Jamaican Cannabis and Hashmaking

0:02SpeakerGood morning, everybody. Hopefully Mark will be joining us momentarily and we will be on live.

0:25SpeakerSending some links out, getting Mark online.

0:31SpeakerLet me see if they start joining us.

0:45SpeakerWhat is going on?

0:49SpeakerOh, I hate this job.

0:55SpeakerI don't see it live, Mark. I don't see anybody joining me. Well, we'll see everybody if this is actually working. 300 viewers, so we got viewers. Oh, I hate this job. Give it a minute here. There it is, everybody. That's Mark. Hello. Oh, I had my volume down. It's not easy being Mark. It's not easy being Mark is all I'm going to say.

1:28BubblemanI don't want you to... My son just called me as well and told me he's sick at ski school and I have to go pick him up now. Really? So I just drove all the way up here to basically dress out. I'm so sorry, bro. Good morning. It happens, it happens.

1:52Etienne FontanGood morning and hello from Jamaica there, Bubble Man. Hope things are going well there.

1:57BubblemanI wish I was still in Jamaica. I'm actually in Whistler now, surrounded by snow and trees and mountains, but everything went wonderful in Jamaica. Hey, Todd, make sure you click on the box, and if you click twice and there's no white frame, it'll change every time someone talks, for you at least, where you're recording. Welcome, Johnny B.

2:20Etienne FontanOkay. Wow, quite the opposite then from the warmth and humidity in the mountains of Jamaica going straight to the ice and frigid, eh?

2:28BubblemanOh, absolutely. I'm looking forward to it. I was looking forward to getting up on the mountains today, but my son is sick, and it sounds like I'm going to have to go pick him up in a few minutes and get back for hash church.

2:42Etienne FontanWell, I hope he feels better and feels well. I don't see the live stream on YouTube.

2:51BubblemanYeah, it's on YouTube. The live stream is streaming. And there's a chat there. We got the whole... Yeah, I got it. Oh, that's interesting. Because I'm on my other account, I can't chat in the chat room. It says, create a channel to join the chat. I think the bubble man in the chat room, I guess, while I'm on here.

3:16SpeakerI love it. I love it. Well, you know, this is the difference between hype and production and doing something you love for fun. So I hope everybody can get a little high and be cool. Yeah, it still doesn't show up on there.

3:33BubblemanNow it's the old I can't get in. It says error. So you may have to send out the links to the people, Todd, because the link that I sent at least isn't working for Mr. Skunkman Sam. And because...

3:49SpeakerI just sent it to Sam. Let me see if that works.

3:53BubblemanChat, and I can't send links. ATN got in on my link, so that's...

3:58Etienne FontanWelcome, Dr. Skelton. Johnny's also not getting...

4:04SpeakerOkay, so here, let me throw it into the... I didn't get the group one that you sent either.

4:09BubblemanThere's another way, Todd, if you listen for one second. If you go to the top where there's the cell phone, the cog, the Wi-Fi, the camera, and the mic, there's a left one, and it's a little person, and if you click on it, It copies the link in a shareable link, not the one from the address bar. I don't have it because I'm not the moderator, but it's on the far left at the top of the screen.

4:34BubblemanIf you click on that box, that should copy and paste an actual link.

4:38SpeakerYou can then, yeah, as it's not working.

4:43BubblemanYou got it. I just got you the new one. I'm not going to lie. Hashtag is definitely getting close to the point where I'm going to give up on it.

4:53BubblemanI'm not lying. Do you have the new link? I'm sending it out to everyone the same as you just did.

5:03BubblemanHey, there he is. I'm back. It's the with major stress. It's quite different waiting for a link in the morning compared to actually organizing the link in the morning. What I am going to ask, John, is that you mute your mic if you're not talking because the noise you're making. Thank you, sir. I'm going to be really, really strict on the mic muting today. I don't have headphones, so if you're not talking, you're on the mic.

