Introduction

Many years ago, one of my favorite activities was riding my motorcycle. One perfect fall day, I scrubbed a curb on my 1973 Moto Guzzi 850T and woke up in the MCV emergency room with a broken collarbone and multiple broken ribs. They say it’s not if you wreck your bike, it’s when. I was lucky my accident hadn’t gone worse.

And I was laid up… more than a month unable to do much of anything and hurting pretty badly. The oxyconton based pain killers they sent me home with made me feel like garbage, there wasn’t much to do but to suffer along. Until one of my coworkers showed up at my home with a small bag of weed.

It had been many years since the last time I had smoked. I spent some time smoking as much as I could late in my teens and into my early 20’s, but decided to stop. For the next many years, I smoked occasionally, generally when I was drunk enough to think it was a good idea. It never was… invariably I’d take a couple of hits and end up paranoid, uncomfortable, and sick. It would pretty much ruin my drunk good time.

But here I was, on the couch, not in the mood to drink, and my ribs hurt. So I puffed a little of the brownish herb that was shared with me and turned a movie on. It didn’t make the hurting stop, but it made me focus on other things so the pain settled into the back of my mind. It made Pale Rider, my chosen movie, a full on psychadelic experience. It got me through.

As I healed and the bag dwindled, I noticed, along with the pain relief, my mental health was significantly better. I was drinking less, happier, more engaged in the things that interested me… My employee wasn’t, it turned out, a reliable source to get more herb. Cannabis was still illegal, and me in my mid-30’s and not great at making the right friends… I was in a spot. Mid-30’s old man asking around for weed… lol

So I spent some time online, reading up on growing my own. Months later, a mysterious package with some catnip-stuffed, fish-shaped toys arrived in my mailbox. I threw it out, figured it was some bullshit promotional stuff that starts arriving in your mail when you decide to open a small business. A few days later, I was wondering what became of the $100 bill I had mailed to Mexico many weeks past. On a whim, I dug into my trash to take another look at the cat toys. Under the label, perfectly concealed in the packaging, two small baggies with a 5 seeds apiece. Sour Diesel and Medusa were the strains these seeds purported to be. If they had been diamonds, I’d have been less excited.

That was a long time ago. Growing my own has been a part of my life since that day.

Now, cannabis is legal in Virginia and many other states, and hopefully will become legal everywhere before too terribly long. Over the last few years, many folks have begun growing their own locally, and I’ve watched as our community has evolved. We’ve evolved from wanting the quickest flower we can get our hands on, eager to harvest early just to sample our own homegrown for the first time…growing bag seed, seeking out the quickest flowering autoflowers, then photoperiods, grown on windowsills and under LED lights, tents quickly evolving with upgraded lights, fans, temperature and humidity control, automation, plants fed on designer salts, eagerly shared on social media.

The community has evolved to begin appreciating more of the how behind our grows, and as we’ve explored the countless rabbitholes around each growing topic, we’ve better begun defining how each of us grows.

As with anything, there's more than one way to verb this noun. What works for you may not work for me, and vice versa, and so forth. The tips and techniques I share in this blog are based on my own experience and what science I have grown to understand.

For a variety of reasons, my style has evolved over years as well. Sun grown, outside, organically grown, plants that are able to reach their full potential. Getting the best light available, along with mother nature’s helping hand with regard to pest and nutrient management, is challenging. Growing outside requires learning, adaptation, and experience. It’s exciting to see more and more growers appreciate the craft at a higher level as their skills and experience grows.

I call it growing on hard mode. That’s what this blog is about. I’ll be sharing knowledge I’ve acquired through experience and study, maybe some relevant stories, tips that’ll make you a more effective grower, and probably a bunch more. My hope is that the reader is able to avoid many of the pitfalls and mistakes inherent in growing on hard mode, boosted up to take their own grows to the next level. Welcome!