NY’S FIRST DISPENSARY DID $12 MILLION IN 6 MONTHS

New York’s first recreational marijuana dispensary sold $12 million in sales in the first six months of operations. 

When announcing the figures this week, Housing Works Cannabis Co boasted the store has already directed millions of dollars to some of the city’s communities in the most urgent need of support. Sales are directly supporting programs that provide New Yorkers a variety of services. Housing Works noted those services include health care, housing, job training, harm reduction, case management, advocacy for health equity and social justice initiatives, LGBTQ+ youth programs, and sexual health services.

The shop’s manager noted these kinds of services were a keystone of what Housing Works does long before cannabis permits were a thing. 

“Our goal, going back over 30 years ago through Housing Works, has been to empower New Yorkers through advocacy and bridge communities to life saving services,” said Sasha Nutgent, retail manager at Housing Works Cannabis Co. “From the resources we’ve rolled out, to the brands we carefully select for our customers, everything we do here has a greater purpose, and we’re humbled to see the support our mission is receiving.”

Things Started Strong

As expected, New York’s first recreational dispensary was a madhouse when it opened a couple of days before the new year. Housing Works notes the shop did an estimated $40,000 dollars in sales in just its first three hours open. Over the course of the next month, the numbers would get up to $1.6 million with sales continuing to roll on to hit that $12 million mark at the tail end of July. 

What are New Yorkers buying?

According to Housing Works’ data from the last six months, New Yorkers are buying for strength. The biggest determining factor in purchases so far is potency. Some would argue that means consumers are uneducated, but that’s not necessarily the case. There is certainly some balance between potency and quality even if the weed with the highest THC number isn’t the best one on the shelf. People that try and disenfranchise the importance of potency in cannabis may be trying to cover for inferior products that don’t get the numbers needed to be commercially viable in this market. In a fun surprise, Housing Works noted that people are leaning towards sativas and sativa-leaning hybrids. Once there is a bigger data pool in New York, it will lean toward gas and dessert weed for sure, with the exception of great diesel. 

Stocking The Shelves 

While sales have been great, getting the product to stock the shelves and drive those numbers has not always been an easy task for Housing Works. 

“One unforeseen challenge and a pain point for both retailers and customers has been product rollout,” said Nutgent. “There have been major improvements with the state’s product testing timeline, for example, but the feedback we still hear from some Black-owned brands is that there is not enough funding to get their products into the market.”

In recent months the dispensary has added over 200 new products.

Delivery

Make no mistake about it, cannabis delivery has been an extremely popular thing in NYC for decades, with various services coming and going over those years. Housing Works has lucked out in becoming the first legal delivery service in the state in addition to its retail site. The company noted this falls right in line with its quest to be accessible. 

“We’ve seen our delivery programs over the years forge meaningful and trusting relationships between our staff and thrift store patrons,” said Charles King, CEO of Housing Works. “To see the same positive dynamic emerge between customers and budtenders reflects our roots in the city, our deep understanding of New York City culture and the community trust we continue to nurture.”

Right now the delivery service is available in select zip codes in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens; anyone over the age of 21 with a valid ID can secure same-day and next-day delivery slots directly on Housing Works Cannabis Co’s website.

WILL GRINER’S CONFINEMENT INSPIRE REFLECTIONS AT HOME?

Brittney Griner returned home to the U.S. last Friday, ending one of the greatest incidents in cannabis and geopolitics of all time. 

Many have been quick to point out various reasons Griner’s ordeal lasted 10 months. The condition of U.S. relations with Russia in the wake of the war in Ukraine obviously tops the list for many as western munitions continue to push Kyiv’s control further and further into Eastern Ukraine. 

The anti-Griner takes for the most part have been poorly articulated. The idea of a professional athlete using CBD is far from new, it’s just the Russian part that made it complicated. And now, as she begins to enjoy her first week of freedom with her family in nearly a year, she’s forced to endure the news cycle debating if she was worth it. And finally, it’s not like she made the deal herself. 

