This contest is a tribute to hydro growers everywhere, and if your not a hydro grower, here is your chance to learn.......the easy way.

First the contest:
To enter the contest, write a short story on your choice of either,
(A) how or why you started growing
or
(B) An entertaining pot related story

That's it, that's all you gotta do to win, the winner is determined by our mods, as usual.

Now for the prize, go to this page, and choose your language to view the awesome prize that www.hidhut.com is offering you.

This is a complete line up, of every nutrient you'll need to grow hydro.
They are super easy to use, and guarantee your success.

The prize does include everything, but in the smaller bottles (I think
that page shows the gallons). It should be enough for a 5 gallon
reservoir changed weekly for a full cycle (like one of the dwc starter
kits available from www.hidhut.com).

Entries should be submitted to THIS thread!
The deadline is Sept 7th.
Peace

Damn...VERY cool...

I expect to see some incredible writing efforts. If I recall, most GP members are not youngsters...therefore we got more hilarious growing stories around here than a platoon of retired marines!

ISO

__________________

I just kind of "blurted this out" when I read about the contest so forgive the haphazzard writtting style




I suppose the earliest any marijuana growers started is in adolescence. I started much younger…but it’s not some sorted tale of a family out of control and in crisis…or rather it is, but marijuana is the sweet spot in that tale…to understand I guess some background is in order.

Let me introduce you to my family of origin, as they say in therapeutic circles. In 1960 an 18 year old musician (of sorts) met a busty young lass of 14. This occurred on a public beach. It was not long (hours?) before I was conceived, not exactly a love child, more of a lust child. To move the story along, the couple kept the child and even had another one a few years later. They tried their best, but even with the support of their own parents they couldn’t make it work. And how could they? They were incredibly young, pretty spoiled by their own parents who wanted desperately to give them everything that the depression of the 1930’s had denied them, and pretty sure they world would give them everything they wanted without much effort.

Not unexpectedly the young man, my father, left the family to go on the road and follow his dreams. Not that I remember any of this, I was only three years old. That left my mom, my brother, and me growing up in my grandparents’ house in a pretty standard working class neighborhood.

I pretty hungry for a dad after that though I didn’t really remember my actual dad. It is hard to believe in this day and age that I was the only kid in the entire neighborhood that didn’t have a dad. My grandfather was a wonderful man but he was….old…and not my dad. Everyone had a dad to do all the normal father son stuff…but not me.

Flash foreword to 1969. After many years away…my dad returned. One night I was sleeping in my grandparent’s room and a man walked in…big muscles, long hair….and said “do you know who I am?” Years later he told the apocryphal story that I said “Yes, you’re my dad!” but that couldn’t be true. I remember the night and I remember thinking I have no idea who this guy is.

Dad returned and there was a sort of Honeymoon between my parents. And after having no dad, I now had the youngest strongest coolest dad in the world. He even changed some of the rules…I could now clime trees and sweat without my grandparents telling me to come in before I got sick. If a neighborhood kid picked on me or hit me I was now allowed to hit them back. That alone caused my spot in the pecking order to shift almost to the very top of neighborhood boy life. All was good, it even seemed as if some sort of Karma was at work. First no dad, now the best dad.

Without being a downer, let me quickly describe what I eventually came to now of my dad as the years past. He was often depressed, prone to violence, suffered from multiple addictions, was a womanizer and blah blah blah…you get the picture.
But before I found all that out, there was also a sort of honeymoon with me and my dad in that first year. He took me to nightclubs to hear bands, he took me fishing, he taught me that men are strong and take action. For a brief time he was just about the greatest man on the planet in my eyes.

So to move the narrative along…mom, dad, me, and my brother moved from my grandparents’ home to a housing project for reduced income families. What a new world for me…from a Lilly white land of home owners with fences and flowers…we moved about 10 miles across town to another universe. It was tuff at first but my dad helped me to be tougher. Back before crack invaded…conflicts were mostly just one on one fights with just an occasional knife. And I quickly learned how and when to fight and grew in confidence.

