The chatted with Josh and Sandra from Moon Gazer Farms about growing flower from seed, their latest small-batch drop of Picnic on the Moon & Papaya Valley Goo #2, and what they’ve got to look forward to this summer on their farm.
Read our Q&A below.
You and your family practice regenerative, beyond organic and carbon sequestering cultivation techniques to grow incredible flower outdoors in the Redwood Valley of Mendocino County. All of your flower is also grown from seed; how do these cultivation practices lead to the outstanding quality, craft-cannabis that we source from you yearly?
We love cannabis, getting lifted, tapping in. It definitely inspires us to grow our garden the way we do.
We grow our ganja in the ground, amongst a very diverse array of flora, fauna and fungi, the same way we grow our food. We call it the symphony of life. We don’t view gophers, turkeys, rabbits, slugs, aphids, or other natural life as a threat to our garden ecosystem. They are a part of the magic. And they generally don’t bother our cannabis plants because they prefer to munch on things like Jerusalem artichokes which we grow in enough abundance to share with them.
Josh and I started our journey in the garden growing vegetables and fruit, which are usually grown from seed. Sometimes plants are grown easily from cuttings (i.e. grapes) or rhizomes (i.e nettles). We love to grow cannabis from regular seeds (non feminized, we need the males too!) that we breed on our farm. It also allows us to view hundreds of phenotypes each year and breed the best plants as our genetics evolve.
We believe seeds are perfect: we love letting the plant complete the life cycle to make their seeds. They are stable: can be stored for months in a dark dry corner of your house. They are economical: you can fit thousands of seeds in the palm of your hand. They are stronger: cannabis grown from seed is more resilient than from clone, so there is less pressure from garden pests (and thus no need for pesticides). On top of it all, seeds contain all the diversity that we love to see in the garden.
You know if you are smoking Moon Gazer that it is the cleanest, highest quality herb you can get and you can trust that it is not just marketing.
Earlier in the year we launched your amazing Papaya Valley Goo #1, which features frosty green buds with beautiful flecks of purple throughout. We’re about to launch your Papaya Valley Goo #2, can you tell us what makes these offerings different?
The most obvious difference is the appearance. Papaya Valley Goo #2 is darker dank purple, the structure is a little more open, less frosty than #1, a little more mysterious. Both are indica leaning, the #2 even more so. Growing from seed, sometimes all the plants look similar, but in this case we had two dominant looks or phenotypes: sparkly lightly purple (#1) and dark danky purple (#2). It’s really fun for us to be surprised every year when the plants bud out.
Picnic on the Moon was both a team member and customer favorite last year and we’re so excited to have it back this year! Can you tell us more about this strain’s lineage, what makes it unique, and how it got its name?
Picnic on the Moon has Lemon Diesel in it- one of the first strains we ever grew from plants we got from a friend up the valley. So it has some history and longevity. This year’s offering was crossed with Banana Jam, so the structure is a little more dense and dank but still has that sweet fuel coming through from the lemon diesel.
It is sativa leaning with creative effects. We have been doing our own breeding for a decade now and eventually the strains are crossed so many times that they take on their own personality and need a new name. Eli actually came up with this name while we were seshing in the garden and we all agreed!
As we transition into summer, what are you excited for this upcoming year on the farm?
With these last few rains and now warm nights, the garden is brimming with life. It is fun to see what happens, what comes back, which strains look happiest from the get, etc. With the abundant rains we are feeling the call for an abundant growing season! We are growing a lot of different phenotypes of Magik Moonbeam, a lot of Papaya Valley Goo crosses, and new seeds from friends that we are really excited to test out. The start of the season is always fun, this year is the same.
We are putting in some new perennial flower beds, the bees love dahlias grown from seed so we are hoping to plant more of those. We have a tray of milkweed going for the butterflies.
Our twin boys just turned 4 and we have a new treehouse near the veggie garden. It has been really fun having our kids grow up and add to the garden magic.