And in correctional facilities across America, nonviolent cannabis offenders are watching the news cycle baffled. How could America give an arms dealer up for an Olympic champion, yet there they sit? Why has the normalization of cannabis forgotten them?

The National Organization for The Reform of Marijuana Laws hopes Griner’s release will cause some soul-searching back here at home. Erik Altieri, NORML executive director, called Griner’s imprisonment a grotesque affront to the concept of justice. He also noted it has served as an unfortunate reminder of how draconic marijuana laws remain around the globe. 

“However, it should also cause a serious level of reflection amongst our lawmakers considering that a large number of states still inflict similar penalties for marijuana possession on our own soil, and the current federal policy of marijuana prohibition isn’t notably different than the stance held by Putin’s regime in Russia,” Altieri said. “Brittney Griner very much deserved to be released and brought home, but our elected officials in the United States must use this as motivation to bring our domestic marijuana policies in line with our nation’s stated principles of liberty and justice.”

Women Grow, which has worked to inspire female leadership in the cannabis industry since 2014, echoed NORML’s take. 

“Women Grow is extremely happy to hear that Brittney Griner is being returned home and is grateful to our government for working on her behalf. This is an extraordinary gift for her family, loved ones, community, and fans,” said Gia Morón, Women Grow president. “In addition, her case has greatly amplified the plight of those imprisoned on cannabis-related charges and the need for cannabis legalization on a global scale. We also hope this continues the forward movement toward freeing all those incarcerated for cannabis worldwide.”

As they did during her confinement, numerous athletes came out in support of Griner as her release was made public. Among those wishing Griner well was cannabis entrepreneur Ricky Williams.

“I was so happy to hear about Brittney Griner’s release today. The greater the change we can create in the U.S. because of her imprisonment, the greater meaning it will give to her incarceration,” Williams said. “It’s time to apply pressure on our government to start expediting domestic reform. There are still tens of thousands of people unjustly detained for cannabis in the US.”

We’ll follow any updates on what the future holds for cannabis offenders here at home. 

PUTTING PURPLE ON THE MAP

Purple weed was already a thing when Ken Estes got his hands on Grand Daddy Purple in Mendocino County and brought it back to his grows in the bay area, but that journey south really put the winds in its sails. 

We ran into Estes during our recent travels to cover Spannabis and the wider Barcelona club scene. He noted he had spent much of the last decade dealing with his health — this is what originally forced him to take his foot off the gas back in the mid-2010s. But his impact to this day is undeniable. We’d catch back up in California to talk purple a few weeks later. 

While not as prominent in the era of 40 new exotic flavors a month, GDP, as Grand Daddy Purple would be known to many, still dots menus up and down California. Prior to the rise of dessert weeds following Cookies hitting the scene, GDP was where people went for a combination of flavor and impact. Even Cookies’ most famous sibling Cherry Pie was the Durban F1 used to make cookies paired to GDP. 

But before all that came to be, GDP was the last stop for those looking for high-impact cannabis that wasn’t OG Kush. Some would also argue the purple was a bit more couchlock-heavy than the OG Kush of the time. And while Ken Estes certainly didn’t invent purple weed, he changed the demand level, all while living through the dark ages of cannabis. 

And he was loud. Few pushed the limits like Estes. During an event in 2010, he opened a dispensary 20 yards from the steps of Oakland city hall. When he wasn’t executing his business plans, he was hitting city council meetings, eventually opening one of America’s first chains of dispensaries with his Grand Daddy Purple Collective shops in NorCal. His being so “out there” during that era led to frustrations for both his peers and city officials, but folks certainly had a knack for following Ken into town. 

Estes’s path to cannabis would start after a motorcycle accident at age 18 in the 1970s paralyzed him from the neck down. Prior to the accident, Estes had been playing soccer at an elite level in California. Pele, in town with the New York Cosmos at the time, gave him a call of support from the hospital’s lobby so he wouldn’t have to fight the crowd there to support Estes in the days following his injury. 

