thai sticks, o i gotta hang around this place. i want some thai sticks!!!
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Quick posts;
A couple of @JohnnyPotseed 's Blue Tara’s starting to frost up
And just a ton of great gear from @Budderton ! Thanks for sharing bro! 
Same plants a week ago;
And today;
It’s been an exciting day on the Hypoclorious Acid front today! First ‘functioning’ generator arrived and we’ve finally brewed up our first successful 250 PPM batch all within the right pH parameters. I’ll try to do a post on Bob’s Hypocl… thread in the next days. But right now I’m really excited at the prospect of beating back budrot & PM every time it raises it’s ugly head around here! Testing has started! Bob has been incredibly patient with me out here in no man’s land! Buying stuff on-line in Asia is quite a different experience than in the West! To say the least! 
Stuck in another dozen Black Cherry Pie Autos in 7 gallon airpots and soaking some Thai “KD Purple Bud” to test out the germination rate. Finally (almost) cleared the drying tent out, but it’s suddenly getting full of loads of 1 gallon airpotted plants! 
Wonder how that happens? A fair number of clones from the last run rooted up very well and there’ll be a few repeats budding out in a month or two. Looking forward to the Ghost Dawgs, Karel Hazes & Bruce Banners again.
I’m just a pollen chucker that works with what he’s got…but I’m stoked to find I’ve collected 80 Cherry Punch beans @ciganomarola and 80 London Pound Cake @Maddawg off the few little branches I pollinated in what seems just a few short weeks ago! Even if only 25% are good I’m loving it! Oh oH, I see what you guys have done to me OG! 
Stay lit everybody!
Hey, get out and look at the peak meteor showers tonight…it’s the best of the annular showers! 
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Right on @Tlander ! Everything is looking great!
I’m not surprised those Affies are stretching so much. They behave much differently outside. My greenhouse grower got them up to 12 ft tall, last summer. And I must add, those Grape Dragons where made by fellow Canadian seed maker @BasementBeans . They stayed small due to incredibly tight internode spacing and finished with very flavourful flowers when I did some inside. Glad your getting some options to help with the botrytis. I hope you get some nice ones and they finish strong for you! 
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I appreciate you giving me props cuz, but the Blue Tara beans were produced by @Oldjoints and then he donated them to me for selling.
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I love this thread @Tlander
Sweet grow habitat you have for yourself.
I’ll quietly be watching 
here.
Love your Canngars “Thi Stix” amazing 
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You wanna “sweat” them… I’ll see if I can find the info for you.
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Well, progress on the Sour Strawberry front! The five that I managed to crack have made it, though one is struggling a bit. Feel bad knowing more could have likely made it. Won’t make that mistake again…hopefully!
Here’s the little ones (and a FrankenBubble) surrounding the only auto I didn’t transplant, still in a 4" pot…man, I could have grown this in the solo cup challenge.
Made it a bit of a ‘moving day’. Pulled all the seedling rack plants out, stripped away the netting, wiped everything down w/ alcohol and moved it all into the old drying tent. Gonna be a bit tight in there but I’m sick and tired of having to open & close the netting every time! But I would love a velcro’ed netting screen to leave the door open on the tent now & then.
A few of the clones from last run (Mostly)
And still plugging away on the sticks!
The last remaining standing KD Koh Tao Sativa landrace plant was looking great yesterday afternoon… I went to check it this morning and was shocked to find she’d hermie’d overnight!
Contacted a neighboring Thai family that was more than happy to welcome her/him into their home! Came home to one less ‘problem’ and with an invitation for a good Ganja curry seafood dinner! As I was leaving ‘Dad’ pulled me over to the freezer where he pulled out a pint jug of some black tar oil he’d frozen…pulling out a big dallop on a tablespoon for me to take home! Have you got any idea how difficult it is to drive up a 4-wheel drive mountain road while trying to track and compensate for a melting, semi-frozen dallop of the stickiest, blackest oil you’ve ever seen? Took an entire shot glass of IPA just to clean off my hand!
Oh, did somebody here order a pizza?
Damn, midnight again! Have a great day gang!
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Another day in Paradise… a few more photos!
Construction has commenced on what for now is called “Budderton’s Alley”! Can’t wait until we can roll up the plastic again. One of these weeks monsoon season will close out and the girls can get down. For now I’m just trying to always have plenty of plants that can be the first to explode with growth when the sun comes back out.
