MATT CASEY: A reefer is another word for a marijuana cigarette. "Reefer Madness" is an old anti-pot movie turned into a cult classic by legalization advocates trying to change public opinion. Reefer Growing Madness is a podcast that tracks the life cycle of legally grown marijuana from clone to smoke.
[SONG PLAYS: "REEFER" MAN BY CAB CALLOWAY]
CASEY: You’re listening to Chapter 3 the Fall Equinox Episode of Reefer Growing Madness, a production of KJZZ’s Hear Arizona podcast unit. I’m your host Matt Casey. Don’t miss the prologue and primer to better understand some of the history, slang and scientific terms related to marijuana. A warning, dear listener, that you’re going to hear some swearing and cursing at times. Yet government-funded research says there’s a positive link between profanity and honesty.
Only five Zpectrum plants remained by the end of Chapter Two the Summer Solstice Episode. And they still had a couple of days left in the vegetative room before moving to the longest phase of the grow-process. Think of it as mimicking the Ffll edition of a 50/50 daylight to darkness ratio. Despite vertical operations in three states, the founder of Alien Labs says he’s still an outsider. His mission is to take California-weed culture cross-country. But first he had to learn how to speak professionally when expressing his passion for quality.
[SONG PLAYS: "REEFER" MAN BY CAB CALLOWAY]
CASEY: It’s been about a month since six tiny Zpectrum clones were cut from a mother plant. They grew roots, five survived in their own pots and have spent time in the vegetative room. General Manager Bruno Gagliardi shows me to an empty room.
BRUNO GAGLIARDI: So she’s going to live in here for the next nine weeks.
CASEY: A large crew will soon make this a flower room filled with a half-dozen strains. Managers handle the Zpectrum plants though.
GAGLIARDI: Room 11, Zone 4. That first table. Right at the split with the bar. Put it on that back right corner.
CASEY: But only four are making the trip. Two of the six Zpectrum clones we started with are now gone.
[SONG PLAYS: "FUNERAL MARCH" BY CHOPIN]
CASEY: The survivors will get at least a couple days to acclimate to the flower room. They need gradual change to keep thriving, and the light cycle must not be disrupted as the number of artificial daytime hours are reduced.
BRUNO GAGLIARDI: And then that’s going to trigger, within the plant, this physiological change. Specifically on a hormonal level, especially for the first few weeks, there’s not going to be a major visual change to the plant.
CASEY: Light intensity, food manipulation and water frequency are how Alien Labs stimulates marijuana plants to focus all their energy on growing flower, or buds, during this phase. They are primordial at this point, contain little to no THC and have minimal odor. But in the flower room, pot plants can grow an inch or more per day on fuel from the farm’s irrigation system.
[SOUND OF WATER FILLING A LARGE TUB]
CASEY: Water fills a giant tub inside the command center set up sort of like a cockpit. Ingredients in Alien Labs plant food are proprietary. During the flower phase, runoff is closely monitored to identify what plants need and what to cut back on. While the number of light hours are reduced, light intensity goes up. The Zpectrum appears to be among the more light-sensitive plants, and the leaves are cupping to shade themselves.
BRUNO GAGLIARDI: It’s kind of showing those symptoms. Other than that though it’s developing a really good structure. The architecture is filling in the space really nicely.
CASEY: The flower phase presents an example of legacy growing wisdom clashing with what someone with an agriculture degree would say. Defoliation is to prematurely remove leaves. It’s a tried and true practice for old-school weed growers, but goes against common sense for scientists. Gagliardi says leaves are the primary sources of photosynthesis and energy generation.
GAGLIARDI: So it is very counterintuitive. And generally with other crops having more, better, healthier leaves will generate a higher yield, higher quality. However, in this plant in particular, it does seem to benefit from this intense stress that comes from the removal of the vast majority of the leaves of the plant during the flowering stage.
CASEY: Gagliardi says there is now a beautiful union of collective wisdom and science applied to growing. And the founder of Alien Labs says the merger is a reason for success. But that doesn’t mean Ted Lidie thought it was a good idea at first.
TED LIDIE: You know, it's funny. I fought against that. I was not fuckin… I wasn’t for that.
CASEY: His view was that agricultural minds thought weed has too much to do with science. But pot is more like a cocktail of art and science. Lidie lost the battle over whether to hire academics. Now everyone’s had a chance to learn from each other and he likes the outcome.
LIDIE: That's part of the magic. Like I said, the mixture of art and science is really where we've excelled, and that's why we've been able to scale the way we've been able to scale and maintain the quality in multiple states and still be true to who we are.
CASEY: Alien Labs sees itself as a symbol of weed culture from the birthplace of weed culture.
LIDIE: All around the world. California is the most sought after weed and a lot of it is because of how it's grown.
CASEY: Lidie is from a place offering the closest freeway access to a northern region of the state that was famous for marijuana growing long before legalization. The Emerald Triangle includes parts of three counties -- Trinity, Mendocino and Humboldt.