Six months into his rehabilitation, he experienced cannabis for the first time with a group of Vietnam veterans who were in the same care facility. This began his lifelong connection to medical cannabis. 

“I was a young kid. I was 18. My first personal experience with weed was pretty strong. But I went back to my room and I slept all night. It was the first night in six months I slept all night,” Estes told L.A. Weekly. 

He recalls how common the idea of marijuana being medicine was. All the nurses and doctors knew. And he certainly knew it was medicine from his first experience. After that first joint, Estes would end up having eyes on the scene for the next 45 years.

“I’m shocked and surprised where this movement went,” Estes said. “I thought we were just in California getting it for patients. When I started, it was the gay world that came from fighting for gay rights to we have people dying in San Francisco of AIDS. Why can’t they use marijuana? And then Brownie Mary got arrested and that changed the game.”

Mary Jane Rathbun was a San Francisco General Hospital volunteer. She eventually became famous for baking hundreds of brownies a day as the AIDS epidemic hit San Francisco hard. Between 1981 and 1992, she was arrested three times for her famous brownies, but her activism helped push Prop 215 across the finish line. Now, Brownie Mary Day is Aug. 25, in San Francisco. 

But we quickly turned back to that first rotation in Vallejo. Since he was still fully paralyzed, the orderly had to hold the joint to his lips for him. But over the next few years, he would work to the point that allowed him to gain some independence. 

“It really took me years of intense exercise, but I was an athlete. It was three years, four years, before I really started being able to transfer onto my bed. I could transfer (to) the floor, put my knees together, leaned forward over my legs to transfer back to my chair,” Estes said of his rehabilitation. 

That moment he was able to transfer on his own signaled to him he would be capable of living on his own. Marijuana was already his lifestyle well before that day. He was still fully paralyzed the first time his friends took him up to Arcata in Humboldt County. 

“I found the Skunk. I found Thai Stick. I found people with Columbian Gold and Panama Red,” Estes said of that first trip at age 19. “I found marijuana so awesome that I wanted the good stuff.”

He’d run into brick weed. The compressed nugs were far from medicine and he knew it. It further motivated him to search for the best options. That first trip north arose from a friend telling him he knew a guy with sensimilla.    

“I said, what is sensimilla?” Estes noted with a laugh. “It’s a seedless weed? And it’s green, lime green? Let’s go there.”

The locals hooked him up, given his medical situation. He scored his first pounds of sensimilla for $100 bucks. That would be about $460 today. 

As for the traditionally tight community up north, especially during the early era of enforcement, “My disability broke me in. People were very compassionate and they understood medicine,” Estes said.

Estes noted his original host in Humboldt understood the benefits of medical cannabis all too well having recently lost his father to cancer at the time. 

“He lost his dad. His dad had cancer. He got help from cannabis. They think it dragged his life another two years, but he swears he was happier. He saw other people who were on pharmaceuticals dying. They were miserable, moaning, and his dad (had) weed on the way out. He really is a compassionate man,” Estes said.

Estes pointed to the statement “all cannabis use is medical.” He said he gets it, to different degrees. But in his case, it wasn’t really up for debate, and the farmers of The Emerald Triangle showed him a lot of love. 

Part of it was because they knew in addition to it being for his own medical use, he was paying top dollar. Some of the brown frown was going for between $30-$50 a pound. Estes wanted nothing to do with it.

“When I got the first Skunk, which was fluffy, I had 24 bags. I sold it for $100 a bag and I would buy that. Next time I bought the Skunk it was $200, the next time it was $400 a pound and after that it was $500 a pound,” Estes said. 

We asked Estes as he watched the pound price creep up, when did he know it was time to become his own supplier and get in on the cultivation side? He laughed and said it was right around the time he saw that first $500 pound. He’s already been collecting seeds in film containers and noting what they were.

