expand again, and I have the stage set for that expansion, likely to be implemented in 2015.
MV: The list of your genetics is impressive. What are some of the unique landrace genetics in your repertoire?
The Rev: The list is long. I have a lot of old-world stuff like Durban Poison, Lemon Thai, Oaxacan Crypt Keeper, Rooi Bart, Bhutanese, a couple of Hawaiians like old Elephant Ear, and Puna Budder, plus a lot of the stuff from the olden days of CBay, Overgrow and Cannabis Culture forums. I have stuff from Vietnam and Alaska, Aussie, and Russian; it is one huge list but those are a few tidbits that come to mind.
I’m way more of a sativa and hybrid kind of guy than a hardcore indica guy; I like both, but 80 percent of the time I would opt for a killer sativa or sativa hybrid unless I was just chillin’ out, then I’m all indica good. I like to be intensely baked, while retaining my focus, and competence in a bigger degree, due to my standards with breeding and my writing endeavors. Many of my KOS-made varieties reflect these qualities.
MV: Out of your collection, do you have any strains geared toward higher
cannabidiol (CBD) production?
The Rev: Not that I know of, nor do I target those expressions; I do love my different high types and that is always a huge target for me, the ride baby. But I’m not really even slightly inclined to target CBD, and I see this whole trend as just another reason to involve more middle-men in the process, just driving up the costs essentially; gotta watch out for this amigos! Beware of stuff you actually don’t need. To each their own. My two cents anyways.
MV: Auto-flowering and feminized seed lines have been out for a while now with varying levels of fanfare. Are there different applications that you advise these types of bred genetics to be used for? What are your thoughts on these types of seeds in general?
The Rev: I have the skills to make either of these types of seed; however, I do not, because as a breeder I have really no use for them and I avoid breeding with them, due to big picture concerns I have. But I think they are great for those who need all females or autos, as growers and consumers. So in general, I think they are all good, as long as some real skills have gone into their production.
MV: I’m going to relay a few questions that we most-frequently hear from producers about the strains to grow, and I’m hoping you’ll tie this back to your genetics along with some classic examples. What are the highest yielding strains that have short maturation times? What strains are most resistant to powdery mildew and Botrytis (gray mold)?
The Rev: All right. I’m about to get some folks shaking their heads at this answer, (laughs) but, a plant grown (truly) all naturally outdoors or indoors, that isn’t some 10-year-old clone of a clone of a clone etc., and you have not sourced your plants as clones from a shop or a friend — no matter how “clean” they claim them to be — you really won’t have any issues the plant can’t deal with, as long as she is genetically sound. And by that, I mean bred for strengths along with power and yields. Most good genes are quite capable of self-defense, believe it or not.
Now, plants that come from around 30 degrees south latitude start and finish flowering early when grown in the northern hemisphere, like a Durban Poison (from South Africa), for example. Keeping the DP as our example, you can assume she comes from a very hot and very dry environment in South Africa, hence, genetically she likely won’t handle high humidity well and will be subject to molds. Botrytis is just one of the bud rot causes. There are more. If you have brought powdery mildew or Botrytis into your garden from imported clones, and the same goes for spider mites, they will be highly evolved, extremely resistant to countermeasures, and vigorous as hell. This is due to them having ridden along through many gardens, being sprayed by everything you can imagine, and adapting to it somewhat. I call these versions of parasites “The Borg” versions, and they are much, much harder to defeat, and difficult for even healthy plants to combat.
So, it’s really the selective breeding. This is what makes up most of the formula for success outdoors (and indoors) — the genetics — and the all the rest is trying not to cause the plant any extra stressors in flowering, making her even more susceptible to attack.
Plants (for the greater part) that are genetically tough against all these kinds of problems, believe it or not, are hemp-type cannabis. So skilled breeding and selecting and inbreeding over several generations would be an option, genetically, to this problem. Leverage evolution — a TLO mantra.
MV: On the subject of strains, when’s the last time you came across the original
Skunk #1 and Big Bud? These two strains are famous, yet they do not seem to be in circulation like the Hazes or Northern Lights.
The Rev: Oh, they’re in circulation, just under hundreds (literally) of new names. Like I said previously, amigo, the whole renaming everything craze really got me worried so I got all my ducks in a row (most of them) about 12 years ago making sure my stock was kick-ass and I don’t venture too far outside my own known genetics unless I trust the breeder.
I have all of those you named, in hybrid crosses (F1s) that either I myself, or a breeder I trust, has made from what I consider to be those actual lines. There are a ton of watered-down versions of everything still sporting the original names — you know, caused by that mindless myopic hunger for millions of dollars above all else. It’s an old problem in a new market; just gotta see it for what it is, and remember, talk is cheap.
MV: It is constantly being reported in the news that today’s cannabis is more potent than it was back in the ‘60s and ‘70s. What’s the proper way to decipher this sentiment?
The Rev: I started smoking cannabis in the early ‘70s (very early) so I can’t really speak to the ‘60s but … I think the big difference for the most part is now the average person can possess ass-kicking potent herbs. But, way back when, there were some very potent deadly varieties back in the ‘70s, but hardly anyone had access to these varieties in the live form.
Panama Red is a great example here. As D.J. Short so aptly said, Panama Red was the “tequila” of herb; and there were some others, like Big Sur Hollyweed, and Red Russian — probably the original Skunk #1 and where the Skunk Train got its name I believe. A female clone of Panama Red sold for $5,000-6,000 way back then, so you had to be a serious grower/breeder/smoker to have this puppy.
When the Afghani influence landed in Northern Cali, it was referred to as KGB (Killer Green Bud) as opposed to Red Bud, because most of the varieties were sativa hybrids or sativas, like Durban Poison, brought to Northern Cali via professional surfers of the day. So wicked-potent weed was always in play; it was just the fact that only a very few peeps had access to this quality of cannabis in the plant form.
A lot of “secret stuff” going on with the bigger growers and breeders back then, and perhaps surprisingly to you, we got like in excess of $4,500 per pound (1980s monies) and yes, I mean in bulk multi-pound deals. Most of the high dollar consumers of those days were East Coast and Southern California.
MV: We appreciate you taking the time to help enlighten us in the world of all-natural growing. What’s the future hold for The Rev and can we look forward to another book?
The Rev: My pleasure, man. I am working on the revised TLO book even now and I am hoping to have it finished by the end of November 2014, but by year’s end is my hard deadline I have set for myself. I have cleared up many things and cleaned out excess stuff I no longer think you need to grow the elegant supernatural TLO herbs. I have gotten simpler, with a great deal of multiple options, as far as soil-mix additions go.
Nice addition to the troubleshooting section too, with great pictures of common issues when first trying to wrap your head around the TLO philosophy. Big new info on recycling options, and worm farm success, a lot of stuff is new but that is the stuff off the top of my head. I actually caused my own plants some issues so I could get good pictures so peeps could dial in any troubles fast.
If you get the book, and you take it seriously, you will absolutely see for yourself — let me say that one more time: You will see for yourself — what this container growing philosophy is capable of. Thanks for the support everyone. Cheers and salutations.