LIDIE: A part of the reason is the environmental conditions there are just perfect for growing weed.
CASEY: Pop-culture has shined light on these places populated by outlaws and vigilantes. Examples are the late-'90s movie, "Homegrown," and the more recent Netflix series, "Murder Mountain." Lidie says legalization ruined local economies in the Emerald Triangle. Now people are selling their farms, if they can.
LIDIE: You know, for Humboldt, when I think back on it nostalgically, it makes me sad. Because now it's pretty much devastated.
CASEY: He credits Humboldt as the origin of California weed culture. The first to focus on cultivating connoisseur-level pot. A group from there even went to Morocco to learn how to make hash. The Emerald Triangle is remote, pretty much surrounded by national forests. So to avoid police patrols, the growers would sell their harvests to customers from all over the country from inside of hotels in Redding, the city where Lidie grew up.
LIDIE: And then the growers from Humboldt would come. And everyone just started kind of exchanging tech. And then that's how the big indoor boom came from Northern California.
CASEY: You may have heard indoor-grown pot called endo by musicians. Alien Labs grows endo in California and Arizona. Lidie hopes to one day have money for investing in ventures by friends who haven’t made it in commercial marijuana. And he feels a responsibility to carry the baton for Emerald Triangle pioneers pushed out by legalization. More up in his face though, are countless competitor brands rising, falling, appearing and disappearing. Research and development to bring new strains to market are part of his strategy for staying on top. And so is a core element of California weed culture — growing dank buds.
LIDIE: The only thing that can really keep you afloat as a cannabis business is focusing on quality.
[MUSIC PLAYS IN WALTER STUDIOS BAR]
CASEY: DJing in the bar tonight at Walter Studios for what’s billed as an Arizona edition of a Ted Talk is assistant general manager Alexander Lawrence, aka Make Somethin’. A song he recorded freestyle plays during the time-lapse video of the Zpectrum plants. Watch it at RGM.KJZZ.ORG Anyway, tonight’s event is a scene in multiple episodes of Reefer Growing Madness. This time for the chance to interview a consumer, and of course, someone asked me for papers to roll a reefer.
CASEY: No buddy, I do not.
TIM: I didn’t think we could bring anything in here.
CASEY: He introduces himself as Tim and says he got free tickets to the event for being a social media follower. Inside his gift bag is a jar of the newest strain.
TIM: I opened it up already. It’s hella purply. Pretty beautiful. And smells delicious.
CASEY: Tim’s gift bag also has a lighter and a rolling tray all but encouraging him to fire up. Makes sense really. Marijuana is legal and this is a private event. Then Tim says he has a decades old felony conviction for marijuana.
TIM: And I’m trying to get my record expunged now for it. It’s been 20 years. I like it that it’s open and everybody can smoke it. I love the smell.
CASEY: So his past is why he thought he couldn’t bring papers inside the venue. But he says it feels good to see others do it openly in the present.
TIM: I wish they had more places where you can sit down, smoke. kind of like Amsterdam. Sit down, smoke, have a coffee, or even at a restaurant and smoke.
CASEY: A consumer for decades, Tim ranks an early Alien Labs strain as the best he’d ever had. He also says the brand is number one in Arizona for potency. The new strain he’s holding is called Darkweb, and he’s curious if it has a certain terpene that cuts through his tolerance
TIM: I want to know if it has the myrcene because the myrcene in it is where you get your high at. If anything higher than a seven percent of myrcene, a blunt maybe last you two hours. Compared to anything less than that, you’re smoking 45 minutes, 45 minutes, to get you high.
CASEY: Loyal customers who care this much about the weed they smoke are validation of brand founder Ted Lidie’s passion for quality. He tells the crowd that it's meant not being the most well liked person at the office. And Lidie praises by name the local farmers for growing pot so premium that he likes some of their strains and batches better than the California versions.
LIDIE: They really are. Our weed out here is so fucking fire. And it really is. And so shout out to the Arizona cultivation team. Bruno, Zander. There is so many of you guys but it’s led by Bruno and Zander.
CASEY: It’s a humble gesture to share glory, which is an example of wise management. Alien Labs is part of a larger company operating at full scale in multiple states. Lidie says it's been a challenge to learn how to effectively communicate his message on quality.
LIDIE: Me just saying, hey, this shit isn't good enough. That doesn't work anymore, like it used to.
CASEY: So how does he define quality marijuana?
LIDIE: It comes down to the way it smokes. It should be smooth. It should be flavorful. It should smell. It should taste how it smells. It should have a very distinct flavor. It shouldn't burn your throat. It shouldn't taste like smoke or tar.
CASEY: Good weed should not feel foreign to the body, he says. Standards for quality cigars, such as white signaling full combustion, and good ash structure, also apply to top-shelf maijuana.
LIDIE: It's like smoking flavored oxygen. And that's how it should feel.
CASEY: And the effects are kind of secondary, in my opinion, to what we consider good. Maybe not even secondary, tertiary. Maybe even fourth thing. This does not mean he’s dismissive of consumers who don’t smoke connoisseur-level weed.