In 1977, he would purchase his first hydroponic system. He said it took him about a decade to get to the point where he is comfortable looking back and saying he was dialed in. To help put that into perspective, the biggest movie of the year in 1987 when Estes started growing heat was Beverly Hills Cop 2. 

The first grow went well, but he missed the part about changing the plants’ light cycle to get them to flower. By the time he did, they had been vegging for a couple of months. The plants exploded and he started selling grams for $5 after the harvest. 

“I actually started catching a BART to the 51 bus on Market Street. The 51 bus took me over to Haight Street and Stanyan McDonald’s right there. I’d set up with little tiny bags in there. And I could sell down the street over there for 20 bucks,” Estes said. This was around 1984 and 1985. 

Estes would move his garden outside. That wasn’t a bad thing — in that era, the best outdoor was widely regarded as the best cannabis available, period. He said it took another decade for the best indoor to start beating out the sungrown.

He saw cannabis grown under High-Pressure Sodium lights for the first time when one of his buddies took a light from a baseball field. Eventually, the HPS lights got a bit more normalized, but there was only one place you could buy them at first. Going in and grabbing more than one light was a red flag to anyone casing the store. Estes and others would send friends and family to grab a light each, until they eventually had enough for whatever size room they were trying to put together. 

“If they saw you putting 10 lights in your car, they followed you home. You had a search warrant on your house a week later. So we were all nervous about that,” Estes said.

In the late ‘80s, he moves back indoors and starts building out grow houses. The product would eventually end up in Dennis Peron’s San Francisco dispensary. He would go from a 10-light house to a 100-light operation in Oakland in 1992. 

While it was a big jump doing 10 times as many lights, he was confident in his standard operating procedures. He also had a lot of faith in his nutrients and pest management ability, too.  

When Peron shut down, Estes went on to work a stint at the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Club. Eventually, Estes decided to open up his first dispensary in Concord in 1997. As Estes went from city council to city council attempting to open more shops in places with no ordinances around medical cannabis, he faced a lot of opposition. Some of the very cities that he went to battle with are now booming cannabis commerce hubs. 

But back then, he was attacked by 1990’s and 2000’s NIMBYs, terrified of the thought of cannabis in their town. They would call him things like a street dealer. 

“I said you have never spent one time in my house and at my table having dinner with me. You don’t know who I am at all sir, or ma’am. But I was attacked all the time. That was the way they did it back in those days for sure,” Estes recalled. 

He said San Mateo was the most vicious municipality of all back then. He estimates he probably opened 20 clubs over the years in different cities. 

Estes credits his activism to meeting disabled activist Dan O’Hara. O’Hara rolled his wheelchair across America and the length of the Mississippi River. He was a vocal advocate in Sacramento and Washington D.C., for the disabled. He was even honored by President Jimmy Carter for his efforts, and the Vatican. Estes and O’Hara became friends. 

“So I became very, very active, much more of an open activist. It was not a secret. I wasn’t behind the scenes.”

Estes has witnessed every level of cannabis regulation in California. We asked what it was like seeing things go from Prop 215 to the legal era. He thought it was all going to move a lot faster, given how fast he opened a shop in the wake of Prop 215 passing. 

“Even though I wasn’t granted a license to have my facility, and I’ve always lasted about one year in these towns, it was enough to start the dialogue, to start the process where other people came behind me pushing, getting attorneys. And next thing you know, there are ordinances,” Estes said. 

The conversation would turn toward the purple weed Estes helped turn iconic. Back when he was exposed to purple on his earliest trips to The Emerald Triangle, it didn’t denote some special quality. He’d see the haze Jimi Hendrix made famous in the late 1970s. He said it was good, but it wasn’t great. 

But in the early 2000s, he started to notice some purple strains were bomb. The Purple Erkel was high on the list for quality, but it was a very finicky plant to deal with. Estes argues the Erkel is really just Lavender and everyone changed the name.

“It was finicky, but when you smoked it, it was fire. It had that taste,” Estes noted. 

