BUDS IN THE 'HOOD

The King of Queens
Mr. S opens the door to his apartment in the NYC borough of Queens. He’s had a long day at the construction site, but he’s excited to see all the healthy plants at various stages of growth that are cleverly hidden around his house. “Look at the clones,” he says, smiling as he pulls back the black skirting around his bed to reveal a fluorescent-lit ecosystem of happy foot-high stalks blowing in the wind of a silent fan.

Under the bed? And there are more surprises to come. A sliver of white light emanates from a razor-thin crack in a wide cabinet under a desk. That’s where new clones live under more fluorescents, the sheer number of which provide enough light at these stages. But where is the big room with the bright lights? A search of the house turns up nothing to indicate a high-tech grow operation that generates perfect, sticky buds—and top dollar.

Life is tough in the big city. Rents in New York continue to spiral upward, immune to the bursting real-estate bubble that is devastating much of the country. Food, electricity, gas—the cost of living is disproportionately high in NYC, especially if you have a bunch of kids. To pay the bills, Mr. S augments his income by growing fantastic weed, which he sells in small quantities to a trusted group of friends.

Trial and Error
It wasn’t always this way. Although he’s always had access to quality genetics, Mr. S’s early attempts were plagued by failures caused by bug infestations and inadequate lighting. Because the apartment wiring wasn’t designed to carry the current necessary to power strong lights, he tried using large banks of fluorescent tubes to conserve electricity. But the buds grew small and stringy, with long internodal lengths as the plants sought more light. Mr. S decided to upgrade to low-power high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps, which caused a flash fire in the main electrical panel and brought the building’s maintenance staff to his apartment to nicely upgrade the wiring and circuit breakers—but they didn’t discover the secret room containing the big lights, either. In fact, Mr. S claims that even the landlord doesn’t know that the room exists, although he walked around the entire apartment just last year.

How can he hide an entire room? Where the hell is it? Mr. S walks over to the wall and, grasping the decorative molding that outlines the wall in a five-foot square, lifts away the entire panel to reveal a hidden space beyond. Climbing through the hole in the fake wall—which a moment earlier seemed impenetrable—he leads the way down a narrow hallway to an immaculate and well-lit growroom used for both vegetative growth and flowering. Voila!

Mr. S uses only organic ingredients and all-natural methods. He starts with 16 strong clones cut from the tops of several mother plants, which are culled twice over a six-month period and then discreetly disposed of. This time around, Mr. S is growing three strains: Sour P, an unusual-looking, mostly indica variety that flowers for nine to 10 weeks; Lone Pine, a mostly sativa strain that flowers for a long 10 to 11 weeks; and the hands-down strongest variety, Midnight Oil, a Hash Plant–indica hybrid that takes only seven to eight weeks to flower to perfection. This strain is so powerful that …. Wait, what was I talking about?

More about that later.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE IN THE JULY 2008 ISSUE