Chapter 12. A GROWTH INDUSTRY
Carved into the pasture hillside, the fruit cellar consisted of two large rooms. Each room fifteen feet wide by fifteen feet long. One for growing, one for budding. With sufficient insulation to keep the plants warm during cold weather and adequate ventilation to keep them suitably cool during hot weather.
The dirt walls had been covered with thick black plastic, then rolls of pink fiberglass insulation were stapled on top of that.
The walls were framed with two-by-fours which were covered with plywood sheeting and covered in turn with a highly reflective bright white paint. A series of 400-watt high-pressure sodium lamps, surrounded by reflective shades, hung from hooks screwed into the ceiling, built the same way as the other walls.
Wires everywhere. Rhino was a self-taught electrician whose safety standards weren’t especially up to code. “Hell,” he’d grumbled when Mother expressed some reservations, “it’s not like we’re getting a visit from the building inspector any time real soon.”
The lamps were hooked to ballasts, big metal boxes which I never did understand, the ballasts were linked in turn to timers strung to extension cords plugged into a bank of outlets which were connected to the main line linked to a generator adapted to run on propane with an automobile muffler added to reduce noise and camouflaged under a stack of firewood up by the barn.
A big fan stood in each room blowing gently, weeds flowing back and forth in the breeze like sylvan waves of grain.
Basically, a normal greenhouse in every respect. Except no glass and buried deep underground. Not to mention, totally illegal.
“From germination to final harvest, a complete plant growth cycle, requires four months,” Rhino explained to Barker. “So, at any one time, we have no less than three separate groups of plants – flights, I call them – in various stages of development.”
The grow room featured a long white wooden table covered with trays of “starts,” two dozen tiny square pots per tray, each pot with three sprouted seeds. Hundreds of baby plants nestled cozily in a warm combination of African violet potting soil, mushroom compost, sterilized cow manure and perlite, a white grainy marble-like substance that allows air to circulate within the pot.
Because the soil was reused continuously, moving with each plant throughout its life, then recycled for future crops, Rhino was often tossing other ingredients into the recipe, stuff such as bone, blood and fish meals, lime. I don’t remember what all exactly, a pinch of this, a pinch of that, like he was a chef in a fancy restaurant. Fertilizer, some combination of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, is almost always necessary.
“During the vegetative, or growth, phase, the plants need more nitrogen,” offered Rhino. “For flowering, the budding stage, more phosphorus is needed.”
Rhino clearly welcomed this rare opportunity to talk about his work. After all, you couldn’t very well discuss marijuana growing with the agricultural extension agent or share crop updates with the boys at the local Grange.
More than once I’d despaired about the need for secrecy. A couple of plants would’ve been simply swell for a session of ‘show & tell’ at school. ‘Inform & confess,’ would be more like it. And last year I’d had this dream I’d won the grand prize among all 4-H entries at the state fair, with a bud the size of my head.
That was one of the problems with this particular cash crop. You couldn’t brag to anybody when things went right. You couldn’t ask anybody for advice when you needed help. There was nobody to complain at. No group to turn to for support. No Willie Nelson charity concerts.
Of course, if this stuff was legal, fewer farmers would be going bankrupt, that’s for sure.
On the bright side, there was no commute, no timeclock, no boss, no federal withholding tax, no co-workers. Plenty of fresh air.
It was the best job Rhino had ever had.
“Let me show you how we get started,” Rhino said, picking up a sharpened wooden pencil in one hand and a tiny container filled about two-thirds full with dirt in the other.
“Make three holes in each of these four-inch pots. Drop a sprouted seed into each hole and cover it loosely with soil. Add water until the soil is fully moistened. The key here is complete moisture. These babies love water.”
“Where do you get the sprouts?”
“We’ve got a huge stash of quality seeds in the pantry in the house. There’s more in the door of the freezer in the barn. Zac here starts seedlings about once a month, don’t you?”
“It’s pretty easy,” I began, mighty proud to be included in Barker’s education. “I put a bunch of seeds, fifty, sixty, seventy seeds, between a couple of layers of moist paper towel in a Tupperware container. I put the Tupperware container in a warm place, anywhere warm is good, like the top of the refrigerator. Someplace out of the way with the lid on loose. When the little white tails start to show, they should sprout in a couple days, that means they’re germinated. That means they’re ready to plant.”
“Zac keeps maybe three Tupperware containers going at one time, because, as you’ll see, it’s a time-consuming process. Each flight consists of a hundred plants. Eight pots to a tray. That’s a dozen or more trays.”
“Three sprouts per pot,” I chimed in.
“That’s three hundred seeds planted over the course of a week,” Rhino continued. “We do that every six weeks.”
“Why so many?,” Barker asked.
“In a word, sex. We’re very sexist around here,” Rhino replied. “Males are not worth the dirt they’re buried in. Fully half your plants could be male, so half your crop ends up being worthless. Wasted space, and space is at a premium under ground. Females bear the fruit.”
