The 2011 Cannabis Harvest Looks Golden
The Bay Area is renowned for having some of the best produce in the world, and that reputation again extends to its sun-kissed cannabis. California's annual outdoor marijuana crop has come in, and despite global warming and heated federal threats, the harvest looks quite golden. Growers, dispensary operators, and experts say California's 2011 outdoor is bountiful, cheap, high-quality and more medicinal than in years past.
While the federal government has publicly pilloried medical marijuana profiteers and exporters, the DEA generally is not interested in qualified patients cultivating marijuana according to state law.
More people are growing more ganja than in years past and more of it is being grown outdoors, said Ed Rosenthal, Bay Area author of several cannabis cultivation books.
Cannabis is a seasonal crop in California with an estimated value of $14 billion per year. Though most of it is thought to be grown indoors nowadays, outdoor crops still go into the soil after the last spring rains.
Farmers in Northern California's Emerald Triangle, formed at the intersection of Mendocino, Humboldt, and Trinity counties grow much of it, though robust outdoor growing now occurs throughout Northern California and into the Central Valley.
Kym Kemp
Outdoors, cannabis plants can get gargantuan
Outdoors, the bushy weeds can grow as big as small trees throughout the dry, scorching summers. Seasonal workers cut them down before the first fall rains start. After several weeks of drying, curing and trimming leaves off the buds, the crop is ready for storing or consumption.
Price
The fall harvest typically means a drop in prices as a glut of weed comes to both the black market and the burgeoning dispensary market, and this year promises substantial savings. In the medical scene, eighth-ounces - which can go for $55 - are on sale for as low as $35. Ounces which retail for $360 can be found for as little as $200. That's a boon to low-income patients, several operators say.
Rosenthal said price cuts might be even more sharp in the black market, because dispensaries are not hoarding inventory like usual. Federal saber rattling, and efforts to shut down storefront collectives has operators nervous about stocking up, said Rosenthal. When cash-needy growers can't quickly sell their product, prices drop, he said.
"It's going to make for very low prices," said Rosenthal.
Quality
The quality of outdoor this year is also rivaling indoor-grown sensimilla, and that's something of a sea change, experts say.
East Bay Express file photo
A flower top of outdoor cannabis from 2011 that tests at 21 percent THC
In the Seventies, all cannabis was grown outdoors, but the federal drug war in the Eighties pushed farmers out of direct sunlight, and many went entirely indoors.
Since the Nineties, the indoor market has come to dominate California cannabis both in clubs and on the street. It tends to be stronger, better-looking, and more easily controlled than an outdoor grow, watchers note.
But under the protections of state laws Prop 215 and AB 420, as well the state Attorney General's guidelines and two federal memos - outdoor is making a comeback, many say.
David Bienenstock, editor of High Times Medical Marijuana magazine, based in Santa Cruz has gone on several Fall garden tours this year. It's another big year for Kushes and Diesels, but his favorite this year is a Norcal hybrid called Tangelo.
"It has this amazing tangerine citrus smell," he said. "I think people are bringing more and more knowledge and experience to outdoor growing and they are producing this incredibly high-quality harvest because of that. I think as people return to putting plants in full sun - which has been going on for a while - it's becoming a big part of why the outdoor harvest product continues to get better in quality."
CBD Rich
The outdoor harvest is not only higher-quality, but it's more medicinal. In 2011, outdoor growers have embraced the high-CBD strain Harlequin in a major way, said Bienenstock.
Cannabidiol or CBD is a non-psychoactive anti-inflammatory molecule in marijuana. Highly therapeutic for pain, CBD dampens the psychoactivity of pot's main active molecule, THC, which is why black market breeders had nearly eliminated CBD from contemporary pot. The Bay Area medical scene has been using labs to identify high-CBD strains and get them to growers - to bring CBD back, as it were.
Addison DeMoura, co-founder of Steep Hill Lab in Oakland said 2011 ushers in a new era of high-CBD outdoor Harlequin as well as other high-CBD strains Blue Suede Shoes and ATF.
For the first time, they're systematically coming to market, Bienenstock notes.
"The dispensary provides this new feedback loop between patients and growers, and out of a big choice, the growing market is for non-psychoactive and less psychoactive pot. It goes against the U.S. Attorneys' entire point for making a target of these places."
Climate Change
This year's outdoor harvest has also been affected by global warming, growers say. "They're experiencing climate change," said Bienenstock. "The one thing I've been hearing everybody wail about is the weather patterns they've been used to and have relied on have not been consistent."n
Southern Humboldt collective operator Charlie Custer at the Tea House Collective writes, "good old global weirding has created even stranger summers up here than the Bay Area has. The last two years' late spring rains, cool and humid summers and soggy falls have been wonderful for our salmon and just perfect for our mold."
Grape farmers are worried about losing 30 percent or more of their crop, and cannabis crops suffer from the same mold as grapes, he said. "Many growers along the coast have suffered more than 50 percent losses," he said.
Consequently, greenhouse-grown ganja has emerged as a new halfway point between fully outdoor grows and a controlled environment, Bienenstock said. "Greenhouses are a way to adapt."
Sungrown, NO2-Flushed
Hybrid enclosures are also changing the terminology of the harvest. This year, Harborside Health Center, SPARC, and others have started calling "outdoor" cannabis "sungrown" cannabis. It better reflects the product's origin and battles the stigma that outdoor is somehow contaminated, dirty, or weathered, they say.
"I think it's a good way to remind people that that's the natural way to produce this plant," Bienenstock.
Lastly, places like Steep Hill are touting new techniques for preserving this year's skunky bounty. While pot can stay fresh for up to a year when sealed and stored in a cool, dry dark area, growers are increasingly turning to nitrogen-injected, vacuum-sealed standardized packaging that's labeled for transport to dispensaries.
This is most definitely not the outdoor stuff bound for export by alleged Mexican cartels, DeMoura said.
"You don't spend $20,000 on testing, packaging and labeling 100 pounds just to rip it up and ship it out of state. You don't wear Manolo Blahniks to the bowling alley."
