Personal Grow | Johanna Silver | Author: Growing Weed in the Garden | Lecture 107: Sexing Cannabis Plants

In Episode 27: I had a sparkly conversation with Johanna Silver. Her background at Sunset magazine and her approach to gardening was fantastic. She was clear to make a point that it's just another plant. To use her own words: "It's fine. If it all goes wrong, you just do it again next year. The definition of a gardener is not someone who gets it. Right. It's like, if you screw it up and you still keep going, then congratulations. You're a gardener. You know, like that's, that's all, that's all it is. You just, you have a passion for the process. It sort of doesn't even matter what the final outcome is."

BUT there is one specific outlier to the cannabis plant. SEXING: also known as Sensimilla which means “without seeds”. The term was coined in the 1970s on the west coast to describe seedless cannabis flowers that come from unfertilized female plants, specifically used to imply a high-THC-potency product. Sexing your plants to determine male from female is an integral step in producing seedless high cannabinoid plants. Males can be stored  in a closed environment for breeding. BUT...if this is your first year lets focus on growing healthy females. 

Johanna shared the difference between male and female. Luckily it is very similar to human anatomy. The Male has pollen sacks that are in a ball shape. Caution: your plants in their earlier weeks may all look like they are female. It takes time for the plant to reach the human  equivalent of puberty. 

Hope you enjoy this fantastic conversation with Johanna!

Listen in on ClubHouse in the Personal Plant room to our Live Q&A with Johanna Silver on Wednesday August 4th @ 3pm. 

Transcript

Personal Grow | Johanna Silver | Author: Growing Weed in the Garden | Lecture 107: Sexing Cannabis Plants

Charlie: [00:00:00] Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of know, grow, create with me Charlie Crebs. And today we are doing another collaboration with personal grow. For those that don't know personal grow is a collaboration with myself, Charlie Crebs and Amanda Reiman and Hailey Nagasaki, Amanda Reiman, and Haley Nagasaki are part of personal plants.

And this is just another little collaboration we're doing to help all of you figure out how to grow cannabis. It is something that was very mysterious and alluded me in the early stages. So instead of you having to do all the research, we thought we would do it for you and do this beautiful setup where we have industry leaders from different sectors.

Helping us learn how to grow the plant. And so today we're talking about sexing and so we have Joanna silver with us today. And for those that don't know Joanna, she is a James Beard award winning author who has written books, such as the bold [00:01:00] dry garden lessons from the Ruth Bancroft garden and growing weed in the garden, a no fuss seed to stash guide it to outdoor cannabis cultivation.

So of course, with a book like that, we had to have her come and join us for this interesting topic of sexing your plants and growing cannabis. So without any further ado, Joanna, welcome to the show. 

Johanna: [00:01:23] Thank you so much for having me. 

Charlie: [00:01:25] Yeah. It's great to see you here. So I'm so glad you made the time and it just sounds like you have been having gardening part of your life and your journey for quite some time.

So I'd love just to hear how that love affair with gardening has transitioned into you being into the cannabis world and starting your cannabis. 

Johanna: [00:01:45] Sure totally. So I worked at sunset magazine and for anyone who doesn't know, sunset is a very old lifestyle magazine that has existed in the Western half of the United States.

Since the late 18 hundreds actually started [00:02:00] by the railroad companies to help yeah. To help people know what to do when they got out here to sort of entice life in the west. And it has a really rich history. It was an independent magazine for a really, really long time and had a stake in national park development and was the first publication to come out against pesticide use.

And the first to publish ideas about hot tubs and sliding doors and this indoor outdoor living, it was real, it was a really amazing magazine. It was admittedly probably less amazing by the time I worked for it. But I still had N you know, time, time Inc owned it. And it was. Still staffed with incredibly talented kind people.

And so I worked there for 10 years and I started in their editorial test garden, designing and building small gardens that would get published in the magazine and eventually convinced them to let me come indoors and be a writer and editor, and was eventually the head of the [00:03:00] garden department as the garden editor.

And then they got bought by private equity in 2017 and a whole, whole bunch of us lost our jobs. So I had a six month old at the time and lost my dream job that I, you know, would have loved to hold the rest of my life and didn't know what I was going to do. And I just, I love writing. And so I reached out to some former  editors in chief of the magazine, and one had landed at the San Francisco Chronicle.

And I asked her if I could write anything for her. And I just sort of assumed it would be, you know, Whatever I've written about. I've sort of done everything under the sun or so I thought in terms of gardening and it was, you know, late 2017 and recreational use and cultivation was about to go into effect in California.

And this person said to me I want you to grow weed in your garden and document it as a [00:04:00] gardener. And I had big been a really big stoner in high school, but I'm not a stoner anymore, like at all. And so really had no idea where to start and she's like, that's perfect. So I worked on that series for the Chronicle and quickly met, you know, the people who've gone on to become my mentors in this space and did that series.

But, you know, it was having a hard time finding. Information that matched the way I wanted to grow, which is, you know, outdoors, only all the books are like for indoors. And really without chemicals and without such a huge emphasis on like what a specific cultivar, which is the word I use instead of strain is going to do to you, you know, just really like a gardeners book.

We, so I as you mentioned, already had one book under my belt and this was like glaringly obvious to be a second. And so I wrote to that book growing weed in the garden [00:05:00] and it came out in March 24th, 2020, which was a horrible time for a book to come out. We were not thinking about books.

Charlie: [00:05:10] Sure. We're not, we were trying to figure out what the heck was going on. 

Johanna: [00:05:14] We were trying to find hand sanitizer so 

Charlie: [00:05:17] well,  it's so funny. for myself, when that happened,  I found more solace in going back to planting and like finding out more information.

Right? Like my podcast was really came out of the pandemic and just wanting to talk about this more with people and get more information. But at the same time,  not knowing about a new book, like yours is tough, especially when you're trying to come out and knowing those things. So, yeah, 

Johanna: [00:05:43] I was busier than ever with every friend I've ever had asking me about how the plant their garden.

