The harvest is in and I can’t believe the results. My husband and I didn’t weigh our cannabis haul from our home garden, but we were able to fill a bunch of regular-size salsa jars with marijuana. This is more than good enough for me!
Like many weed enthusiasts in the state, we enjoyed our first home-grown harvest in October. Strike up the weed exchanges! It’s kind of like a cookie exchange — and there may be cookies — but way danker. Everyone brings jars to share and exchange, providing everyone with a greater variety than they had before. I don’t know of any public exchange, only a few private ones. But there should be a public one! Anyone sets one up, let me know and we might write about it (assuming it’s legit and not skeevy).
In the meantime, let’s brag about our green thumbs. How’d your harvest come out? Got any cool pics? A strain you really like that grew well in our New England soil? Tell us about what you grew and we’ll publish some of the write-ups in print and online — who knows, maybe an exchange can grow out of this? (Have I dropped enough hints about how badly Western Mass needs an exchange?) The information may also help us all decide what to grow next year.
Here’s what I grew:
White Queen: The strain is a hybrid of indica (sleepy) and sativa (energizing) strains and it’s certainly the sexiest bud we grew this year. Bulbous and covered in white frosty trichomes, the Queen also gives off a herbal aroma. Smoking the White Queen, the high hits me like a full sativa and kicks like a mule to the head — BAM! I’m awake and ready to roll. This is some potent shit. I quickly learn that the White Queen has a dark side, however; take too much and paranoia and anxiety set in. This sensation was strange for me; I have not found many strains that set me on edge. A little of the Queen goes a long way, any more than that and she’ll chop off your head. Other reviews I read on Leafly about White Queen reported little to no paranoia — which freaked me out even more, man!
T57: We named this plant after the friend who gave us some seeds she had kicking around in her coffee table for years — and I wish we had some clue as to what strain this actually is, because it’s pretty damn good. It hits like a deep indica and definitely gives you the desire to sink into the couch and binge watch TV for a few hours. This weed will be good for at the end of the day after the kids are in bed. Serious unwinding. The flavor is a bit hay-like, which make me think we let it grow for too long. The onset of the high is fast, providing a nice balanced body-head high, though I suspect this is mid-grade weed. I vow to never again grow weed I can’t identify — it’s heartbreaking not to know, like the pain of having the best pizza of your life, but never again being able to find the place.
Amsterdam No. 1: Again, I don’t know what this stuff is, but that wasn’t the intention. We purchased a variety pack of seeds online from a shop in Amsterdam, figuring the seeds would be labeled. They were not and the stoners we reached to bitch about the pack said it was just loose seeds they find around the shop. Gah! Whatever, we planted it and the seed grew into a weed jammed with thin sticks and leafy bud. The smoke produced when you light it is thin and the flavor is gone before you can figure it out, but the exhale has the satisfying smell of a high-quality tobacco. The high is uplifting, clear, and motivating.
Amsterdam No. 2: Another seed from our variety pack, No. 1 and No. 2 are not of the same strain, they look, taste, and feel different. No. 2 provides a thick smoke and has kind of a bubble gum flavor. The aroma is a little hay-like, so perhaps we pulled it too early? I don’t know, but this one had the most bud rot problems of any of our plants. Bud rot is when your weed rots, duh; it looks like gray/brown moldy marijuana and it pulls off the healthy cannabis with ease. The high is quite chill and relaxed, quiet and reflective. A good weed for deep conversations.
The Royal Medic: I got this clone from a friend when it was about six inches tall. The Royal Medic is an offshoot of the Royal Highness strain, which has nearly a 1:1 ratio of CBDs, one of the active chemicals in marijuana, to THC. Most people know about THC, the chemical that gets your high, but CBDs have more medicinal qualities — anti-inflammatory and relaxing. I suspect the relaxation is related to the immediate impact smoking a good CBD strain has on your body: it’s a lot easier to relax mentally when your body isn’t tense. The Royal Medic provides only a small high, but that’s not what we grew it for. When I smoke the Royal Medic it feels like a wall in my shoulders and back is crumbling and washing away down a cold waterfall: my shoulders drop and my neck feels loose. A big fan of CBD-heavy strains, they are particularly nice to use before doing yoga — open up them chakras and tense muscles.
Write in and let us know what you grew this year, what it’s like, the effect, taste, stank, whatever you want to share. Get me at palpini@gmail.com.
