![](\"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/sean-characky-marijuana-grower-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
In Sean Characky\u2019s phone (and in his head) is an incomparable marijuana industry Rolodex. A who\u2019s-who of cannabis breeders, geneticists and originators rolls off his tongue. This is the kind of contacts list a well-moneyed upstart would mortgage his second home to get, and these are all friends and colleagues of Characky\u2019s from the barely legal days 20 years ago, when he and a few other pioneers in Southern California traded the clones and seeds that formed the nucleus of today\u2019s dispensary menus.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got the original SFV [San Fernando Valley OG Kush<\/a>] from Brett, who had Josh D.\u2019s cut, back in \u201998,\u201d he says. \u201cBack in the day, I was the guy who would sell it to you for ten grand. It\u2019s no big secret I was the guy who would sell it to you, if you wanted it.\u201d<\/p>\n Sean Characky, the grower at Pisos in Las Vegas, can talk your ear off with cultivation stories.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Today, Characky can reveal these arcane marijuana secrets as if they were what he ate for breakfast that day. He can tell you \u2014 with the authority that only comes from being there, which cuts through the fog of competing stories, nicknames, and disputed lineage \u2014 that Skywalker OG<\/a> is just OG, rechristened by an LA dispensary owner who happened to be named Luke. He can tell you about the beef between two other old-school growers that led one spurned partner to sell 50,000 clones \u201cto every dispensary you can think of,\u201d quite possibly the one move that is most responsible for sending OG\u2019s distinct aromas of limonene and pinene into the lungs and nostrils of weedheads around the world.<\/p>\n What you won\u2019t find is Characky showing any of this off on social media, making noise at the loudest booth at the Cannabis Cup<\/a>, rubbing elbows with Instagram celebrities or pressing fistfuls of his weed into rappers\u2019 hands, banking that a few bars\u2019 worth of mention will be enough to create the next top strain. If you did, you\u2019d probably laugh \u2014 or mistake him for a cop (or, just as likely these days, a Silicon Valley investor trying to \u201cfit in\u201d).<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not a hip dresser. I don\u2019t have any tattoos. I look more like a banker,\u201d he says. \u201cYou have to fit a social media style in order to create a hype. I\u2019m not much of a hype man. I work really hard and I\u2019m glad people seem to like what I grow. That\u2019s all I need.\u201d<\/p>\n Hardcore OG<\/p>\n<\/div>\n More important than those dusty old bona fides, dating from when today\u2019s budtenders and hype extraction artists were in diapers, are the ones currently living under lights in a growhouse in the Las Vegas<\/a> desert. Five years ago, Characky relocated to Vegas from LA, and consequently became a big fish in a smaller, regulated pond.<\/p>\n \u201cI just got tired of living in Cali. LA is overrun,\u201d Characky says. \u201cAll my roots are there, but the taxes are high<\/a>, I got tired getting stuck in traffic. So I came out here to try and find new turf, and landed with some of the better groups in town.\u201d<\/p>\n Characky is currently in charge of cultivation for Pisos<\/a>, one of the Vegas-area dispensaries that went recreational this past July 1<\/a>, and one of the few in Las Vegas (if you believe Characky\u2019s story, and why not?) that\u2019s fully vertically integrated \u2014 and the only one with these carefully curated genetics.<\/p>\n The Taffy strain grown at Pisos is a beautiful specimen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Which means Pisos is a strain-chaser\u2019s dream. This also means that Pisos can get away with selling eighths for $69, and can struggle to keep them in stock. Whether they grasp the significance or not, at Pisos, tourists from around the world are buying eighths of the original Jack Herer, or an original cut of San Fernando Valley OG Kush, taken from the same mother plant Characky has kept alive through clones since those long-away days when a Clinton was president and \u201cIntergalactic\u201d was the top single on a Beastie Boys No. 1 record. (For the millennials: That would be 1998.)<\/p>\n \u201cThere are so many variations of the SFV now, but that Josh D. cut is still the best cut,\u201d he says. \u201cIt seems to affect people in a way that\u2019s more level.\u201d<\/p>\n Also in Characky\u2019s head is incomparable knowledge \u2014 what those plants want and what those plants need. How much potassium, how much light, how tall or how small they should be allowed to grow. Characky can tell you how many winners<\/a> out of each 12-pack of seeds popped you can expect (one, usually), and how many legendary, life-changing cultivars that have been lost forever because the farmer didn\u2019t know what he was doing (too many to count).<\/p>\n Do Si Do<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cYou pop a new seed of Lemon Banana Sherbert and receive 1.7 ounces off of the test plant. Then you gauge this plant and say, \u2018Can I do better?