But when the press copies of your book are stuck in a warehouse, That's closed because of COVID, you know, it doesn't matter if it's a book about gardening. It was just like a garbage time [00:06:00] to have a book come out, totally world. Cause you know, whatever. But here we are, 

Charlie: [00:06:06] of course. I mean that this is the evolution and this is the thing that you know I'm so excited.

We're talking right now because I mean, it's obvious that  you've taken some time to write a book about this and we are here just trying to learn as much as we can. And you know, I think that's the beauty of the plant too, in some odd way is I love how it kind of connects us all. And now we're here talking about your book and you know, talking about growing.

So it all works out, right? Yeah. 

Johanna: [00:06:32] Yeah. And one other thing, when I said I lost my dream job what I then forgot to say is that doing this book has been more fun than I. Ever thought, like I thought my career had peaked being the garden editor of sunset, and this was the most fun I've ever had for so many reasons.

But I mean you know, it's a book about weed and just a lot of fun, so yeah, 

Charlie: [00:06:55] totally. I'm so glad you said that because I mean, that really is, you know, the joy [00:07:00] for me of when I've made a decision at the beginning of this year to focus on, you know, first, just personally putting a lot of my efforts into growing this podcast and having as many interviews with people like yourself as possible.

But secondarily, you know, on a personal note, I'm trying to make my business only revolving around cannabis now, which is, a feat within itself. But both of them just give me so much joy. It's like, I really don't. What else I would do or anything that would bring me so much joy.

So here we are. Right? 

Johanna: [00:07:30] Yeah. 

Charlie: [00:07:31] Nice. So, okay. So you had this beautiful evolution. You were on a path of just running that garden program at sunset and like a lot of paths, they have changes and pivots and turns and kinks and layoffs that we all can expect. And I've been there myself.  With Cannacraft, I was laid off after only working there for 11 months and it was a blow.

Right. You know, and it's like, you have to kind of figure out those necessary steps that will, , make it, you know, [00:08:00] That's the fun part of this journey, you know, and that's why I love talking to people about their journey of how they led to where they are. But what I'd love to ask next is in terms of your involvement with sunset and writing about gardens and having all that background I just would love to see  how did that play a role in your involvement in growing cannabis?

What were some of those things, those techniques that you used and that you, you would see as being, you know something that you would recommend to other people, like what were some of those key expertise that you had from sunset that you've brought over and transitioned to cannabis? 

Johanna: [00:08:37] That's a really great question.

So when I was first doing,  all of my initial research, like I didn't even know where to get seeds for weed, you know? And and so , I sort of was a wash in all of the misinformation or mystery of cannabis as anybody else when I first started. And there are a few [00:09:00] things that do make the plant, you know, really different from other plants.

But it's not actually how difficult it is to grow, which is sort of what people will have you believe.   I had people telling me when I was like first tracking down the people to talk to, I had someone telling me,  I think you can grow outside your, so you're still gonna need lights to start the plants.

And I'm just like, eh, like, I don't think so, like plants or plants or plants. So as I started to get my bearings under me I'm trying to think of a good example. As I start, as I, as I started growing and then just realized like, oh, this is, this is just like, this is like, there's like a little, not a nonsense that has come from the cultivation, the cannabis cultivation world under prohibition.

And I'm not knocking any of those practices. I mean, these people had to adapt to growing indoors with unnatural light. You know, there's all sorts of [00:10:00] like very strange, complicated pruning practices. And the reason that those exist is you're having to make up for the fact that you have static light, overhead.

And so you're well, and you know, and you want it to hit all the different parts of the plant. So you do all these like weird voguing moves to get your plants. You know, show all of their, all of their spots and outdoors, you know, you have the sunshine which has full light spectrum and it moves throughout the day.

So it sort of hits everywhere. It needs to, without these sort of  crazy pruning practices. So some of it was just like finally coming to my senses. And I think that's, what's really different about my book from other books about how to grow weed is that like, if you learn how to grow weed from a weed person, like you're gonna learn this weird lingo that doesn't really connect you too, the rest of horticulture.

And I think that's like a little bit [00:11:00] sad. And if you hopefully, yeah. Cause if you, and if you learn from me, like you're going to learn, just kind of like how plants grow in general. I'm trying to think of another one. Like everybody calls it Like vegging and then flowering these two sort of states of growth, right?

Like your plants venting before they start flowering. And I just like, always thought that was really peculiar. Like , my determinant tomatoes they grow and then, and then they flower and they make fruit and I'm not like, sort of obsessing over the moment when that change happens.

And I'm not like changing all the the inputs, right. Like  it happens naturally. It's not like,  indoor cannabis cultivation. You're flipping a switch. Like there is no switch flipping outdoors. It's just called the sun and the seasons and the cycle.

And so a lot of it is just hand-holding. For people to get comfortable that this is indeed just another plant in their garden. And again, there are some things that make it incredibly unique which is actually one of the things like why I'm here today to talk about [00:12:00] sexing. That is like the thing, one of the things that makes it incredibly unique horticulturally.

But it's not like. Hard to grow otherwise.

Charlie: [00:12:11] It's so funny you say that because we had Patrick King on here a couple episodes ago and he was just, you know, drilling in to that. There's no segregation and agriculture. There's no segregation between the difference between our plants and other plants, , there's Annuals and perennials.

Right. And this is definitely an annual, so it's one of those things that once you've made that distinction, now there are specific ways you treat annuals over perennials. So I know you were kind of like trying to search for like one of those kinds of things. So let's talk about that. Like you were just talking about the difference of the stages, which we find ourselves talking about on here, because that's the nature of the beast is we only know the lingo.

We know. So we always talk about those transitions from [00:13:00] seedling to vegging, to flowering. But you know, for the most part, we're just talking about those different stages of what happens within the plants, not talking so much about how we're going to change the amendments or the inputs because of those different stages.

So I just find that really interesting. And of course it would be interesting to see how your book is just basically coming from someone who's a gardener. Who knows how to keep and maintain a nice garden for just all types of plants. And now we're getting very specific on one. 