Due to his generosity and OG spirit, this area of the nursery is dedicated to @Budderton and quickly filling up with his wonderful genetics! The latest run of LA Affie x Afgan H.P., LA Affie x Lemon Slurp and his donated Grape Dragon all have stems like they are dreaming of becoming redwoods! Two weeks ago they were ground-hugging round balls of fire, today they’re stretching out like giraffe necks! There’s also a nice assortment of other goodies from him sprinkled around the place.
Also started transplanting all the clones from last season’s run. They’re stretching out and look like they want to flower so into the 7 gallon airpots they go! Whoops, forgot to take pictures there.
Blue Tara’s are starting to frost up
And the Bloody Monsters are coming along
Still testing with the Hypoclorious acid but really excited with what I’m finding! Big Kudo’s to Bob @BudbusterPro.net for all his efforts! If anybody is having problems with Botyrtis or PM you really want to read that thread!
And we’re still twistin’ up styx!
The ferment testers
And finally, the new ‘Styler Stix’ using a new high-compression wrapping technique (Okay, string…‘while’ high! ) over the corn husk.
Okay gang, Saturday night over here already, time for a ‘tester’! Have a great weekend!
(Edit: tester or two!!!)
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Holy shit @Tlander ! I’m humbled and honored! Thank you for presenting them in such a professional setting. I appreciate your time and resources that you’ve put into them and I hope they reward you with a great harvest! Your making them shine! 
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Update; Made it by the newly transplanted clone row, with a few odd’s & ends thrown in for good measure;
Enjoy your day off all and thanks for stopping by!
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Looking good there brother…
I’m honoured to learn about the thai sticks directly from you 
I recently had a conversation about thai sticks with one of my brother here, hope you don’t mind me inviting him over…
@MoBilly , hey bro …
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Hey @alwaysnoob Bring 'em on in! Everybody’s welcome!
Most all my experiences with the sticks was 46 years ago! But I have a perfect memory-wrap of the smell as it’s being broken up! I was gifted some real ‘hand-carried from the spot’ Durban Poison’ and was really shocked to find it had the only smell that ever come close to that fermented chocolatey, spicy smell of the old Thai stick weed!
In the intervening 40 years, I’ve done some work with lots of species of SE Asian fungi and a few fermentation’s…just enough to recognize that the fungi responsible for the fermentation itself may be the actual ‘cause’ of that particular smell? I ‘think’ the area near Durban is also a location where a form of fermentation is/was used as a means to preserve ganja in a hostile environment. Perhaps that could be the mutual connection between to that smell shared by both of the strains?
Okay, so that’s my long-winded explanation of why; “I’m doing it for the Science”
As I said earlier, “How many times in our lives do we get a shot at playing around with a jar full of Thai Sticks?” Gotta play to win! Today, despite my expectations that I tied them too late in the process to ferment well…I found condensation on the inside of the Ball jar they were closed up inside. Took 'em out, dried the glass and after 10 minutes returned them to the jar and sealed. Looks like we just might get some fermentation out of these yet! 
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Thank you @alwaysnoob !
If you have room for an old hillbilly goat herder in this room I’ll stick around. I guess I have some reading to do later. I am new to all this but I heard the term Thai Sticks years ago. Still had no idea what they were though. lol
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Just stumbled upon your grow log and man what great content you are sharing. I love your outdoor setup and I love Thailand! Was hoping to plan a trip there this year but it’s going to have to wait unfortunately. Looking forward to how your thai sticks turn out.
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Hi @MoBilly , welcome! Just kind of a play-by-play of daily life here, trying to get used to the fact that we can actually do this more or less right out in the open! Where were YOU in the mid-1970’s? The best thing I had the option of growing for many years was seed from a friend’s grow in Humboldt County. While it got me by for a loooong time, the variety that’s come into my life since finding OG is spectacular! Once again, THANK YOU OG’ers for your wonderful OG Spirit! You’ve all made my life MUCH more interesting!
@deeez99 Glad you could ‘virtually’ drop by! Yep, tourist season is beginning for the first time in a couple years! I used to try to just stay off the roads from Xmas eve until mid/late January every year, too many people forgetting which side of the road to drive on, first-timers driving motorbikes on sandy, pot-holed roads (Rent a car/truck, not a bike if you visit!). Anyway, looks like I may have to reinstate my old habits as the roads are filling up again. I’ll be sure to post about how the sticks turn out…though I’m still in the dark about how long the actual fermentation will take…if it happens!
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Can you school me on the fermentation please and the process/benefits
Yo @Big_Yeloe ! Good to see you back again!
