by Greg Green
How Cannabis Is Used
Whenever we hear the word Cannabis we think of the famous leaf shape like the one on this book’s cover. Many magazines show joints being rolled thick with leaves. Leaves are in fact the lesser potent part of the plant next to the stem and the roots. The cannabis plant can be divided into 6 main sections Bud,Stem, Branches, Nodes, Leaves, and Main Cola.
The next thing to know is that plants have a gender. The genders are male and female and sometimes a mix gender called the hermaphrodite condition. Now listen to this closely.
1) The male plant is not used for smoking because it contains low levels of THC and does not taste very good, but it can get you high.
2) The female plant when pollinated does produce THC but produces also seeds which prevent larger quantities of bud from being produced.
3) A non-pollinated female (sinsemilla) plant will produce more flowering buds with no seeds and will produce higher quantities of THC than the male plant or a seeded female plant. The buds produce resin, which contain THC, and can drip down onto the leaves. When she is fully mature she should produce a very pleasing high depending on the grow method, the strain of plant and when it is harvested.
To put it plainly, males can be smoked but are not very good and are considered vastly inferior to the female plant. The female plant when pollinated produces seeds and can be smoked but is vastly inferior to a non-pollinated female plant (sinsemilla) that produces more bud. It should be the goal of every Cannabis user to grow non-pollinated female plants with big buds. The goal of a cannabis breeder is too produce quality seeds and plants. How both these things are done is what this book will help you to understand.
At the end of the Cannabis plant’s life cycle the plant is harvested. This means one of two things. The plant can be completely uprooted and treated (called a complete harvest) or the plant can be harvested a small bit and used again for a second flowering term (this is called re-veging and re-flowering).
When Cannabis is harvested the harvester concentrates on the best part of the plant, namely the top cola and the buds. The leaves are the last thing to worry about and the stem and roots are normally thrown away. There are many ways to harvest a plant and we will explain it in detail, later. Once the grower has selected the parts they want, they then set about curing their harvest. Curing your harvest is important. It helps one to produce a finer product. After the curing has been done the grower can then choose how he/she wants to finally produce their smokable mix. They can use the cured plant as it is and smoke it dry or they can produce hash or oils from the curing process.