5:34BubblemanThank you. Welcome, Mr. Scaldone and Johnny B, Skunkman Sam, Etienne. And of course, hundreds of people watching live right now. I don't know how many there are, but I'm sure there's a few. YouTube says 500.

5:48MrDarren's not here, but I'm just saying, bong rip. I got to do a bong rip.

5:56BubblemanBeautiful. I can get behind that, Johnny B. And while I wanted to go to Jamaica, Johnny B and I just had. It was epic. I'll tell you. It was really quite a one trip. Johnny landed a little late from the rest of us, but wonderful concert, wonderful meetings, just all in all great vibes. Got to hang out with some plants, do some cloning, a little bit of rosin pressing with the Sasquatch rosin crew that we were We're able to do at our booth at Bob Marley's birthday celebration or Earth Strong, as they say in Jamaica.

6:30BubblemanIt was his 72nd Earth Strong. And so we had a little booth with cannabinoid research and development set up at the back. Tony was representing. We had Ernie out, our grower that used to grow for... We had all our Jamaican partners in the house. Johnny B was there. I was there. And it was really, really fun. And I'm telling you that for those of you that are spending time and money and energy going on trips for cannabis cups and these sorts of things, I implore you to potentially put Bob Marley's Earth Strong on the list.

7:05BubblemanIt's a small kind of gathering, maybe a thousand or two thousand people total over the course of the day. The quality of people is incredible, the quality of dialogue and conversation. And they even had a little bit of a conference style where people were speaking. So I got to see Jah Nain, the reggae artist, speaking with Dr. Jelani Naya from the Rasta Council at University of West Indies.

7:30BubblemanAlso was able to do his radio show with him on Ganja Talk, which was quite wonderful. But listening to Jah Nain talk about the... So what's the next step?

8:07Etienne FontanSo what is the next step for Jamaica? Since you were there, you probably got a better update on what's transpiring there because everything's just kind of been rumor controlled. So can you put some cement to the rubber?

8:18BubblemanWell, we did have the Prime Minister come up to our booth at the Bob Marley Earth Strong Celebration, which was wonderful.

8:26SpeakerShout out to Roland.

8:33SpeakerDid we just lose Mark for a second there? I think we just lost Mark there for a second.

8:38MrMark was talking about how we had the Prime Minister come by, stop by the CRD booth, and said that within the next few months there will be licensing being handed out. Shook Tony Ventura's hand. It's pretty empowering. It's pretty cool. We had a lot of the government officials over the period of the day stop by. I was the patient. Story, and I had lots of talks with people and talking about how cannabis had changed my life with my surgeries and stuff.

9:07MrReally, really empowering. It was that the people truly, really wanted to know more about what CRD was doing and exactly what our direction was with working with the Jamaican people and the Rastafarians. It was pretty cool. We talked about the Sasquatch Press. We had these guys there from the Sasquatch. They were there. They were pressing out resin for the Rastafarians, people bringing up their own buds and we're getting different yields.

9:34MrSo they're really learning the difference between the heat and the pressure. Everybody was really, really just, they were just, they wanted it. They really, really wanted to learn. So we had a really busy booth. It was a fantastic day, definitely.

9:49Etienne FontanSo it sounds like everybody was quite receptive. Did you meet with any negativity?

9:54MrNo, I had one lady, she was kind of, so what are you guys going to do? Are you going to try and take it from the Jamaican people? Like, no, we're here to help the Rasta Farms. We're teaching them how to clone. We want to work with the farmers. We want to get back at, we want to give, like Mark said, we want to breed the lion back into Jamaica and give that to the farmers so they don't have powdery mildew, bug infested weeds, stuff like that.

10:17MrWe've got to breed the lion back in. Mark was talking about, about, of course, Snuck Matt Sam talking about it. And there was lots of talks about exactly what we're going to do once we get a license in Jamaica and bring it back to the people, allow the farmers to grow, because that's what we're looking at, outdoor growing resin, not growing it indoors. We want the sun to grow our resin.