Johanna: [00:13:30] And I'm not trying to be like a snob about it when I, so I don't use the word strain, I use the word cultivar because that's the technical term.

It's a cultivated variety. I mean, you could also, I like, I also don't really talk about what cultivar of tomato I have. We all sort of misuse the word variety together and I'm fine with that, but I'm not trying to be like a snob about it. I am trying to like help cannabis. Come into the rest of the agriculture horticulture, gardening world and for it to [00:14:00] fit, you know, we don't talk about like what strain of tomato we're growing.

That sounds like nonsense. So I'm not doing it to be a snob. I'm doing it to sort of weave it together. 

Charlie: [00:14:10] I appreciate that. It does. And I, and you know, that's so much of what this is too, is to, to weed throughout the bullshit, to get rid of the bro science, to get rid of all the things that tell you, well, if you're growing that specific cultivar, you're going to have to handle it totally differently than this cultivar.

And I think that's what you were kind of alluding to. So with that being said, , what would you be? Giving advice to someone, , in the book, there must be kind of a certain type of format or just kind of overall way of portraying cannabis. So what was that for you in the book?

Johanna: [00:14:42] Interesting. So.  I don't talk about what everything's, I don't mention like what this one's going to do to you. I stay completely out of that completely out of like, cultivar, like this, one's going to make you like super horny, but it [00:15:00] also kind of like smells like your grandma's bathroom.

Like, I don't do any of that. But what I do do is I give a brief history of the plant because I think that that's. Incredible. I mean, I think people don't often realize, I don't know if people know that it's one of the oldest, if not the old oldest plants under human cultivation. So it's one of the plants, you know, along with like barley and linen and flax, that we've been cultivating that we've been choosing, which varieties to breed the longest.

And there are some people that think it, this is the oldest one because it's so useful. , every part of it has been bred for something else. And I also have a whole chapter on that shows different gardens and different gardeners and explores the different ways and reasons why people. Grow this plant and it sort of runs the gamut.

And then, yeah, there's the whole book is about how to grow. And each chapter starts with an anecdote, [00:16:00] which I hope to be funny about my personal experience and then the nitty gritty, like how to, how to do the thing I'm talking about. And I should say that as a gardener I'm lazy and I am no fuss and I'm tough love, and I'm not that way just because like, I think it's cool, but I, , and I'm lazy, but I, I actually think there's something to be said for giving plants what they need from the beginning, which is like the appropriate light that it needs, , the appropriate amount of water, enough room for airflow to get in there and not cause a lot of problems with,, fungal or you know, other diseases and then sort of walk away.

Like I'm not, I'm not after like I'm not the book. If you are looking to. Change your life and grow weed as a lit for a living and be able to like sell it to the dispensary. Like I grow things if they're tough enough to survive my lazy care. I don't want to use chemicals. I don't want to nurture things.

 I'm a big [00:17:00] believer in like stressing my plants to some extent, right? Like we get that much better tomatoes if we don't over-water them and I, I know that people are where they can dry farm cannabis and get like crazy terpene and cannabinoid levels. Right. Cause when this annual, as you mentioned, is trying to do everything in its power just to reproduce before it dies.

It puts everything it's got into that flour or fruits before. Finally kills over. So that's why I'm lazy. And that's my approach. I don't know if that answered your question. 

Charlie: [00:17:35] It totally does. And I mean,  first was it was to get an overall general consensus, which I love that you first said, Hey, I'm taking this as a not serious.

We're just having fun here. I'm trying to make some jokes at the beginning and we're just talking about plants and  I love how you make it. So you're not trying to do a differently than you normally would grow plants. And that's where it affects because like, why would you do that to yourself?

Because, you [00:18:00] know, in the end, if you treat this any differently, you're not going to, that's not going to become part of your rhythm. That's not going to become just another plant. You're taking care of a dirt garden. Now it's something completely different. And you're like, oh, well with this one, because it's cannabis now I'm checking the Brix levels and the moisture content and making sure it has enough NPK.

It's like, what are you doing? Like, you know, thank you way too confusing. And that's just not the way that you grow. 

Johanna: [00:18:28] You really don't need to like people listening, like get some compost and walk away. Like, you're good. 

Charlie: [00:18:36] That's what I love telling people. And then I love that. That's kind of what you're saying too.

You know, it's like put the bottle nutrients down. Put all that other weird stuff. You're going to try to incorporate into your grow system this year down and just by good soil, good genetics. And you're already 80% of the way there. Maybe even more. 

Johanna: [00:18:57] Yeah. And I do think it's unfortunate [00:19:00] if people are first-time gardeners and learn, weed

in the like total weed way, because I actually think that cannabis is a really good starter plant. It's a really good gateway plants to other, to wanting to grow other things, because it is so fun to grow like. So fast and it smells so crazy. So if you've never gardened anything before, this is a great one, you know, you're going to get, you're going to reap huge rewards by the end.

Charlie: [00:19:30] Totally. And it's just like, you know, so funny, I saw someone who was making a joke and he has like Instagram gardening page. He was at some,  grocery store buying organic strawberries for $4 a basket. And he's like, oh my God, this is such a rip off.

I had to spend $150 to plant all of my strawberries. And they were all eaten by birds. But the one that I did get was delicious and, just kind of making fun of himself of how much energy and money he had. Put into making his own strawberries, but then he could buy [00:20:00] it from the store. But deep down, I know that one strawberry that you eat from your own garden is going to taste so much more delicious than anything you could buy at the store because you grew it.

And then like you take that to the next step of you growing your own cannabis, who that stuff is just amazing. Like when you first smoke your own cannabis that you cured perfectly. Fuck me. Is that a great moment in time? Like, I just, it, it changed a lot for me. My mom was a landscape designer, so I grew up with beautiful aesthetically, gardens that were just designed nicely.