Re; fermentation…hmmm, it can get pretty complex depending on how you approach it. I’ll take a shot, but realize I only know little bits of the whole story! Apologies in advance, today’s a crazy day here so I’m only gonna touch on a few things and will follow up later on.
I think ‘mainly’ (besides for producing alcohol) fermentation is/was used as a means to preserve foods or other perishable items. Without it, we wouldn’t have bread, pickles, yogurt, cheese and a lot of other things. One of the spin-offs is that in the process, items ‘change’ in subtle ways, such as changing flavors and textures and making some nutrients more ‘available’/easily absorbed into our bodies. (That’s probably also part of why we sometimes use fermented mixtures on our plants).
Quickly jumping to the subject at hand (Thai Sticks)…some people claim that the Thai Sticks of the 1970’s period were fermented. Some say ‘in the ground’, others say differently…I wasn’t over here yet, so can’t say!
In various parts of Africa (and elsewhere) people have created a process called making “Cob” which often involves tightly packing green, fresh buds inside a material that will hold moisture in, (often corn husks, but goat stomachs have been mentioned!), letting it ferment until it becomes a single mass rather than individual buds. Over time the compressed mass is opened for inspection, dried a bit if necessary and re-wrapped to continue fermenting until it’s deemed to be ‘done’. From that point on the ‘bud’ is a much more indestructible product that holds up well in lands where you can’t just run out and buy a ‘Grove Bag’! (@CADMAN sent me a link above to another great forum thread on producing COB and it has MUCH more detail than what I’m going to have time to write out…check it out!)
Now, back to the part about “Changing” things! (‘cause I CAN get Grove Bags!) Just as fermenting grains can produce a very different product than the original grains themselves, there’s a thought that fermenting ganja also produces changes in the product. Obviously we’re hoping for ‘pleasing’ changes, not mold and rot! I can’t say if a ferment had effect on the high of the original TS buds, as I never smoked both, mine ALWAYS had that fermented scent.
My experiences with the old days Thai Stick were looong ago, but I’ve not forgotten them! I actually smoked two little one-hitters in a tiny brass and bamboo pipe with a good friend who had brought the sticks to me from Japan and then went off to an interview for my application to a Fine Arts college! I can remember that I had to actually look at the form in front of me to remember my name! But more than that, it was the smell of the budlets as I broke them up…Really a rich, gooey, fermented chocolatey smell that I’ve searched for for 40 years now!
I see loads of strains labeled as “Thai Something-or-other” for sale around the World (and have access to a bunch of different Asian landraces), but I’ve yet to find one that clicks with my ‘smell-experiences’. (If anybody that was around in those days, smoked/smelled it back then, and has found a modern strain that matches – PLEASE let me know about it!).
Now, part of the experiments I’m doing are trying are to see if it might be that the smell I’m seeking is actually a combination of the strain and the fermentation process? Now it starts to get complicated because there are lots of different fungi/bacteria that can cause the fermentation to happen and they may be only associated with certain soils/areas and each may produce a different final product!
In the end, I’m just having fun with the pleasant situation I find myself in these days; having a couple jars full of sticks to play with! I’ll keep, “Doing it for the Science”, somebody’s gotta do it! Will report back here as things progress!
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What went ‘in’…
Hot update! We just decided to open up one of the sticks that’s been wrapped in corn husk and braided string (the 'Styler Stix!) for about 4 days to see what’s been going on. The husk shows slight signs of mold/fungi. The ‘stick’ itself has already coagulated into a single mass with a slightly shiny exterior! The smell isn’t what I’m looking for, but that could just be the smell of the corn husk itself which was still on the ganja? I’m going to quickly re-wrap this one in fresh husk and let it go for a few more days and check it again. In a ‘first’, I’m not even going to try smoking any yet!
One observation; The sticks I remember did NOT have the smooth, shiny exterior that this process is producing. They were much more reminiscent of the sticks before wrapping in corn husk, when you can still see crystals of resin. Now, perhaps the old sticks were fermented in their 100-stick packs (as I got a few back in the day) wrapped in wax-paper rather than individually wrapped? That would probably make more sense ‘commercially’.
What came out;
Close-up;
The things I do for Science!
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Budderton’s Alley is quickly turning into Budderton’s Corners!
A couple glamour shots of the little girls;
Sunset doobie time!
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Holy shit @Tlander ! What kind of weird Thai monkey growth hormone are you feeding those things?!
Who would have thought a plant with its roots in the mountains of Afghanistan, would love the Thai environment so much?! Who am I kidding, everything loves the Thai environment! 
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