10:38MrSo that's the biggest thing about Jamaica is we're not building big indoor facilities like we're doing up here in Canada, not these 80, 20,000, 30,000 square foot monstrosity buildings. We're using the sun. We're using the The air we use in Jamaica in order to grow exactly what we're doing to bring forward a pain medication for pain control is what we're looking at.

11:00SpeakerOne of the funny things about Jamaica, of course, is most Western varieties, if you want to grow them outdoors in the ground, you need to give supplemental lights until they get big enough and then you quit giving them any light.

11:14MrAnd that's what we have going on out there. They were stringing just little LED lights across the fields and leaving them on so we're getting 18 hours of light. And you can just see the difference between the last crops that I was looking at a couple years ago that were just single colas, like just a single cola. If you saw the videos that Mark was putting up when we did Facebook Live there the other day, you can see the difference in what we're doing.

11:38MrWe've got great big bushes, like bushes that are growing there. It was great to see that, to get to see that in Jamaica for the first time when I put a huge smile on my face. We don't have these just single plants, you know, just one cold plants that are growing.

11:52SpeakerOne of the advantages with Jamaica, of course, is that you can quite literally turn off the lights anytime the plants are big enough and they'll flower.

12:01MrAbsolutely. You can see that. They move some of them outside to the other side. You can see how they completely change within 10 feet.

12:10SpeakerRight. But, you know, up until the early 70s, everything growing in Jamaica was equatorial or tropical. It wasn't until the hippies discovered, you know, what we call Afghan or what we call indica, you know, broadleaf drug variety that flowered fast and then started spreading it everywhere. We, you know, even Maui. I mean, when I first went to Maui in the 90s and saw some of the people trying to grow complex hybrids in a tropical area and it would just bud up and mold in the middle, I thought, Jesus, you just got the wrong strains.

12:40SpeakerAnd I've heard Rob Clark complain many times that Jamaica lost, you know, the hazes, equatorial varieties some years ago when people were trying to improve with the new hybrids, but it didn't happen. You know, Sam, could you talk about that a little? Well, it did change Jamaican growing because what the problem with Jamaican growing was they used to be able to have basically two seasons, the long season and the short season.

13:06SpeakerThe long season they planted in the spring and harvest in the late fall or early winter and They planted in the early winter and harvested in the early spring before the hours increased again for the short crop. But the problem with all of these was that you can't do that with wide leaf. You can only do that with narrow leaf. Thank you for joining us.

13:51SpeakerThink about it. You're a Jamaican farmer. You put your plants in the ground early in the spring. You can't harvest them until November, December, which means they're there for thieves, they're there for the police, they're there for a lot of problems. Where you put something like an Indica Sativa Hybrid, Or wide-leaf, narrow-leaf hybrid. And what you have is a plant which is done in three or four months and wham, bam, you're out of there.

14:19SpeakerSo you can pull a couple crops and spread your risk.

14:26SpeakerWhen did that change, I was going to ask? When did this influx of hybrids get there? It started showing up in America in the 70s, and by the end of the 70s, they already had a little bit there, and by the 80s, Probably a hundred different groups or individuals had taken the wideleaf or wideleaf hybrid seeds to Jamaica. Not only Jamaica, but to Mexico, to Morocco. I mean, in the 80s and 90s and 2000, it's everywhere now.

15:03SpeakerIt's hard to find a traditional area with land races that have not been affected by other Western genes.

15:11Etienne FontanSo both John and Sam, if you can answer this, and what are the biological problems or issues they're dealing with currently in Jamaica due to these genetic, you know, these...

15:23SpeakerWidely varieties, the problem is botrytis and powdery mildew and early flowering. So, yeah, that is the problem.

15:35Etienne FontanWhy is early flowering an issue?

15:38SpeakerWell, because do you want little plants or big plants? Because it's in the wrong climate. You can't have plants that go directly into flowering and stop vegetating in a place where they're going to have to vegetate, grow, and flower simultaneously to fend off incredibly moist atmosphere. So all these loose spindly buds... Can actually sweat off the moisture where all these dense buds that we're used to seeing indoors trap the moisture and rot it in the center.