Unfortunately, she wasn't that much into the agricultural, like vegetable growing type of thing, but that's okay. I'm taking that on myself and I'm learning all that fun stuff, but the reason I'm bringing that up is just. I think we find ourselves in this moment and I'm just so glad you're on the same wavelength of us, of just trying to communicate to people that this isn't brain surgery.

This is something that anyone can [00:21:00] do if they really want to try to do it, but we're at this fun kind of evolution point where we're,  we've had some people following along and we're growing. And the plants now really taking off we've either had clones or seeds that we started off with. We put it into a great medium, such as living soil, and we made sure it was in the right pot or bed and it's make getting enough light.

But now we're at that stage where this plant's growing and it's going to start showing its sex. If it's going to be a female or male this is a pretty key spot. And I just,  want to kind of see if we can transition into that conversation of that specific moment in time of growing the plant.

But I also want to give you some space to talk about. You know, the things that happened before we get to sexing a little bit and just kind of the way you approach to growing cannabis. 

Johanna: [00:21:50] Well, I only start from seed Because I think that seed grown plants are a lot stronger. They form a taproot, whereas clones don't.

And [00:22:00] I just find that clones in the cannabis world are just like particularly finicky. Cause they haven't seen like a lick of outdoor light. And I don't know, I'm just a snob. Oh, actually, you know why? I really, so it's funny that I'm coming on for the sexing talk because like, I think just the existence of something called sexing, the plants was like enough to get me super curious.

In this point I was like, you, you do what? Like I get to walk around talking about sexing, my plants, like, okay. So I think that process is really fun and just really unique to weed. And I'm trying to think of what happens before then. I'm just like Let minegrow. I actually, so this year everything's on drip irrigation in my garden and this year I, I left town for three weeks in June.

And yeah. Finally saw my mom and dad after all this COVID stuff with my [00:23:00] four year old. And so my plans weren't revealing their sex yet. You know, you can you can get these sex kits, test kits from certain companies. If you just Google online, you know, like cannabis, sex test. You can mail them a smashed up piece of the caudal lead-in, which is the seed leaf.

And get the, you know, I don't know, am I, should I go into more detail about that for people? 

Charlie: [00:23:26] Nah, I think we're probably stay away. This is more of a general, but I hear where you're headed. 

Johanna: [00:23:30] Okay. Right. So you can, it's really easy by the way, but you can get your plants sexed right after they germinate on.

So it's a little bit pricey and I I'm just lazy. Like I was getting everything for free a while ago, but I'm just like too lazy to ask for favors anymore. So I just wait like everybody else maybe and find to find out what sex they are anyway. So I was getting ready to leave for three weeks. My plants were not, you know, no sign of pre flower or anything.

So I just. [00:24:00] Cross myself, which is not true, I'm Jewish. And I just like, you know, pray for the best basically, and like get them in the ground and pray. Just praying that the ones I'm putting in the like Primo, Primo, Primo spots are female. And indeed I planted a male in like the money spot this year, so I'm super bummed, but yeah.

Anyway, sometime after summer solstice and really dependent on what cultivar you have, you can start to tell the sex from from a pre flower, which is found in. What, well, if we're leaving it really general, we'll just call it like the armpit of the plant. So as you examine your plant, you'll see, you know, we're a, we're a new branch starts.

It looks like an armpit and you have to be a little bit careful because also in those armpits are where the, where new, new growth begins. So there are sort of these, these flaps called stipules and you start to look around there, behind [00:25:00] there, and you start that's where you, when you start to see like, oh, that's the new leaf growing, but that's something else.

And it's that something else that you're after for sexing the plants. And basically , if you, what you see starts to look like a ball. It's a male. And if you see like a hair, it's a female, but it's not totally that cut and dry because the hair comes out of a little ball. So like I'll typically every year, like go through this phase where I'm like convinced that I've only, I've somehow only planted all males.

Right? Yeah. So I freak out. You know, last year I was doing a whole video series for Leafly that people can find. And I definitely went through a few weeks where I was like, oh shit. Like I have no female plants. And to be a hundred percent honest, that's, that's right where I'm at right now in my garden where they're all males, but you know what, I know I'm getting a little bit more experience so I can tell, like, I'm, I can tell which ones are [00:26:00] truly going to become pollen, SACS and males, and which ones, like, I just need to give a minute and a hair is going to pop out.

Charlie: [00:26:06] So if I'm hearing you correctly and, and this is what I've at least been told, I haven't sexed myself because I've used clones in the past years. But if I'm correct, What you're talking about is in those initial stages, they all could look like males. For instance, it takes more time for it to develop, to really have more of the ball look and feel.

And the more female, just like those little like hairs coming out of what is just,  like almost like an elliptical shape for that like piece below it. Correct? 

Johanna: [00:26:38] Correct. So what I'm saying is that like, you'll, you'll get better at telling too, like, it, it takes a little bit of time because they can all look like balls at first, but also the more, the longer you do this the more you'll you'll like, I, I can even tell the difference between the like ball and, and female, Organ.

Charlie: [00:26:58] Let's talk about this [00:27:00] though. So in essence though, There really isn't too much damage that could happen in these first couple of weeks of evolution, if I'm correct. And we don't really have to worry about this until we're getting to,  a month or two down the line where they're going to start creating sacks and have pollen.

Right?

Johanna: [00:27:17] So we have totally. Yeah. So do not panic. Like there's zero need to panic right now. The, just let them grow, let them grow exactly it takes like more than a month, but yeah, we can say a month, like they really start to look, ain't nothing going to happen for quite a while. Right? Like these, these Paul and Sachs have to form, they look like bell-shaped flowers before they pop open.

Like you're not at any risk of keeping a male growing in, in you know what, I'm glad you brought this up because my brother is actually growing this year in New York and it's. My dad has grown too with my book and in Colorado, and now my brothers growing up, [00:28:00] they don't actually read the book. So like my, my, so my brother is like, well, I thought I had to get rid of the, of the mail right away.

