Roll Your Own: In Defence of Loose Weed

 

Listen, I know you’re going to argue. I like them too, I do. Pre-rolled joints are the bee’s knees. We’ve written about Canadians’ preference for them before here. But here’s one for the aficionados, for the flavour lovers, for the connoisseurs of cannabis. Here is a completely honest account of how pre-rolls are made coming from me, an anonymous writer who happens to have grown lots, and lots (and lots) of weed for my own gardens as well as managing other companies’ gardens.

You know that one time you got that special weed, the real AAAA top shelf bud? Here’s the thing about THAT weed. That weed had a perfect life. That is the trust fund kid of marijuana. From the day that plant was clipped from its healthy mother it was put into the perfect environment to sprout roots and make an identical copy of that mom.

Regardless of the method, soil, coco, no-till, hydro, indoor, greenhouse, hoopy or outdoor, that plant was provided with the ideal climate throughout every stage of its life. If the air-conditioner or a light went out in an indoor environment, a back-up took over and the broken one was repaired immediately.

A plant’s nutrition is paramount to its health and vitality. The best weed you ever smoked was fed exactly enough and not more. Too much sauce spoils the meal. It’s easy to burn plants in various stages of growth with fertilizers and when that stunting is done, it can’t be undone.

When your favourite weed started to flower, the real work was on. Every grower trains and cleans up their canopy in a slightly different way, but everyone does something. This is where pests, molds and mildews can become much more problematic, especially in humid climates or amongst legal “grow ghettos” as it often becomes due to regulation. Many times large buildings are portioned out and rented to many different legal operations. That means if someone in the building gets pests, everyone has a higher likelihood of getting them too.

Sometimes a grow gets powdery mildew in the flowering stage and the owners spray it with Potassium Bicarbonate, a wine sweetener, ingredient in food and generally safe. A popular product is called GreenCure. You can use it for your winter squash as well. It’s great. But, the plant had mildew. Where did it go? I don’t know. I do know if you let it, it will grow back. I also know I don’t want to smoke Potassium Bicarbonate.

Oftentimes when the bud looks a little wetted previously or matted, it’s been sprayed in flower, who knows with what! Nice.  Now that can be hard to judge between a machine trim and a sprayed flower so, that’s a bit iffy, but it is very easy to see bud that has been unmolested.

Now a grower may not have the luxury of running all the same strain in a room. They may grow sections of OG and another section of Purple Punch. Their Purple Punch could be dialled in with the room, but the OG is more finicky amiright? I’m right, trust. So, the Purple Punch gets a perfect run and bag appeal while the unnamed OG gets over or underfed. Stress increases the chances for pests or mildew to take hold.

After all that, your favourite weed was harvested and perfectly dried and cured before packaging, if it was packaged in anything at all. For all I know it was a ziplock bag. “But I thought we were supposed to be talking about pre-rolls,” you’re thinking. Well, all that other weed in the room that didn’t come out perfect, the worst of it went to extraction (c02 or distillate for the worst of the worst to be safe), but the next tier up was ground up into pre-rolls. Oftentimes it was mixed with a bit of trim to pump up the pre-roll, and other times it was all trim. If you’ve ever cut open a few pre-rolls, you know what I mean.

Sure, there are many premium pre-rolls, and here’s how to find them. First, they aren’t flavoured or wrapped in flavoured papers or blunt wraps. Good weed tastes good and they will want to flex that. The other ones might get you really high, but usually it’s the kief or concentrates added that’s doing the heavy lifting on top of trim. Second, they are usually pricier. If you find good pre-rolls from tasty non-flavoured or hashed-out weed that are cheap, you keep buying those.

When you buy premium weed, you don’t have to worry about that. Don’t get it twisted, I’ve smoked plenty from the bottom of the shelf, but if you can afford not to, don’t. Trust your experience over the test results as well. Remember, whoever pays for the test, pays for results. A lot of people like to think that because it’s legal, weed is easy to suss out now, but the truth is there are so many options available to you today that the consumer needs to be more vigilant than ever and vote with their wallets.

Buy yourself something nice

Here is what I would try tonight if I were ordering flower:

Forum Cut GSC. Much legendary.

Symbiotic drops hits. If the grower doesn’t totally suck Mimosa is an easy grow that hates drama. A safe bet for max orange terps sans PM and greencure spray.

It’s not a hype boi strain, but it stands the test of time in many growers’ arsenals. Recommended for head buzz lovers.

I only give you truth. It’s up to you from here.

 

By the Potmaster General, for Potsmart