16:09SpeakerA lot of it is structure, but it's also resistance. The materials from northern Afghanistan really don't have resistance to hot, wet, humid climates because they don't got them there.

16:26MrI was going to say, Sam, with all the different varieties they're growing, this is just a picture I'm showing you guys here. You can see in the upper top corner here, you can see the lights that are hanging and stuff like that. But with the wide leaf indicas, I was taking pictures of those leaves in general. Like I was just showing them and then taking a look down the spine and seeing the difference of what was affecting it.

16:45MrYou can see the difference in the growing of all the different strains. And one was the Jack Frost that it was more of the haze and how just amazing that plant was. Thank you for joining us.

17:12SpeakerWhen you can trip them and more important resistance to botrytis and powdery mildew because those are a big problem for most white-leafed organizations.

17:27Etienne FontanWhat about bugs? Were there any particular bugs that tended to be more dominant in the gardens, John, than others that they're dealing with?

17:37MrWell, see, for me, I mean, I walked through the garden. I didn't see any PM. I saw a little bit on some plants down on another field. We could see where there was a little bit of bug damage on some of the wide leaf varieties. And we talked about the indicas and the sativas and then about just the difference of how far apart some of the fields were and about cross-contamination.

17:58MrAnd then some farmers were walking from one side to another side. So it was more of a really educational talking about cloning, because they were just cutting clones and sticking them basically outside, right in between the plants. So we were kind of going over, Tony mentioned doing a Ziploc bag type method, so cutting holes in the bottom of the Ziploc, putting four clones in the middle, folding over the top, spraying a little bit of moisture on top, and then we went and got a shop link, so we're kind of showing them the difference in cloning, because everything from there is from seed.

18:30MrSo it's kind of more about teaching the farmers who have been doing it for so long just some other methods so they can get some, you know, bigger growth, better varieties and stuff like that and what they're dealing with.

18:44Etienne FontanWell, so they can keep mothers and also, as you said, clone is exponential once you have a varietal that you know that is, you know, a cultivar that you want to perpetuate, especially one if you find it works in your valley or garden, etc.

18:57MrYou want to perpetuate that. We found one out of, I think there's up to, I think we had up to nine or ten varieties and one sticks out tremendously. You can see the difference how it's growing. Like, okay, that's the one we're going to clone lots of. So that's what we started cloning. And it has more of the haze variety in it. You can see just how dominant it was, how much more vigorous it was growing, and just the overall plant health of that one particular variety out of all the ones we have is the one that we're going to be like shushing it out and saying that's the one that's doing the best here right now.

19:25Etienne FontanHow tall was it? Over my head, seven, eight feet tall. And how taller was it than the other ones around it? Well, right beside it was the indicas that were up to about here.

19:37SpeakerThe only bad thing about it, John, was its name was Blue Dream.

19:44MrDon't think it was Blue Dream. I think it was the Jack Frost or something. And that was something that's one of those terpene ones that we really, really liked from Blue River. It was that particular terpene. That's the strain that's doing the best out there. So it'd be really good to be able to extract the terpenes from those plants and to see the difference between it being grown indoors in California, being outdoors in Jamaica, and taking the difference Different variety.

20:07MrTaking a look at the, I'd say more of the profile and see the difference between the two strains being grown in two different conditions. I'm kind of interested in that and just see the difference of what outdoor Jamaica can do compared to indoor California.

20:21SpeakerThere's going to be some beautiful stuff coming out of the tropics when they're growing the stuff that grows well in the tropics.

20:28MrYes, but some of these strains that we're bringing in to try and grow there are typically not the strains that are going to be growing in Jamaica. I think it's more or less seeing what's there in Lake Samson. You've got to start bringing in the varieties that don't grow in Jamaica. And all they're doing is bringing disease and bugs and other things to the island that we don't need there.