It's just going to like drip, Paul. And I'm like, read the book anyway. So no, you're fine. Like, you're totally fine there. There's not going to be premature ejaculation all over your flowers. Like, you're totally fine to just let it go. And, 

Charlie: [00:28:25] This is so important for people 

to hear, you know, it's just like we can get so stuck in these moments.

And like, let's just talk about this for what it is. This is the plant going through puberty. It's literally just about to drop its testicles. So,  let's, let's give it some time and figure out we get the, the right sex of the plant.  The worst thing you could do is think it's a male and then out.

And it was a female and you just lost a whole plant. Like that's the last thing you want to have. 

Johanna: [00:28:52] And then the second worst thing you can do is leave town for three weeks and plant a male in the Primo spot. That is [00:29:00] sort of the second worst thing you can do to deal with that. 

Charlie: [00:29:03] But my question with that is, am I right?

You know, just like my opinion of it. I was thinking to myself, well, why didn't Joanna? Just wait until she got back and keep them in the smaller ones, figure out the sex and then plant them once they shoot him. 

Johanna: [00:29:20] Those wouldn't have been on drip nursery. I didn't feel like asking. I didn't feel like doing the work to like, have someone come over.

And I also knew that once they get into the ground, they really take off. So I had like all these various spots but there's this onebed and I like cover cropped it last winter and like. You know, did all the things. And he was just like, yeah, I'm an, I'm a, like a farm farmy gardener. It's just like the juiciest soil.

And it's like, there's this male growing tomato 

Charlie: [00:29:56] Can I give you  a suggestion I heard. Sure. Dragon fly earth [00:30:00] medicine. They suggest to plant about three to five seeds in everywhere where you want to plant. So then in essence, even if you do have a male, you can just pick those out and then you'll still have the female seeds left behind within that little section, which I thought was an interesting idea.

Johanna: [00:30:19] Yeah. Yeah. And, and I also have found that we transplant very easily, so eventually I'm going to get out there once. I know for sure. So I have this thing that like, when, when the way I can tell between a male and a female is like, even in that early stage when you're like, not quite sure if it's a female or male, like at some point the male, it just like makes your brain go ball, ball, ball, ball.

Like you look at it and it's just like ball. And so I. I'm and the other one you'll be like, is there a hair? I don't know if there's a hair. It was just like ball, ball ball. So I'm, I'm pretty close to the ball ball ball with this one, but I'm [00:31:00] giving it just like another couple of days to surprise me and then I'll shuffle them around and you know, what people can, so you might be, you know, you might be curious, like, can I keep a male?

And like the answer is yes, totally. You need it to be completely like completely away from your females. Not like outside in another spot, but like, Indoors. And you can like, if you want to get pollen, let's say because you want to get some seeds for next year. So you, what I think the best thing to do is to cut off a branch and to just bring it indoors and put it in a glass of water, sort of like a flower or like a cutting that you're going to root because it will live and it will sort of continue to mature and develop.

And eventually you can you know, put a bag over its head when it, when it releases the pawn and shake it all out. I also have dragged one into like the unfinished laundry room that's sort of, or like the garage or something. You don't want it to stay [00:32:00] open and like nearly kill it. Like it's not even going to be getting much light and like, maybe you remembered a water every few weeks.

Like you're torturing this plant, but you're going to get some pollen. And I do want to assure you that if you don't do this and you in any way, think you're going to trick the system and like. Not get pollen everywhere you are. Oh yeah. 

Charlie: [00:32:22] Don't think you're better than nature. Nature will find a way and that's fine.

Johanna: [00:32:26] Like, I smoked weed all through high school that had seeds in it and like, and it it's just that, like now it's super, it's super uncool to have, like, you're not going to impress people if you have seeds in your weed, but also it's not the end of the world. 

Charlie: [00:32:41] Well, it's so funny you say that, Joanne, because I was just so happy my first year when I was like,  getting all of them, I finally trimmed my stuff and I started looking around.

I was like, oh my God, here's a seed. And it's like, even if you don't have any males around, you'll still get seeds. I mean, there's pollen everywhere in the air. So [00:33:00] yeah, it's just such an exciting thing. The whole plant and just this whole experience is so much fun. And I just love that you, that, that idea of like, , I know Amanda Reiman, she loves creating her own her own genetics and making her own seeds.

So yeah, I think that's such a fun thing to do. And I definitely want to explore it later in life when I have more time and efforts to do such things, but that's really cool. So I think. Again, that whole idea of just ball, ball, ball, look for ball. And if you can't see ball easily between your plants, give it a week, try it again.

See if you see a ball ball, ball ball. 

Johanna: [00:33:39] And if you know, don't panic, not 100% of the proceeds are going to be male. I promise. 

Charlie: [00:33:46] That's also good advice for sure. So I love that you gave that advice and I think it was interesting that you brought this up, how different this was the sexing part of it from your normal gardening.

So I just love it if you might just [00:34:00] describe that to us in a little bit more detail, like, are there any other plants that we sex and try to find the male and females and separate, them like this? Or is it pretty specific to cannabis? 

Johanna: [00:34:10] It's really specific to cannabis. So in, in gardening, You know, most, most plants have female and male flowers on the same plant.

There are a few, there are a few in the editable world that don't one is I have them all in my book. I might have to look it up, but off the top of my head spinach, but like, who cares? Because if your spinach is flowering, you're like chucking it into the compost heap. I think asparagus, but same thing.

Like you're not into the flour. He, , Kiwi vines, you need to make sure you have a male and a female, but that's just sort of something you do at the time of purchase. You're not needing, , it's definitely the only one where you're needing to tell the difference. And then you're needing to get rid of one of the males.

It's completely unique to cannabis. Like there's nothing else. We do that for. 

[00:35:00] Charlie: [00:35:00] Well, and it's so cool. You bring that up because I I had the honor of speaking to some legacy growers from, the sixties, seventies, eighties, and it was just really interesting to talk about this time of sensimilla, when they started making that change from just, they were putting all of it in at the beginning, male, female, I didn't give a shit what it was.