In 2003, his relationship with purple would change forever. He was showing his friends Charlie and Sarah, they were Blackfoot and Pomo Indians. The Pomo have a deep history in Mendocino. 

The Pomo traditionally lived in what is now the area around Clear Lake, Alexander Valley, and the Russian River watershed. The Pomo spoke seven different dialects while living in small independent communities that relied on hunting, fishing and gathering to meet their needs. 

Estes showed the pair some Big Bud x Erkele from Bodhi. A lot of people thought that was the GDP, but it wasn’t. It did do well though, taking home top honors at an early cup in L.A. at one point. This put the purple, and the affection Estes had for it, on Charlie and Sarah’s radar. 

During a later trip to visit their home on the Eel River, Estes saw some suits as he was pulling up. He provided the pair with cash from a score he had made that day to keep their home. Charlie would go on to tell some other folks in the tribe about what Estes had done. 

Eventually one of the members of the tribe showed Estes what they called Purple Medicine. It was phenomenal. 

“He brought it to me. And I had a bright light shined on them. I was like, oh my god, this is amazing. The color was amazing, purple everywhere. But you could have rolled that pound out of the bag like a bowling ball. It all stuck together,” Estes said. “They had it for 18 years. You could peel buds off the pound like velcro.”

A GDP outdoor crop.

Estes wanted to buy as much as he could, but after a few rounds, the tribe didn’t want to do business with him. They gave him the cut of Purple Medicine so he could run it himself. It became what we know today as Grand Daddy Purple. Estes went all in on his new cut and changed all of his operations to GDP. When he couldn’t produce enough in his 200-light operation, he brought it north for his friends to grow, too. Since he was paying $4,000 a pound, they were more than happy to run it for him. 

“I know what I got. I’ve got this. This is it. This is to me just like the Grand Poobah. It’s like the grand something, Grand Daddy Purple, and then I high-five Charlie,” Estes said, remembering how he came up with the name. 

As he started making the trip more regularly, farmers would wait for him south of Garberville to try and catch him before he spent all his money on someone else’s weed. One time a utility truck flagged him down at night, the pounds were inside the bucket you would use to do maintenance on a telephone pole. 

Estes said the best GDP came from all over. It wasn’t a particularly challenging plant to grow, so a lot of different people in various conditions were able to make the most of it. 

On his way back from up north he would call his friends’ answering machines and just say Grand Daddy Purple and code word that it was on its way south. Eventually, he would open his shop in Oakland’s former Oaksterdam neighborhood. Oakland loved purple. 

“People back then thought purple meant it was overdried or always moist or something. And then there was no purple on any menu,” Estes said. 

In the earliest days of trying to convert Oakland to purple, Estes would hand out nugs to the people in line at his competitor and offer refunds to people who bought eighths if they didn’t like it. 

“Pretty soon, within six months, we got E40 and Keak Da Sneak are smoking it. It was on Weeds. It was in Pineapple Express. Snoop Dogg said on Howard Stern it was his favorite strain. It was just this crazy blow-up thing. I did kind of have the idea it could happen, but I didn’t know it would happen as fast as it did,” Estes said. 

Estes began collecting seeds from the 200 lights. Every run there would be a dozen or so. When he decided it was time to hunt for a male, he had about 60. 

“I backcrossed it to stabilize the genetics. I tried to focus on the traits that I like, the rock-hard buds, the nose, the nice branching, the dark green waxy leaves, so that we came up with Ken’s GDP,” Estes explained. He argued some people liked Ken’s GDP better than the original. In the most technical terms, Ken’s GDP was essentially Grand Daddy Purple Bx1. 

He also took that male and put it in a room with seven of the bomb strains out at the time. Estes said a lot of people won cups with the seeds that came out of the room. He believes a big chunk of what’s commercially viable in the market dates back to that breeding project. 

Estes ended up dealing with a federal case for six years. Nobody wanted to touch him at the time. 

“You have to almost like, stop doing what you’re doing to get them to leave you alone,” Estes said. “I remember being in their office in San Francisco and asking, why do I have this target on my back?” 