20:49Etienne FontanSo what then, what sort of fertilizers are they using out in the fields then? Or what do they have access to for the most part? So this is really cool.

20:57MrI want to mention this to you, Sam. The pH water is about 8.5, if that's what they're dealing with. But that's what I've seen with the cloning. When we tested the water that they were using, it was like 8.5. The pH is way too high. But yet the plants are doing so well and the soil is so red. We're wondering about the minerals in the soil within it to bring the pH down to allow those plants to be in so well because the pH at 8.5, I know, my plants are locking out at that point.

21:21MrSo I was kind of curious about that. I wanted to bring back some soil to test it because it was kind of different to see just that in particular, the difference of the water being at 8.5 and then they're feeding and the plants are doing tremendous in the red soil. But then when we put them into the pro mix that we're trying to clone with, it's just not, of course, there's no uptake.

21:41Dr Mark ScialdoneThere's going to be a lot of natural soil that can buffer that pH, right? It's called the lime.

21:47SpeakerYeah. We've used it for decades. That's how you make the soil.

21:49Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd if you think about it, I mean, again, most of what coral reefs are and probably the underpinning of what's there is mostly lime, right? So the island is itself a natural pH buffer.

22:05MrExactly. That's what I was trying to say. Naturally, the soil in the ground is naturally pHed. Well, because the water pH was way too high, so that's something that we realized we had to start pH-ing the water, specifically just for the clones.

22:20SpeakerYou can also change the pH of the water pretty easy in line in the irrigation tube, so it's not no big thing.

22:29Etienne FontanCurious farmers may want to know what is the pH you were trying to keep the clones at, John?

22:35MrWell, for me, I'm probably 6.3, 6 to 6.3.

22:39SpeakerYeah, 6-6 to 6-4, so 5-8 to 6-4 works fine.

22:43MrYeah, I'm a 6-3 guy, you know, that's kind of where I hit when doing hydroponics, then of course 5-5, so that's what works for me. I see what works in Jamaica, so we're trying to really be able to establish the make, cut the clones and getting proper, so right now it's like trying to find a mini-dome on the island. They just don't exist.

23:07BubblemanWhat doesn't exist on the island?

23:09MrAmenity Domes.

23:10BubblemanMy friend has a thousand of them in Mo Bay.

23:13MrWell, how come we couldn't find them? Well, then you didn't mention this when we were sitting there. We're going to have to send some domes and trays. Okay, well, you make sure you send those over to the facility and I'll fly in.

23:27BubblemanI've already contacted my friend. The thing is, is he's not a delivery service. So it's a matter of getting something to Mo Bay and pick them up. And that will be the logistics.

23:36MrSo I got to fly into Mope.

23:41SpeakerWhat's the size of those units, Marcus? Are they individual plants or are they big ones?

23:48BubblemanLike we were talking about clone domes. Are you talking about plants?

23:52SpeakerNo, for clone domes, yes. Is it for individual clones or is it for groups of clones?

23:58BubblemanI've never seen an individual clone dome. They're just for groups. It's like 50 and 100, I believe, are the size of the domes.

24:05SpeakerYeah, people even use things like plastic water bottles turned upside down.

24:11MrOkay, yeah, two liter bottles.

24:14BubblemanThat makes sense. Yeah, it's definitely, there's a whole bunch of different logistics in Jamaica for growing, but just little things and the fact that it's, like John mentions, becomes difficult to locate certain, oh, Todd left the call. That's not a good sign considering he's running the entire thing right now.

24:36Etienne FontanWell, we're still on.

24:39BubblemanI finally got on my phone because my computer was absolutely not giving me any love.

24:44Etienne FontanYou could turn up your volume a little bit. You're a little in the, sounding like you're in a hallway.

24:48MrPut some headphones on, Mark, with the cell phone. It'll be a lot better if you can.

