Times report: Master growers boosting MMJ quality

 Cultivation
Apr 012012
 

Behind the bolted steel doors of an old brick warehouse, Big Wes meets a nutrient company scientist to see if he can increase his crop yield. Rows of hydroponic marijuana plants soak up solution flowing through plastic troughs and light blazing from high-pressure sodium lamps. Big Wes has spent more than half his life calibrating his system of growing high-grade marijuana to its utmost efficiency, Joe Mozingo reports in the Los Angeles Times. At 50 years old, he harvests a crop of dozens of plants every week from five rented warehouses scattered along the rutted [...]

Amador County board votes to allow 24-plant gardens

 Ordinances
Mar 142012
 

JACKSON – Amador County medical-marijuana patients will be able to grow their medicine in outdoor gardens this year, although those plots will be smaller than they had hoped. The Amador County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to lift a 4-month-old ban on medical pot gardens and allow any single garden to be used to grow as many as 12 plants per patient for as many as two patients for a maximum of 24 plants. That is only a third of the capacity recommended in February by the county’s Planning Commission, Dana M. Nichols reports [...]

Siskiyou deputies hit growers with ‘compliance checks’

 Law Enforcement
Mar 142012
 

DUNSMUIR — Siskiyou County Sheriff Jon Lopey said he plans to meet with detectives who conducted recent medical marijuana “compliance checks” in Dunsmuir to ensure they’re relaying correct information to the public. He said the Sheriff’s Office will abide by doctor recommendations for marijuana amounts and that any misinformation put out by deputies and detectives will be corrected. Lopey stated in an interview earlier this week that cooperating with deputies doing compliance checks is completely voluntary. Earlier this month, Dunsmuir residents reported that sheriff’s deputies, in some cases accompanied by a detective, made unannounced visits [...]

Review: ‘Marijuana Made Simple’ gets back to basics

 Bud's Blog
Mar 102012
 
Review: 'Marijuana Made Simple' gets back to basics

If you’ve ever spent any time in a grow shop, you can spot the pro growers the moment they walk in. They may be smiling, but they have hundred-dollar bills in their pocket and they’re getting ready to haggle with the owner. Good growers know what they need to grow primo bud, and they view the tools of the trade – lights, fans, nutrients, soil – as business investments that pay off down the line. For beginning growers, those investments don’t always pay off. They get bad advice from their well-meaning friends, buy a bare-bones [...]

Yuba City passes urgency ban on outdoor growing

 Cultivation
Mar 072012
 

Yuba City residents who grow marijuana to cope with pain, nausea and anxiety will have to do so indoors or not at all. In a 4-0 vote, the Yuba City City Council passed an urgency ordinance banning residents from growing medical marijuana outdoors, Jonathan Edwards reports in the Appeal-Democrat. Residents can move their plants indoors so long as they register with the city, limit plots to 50 square feet, hide evidence of its operation from onlookers and lock up their yard as well as their greenhouses. Growing inside is hard work, dwarfs the size of [...]

Zip ties recommended for Mendocino growers

 Cultivation
Mar 022012
 

The Mendocino County district attorney is advising medical marijuana growers to tag their plants with sheriff-issued zip ties to lessen their chances of prosecution. “Participation (in the zip-tie program) will continue to be one factor considered by the prosecuting attorney if allegations come before him of criminal wrongdoing,” Mendocino County District Attorney David Eyster said in a written statement issued Thursday afternoon. Skeptics question whether it’s a good idea to register pot-growing operations with the sheriff’s office, given the recent federal crackdown on cooperatives, dispensaries and the people who rent to them, Glenda Anderson reports [...]

Fed prosecutor warns Fresno farmers on pot grows

 Marijuana News
Mar 022012
 

Federal officials warned owners of Valley farmland Thursday that if they lease land to someone growing marijuana, they could lose their property or face jail time. Sacramento-based U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner came to the Fresno County Farm Bureau to detail his office’s stepped-up prosecution of large-scale pot farms. He met with about 65 people representing Valley sheriff’s offices, federal drug agents and the agriculture community, Robert Rodriguez reports in the Fresno Bee. “We want to send a message to land owners that they have to know what is going on on their property,” said Wagner, [...]

Wagner defends California dispensary crackdown

 Marijuana News
Mar 012012
 

As the top federal prosecutor in Sacramento was announcing a new focus on huge pot farms in the Central Valley on Tuesday, a U.S. district judge delivered a separate blow to efforts to thwart crackdowns on medical marijuana. U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. dismissed one of five suits that had been filed in federal courts last fall in a bid to win legal support for medical marijuana use in California and other states. Burrell’s order came in a suit filed in federal court in Sacramento last November on behalf of the El Camino [...]

Input sought on Yuba County growing ordinance

 Ordinances
Mar 012012
 

Both Yuba County supervisors named to a committee to further study the issue of medical marijuana growing in residential neighborhoods said they want to listen to all parties to create an ordinance to regulate the issue. A day after a proposed ordinance died at a board public hearing because it couldn’t get a majority of votes, Supervisor John Nicoletti, who didn’t attend the hearing because he said he had a conflict with a culinary class he’s teaching at Yuba College, said he felt it had some good elements, Ben van der Meer reports in the [...]

Former Stanislaus deputy faces pot-growing charge

 Marijuana News
Feb 252012
 

A judge Friday scheduled a trial to start Sept. 25 for a former Stanislaus County sheriff’s detective accused of four felony charges, including embezzling from the Sheriff’s Department and cultivating marijuana. Defendant Kari Abbey initially was charged with second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter in connection with the off-duty shooting death of Rita Elias, 31, who brandished a BB gun during a confrontation with Abbey in September 2010. At the end of Abbey’s preliminary hearing in December, Superior Court Judge Ricardo Córdova dismissed the murder and manslaughter charges, Rosalio Ahumada reports in the Modesto Bee. The [...]

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