One of the things that caused Estes some headaches was his choice to start declaring his cannabis income on his taxes early. He figured if he was paying his taxes, how could they say it was illegal? Well, they certainly took the money no problem. 

“I want all my cases, but it took me six years. I had three federal cases. I got raided in 2005, 2008, and 2009,” Estes noted. 

One of his shops was caught up in the massive San Diego sweep of 2009 that saw 13 stores shut down. People would tell Estes they weren’t growing the Purple anymore because he was too hot and he shouldn’t come around.

But the more cultivation in urban settings got normalized, the less he needed people up north to help, as GDP would prove to be an indoor strain. When you run it outside, it’s 80% leaves and 20% buds; thankfully it’s the exact opposite indoors. While it wouldn’t quench the thirsts of the eventual three-pound-a-light crowd on the hunt for maximum dollars, it was always heat. 

These days Estes is doing his best to keep GDP alive. He recently had it tissue-cultured. While a popular long-term storage method, tissue culture is also a way to clean a plant of diseases. The freshest piece of the meristem is cut before it has a chance to be infected like the rest of the donor plant. Two people are currently running the clean version of GDP. 

“I just want to be the brand ambassador,” Estes closed laughing. 

FEDERAL CANNABIS ARRESTS DIP 24% IN 2022

Advocates are celebrating federal cannabis arrests dropping 24% in 2022

After frequently noting all the cannabis progress happening around the country and the world in recent years, we were a bit caught off guard by the large jump in cannabis arrests during the first year of the Biden administration. That 2021 jump in arrests was the biggest in a decade, as we noted last year. 

This was despite Biden’s promises to pursue decriminalization, now two and a half years ago. Nevertheless, 6,606 people will be arrested by the DEA and partner agencies in 2021. There were further resounding messages from the community that this was the opposite direction we had expected to see cannabis enforcement take in the Biden Administration. 

The 5,061 people arrested on federal cannabis charges last year represent a 24% drop from the year before. It also nearly erases the jump from 2021 when the decade-highs in arrests represented a 25% jump from the year before. 

NORML noted that while arrests were down, seizures trended in the opposite direction. 

The DEA’s Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program Statistical Report noted agents and partner agencies confiscated approximately 5.7 million cultivated cannabis plants last year, 37,000 edibles, and 60,000 concentrates. NORML noted that as in the past, most of this enforcement is happening in California. Just over half of all federal cannabis arrests in 2022 took place in California and 88% of all product seized nationally was in The Golden State. 

“California has always exported the majority of its marijuana crop out of state and the adoption of adult-use legalization in the Golden State has done little to change this fact,” acknowledged California NORML Coordinator Dale Gieringer. “Illegal marijuana cultivation will persist in California so long as there remains a substantial demand from other states and as long as interstate commerce remains prohibited by federal law.”

California had the most plants seized by a mile. Of the 5.7 million law enforcement scooped up around the county, 4.9 million were here. We had 16.6 times as many plants confiscated as runner-up Oklahoma. Kentucky and West Virginia rounded out the top four.  

“The reasons we are still seeing relatively high levels of marijuana eradication and interdiction are simple,” said NORML’s Political Director Morgan Fox. “Despite considerable state-level progress, more than half of all U.S. states continue to ban regulated adult-use cannabis markets. Furthermore, the federal government overtaxes state-licensed cannabis businesses and makes it extremely difficult for them to access basic financial services so that they can better compete with unregulated operators.”

Morgan believes the expansion of state markets and fewer hurdles for operators will do a lot more damage to the underground cannabis economy than any enforcement could ever hope to. 

“Spending billions of taxpayers’ dollars to enforce federal cannabis prohibition, putting law enforcement officers in unnecessary danger, and hampering the implementation and effectiveness of state-regulated markets are clearly not the answers to this issue,” Fox said. “Rather, the federal and state governments should work toward furthering sensible policies that facilitate regulated cannabis markets and work to repair the harms caused by nearly a century of prohibition.”