24:54Etienne FontanSo what type of, I know you guys brought the squisher to Sasquatch, so what type of hash were you seeing besides the hash that you were making? Because I know there's, since there's a lot more cannabis, you must be seeing a lot more hash.

25:09MrYou know, we saw a lot more bud this time around.

25:11BubblemanThere was only a few people who brought hash that squished out, but we definitely, we definitely saw A lot of flour. Everyone has flour in Jamaica. It's like a no-brainer. And I'll have to say the bud that Kiddus I had was probably some of the nicest. It was about a three or four gram bud and his just dripped.

25:30MrIt squished.

25:32BubblemanHe had full drips going right to the bottom. So that was really nice. It had also the people where the Sasquatch crew were staying had some really nice bud. It was like a pineapple skunk sort of flavor and That's really nice too. Tasted super nice. I mean, there's nice flavors in Jamaica. There's no doubt about it. I've made beautiful hash there in the past. It's just hard to find.

25:57BubblemanYou really have to find the people who are focused on that sort of OCD level of growing where they're paying, you know, more attention than the least amount of attention. So I guess we are still live. That's good because Todd is telling me that his thing died and he's having a hard time getting back in right now, which is, I'll tell you, Hash Church is... It's a lot of work.

26:18BubblemanIt's falling apart.

26:19MrIt's a lot of work.

26:21BubblemanHash Church is slowly but surely crumbling to the ground. I told Todd today that we might be in the last couple of Hash Churches here. I'm not sure how much longer we can keep it going with just forcing it. When it was natural and it all came together, it seemed such a good thing. When it seems like a forced thing and we really got to try to make it work and the internet's flailing on us, nobody can understand, it just slowly turns into a kind of like maybe Maybe we've run its course.

26:50BubblemanI don't know. We'll check in the next couple of weeks. We'll see how it goes.

26:55SpeakerI say it's a plot. I think it's more than just a coincidence that Trump got elected and Hash Church crashed.

27:03Etienne FontanRight? Chad is not very happy at all with hearing this in any way, shape, or form.

27:08MrYeah, they're kind of freaking out. They're like, no. We can always do like, you know... We got to keep it going. We did the Google Talks.

27:18BubblemanTodd and I have been talking about starting a different show, kind of a different type of an interview show, having different guests on and like a Friday night show that we've been trying to do for a while. And so that might happen in the future. And I'm sure that we'll invite some of the Hash Church guests in to hang out and chill. But yeah, you know, it's just I've missed the last five Hash Churches.

27:42BubblemanI haven't even been able to speak a bloody word. I'm running around like a chicken with my head to cut off. Today I drove to Whistler to drop my son off for ski school. Ran around like a maniac trying to find an internet connection. And then five minutes into church, my son called me and said, I'm sick. I'm coming down. We have to go home. So I'm actually leaving right away here.

28:00BubblemanI just wanted to get a couple of words in before I did. I'm not sure if Todd's going to be getting back on. If people want to communicate with him, that would be great. I'm on my phone, so I'm unable to communicate with him. My computer's not working. He just needs to figure out clicking on that link that he shared with everyone, maybe rebooting his browser. And he should be able to get back in.

28:22BubblemanIt's happened like that for me. But I think if he stays out for a long enough time, the chat will die and it won't be live anymore because he's actually the one that was running it.

28:35MrWell, I guess we're talking for now and doing what we love to do is talk about this plant and how great

28:42SpeakerWe all have to talk really a lot faster in case it's going to die.

28:46Etienne FontanThere you go. Well, I have admin and I'm still alive, so that may be the reason why.

28:54Etienne FontanYou better just stay there.

28:56BubblemanWhere'd you go, Torchy?

29:00MrMark's looking for his torch. You know what? I woke up this morning and I got this trim bin is just doing wonders. Look at this hash you keep getting from the trim bin. And of course, I got to clean it up. But then I did a little Facebook live this morning sideways so I had to delete it. But definitely just trimming. It's all about trimming your weed and what you do.

29:22MrAnd those first little bits of trimming or the first bounce or everything is where you're