They just put it all in. And then as you were saying, like back then they had literally like these coffee cans with a little, like little paddle on the top, and that would keep the seeds on the top. And like  the grass would stay at the bottom, it was just hilarious how we worked around the seeds that were present in our cannabis back then, but then with sexing, and sensimilla when we started just looking for the female, just the evolution of the plant, but It's so interesting to hear that because from what I've gathered, that really was just because of bag appeal, right?

Like no one wanted to have to sift through seeds. So we started making just [00:36:00] female, cannabis that didn't have any seeds. And I think that's such a unique change that we've evolved to over time. And now here we are in 21, 20, 21 talking about it. 

Johanna: [00:36:09] Totally. Yeah, totally. 

Charlie: [00:36:11] I want to hear more about the book. It seemed like it was  a fun journey, but I want to hear kind of like how that came about and was that just because it was someone something that they wanted you to write on or was that more of just a passion project after you've done some articles on cannabis? How did that come about?

Johanna: [00:36:28] So, yeah. Okay. So after I did the series for the Chronicle, which was more like sunsets, former garden editor fumbles her way through weed cultivation, where I was like, I don't even know where to get seeds. And this was more like, okay, you know what? I want to write a book about this.

And so, you know, I did the book proposal, et cetera, et cetera. I found a publisher And it was largely in my hands. And I worked with a freelance photographer named Rachel Weill, who I've, who I worked with all of my sunset days and just have really [00:37:00] great creative chemistry with, and we set out to do this book and you know what can I tell you?

I mean, it was like the blind leading the blind on some of it, like, we didn't have the budget for like a prop stylist. So we spent like four hours you know, like there's like a picture of, we like talk about, you know, what to do with your family leaves or if you have a male and you're cutting it down and like, oh, you can make it into juice or something, something.

So there's like a picture of juice with like a napkin. We spent like four hours just like trying to make sure the napkin was like perfect placement. You know, we're getting more like from this lifestyle magazine, everything like the hassle of beautiful. So I will say that like, The project, the book. So I was sort of like I mentioned, ha this is so funny high school.

Joanna thinks her whole life made sense now that I'm writing about weed. But when I, when we were finding gardens beautiful gardens to go photograph we did go up to Mendocino and Humboldt county. So in the Emerald triangle and found some, [00:38:00] some legacy in some newer growers who are you know, doing regenerative agriculture or farming on small enough of a scale that, you know, there were like garden takeaways from it.

And, , when I, when I started writing about and re meeting and learning about, and spending time with people who had spent 10 years in federal prison, because of a plant that their mom taught them how to grow. That's when it started being just like less, totally hilarious and more something that I, I did want to honor and I did want to take seriously.

 I think the same is true , since the book has been published and sort of every my own awakening in light of everything that happened right with George Floyd in summer of 2020, I did some self examination of my own history as a garden writer who, is always in search of the prettiest gardens, the fastest, and, having covered far too many white people's gardens.

And so actually embarked on a project that got. That [00:39:00] did get published in the San Francisco Chronicle profiling five or four black cannabis gardeners, again, all outdoors. And you know, I think that there there's a lot, that's like funny about having been a stoner and then getting to write a book about, about weed, but it's actually, a really important plant,  in the history of humankind and also in, who's, who's been targeted negatively by this plant and people sorting out their relationships to it and it's , the books.

So the book went through sort of a journey as I, as I matured into writing it. And yeah, like I mentioned, I. I think in talking to me now, you can probably tell that I'm like really funny. And the book is, I said that I like tried to be dry. I like, kind of gave it away. So like the book is, is definitely like the chapters.

I throw every, I throw my husband under the bus a lot in it because he just like, didn't want to smell like, like the drying and curing was a little bit of [00:40:00] a challenge in my family because my husband was like, I like really not wanting to smell. Like, he'd take taking a bong rip before going into work every day.

And yeah, I mean, just like, 

Charlie: [00:40:10] so he didn't let you, he didn't let you cure it in the in your guys's closet, your own closet?

Johanna: [00:40:15] So the book talks about this, but so I I wanted to do this whole thing, like sunset, or like Martha Stewart, who, by the way, I got to blurb the back of the book. But I wanted to dry it in the closet upstairs.

It's beautiful. You know, like white walls, you know twine hooks, whatever I cleaned, I cleared out a whole closet and then it just like, my husband was just like, oh my God, like, no it's smells. And so I had to bring it downstairs and that's the one part of the book that looks like everybody else's grow book where it's just like a hideous dry room.

You know, it's like this, like I mentioned, this unfinished laundry room. That's ugly, like everybody else, but I'm, I'm transparent about that in the book I [00:41:00] show the pretty one. And then I'm like, yeah, this didn't actually happen. 

Charlie: [00:41:02] Yeah, I saw that on Instagram though, the white closet background with them hanging.

And then there's the honest truth of just. Putting it in your garage or wherever you can. And that stage is so difficult to, I mean, I totally sympathize with you. I also am in a family where my wife isn't,  she doesn't consume cannabis at all, but she allows me to do my passions. And then all of a sudden it was like September and I'm like, okay.

So yeah, I'm going to have to set up this space in the garage and she's like, okay, we'll do what you gotta do. And I literally, like, I hung like these like a 12 foot black. Sheets all the way down. I stapled them to the top of the garage and like made like a room out of that. And then I had like air conditioning and dehumidifiers.

It was fucking nuts. Yeah. But Hey, we that's what we do. But like, there are certain things about this plant that, you're just kind of unavoidable, but it's also great that in 2021, there's a lot of things people can do, like take a [00:42:00] grow tent and put a charcoal filter on it. And that can get rid of a lot of smell.

If you have a significant other or someone else who doesn't want it. Permeate throughout the whole house. It's so interesting how, , I love how Joanna you and I have these moments, but that's only because we're in the cannabis space talking about growing or growing ourselves. So then there's like, how do you actually make this fit within your own life?