\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cBut how would I know if it\u2019s a good one if I didn\u2019t know how to grow? If I didn\u2019t have the technical background, the finances, the elaborate set-up, start of the art lights, epoxy floors?\u201d<\/p>\n Characky says that he wonders how many people today purchase Lemon Banana seeds, pop them in their house, and actually pop \u201cthe most amazing strain the world has never seen\u201d \u2014 but then mistakenly throw it \u201cto the wayside\u201d because they didn\u2019t have enough experience or knowledge to bring the plant to its full potential.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m starting to see that all the years of growing I\u2019ve had weren\u2019t just because I had this amazing cut no one else could get,\u201d Characky says. \u201cIt was organization and leadership skills, getting people to trust you and your grow technique<\/a>. That\u2019s how you end up with fire.\u201d<\/p>\n The wide indica leaves of a Bubba Kush.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n To supply Pisos with dozens of strains<\/a>, Characky needs no more than 10,000 square feet of grow space, divided into 22 rooms of 10 lights each, with hoods fixed to eight-foot-tall ceilings. In this way, each room can grow multiple strains simply by feeding each side of the room different nutrients. This gives him flexibility \u2014 and control.<\/p>\n If cannabis were more like another industry, Characky would be what you\u2019d call a \u201cmaster.\u201d There are master brewers, master vintners, and so of course there are master growers. Right? Nah. \u201cI don\u2019t like the term master grower,\u201d says Characky. \u201cI don\u2019t really know what a master grower is. I prefer to call myself more of an engineer. What I\u2019m after is engineering the system that can grow the product to its highest level.\u201d<\/p>\n In an industry where few growers make it to the two-decade mark, Characky says his over 20-year resume proves that he\u2019s found \u201cthe secret\u201d and that he\u2019s been successful replicating it.<\/p>\n Cookies Tangie #5<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cGranted, I\u2019m not saying other people can\u2019t figure it out\u2026 But I\u2019m hoping people understand that you can\u2019t just get a pack of seeds, hire some dude who\u2019s been growing in a garage, set him up in a 60,000-square-foot warehouse and make it happen,\u201d says Characky. \u201cIt\u2019s not just growing a seed, putting it into the ground and expecting to become a millionaire. That day and age is gone.\u201d<\/p>\n But how would you know any of this \u2014 unless you knew? Who do you trust, and why? That\u2019s the problem. \u201cThere\u2019s absolutely no way to know,\u201d says Characky. \u201cI have the original SFV, but that\u2019s if you believe my story. It\u2019s all getting people to trust you.\u201d<\/p>\n And here, at least, is where the trust is something you can see and taste. It\u2019s in the flower.<\/p>\n Kosher Dawg grown in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Originally published in\u00a0Issue 28<\/a>\u00a0of Cannabis Now.\u00a0<\/em>LEARN MORE<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> are you a cannabis grower? Do you have your own secrets of the trade?<\/p>\n The post The Secrets of an OG Grower<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
In Sean Characky\u2019s phone (and in his head) is an incomparable marijuana industry Rolodex. A who\u2019s-who of cannabis breeders, geneticists and originators rolls off his tongue. This is the kind of contacts list a well-moneyed upstart would mortgage his second home to get, and these are all friends and colleaguesContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":25595,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,5,553,85,2629,228,488,3847,4030],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25594"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25594"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25596,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25594\/revisions\/25596"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Sean](\"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/sean-characky-marijuana-grower.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Grower](\"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/marijuana-grower-hardcore-og.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Grower](\"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/marijuana-grower-taffy-pisos.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Grower](\"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/marijuana-grower-do-si-do-strain.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Bubba](\"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/bubba-kush-leaf-grower-marijuana.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Cookies](\"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/cookies-tangie-marijuana-grower.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Kosher](\"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/kosher-dawg-marijuana-grower.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n
\nRead More: The Secrets of an OG Grower<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"