During this honeymoon between dad and I, he once took me behind his childhood home to show me a secret. In the sludge from the waste treatment plant directly behind the house, he showed me a wild marijuana field. He lit some to show me the smell. I didn’t exactly now what is was or what to do with it…but it was important and it was a secret…and dad shared that secret with me.

This is all about the time I was eight or nine years old. I would walk miles to visit that marijuana and I didn’t know why. I did know it fascinated me.

In my third grade class that year we learned about the first thanksgiving. One fact that perked up my little ears was how the Indians (this was before they were Native American) taught the English settlers to use fish when they planted crops to make sure they grew well. I may not have been a good student (ok I may have been the worst student) but I developed what even now seems like a clever plan.

Fist I went fishing. The town was on long island sound and the project kids would always walk to the dock to catch the baby blue fish that ran is schools. Most often we would clean em’ and fry em’ up with butter. But I had a better use. I went to the marijuana field and dug up a small plant…then I went back home…dug a hole near the front door and put in the fish and then the plant. I was confident my plant would grow well and have a bountiful harvest. To be honest I didn’t think I new what the harvest was for…but I was proud as a boy can be.

A few days later, my dad asked me about the plant and I told him about my wonderful plan to grow the biggest and best marijuana plant ever. I don’t remember his exact reaction but he was not pleased, and I had yet to learn just how dangerous it could be to displease him. But this was the honeymoon before the beating began.

This was the first “pot story” about me and dad. There were many more: the time he grew plants right out in the open and people thought they were Christmas trees, the times we would ride in the car together and I would get a contact high , and when I was older how he would steal my pot and blame my brother, to mention a few.

But whenever I grow pot now I feel like me and my dad are back in that honeymoon and I am making him proud and we are sharing a secret. We even had a chance to recreate that moment a few years back...I showed him my basement grow with 1400w of HID. The plants were growing in huge pots and were loaded with budz of the highest quality…he was amazed…unfortunately this was one of the few good moment I’ve had with him as an adult…The ugliness of years of violence and neglect are forgiven but not forgotten…and it is difficult for me to even talk to him.

Still somehow marijuana, dad, and I will always be frozen in that year of the honeymoon…and I know that my almost daily smoking is way for me to still spend time with dad, the dad that exists in my mind and almost briefly existed in real life.

you know scott, its funny that your story includes parents, my one sure does and i know alot of people who have crazy parents and pot stories... here goes...

as some of you guys may or may not have found out im basically an aussie. 1st generation, but still, an aussie, proud as any other and as true blue and fully fledged as any great grandson of a convict. (aus was a penal settlement)

so i grew up under the sun, and sure enough in my early teens around 13 or whatever, almost before i knew what a chick was and stopped disliking them (kids are stupid) and sometime after i learnt to rub frank ... i was introduced to my first bong hit. (i only started rolling joints after i was 19, it was always easy to lay our hands on an empty orchy bottle and a piece of green hose, and my cone was/is always with me) this moment changed me, it was a mariage made in heaven. first thing i did was buy a cone (i still have it). my greatest happinness was to go fishing and spend a day on the coast smoking bowl after bowl. but that was the beginning... then i germinated my first seeds....

... i always collected bag seed, and we had great smoke back then, before the skunks, great soaring wild sativas from the south pacific... (from here comes my sativa fetish, my mission in life)...

of course my oldies kept finding my plants, i mean i grew it in the open, in the cabbage patch thinking theyll never catch on to what it was. but you can only go so far with the science project story, and in summer? theres no school ... heheheh

(only recently did i find out that my dad used to be a dealer in his hayday, no wonder he was able to spot my germinated seedlings for what they were EVERYTIME.. im still dazed and i found out a year ago...)


so year after year i kept at it, and then one year we moved... we didnt just move, we changed continent. i was old enough to stay but went along for the ride, i mean, why not? a holidays always welcome...

of course i kept at it, but for some stupid reason, now that i had acres and acres of forests and deserted patches to grow in the sun i went indoor... i stole some tungsten flood lights, dismounted some flourescents from some public toilets and set up the worst do it yourself hydro grow you could imagine, the electricity bill soared, the plants only just hung on for their dear lives, and after a few months my folks caught on... and guess what?... they were as tired of the battle as i was.