THE ROAD TO LA STARTS: THE EMERALD CUP HARVEST BALL

The rain could not stop the heat at the second annual Emerald Cup Harvest Ball in Santa Rosa. 

The event serves as the kickoff to cup season with the winners getting crowned in roughly six months in L.A. at the awards show. This weekend had traditionally served as the whole show for years, before the new format. The quests of farmers looking for next year’s hottest genetics, the chance to survey the harvest, and the awards show were all crammed into one action-packed weekend over 17 years that continued to get larger and larger. 

With the awards show still months out, the weekend now focuses on the cannabis of the moment and seeds. The seed and genetics part can’t be overstated. In more recent years we’re even seeing tissue cuttings available for farmers terrified of the dreaded Hop Latent Viroid, commonly known as HLVd. Cuttings with HLVd have been the downfall of mega nurseries people were convinced were here to stay. But regardless of the high-tech stuff, the regular seeds and cuttings called clones are a huge part of the show.

We were reminded of this when we walked in the gate on Day One. Emerald Cup Competition Director Victoria Shea grabbed me out of line just before gates opened so I’d make it to the judges’ meet-and-greet on time. The public hadn’t even been allowed in yet and there were already lines at the Compound Genetics and Purple City Genetics Booths as their peers participating in the Harvest Ball queued up to get the latest and greatest genetics from both. That wave of people on the hunt would increase tenfold once the gates opened up. 

And those who weren’t looking for cuts were looking for great cannabis or trying to convince people they had it; plenty did. 

Our Favorites

Higher Heights from Comptche, California, had a lovely spread. The two standouts for us were the Carambola and the Purple Candy Cane. The Purple Candy Cane was a bit more complex on the nose. 

Pacific Cultivation was another absolute banger spread for 2022. Everything came out awesome, but it would be criminal to not highlight the Hippie Crasher. The pairing of Kush Mints and Wedding Crasher was among the finest offerings at the whole harvest ball. The Caked Up Cherries was our second favorite from the Pacific Cultivation lineup.

Pacific Cultivation

Humboldt Seed Company had their new Jelly Donutz collaboration with Casa Flor on display. You could certainly smell the sugary goodness some people like to start their mornings with. 

Moon Valley Cannabis’s Wine Country-grown pot also was pretty awesome. The standout for us was the Grapes and Cream, but the Zlurpy was very competitive, too. We could see people leaning in that direction for sure. 

Moon Valley Cannabis

Bigfoot Cannabis Co’s rendition of Gelato 41 was stunning. It was one of our favorite versions we have ever seen that wasn’t indoor. The only one nicer won the Cannabis Cup in 2018. 

Fidel’s spread was as top-class as to be expected. It included the KMZ that won the Transbay Challenge I hosted in Los Angeles this past August. The blend of Kush Mints and zkittelz is a flavor profile in its own league. 

Fidels

One of the loudest jars of the day had to be the Garlotti from Good Good. Once you cracked it open, you were hit with an explosion of garlic terps so strong your eyes and sinuses might water up a bit. But don’t worry, that’s definitely a good thing. 

Garlotti

Sun Roots Farm’s Velvet Papaya won the contest for the thing I think we’ll have the best shot of smoking in a hash format. The terp-loaded strain was said to produce a decent amount of the resin you need to make hash, which essentially is collected plant resin.

WINTER MIXED-LIGHT CANNABIS HARVESTS ARE SPECIAL

California’s winter-grown mixed-light cannabis is among the best flowers of the year, period. 

The crop falls into two categories. The light-assisted and light-deprivation grown. The first is self-explanatory. The second is the term for farmers controlling the natural light cycle by mechanical means. Most of the stuff growing right now is light-assisted, but there are still a few people without power producing some really flavorful weed up north this time of year. 

