Skip: Have they ever come up with a test for whether something has been grown organically or not? For instance the USDA now has a organic labeling certification. There's different classifications for that too. There's 100% organic, 90% organic, under 90% organic. These allow you to have certain products within your product that are not 100% organic and still issue you a label to show that you took extra care with your growing, processing or packaging.

I find it very confusing here in Holland because they will label pot "bio" simply because it was grown in soil. Yet it may not even have had organic pesticides, it might've had chemical pesticides or whatever. Yet just because it was grown in soil it will still get this label "bio", right?

Jorge: If I'm king I make all the rules. What we have here in Holland is a situation where we have about 100 kings, and everybody makes their own rules to suit their own needs. All they have to do is be louder and stronger than somebody else and then their rules become truth. It's impossible to police, impossible to control.

Skip: I'm hoping that eventually if cannabis laws are eased a bit in the E.U. that they would eventually apply their labeling laws in the E.U. to cannabis. Which would prevent "bio" from being used as a word to describe cannabis unless it was indeed grown organically. That's something for the future, I don't expect you to answer on that.

What new methods are being used by growers and what improvements have you noticed as a result?

Jorge: There's a lot more seed varieties out there. A lot more access to seeds. It's easier for growers to get a hold of genetic material, which is real exciting. There's lots of changes within those. Some are more potent, different flavors, different tastes, different abilities. A lot of varieties have increased in quality. Some are more mold resistant, or easier to grow, or more fertilizer tolerant.

Skip: So are these changes in genetics coming about by cross-breeding or are they doing genetic engineering on these?

Jorge: They can only cross one variety with another to come up with an F-1 hybrid. But the problem is people have talked about pulling out the THC cannabinoid gene and putting it in another plant. But that hasn't happened yet.

Skip: Haven't you heard about the THC tomatoes?

Jorge: That's all bullshit. I ran it down and talked to the person that "made it up", but I haven't seen that it's true that there's a THC containing tomato.

There's quite a few things that are different in the last five years. Lighting's changed. They've added several new lamps. There's 1100 watt lamps. There's different spectrums. There's warm-white, cool-white. From Venture lighting. Those lights seem to work real well, especially the warm-blue one. A lot of people seem to like that one.

They now have one part nutrients. They're mixing the chemicals better. They're a little easier to use. There's a whole range of new instruments out. It's cheaper and easier to measure things now than it was a few years ago.

Skip: You mean like humidity or gases in the air?

Jorge: Everything. CO2 in the air, temperature, humidity. They've got electronic measuring devices. Now there's one program that you can hook right into Windows, get all your calculations right on screen. Line graphs show you your temperature for the last 48 hours, or 48 days, or 4.8 years. As long as you had it on, you can record that. That's a huge thing! You have a lot more information to make your decisions with.

There's a ton of new plastics that have made hydroponic gardening easier. Gullies and what not. More technology enables you to measure the turbidity of the water. New sensors. More control over the environment.

Skip: Have growers changed emphasis over the past few years? For example concentrating on taste and quality over yield and potency. When I say quality, I mean not necessarily how strong it is, but say in the curing process, when it's getting ready for market, handling it correctly.

Jorge: It kind of depends on who you are and what you're growing for. A lot of people aren't as good a grower as they think they are. They're substandard, yet they still manage to sell all their dope and make a lot of money. That gives them the illusion of success. I've seen a lot of rooms that are producing about half of what they should be able to. It's very, very common. I've seen a lot of bad growers! Over half the growers out there are just not very good at it! They need to become better growers before they can worry about making their dope any better. They still need to get up to the benchmark of a half a gram per watt of light.

I talked to a guy yesterday who was making .3 grams per watt of light every month, and he has a great lifestyle, traveling all over the world,incredibly successful and he's just not that great a grower. People are looking at him as sort of a hero. But to me he's not. He needs to learn more. These people love to talk about varieties and like to be snobs about stuff, but they just don't have the skills to be a snob!

[Laughter]

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