Author Biography
Greg Green is the best-selling author of The Cannabis Grow Bible and The Cannabis Breeder’s Bible. He grew up in Ireland and has travelled around the world learning about the cannabis plant. His formal education in advanced botany and plant horticulture has allowed him to become the foremost expert on cannabis horticulture and cannabis plant breeding techniques. His legions of readers are eagerly awaiting his next book.
Published Works
Upcoming Works
Cannabis Grow Bible (4th edition)
Author Interview
1. What sort of technology would like to see developed to make marijuana cultivation an easier or more efficient process?
Cultivation gets easier with knowledge and experience, so keep reading and applying what you learn. It all adds up. The most important thing we need to be concerned with today is that indoor cannabis cultivation leaves a surprisingly high carbon footprint and is a greenhouse gas emitter. We need to get that footprint down, which means regulating what we do before someone regulates it for us, which will happen. It is not so much a problem for the home grower, but it becomes one on a larger scale in hot environments (cooling). The main culprit is the high electricity usage and emissions from added CO2. It needs to become a sustainable process, and we need to work on this today, not tomorrow. That means using clean, renewable energy sources and being careful with CO2 emissions. We might need to stop using CO2 and be happy with results that are not CO2 supplemented. It’s a small price to pay to live in a better world.
2. If you could grow in any climate/location in the world without worrying about the legality of it, where would you want to grow and why?
Places with renewable energy sources and lower greenhouse gas emissions are the best place to grow. That means avoiding places with more extreme temperatures that don’t have renewable energy sources. The best places tend to be on the coast of America, especially in California, which has renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Temperature ranges are not so extreme. However, climate change introduces extreme weather. So it’s a vicious circle. If you can grow outdoors, you are on to an environmentally friendly winner as your expenses and gas emissions will be the lowest for cannabis production.
3. When breeding a new strain, what would you say is the most important thing to keep in mind and why?
Large populations give breeders more options for selection. There is no point in repeating what has already been done. Finding something new is everything, and you either hit the jackpot in small populations or increase your chances of getting what you want by growing larger populations. It is like having more lottery tickets increasing your chances of a win. A breeder’s dream is to be able to walk through a cannabis jungle to select the best of the best for breeding purposes.
4. How has writing your books impacted the way you think about growing and your process?
My background was not in science, but when I researched cannabis, I learned so much about living things that it enabled me to go back to university and get a science degree, a BSc in Biology. Cannabis had already taught me so much it made biochemistry, photosynthesis, evolution, and genetics easier to understand. Learning about cannabis was the doorway to science for me. Learning about cannabis is the doorway to science for anybody who learns even the basics. It is a skill you can apply to other crops with some modifications. It will be easier to understand more about cultivation in general. Your regular house plants should be looking all the better for it also.
5. What do you find to be the most challenging and/or rewarding aspects of writing your books?
The most rewarding is looking back and seeing what has changed. It reveals trends, and you can predict where things are heading. For example, LED lights and grow tents. LEDs have completely changed cannabis production. In earlier book editions, LEDs were hardly a thing, then got more noticed as having potential and now are absolutely what indoor growers should be using. We didn’t even figure out cannabis needed 12/12 until the 1980s. We have come so far, but we have a long way to go with climate change already upon us. The most challenging part of writing about cannabis cultivation is that I need to go through the latest in cutting-edge research, which means reading lots of scientific journal papers, understanding what they are saying, and then communicating that science to the non-scientific reader. Commuting science that way is everything. So you need to develop that skill. It is tough to do. Scientists are generally terrible at it. If a scientist can communicate science, then take them out of the lab and get them communicating. It’s that rare.
6. What is your favorite movie?
Ah, my favorite film. Let me see. “Altered States” (1980) by Ken Russell starring William Hurt. It’s science fiction about a researcher who uses sensory deprivation isolation tanks coupled with pharmacology he has obtained from his anthropology research. Modern science experiments meet ancient ritual practices, and it changes the scientist in more ways than one. It has some intriguing incidents involving evolution. I can watch this again and again. The scenes involving X-ray results will blow your mind.
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