Which I think is also something that needs to be talked about, ,  it's just not just as easy as saying yeah, grow weed. That's easy. Yeah. It's just like any other plant and as there's nothing else different about it, it's like, Nope, there are some things it's not like it's rocket science, but there's still some things that you got to know to really give yourself you know, set up for success,

Johanna: [00:42:42] right! Like we're renters here in Berkeley and  the plant is legal, but like. Like you can read the fine print of our lease. It's like, no, no illegal substances. And it's federally illegal.  Our, our landlord happens to be a lawyer. And so there was sort of like [00:43:00] a part where it got real, especially for my risk averse husband being like I'm not really interested in this little project of yours, like costing us,  our home.

And yet to this day, I don't like, I don't, I don't know if they know. Like, I think must know. Right? Like they come over and they walk right past it. When it's growing in the garden. She knows, I wrote a book, like, is she not Googling me? You know? I don't know. So anyway, I think we're fine. But there are some elements where you got to make sure  that the people in your household are onboard with you grown weed for the smell or other reasons.

Charlie: [00:43:36] Yeah, I am in a very much the same boat. I I actually had to sign a contract saying that I would not grow or run a facility, the out of my house for cannabis. So it was something that I knew I was going to be signing. We, I mean living here in Napa, I don't know how it's like in Berkeley, but I can only imagine finding a place for your family, your [00:44:00] dogs and everything is virtually impossible.

So I bit the bullet and said that I wouldn't grow just so as to have a roof over her head, which was definitely a good decision. Last year I had a friend who was nice enough to let me grow at his property. But, and again, I thought that was going to be the same situation this year. And then. Last month, he gave me the horrible news that, that wasn't going to be the case.

So it's actually really interesting. I'm I'm doing this whole podcast about growing cannabis and I'm actually not even doing it currently, 

Johanna: [00:44:28] you're having a year off. 

Charlie: [00:44:29] Yeah. It's, it's, it's a really hard sabbatical. I literally had all of my babies,  starting to grow from seed and then had the horrible news and Amanda was so nice.

She's like, no, bring them up here and we can foster them. And I was like, you know what? This just seems so difficult. So I'm just spending my year doing what I can do, which is talking to people like yourself and helping people understand how to grow better. And I just can't wait til I'm back out there doing it again.

Johanna: [00:44:55] You know, I'm really not a big consumer. And every year [00:45:00] I'm like, okay, I'm not growing. Like the book's done. You know, I get it. I'm not going to grow weed. And then every year it comes time to start my seeds. And I'm I mean, I'm just like a big seed growing junkie in general. And like, I go through my stash of seeds and I'm like looking at all the, all the flowers and all the veggies.

And I'm like, don't look at the seed stash. Don't don't look at the week staff don't look at the wait don't don't don't and of course I take it out and I'm like, Ooh, Ooh, Ooh, we should do that one this year. Oh, that would be, yeah. Yep. So I'm yet to take a year off, even though I'm like, I really don't need to be growing this anymore.

Charlie: [00:45:35] Yeah. Well, but the thing is, it's so great to give out to friends and family and just gift people. Like everyone gets excited when you get to try. Someone's like, growing up here in Napa, when you try someone's wine, That they grew and made. They are so stoked to give it to you and to let like gift that, like there's some, there's something that happens in that situation.

You know, it's just like, there's something [00:46:00] remarkable about that gifting that is just it's different than anything else for sure. And I always love doing it 

Johanna: [00:46:05] agreed. And like my, the other thing I'm always saving space for is like, , I have a four year old and I'm like, oh, I'm just going to grow him all these veggies.

But it's like why he doesn't eat the veggies. So.  I don't know why I'm doing this this year. Like he doesn't eat green beans. I could care less about the green beans. 

Charlie: [00:46:22] But you do. And it's like, it's sometimes it's not even a, yeah. We find ourselves in the same moment. Like we grow a lot of greens and kale and it's like, we've never ate this much kale in our lives, but here we are doing it for sure.

Totally. Oh, that's so cool. Well, I just love that you have the bug for growing and you definitely, it comes across so well. And I'm just so glad that you put that passion into a book. We've got a little bit more time to kind of wrap it up. So I always love to just kind of take this advice, 

I'm, we're just to let everyone know, we will add pictures to this part of the process, because for us just to be talking about it, isn't really doing a [00:47:00] justice in terms of the differences between female and male and Joanne I'll probably have to pick your brain about some of those Leafly posts that you put up there that might be good articles for people to look at, to get some more information.

Johanna: [00:47:13] Totally. I can, I can send you that way and I can also probably give you some pics from the book for y'all. 

Charlie: [00:47:21] Thank you. But with that being said,  I want to kind of talk about,  the evolution of this.  Let's talk about this book and, those people out there, there's so much out there in terms of information.

So whenever we have someone on here, who's written a book, I mean, that's really. Trying to make it possible for someone to have one resource that they could go to that could get them throughout the whole growing season. And that seems like your book has been comprehensive in that level. 

Johanna: [00:47:47] Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, there's a, there's a community college course in the east bay that uses my textbook on growing. 

Charlie: [00:47:55] So yeah, teacher, Joanna, let's go for it. So [00:48:00] I always like to ask this question near the end. Here we are. It's some of our listeners first time growing cannabis, what's your advice for them?

How are they going to get to this? How are they going to get to a good product at the end? What do you have to get on your soap box and make sure that you get across to that person who's growing for the first. 

Johanna: [00:48:18] Well, we're already in late July, so am I addressing them like they are in late July and what to do from here on out?

Okay. Sure. Definitely like lay off any weird shit you're doing to theplant just like stop, like stop, stop, like taking family leaves off stop at this point, probably stopped pruning because it's going to, you're just going to be cutting flower buds at this point. So just like stop and, and watch, this is sort of the boring part where it gets really trippy out there.

You do have a choice now, now does become a choice where the, I will say the one way that weed is really different from [00:49:00] my other crops is that we, at least in the bay area have a lot of problems with Butterflies and caterpillars laying their eggs inside the flowers and then the caterpillars shit inside.