LIDIE: That's cool, too. That's part of the culture. That's what makes cannabis so cool, you know.
CASEY: Lidie told the crowd at Walter Studios that he’s a nerd welcomed by other subcultures because he always had good weed. So his brand name is anti-establishment and is for the people who don’t feel like they fit in. I can relate to much of that. I’m an outsider too. For life. But Lidie’s brand has been around for a decade-plus. It wins awards all the time. Lidie is an important figure in the marijuana industry doing a lot of business travel. And pot has a celebrity aspect through expanded legalization and licensing deals. But Lidie says he’d rather be home with his children, hanging out with his same friends from back in the day or playing video games.
LIDIE: Weed is this huge thing now. And it's fucking cool and all this shit. But it wasn't at the time, and it still isn't to me.
CASEY: Back at Alien Labs, Alexander Lawrence — you heard Lidie call him by the nickname Zander — is feeling good about the praise from his boss.
ALEXANDER LAWRENCE: It’s definitely very validating. I try to not let it get to my head cause then the team could be like, ‘oh we got the best weed’ and then we get too comfortable. And then next thing you know the smallest thing could snowball into a huge problem in the grow.
CASEY: Netting has been laid over the Zpectrum plants and the rest of the room. As growing continues, crews will use it as a support structure to create a canopy for even light distribution. Lawrence predicts the plants will be poking through the net within a week, and he’s right.
LAWRENCE: Budding is initiated fully. The bud sites are split wide open.
CASEY: So much growth requires plant work. One chore is defoliation, which is counterintuitive to academic principles on agriculture but works for growing marijuana. Lawrence says removing the leaves on time helps expose light and maintain proper air flow in the grow room.
LAWRENCE:: But we want to try and get in here and get this plant work done before they start budding anymore because the hairs get very, very sensitive. And they can kind of retract like a snail's eyes. They’ll kind of get burned. They'll turn orange. And kind of freeze the bud development in time.
CASEY: Holidays threaten chaos for any cultivation schedule. And a major one delays finishing the plant work. By now the room has grown so much, Lawrence and I have to squeeze between the wall and a leaning canopy to reach Zpectrum plants.
LAWRENCE: There is a window of opportunity to do the plant work at the right time to really get the best out of your plants. And we are past that window. And we need to punch through this plant work and get back on track.
CASEY: It’s not all bad news though. The plants show signs they’re getting the perfect amount of food and water. And the bud structure is such that small buds may still grow together to form larger buds.
LAWRENCE: Looks like it’s very-well fed. It looks like it’s set up for success. We’ve just really got to get that defo done to really make a better impact on the yield, the overall color and the even structure of the buds throughout.
CASEY: It will take almost a week for crews to finish the entire room. Once it’s done, a growth spurt follows that makes the plants so tall Lawrence worries more about a low yield. Most care for the plants during the rest of the flower phase is done by irrigators studying runoff. A few days before harvest, Lawrence and I squeeze back for one last look at the four Zpectrum plants. He says they’ve developed a nice purple hue despite being shorter than their neighbors, and are ripe for picking.
LAWRENCE: It’s interesting seeing this plant look ready to harvest even though it's not getting chopped until earlier next week.
[SONG PLAYS: "REEFER" MAN BY CAB CALLOWAY]
CASEY: Next time on Reefer Growing Madness, it’s time to harvest, cure and package the Zpectrum plants’ flower. And we’ll explore the taboo odor associated with marijuana. Because you wouldn’t believe how much even a short visit to Alien Labs leaves you stinking like weed. Now my project partner Tim Agne has a preview of the photo and video online for the Fall Equinox Episode.
TIM AGNE: As I look back at the photos from moving into this flower room, one thing that I notice immediately is that we go into this intensely yellow light. And it looks even more yellow in the photos I took than how it felt in real life. But I got to the point where when I was going into this room, I just had to put on my sunglasses on all the time. I know Alexander had special sunglasses that were sort of blue tinted to make it look more normal. But the visual difference between the stark white hallways and the bright yellow flower room. Going back and forth.
CASEY: Also look for visuals from our field trip to Walter Studios and the interview with Ted Lidie.
TIM AGNE: That was a pretty good size room full of people all there just to kind of hear what Ted had to say. Obviously other reasons that people were there. There was a lot of free swag and a little bit of free weed that everybody who showed up got. Even though he’s talking to us public radio guys, he’s dropping F-bombs. But then when he gets into the nitty gritty. When he gets into specifically talking about the connoisseur level of appreciating cannabis that he is on. That’s a whole different thing. There is a level of sophistication that I don’t think I would ever be able to touch.
CASEY: Reefer Growing Madness was produced and hosted by me, Matt Casey. Tim Agne is our digital editor. Assistant news director Lindsey C. Riley is our project editor. To see photos and other media from this episode, be sure to check out our website: rgm.kjzz.org. And thanks for listening.
[SONG PLAYS: "REEFER" MAN BY CAB CALLOWAY]