so my mum took my plants out of the attic, and replanted each one with all the care and tenderness she aplied on everything green. she composted the soil, tilled a damned plot, and watered them all summer and into the autumn... my dad didnt say a word about it, neither did she,... i was to scared to speak... but she grew me my buds and all i did was go in and harvest the lot at the right time. we never said a word about it ever, not once, but i learnt alot that summer, i watched what she did, i watched how she did it, i learnt the why of her every move, she turned me feral. and after that i was on my own, i turned guerrilla.

so thats my hydro story, and my first crop story too.... i guess it runs in the family, the pot from my dad, the green thumb from my mum...

i always find it funny that my first ever successful crop was the one my mum grew for me.

WOW! What cool stories! Thanks Scott and Ileso for starting this off. I can't wait to read more!

Peace

__________________
Life,
j-angel

aka GP purrie kittie attack cat!


My Little Grow LST'ing w/Hardware

My Outdoor Odyssey 2008 BONSAI MUMS

My Little Grow Indoor To Outdoor 2009

when is the deadline for this contest?

Damn, I missed that! Errrrr the deadline is Sept 7th.
Thanks for tugging my shirt!

I guess I was around 19, when I was living in a beach bunglow in the OCEANVIEW area of Norfolk,Va. Newly married,living in a rental property of a good friend of my father-in-law's.Times were tight and my father-in-law had given us this huge MARIJUANA plant to cure and sell for the money.I had this 4way doorway inside the front porch(kit/hall & porch/hall & porch/kit) with a center post of jambs. And in the center of the hall was the attic access.I had hung this tree upside down to dry & cure,about 3 days into drying my landlord comes by to get me to fix something at his house for him.And the hole time he's there, It's all I could do to keep him from noticing that plant.He was standing right next to it. I don't know if he noticed it or not,nothing was ever said.What could he say, his best friend(my father-in-law)gave it to us.
As I stated in my profile I come from 3 generations of growers,My grandfather grew MARIJUANA in the mountains of western VA.(not WEST
Va.)and my deceased father-in-law grew his in the swamps of blackwater.
I'm the 3rd generation to grow.
My father is the only one in his family that hasn't smoked it.
So I guess you could say I was born into growing.
But I only DELT out of desperation...
Where as now I don't sell anything,I'll give it away.
And my friends stay happy all day...

__________________
Aging is GODs way of telling us there's no time to waste...

WAS MOSE'S REALLY SPEAKING TO A BURNING BUSH???
OR WAS IT ONLY SMOKING???

I got 2. One is short and funny. The other will take me some time to type, so Ill tell it later. Back in the winter of 67, I was 14 years old. Me and S.G. were talking about trying some marijuana, but had no idea of where to get it. We learned , in school, pot came from the hemp plant. Hemp, inst that what rope is made from? So we went into the Gym and took some strands from the ropes they got hanging, for climbing. Next we had to get some papers. "Here lets use a piece of my lunch bag". When I lit my lunch bag and rope joint I almost burned my eyebrows off!!! Not to mention all the chocking and coughing. The End. Story 2 is about the first time I smoked real pot.

back in 2004 i went to la paz, bolivia..

hehehe

sorry, started laughing... hehehe, i can laugh now.. im safe.. hehehe
well me and my pal were in la paz and we scored this absolutely deadly weed.
it had sticks and stems in it, it had leaf everywhere, but amidst all that it had these short thin tight buds, that incidently were also packed with seeds. and we had 40g of this stuff that we scored the day before our journey out of the country...

but thats ok we figured, me and my pal, we were seasoned hardcore smokers, well just smoke it all when we get to santa cruz de la sierra, shouldnt be too hard we say to each other, i had my faithfull chillum with me, no sweat. so i rolled it up in a plastic bag, stuffed it in a coat pocked and boarded the bus, and went to sleep..