And then it rots. And that's how you get bud rot. So if you are serious about not losing a sizeable amount of your harvest to bud rot, it would be time to start spraying once a week with something like BT, which is an organic bio pesticide. But I will, I'm just going to tell you, I still don't because it screws with Monarch populations and, you know, I just, as an organic gardener, I've I make peace with loss.

I make peace with like, sharing with nature. So I still don't, I'm still too lazy to do it. So, , I, you can keep looking at your, you start paying better attention to your plants at this point. And like, you know, if you see anything that looks gray and soft, you can go [00:50:00] ahead and snip that out. Now you just have fun.

And it, it starts to, they start the buds start to stack and the, they just start to look really, really different as they start to go into their flowering stage. I would also say like, don't panic too much about curing and drying. Like, if you've ever dried an herb, you know, you like, hang it upside down somewhere dark, like you're basically doing that, you know?

And if you don't do it perfectly, you haven't ruined your crop. You just like, maybe have like a little less cannabinoids and terpenes, but like you haven't ruined it, that's, I think the next stage where people start freaking out about having to do everything perfectly. Right. And. Last year it rained Ash on my plants for however many months we had.

And that was a bummer. And I didn't I didn't do a bud wash because I thought it sounded really anti, like, what's the word non-intuitive unintuitive to like dip buds in water. And [00:51:00] all the farmers told me not to, because I think on an agricultural scale, it doesn't make any sense, but a lot of the home growers I know who just have a few plants really, really I think they were all really glad they did a bud wash, so you can look it up online.

There's different ways to do it just in water or in peroxide and then water to get all that Ash and whatever else was burning,  off your plants. I don't know. I feel like I was supposed to keep it really simple, but I just told them about like BT and bud washes. But, especially if this is your first time growing.

It's fine. If it all goes wrong,  you just do it again next year. The definition of a gardener is not someone who gets it. Right.  If you screw it up and you still keep going, then congratulations. You're a gardener. You know, like that's, that's all, that's all it is. You just, you have a passion for the process.

It sort of doesn't even matter what the final outcome is. 

Charlie: [00:51:53] Sure. I'm so glad you said that because I mean, , it's just like with anything in life, careers, entrepreneurial [00:52:00] life, anything, if you fall off the horse, you got to get back up and try it again. And  cannabis is so much the same thing.

And last year I didn't do anything. I also did not do BT, which people recommended to me. Cause I was just at a friend's house. So it was too far away to even try to do it. But anyways I lost a whole plant, tocaterpillars. It was my most beautiful plant I've ever grown. It was 24 carat. It was this tangy cross that was just delicious and it looks so fucking beautiful.

And then the, like a week before I picked it, it started getting some caterpillars, budrot goingon and by the time I picked it, harvested it, dried it. I lost everything. And you know, that's just part of it. Right. But like, I got to move on. And so for me, I'm actually, when I do grow again I'm going to be putting like mosquito netting around my plants, distrusting the butterflies and the caterpillars and all that stuff just can't even get to the plant.

And people suggested to do that around [00:53:00] flowering time. So there's a little suggestion for people who want to have. That's great. So for the Ash too, right? Like that's not going to get on the plant if you have something like that. So, yeah. Yeah. 

Johanna: [00:53:10] Yeah, clear. I spend a lot of my time out in the garden.

It's like, love, hate, right? Like I'm like out there. Hating things just kind of staring half the time. And yet it's like my greatest passion in life. So like, this is just sort of how it is like pursing your cursing half the time. You don't know what to do half the time. And that is gardening. 

Charlie: [00:53:31] That's it? I came out to the garden yesterday and I just saw like, some of my favorite tomatoes had just been choked out by some Ivy. And I was just like, oh gosh, darn it. I really wanted some dyno eggs this year, but I guess I'm not getting my dyno eggs, but there's other tomatoes around. Well, cool. Well, Joanna, I just really enjoy your perspective and just your, your convivial nature about growing cannabis and just our gardening in general.

So I just appreciate you spending the time [00:54:00] and giving some great tips and I look so forward to continuing the conversation next week. So yeah, I guess I gotta ask, is there anything else we feel like we need to kind of go over before we wrap this thing up this week? 

Johanna: [00:54:11] No, I, yeah, I feel good.

Thanks for having me. This was fun. 

Charlie: [00:54:15] Oh, so much fun, so much fun. It's just so cool to talk to someone about cannabis.  Like we were saying, last year was so,  not the year to put out a book or try to do any type of real business. So it's just so great. Now, here we are here. We are a year later and we're starting off again.

We're having these types of podcasts where we're getting our book out there and making it happen. So I guess with that being said, I'd love for you to just,  tell people about your book and the name of the book and where they could find it. 

Johanna: [00:54:43] Sure. So again, the name of the book is growing weed in the garden, and then the subhead is I know fuss seed to stash guide to outdoor cannabis cultivation.

You can find it anywhere. Books are sold, your local bookstore should be able to order it for you. You can also get it on Amazon. Of [00:55:00] course. You can find me like anywhere, but I'm probably most fun, although less fun. These days on Instagram. My handle is Joe Joe silver. For most of 2020. I was filming my child and I and the garden.

He was like, not on social media before the pandemic, and then I turned to completely exploiting him. But anyway. Yeah, I don't know. And I'll see y'all in clubhouse next week.

Charlie: [00:55:22] I guess I need to download clubhouse most definitely. Well, yeah. I mean, we'll get you all hooked into that whole platform before next Wednesday, but yeah.

So for those who love to join us, we are going to do the discussion section with Joanna silver on August 4th at 3:00 PM on clubhouse in the personal plants. Clubhouse room. So hopefully we'll see you there and you can ask any questions or we're just going to be continuing the conversation about sexing, how we can tell the difference between male and female and just the plant in general.

So awesome. Joanna. Well, I really appreciate your time and joining us and [00:56:00] we'll be talking to you on August 4th. Sounds great. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for listening everyone. This has been another episode of know, grow, create with me, Charlie Crebs. And thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next week.

Take care now. Bye bye.