“So, you kill all the males?”
“Right. Need to nip this problem in the bud, so to speak. About six weeks after planting.”
According to Rhino, there were about as many tricks to the trade as there were growers. To cull the male plants, Rhino would reduce the amount of light available to twelve hours, thereby forcing maturation. Unlike humans, marijuana males mature faster than females. After a couple of weeks of reduced light, the males could be easily identified and destroyed.
Rhino would then increase the light back to the normal twenty hours and the remaining females would return to their growth stage. Another ten weeks, they’d be ready to harvest.
“It’s all a big juggling act. Two balls in the air, one in your hand. You want to keep the bud room full, producing all the time, you want the grow room full, humming along, ready to replace whatever plants you harvest, and you want the table of seedlings full, growing fast enough to replace the plants you move into the bud room.”
The powerful lights were positioned about eighteen inches above the pots. “Marijuana grows as much as two inches per day, exactly like a weed, so the height of the lights has to be adjusted continually,” explained Rhino. “Too low and you can burn the plants. Too high and they grow tall and stringy.”
We moved into the next room. “This is the bud room,” Rhino announced proudly. He had a lot to be proud of. The subterranean enclosure was crowded full of huge broad-leafed green bushes, almost every one of them densely festooned with buds, like fuzzy ornaments on a Christmas tree.
In the bud room, because of the reduced light available, new bud growth stops. The white pistils of the female flower, which doesn’t look at all like any other flower I’ve ever seen, begin to turn a reddish-brown color. Crystal-like clusters of resin glands, containing most of the plant’s actual active ingredient, soon become apparent to the naked eye. You could actually see the drug.
“Smells good.”
“Smells like money to me,” Rhino quipped.
“Most of these girls are about due. Harvesting is simply a matter of cutting off all these buds,” explained Rhino. “The technical name is cola. And that’s about the last time you’ll hear the word used around here.”
Then, holding a big bud. “Take a good whiff.”
Barker bent over, and stuck his nose right next to the bud. “Whew! Strong. I had no idea. Certainly is a distinctive odor.”
“That’s a problem with this business. The better the product, the more it smells, the easier it is to detect. One of the reasons you want to live out in the woods, like we do. Exhaust fans, got to keep the temperature down with these damn hot lights, blow that stink right out of here.”
“Where to?,” Barker asked, sounding a little concerned.
“Nothing to worry about,” Rhino answered with a self-congratulatory chuckle. “I’ve got the whole place vented out to the manure pile. By the time this air gets there, it all smells the same. Like shit.”
“Different strains smell different. Each have their own bouquet, like wine. Somebody knows what he’s about can tell the difference between, say, Maui Wowie and Humboldt Gold with just a single whiff.”
“A dope snob,” I joked.
“There you go. I even thought about developing a strain that didn’t smell so much. Sure solve some problems.”
“Why didn’t you?,” Barker inquired.
“Marketing. Plain and simple. Folks got it in their heads, the stronger the bouquet, the greater the high. Which is basically untrue. But, hey, I’m no different than any other small business. Gotta give the customer what he wants.”
“He’s always right,” I said.
“Even when he’s wrong,” Rhino agreed. “You’d think your particular clientele wouldn’t care,” Barker offered. “I mean, after all, it’s not like aspirin or Tylenol or Prozac have such a specific odor.”
“Fact is, I got to thinking maybe there was more money to be made. Odorless weed would be less detectable so it’d be easier to transport, easier to store.”
“You’d probably be able to smoke it more places, too,” I suggested.
“Possibly.”
Rhino took a pair of clippers out of his overalls and snipped a small plant off an inch above dirt level. “Runts will always be runts,” Rhino said. “We call these ‘suckers,'” tossing the scruffy thing into a nearby trash bucket. “They suck up nutrients, space, water, light, limited resources you need for plants who are doing a good job. Best thing to do is get rid of them as soon as you can bring yourself to do it. Sooner the better. There’s natural human tendency to hope for growth but it never happens.”
Rhino stood silently, looked around, surveying his crop like any other proud farmer. “Looks a little dry in here. Might as well water while we’re here. Zac, what’s say we get a little bucket brigade going?”
“Sure thing.”
I went to the doorway where three 30-gallon, garbage can-sized plastic tubs of water stood. A couple of gallon milk bottles floated on the surface with the tops cut off just above the handles. I dipped them in and walked back to Rhino with the two full containers.
Lastly, comes the drying. Rhino would hang the buds in a cool, dry, dark place until they were dry to the touch, almost spongy, not crumbly.
That simple.
But it was rarely that simple. Even in a controlled environment like the fruit cellar. This is farming, remember. Bugs, disease, bad seeds, bad soil, bad luck all played a role. Too much water, too little water. Equipment failure. Farmer error. A host of variables.
Through it all, Rhino hummed and whistled while he worked. Like one of Snow White’s seven dwarfs.
Dopey, I’d guess.