The light-deprivation stuff is shortened to deps for simplicity. A lot of dep farmers take the heart of the winter off and still get in three runs a year. But those perpetual light-assisted grows that use the power of the sun year-round are able to just perpetually pump out whatever number of tables on their fixed 52-week schedule. Barring the perils of mother nature, there are farmers using the sun and a little extra light to help through the rainy days and shorter ones are producing crazy high-end cannabis. 

One of the most respected owner-operators in the light-assisted space is David Polley of Preferred Gardens — a lot of people have him with a seat at the table when discussing not only who is growing the best mixed-light cannabis in California, but also in Florida. 

Polley explained that you can run some nice deps in the winter with enough natural light, but the production isn’t there. 

“An expert with Winter Deps would usually only grow cannabis for hash in the winter,” Polley told L.A. Weekly. “Flower production is very limited, but the cannabinoid, terpenes and flavonoids are actually at an all-time high. So fresh frozen (material frozen immediately at harvest for processing) will put out some A1 rosin.” 

Polley explained the basics of his process that’s a bit more commercially viable this time of year. Specifically, light-assisted greenhouses that have climate control and you utilize artificial lighting to increase the daily light integral to increase production during the shorter winter months.

Polley in the garden.

“In Cali, that usually starts in September and ends in March or April,” Polley said, “In my biased opinion, the artificial light mixed with the natural kiss from the sun creates the best medicinal cannabis on the planet. Lab tests show cannabinoids and terpenes much higher under these practices. I love the effects from good light-assisted cannabis.”

Polley further explained that the harness of the California sun during the summer is just too much for all the best stuff in the resins that have developed on the plant. 

“Like it’s extreme during the summer in California and the light levels are through the roof,” Polley said, “so I tried to shade my greenhouses more in the summer than I would anytime to get less light and that’s how you get more of like an exotic flavor.”

He argues what’s going on in the industry right now is people are just trying to pump these plants with so much light intensity via LEDs and whatever else the hottest new tech is.

“They’re just slamming them so they could get four pounds a light, just production, production,” Polley said in distaste. “But, that’s why the quality of more than half of the cultivators is just not it. It’s not what we want because they’re just focused on production.”

Photo courtesy of Preferred Gardens

Polley pointed to great genetics as a key to the flame as he prepares to enter the Arizona market, already having crushed it in two other states. 

“I’m pheno hunting 50 seeds every week. I’ve been doing that for eight-plus years,” Polley said. “What’s crazy is that’s 200 seeds a month and we only come out with three to five winners a year.”

Mendoja Farms is another of the state’s top light-assisted producers. After going hard with four big runs in 2022, owner Justin Wilson is taking a month off from flowering and just maintaining his nursery stock before he revs back up next month. 

As for the quality of the winter products, Wilson argues a lot of it is temperature and how physically far we are from the sun. 

Photo Courtesy of Mendoja Farms

“The winter run seems to have twice the amount of trichomes on them,” Wilson told L.A. Weekly. “I feel that it has to do with just the distance of the sun, how far it is from us, and having to warm the rooms up with propane heat.“

Wilson believes the stress on the plants from too much heat is far more stressful on the plants than on some chilly nights. 

“They just seem to like the cold a little bit better. I wouldn’t say cold. I would say that the colder temperatures where I’m at in Covelo and not dealing with strenuous heat that we do have here during the summer,” Wilson said. 

We asked Wilson if it’s easier to get away from market trends this time of year since the more exotic flavors have a good shot at being so full-flavored.

“Yes, it is for sure,” Wilson replied. “I think you can play around more in the winter because you’re gonna have the flavors coming out more in everything. So you don’t have to stick to those saying name-brand stuff and what everybody else wants. That’s when I kind of do like my trial runs.”

Wilson pointed to the fact that a lot of people do their pheno hunt closer to the middle of the year. It’s a double-edged sword. Those mid-year hunts may not get the same terpene levels as the winter, but they’re being stress-tested by the summer heat through the hunt. Wilson has found stuff that was awesome in the winter, but not able to deal with the heat of summer.