we were awoken about 5 hours later at a border stop, between states. narcotics control. me my pal and a bag of weed. so what i did was stash the bag in another bag that had oranges and get off the bus with the other passengers.. then we got hurded into a group a small way off and waited to see what happened next... me and my pal were almost literally shitting ourselves, i put the bag of oranges down on the ground beside me, discretely but naturally got the OTHER bag out of the first a put it somewhere behind me, and started peeling and eating oranges so as not to start shaking. my mate was freaking by now and nother special had happened.
we almost literaly shit ourselves when we saw the dogs. 1 labrador and a german shepeard, and off they go .. 1 into the luggage and another into the passanger compartment.. so we started panicking, my mate whent a sick creamy off white colour and started sweating.. i think, everyone on the bus noticed us, we were the only foreigners. if anyone has ever been to bolivia, imagine those faces looking at you in a suspicious manner (or so we thought, now i believe its a mask the put on for foreigners..hehe). the dogs came out and it was back on the bus for us, for some reason i stuffed the weed back in my pocket, and even said good morning and smiled to the lady narc officer that was at the door of the bus as we got in.. hehehe, fk im stupid sometimes...

about 6 hours later we arrived at santa cruz, ok the plan was to lock ourselves in the room and smoke it all till sunrise, our train wasnt till the next arvo. so we went into the room, and my mate says ok lets start with a joint.. we got all night... no problem. we rolled up a fat one, smoked half of it and coulnt finish... that was it half a fatty, between the two of us 'seasoned i can smoke anything atitude' stoners. about an hour later i still managed a small pipe hit, but that was it... we were too wasted.. this was some serious weed we had.

we now had a problem, that was a shitload of weed, i was damned if i was going to throw it out... not THAT weed, it was too damned good to go to wast.. no fkng way!

so i divided it, rolled up half into a tight bag, put the rest in my backpack for the trip home... the next morning, i went out, bought some black masking tape, rolled the ball of weed up real tight and taped it securely to the underside of the bedside table, so as noone could find it. then i wrote a clue in pen above the mirror in the bathroom, so as only an ocidental could see it, (bolivians are really short..), it read something like look above the light switch next to the bed, and another one .. read ... like five or six clues until they got to the package under the table, where they got a full note signed by me, explaining the story, where to get more of it (not that they would need more) and to stash another package with a new note from them before they left...

the rest i took with me on the train that afternoon... this train is an adventure in itself... 18 hours from santa cruz to porto juarez between bolivia and brasil. i had to get rid of the stuff by then... the first time i had traveled on it was surreal, but it didnt prepare me for the return trip, which was just as surreal but without the train loaded to the ceiling with contraband, truck wheels, steel structures, car parts, truckpart, ceramics, building blocks.. you name it we had it, the corridores were full of itup to waist height, we had to walk over it to get to the toilets... the way back had none of this, the trip looked calm, then at every stop ladies would get on selling food, plates of fried chicken and rice.. puddings, rice puddings... hmmm rice puddings...

then my thought were derailed by two bolivian gairls that were touching my mates hair from behind us... my friend is blonde, must have been a sensation for them to toutcgh blond hair, well one thing led to another...
yes thats exactly right... hehe you dirty minded people you... he got hauled onto the seat behind us and basically got raped for all i know... on a train, in an open carriage, full of people, and families and whatever... oh well i still had my weed, and thats when i bought my first cup of rice pudding... it was actully quite good too .. so id grind the weed up in my hands stuff it into the pudding, mix it and swallow... i did this over the next few hours a bit at a time, it would take a bit to start rising i figured, about an hour- hour and a half, what with all the pudding..
by the time we got to the border town about five hours later i was not only flying, but i didnt stop rising either. we smoked the last joint we had ( id saved one for the ocasion) before boarding the last bus into brasil at the border.
but it didnt stop, i couldnt sit still, by the time the brasilian border narcs came in two hours after that i was still going strong, i was scared the guy would ask me for my passport.. if he did i would have drooled i was so high... they started searching the bus for drugs, i started getting paranoid, still trying not to drool, i remembered thar as i ground the weed on the train i threw the seeds into my backpack... paranoia.. so i started eating the seeds, its a habit ive had ever since, i crack a seed between my front teath and take out the inside, and spit out the shell, they taste ever so nice and oily..... heehehehe, an hour later i had to stop before i had none left to bring back home to grow.. this was one crop i really wanted to grow... oh yea!
well, i fell asleap, and woke up several hours later , but i cant remember much after that i must still have been high..

this story is the reason im so damned passionate about land races and sativas as opposed to skuknk and skunk varieties... it made me think differenty about my breading program... the 72 hours i just related were a reall education..


i also like fishing... and i got lot of THOSE stories as well.. hewheheh
peace
ileso

My first experience with pot was not a good one. The pot was awesome but the person that brought it over decided to hide it inside the barrel of a gun.

Well needless to say that he was showing off and the next thing I knew the gun went off about 4 feet from my ears. I couldn't hear a thing (damn 45).

The shot went up so we had marijuana raining down on us and nobody could hear a word.

The first time I smoked REAL pot was back in 1967. I was going to my buddy S.G.'s house. He told me he was going over to B.A.'s house to try some pot. I asked if I could go with. We went over to B's house, when we got there B told us his older sister got this pot from some of here college friends. She was an art major at U.C.L.A. The classmate she got the pot from was in a band that played the Whiskey all the time. After we got stoned his sister took us to the local state collage to see a couple of new bands, some chick singing with a band called Big Brother, and some guys called Canned Heat. Turned out to be a great concert. As a side note my friend B.A. grew up to be the lead guitar player in a famous 80's band.

lol i wasnt even born in 1967 lol

....I remember Canned Heat....I guess that tells the tale! LOL!

__________________
Life,
j-angel

aka GP purrie kittie attack cat!


My Little Grow LST'ing w/Hardware

My Outdoor Odyssey 2008 BONSAI MUMS

My Little Grow Indoor To Outdoor 2009

Some chick with Big Brother (and the Holding Company?)...Janis Joplin?

God! I'm old.

Pappy

I know all those bands, and one of the things I love about this site, is the age and sex difference. We have lots of old farts like myself here, and alot of you would be shocked to learn the high percentage of women here too.

I think the females come to this site because they know they are safe from the internet jerks that would only serve to harass them. Feeling safe is a very important thing.

Janis Joplin rocks!

1967 I lived in phoenix, and weed was ten bucls an OZ, for really good weed too, excellent weed was like 12 bucks an oz. My forst experience buying weed out there was Panama red, I bought a half a lid, for 6 dollars!
Peace

There's one I wonder if the younglings understand.

NICKLE-1 fat finger across the bottom of the baggie(no weight then)

DIME-2 fat fingers

LID-3 fat fingers

OZ-4 to 5 fat fingers(you could just fold over baggie flap)

Mexican,Colombian,Panama Red,Acapulco Gold,Hawaiian(Maui-waui),
Tia-stick(the real shit dipped in opium)Sensimilla

I remember paying 5.00 for a nickle/10.00 for a dime/15.00 for a lid/20.00 for an Oz of Mex 45.00 for a qtr lb
When the the Colombian came around it was 25.00 an Oz
Panama Red and Acapulco Gold both were 35.00 Oz
Hawaiian was 40.00 an Oz
Tia stick was 15.00 a stick(about the diameter of your pinky and across the bottom of the baggie)
Sensimilla was 40.00 an Oz

__________________
Aging is GODs way of telling us there's no time to waste...

WAS MOSE'S REALLY SPEAKING TO A BURNING BUSH???
OR WAS IT ONLY SMOKING???

I remember riding on my pet mamoth to get to the grand canyon (which was only a river then) to hunt dodo birds.....jk... I enjoy the nostalgic look back as much as all of you....let's pick up a lid, drive around in the van, and listen to some Big Brother and the Holding Company!

Or Genna Raven and Ten Wheel Drive....a New little band named Led Zepplin.....Pink Floyd.....Jimmy Hendrix...those where the days!

Peace

__________________
Life,
j-angel

aka GP purrie kittie attack cat!


My Little Grow LST'ing w/Hardware

My Outdoor Odyssey 2008 BONSAI MUMS

My Little Grow Indoor To Outdoor 2009

and these are the days also...its always now! in the old days there was no GP to enjoy, no one knew how to grow well, you couldn't order seeds, legalization seemed to be of interest only to people too young to vote, and I couldn't listen to Jimmy and Janis on my Ipod....