Greetings, cultivators from around the world. Jordan River here back with more grow cast all greased up and ready to go. Today we have grease on the line. That's right. Mike from grow with grease is here. He's going to talk about alfalfa extract and plant hormones and micronutrients, trace minerals. Really, really good episode with Mike here, first time guests, formerly of mammoth microbes, now working with Greece. So it's gonna be a great episode before we jump into it, though. Shout out to AC infinity. That's right. AC infinity.com, code grow cast one five. That gets you 15% off on the website, plus $99 or more. Your order ships for free. Grab the best Grow Tent kits around. If you're popping up a new tent, there's no better way than go grab the all in one kit comes with everything you need to get started, or grab just the parts you need. The best in line fans in the game. They got fantastic bar style lights. They got affordable board style lights. They've got pox bottom watering systems. They've got oscillators. They've got everything you need. It's AC infinity.com, code, grow, cast one, five. Now if you go to Amazon, you can order AC infinity products Amazon Prime. Need it shipped right away. No problem. Use code, grow cast 10 for 10% off your online orders. That's growcast One zero on your Amazon orders. And growcast One five at AC infinity.com and don't forget, $99 or more spent at AC infinity.com means $0 shipping. They'll ship it to you for free. So go and grab whatever you need. Use the growcast code, it supports the amazing AC infinity brand and helps us keep our lights on. I appreciate all of you, folks, and a huge thank you to AC infinity, acinfinity.com code, growcast one five and code, growcast one zero on Amazon. All right, everybody, let's get into it with Mike from Greece. Thank you for listening and enjoy the show. Hello podcast listeners. You are now listening to grow cast. I'm your host, Jordan River, and I want to thank you again for tuning in today before we get started. As always, I urge you to share the show, tell a grower about growcast, or better yet, turn a smoker on to growing it's the best way you can help us on our mission of overgrow. Growcast.com is the new website, brand spankin new go check it out there. You'll find the seeds and the membership and the events. It's all up there waiting for you. Special shout out to the members. You guys make this all possible. We are back on growcast podcast today with a brand new guest, very excited to speak with this individual. Interestingly enough, we've been following the team from the former mammoth microbes, and here we are again with another team member from that team. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the creation of his own product, and we're going to talk about microbes and alfalfa and so much more. We got Mike from grow with grease on the podcast for the first time. What's up? Mike, how you doing? Man,
Hey, what's up, Jay, I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you so much for, uh, making it happen and making the connection, and just stoked to be talking with everyone. Thanks. Yeah,
of course. Man, welcome to the show. We bumped into each other. Interestingly enough, I think I spoke with you, or it might have been someone from your team, but you guys had a grow with grease van at the Nova cup. I want to say North Virginia cup, 2023 Does that ring a bell? Am I getting that right? Must
have been someone else, but it could have been that we had some samples there, and someone there kind of representing for us, because we have a pretty strong following in that area. That's
right, they were giving out samples. And I remember seeing the bison right, and I remember getting a sample of your original flagship grease product. And yeah, it was funny, because if you've been on my radar for a little while, and then we spoke, we did a little call, and I was like, I gotta chat with this guy, because you deal with a lot of what I am interested in, which is helping growers. Grow better, bigger buds, better buds, stinkier buds, faster harvest, all those fun things, you know. And a lot of your products are, I would say, kind of like secret weapons that you can add to a grow that's doing well, you know, you can add this to a grow that's an intermediate grower, somebody who's having successful runs, and you get extra results. So I'm really excited to dive into everything. But let's start from the beginning. Mike first for the audience, a brief intro on yourself. What brought you to cultivation and what brought you to Mammoth and eventually Greece.
Oh, thanks, yeah. And you know, again, thanks for reaching out. Because in our initial discussion, I just feel like there's a lot of alignment in our communities because we really care and put in that extra effort of driving for, you know the quality, and it sounds like you know, what your community strives for, too? Like, if you're going to grow your own and be, you know, putting all the time and effort in, you really want to get the very best out of it, and also be coming from a more natural and kind of as most well rounded approach as possible, right? That's so true. I've been growing for a long time. I you. Was really lucky to kind of start working in a garden supply industry when I was, like 15, and I was actually the same time that I really got into thinking about growing like cannabis, and even brought home, you know, a light from the garden center, and kind of raked up a little situation in my attic and started growing like a plant, you know, and I was pretty young, along with my brother, and just starting to experiment. And it was really cool. I actually approached the principal of my high school to reopen our greenhouse, and he actually let me run my high school greenhouse as well. Oh, that's really cool. Yeah, that was, like, a really amazing and, like, formative experience trying to kind of figure things out. And then I had a little bit of background and a lot of support, actually, through the garden supply store, they would take some of the older plants and just donate them to us, and we could grow them out in the greenhouse. So it was just a really cool program. That's what kind of sparked a lot of my initial passion. My parents were into gardening, and grandparents were really into gardening and everything coming from that generation, the victory gardens and everything. So it's always been a strong, formative thing, and I guess really important in my life and growing up, I actually ended up studying horticulture and floriculture at Colorado State University, really exploring like that passion more in depth and, uh, knowing in the back of my head, you know that my passion is definitely with growing flowers and growing cannabis. But at the time I graduated 2010 it was funny. Horticulture was actually like the top five most useless degrees. Yeah, right. They said, you know, at that time, that funny how
that works. They said, Hey, go get a graphic design degree. We're always going to need graphic designers now, graphic designs in the toilet, and people are growers,
right, right. Go get a radiology degree, right? Yeah, totally. You're gonna
want to get into broadcast radio, my friend, but,
but sure, so that was kind of funny, but it was really nice to kind of be like exploring and going more in depth on my passion. And then got into really growing cannabis more intensively, of course, through college, and kind of got lucky being in Colorado at the right time and right place with legalization as well. So that was really interesting. Like when I graduated, the economy was really coming out of that recession of 2008 so everything was pretty tough. And I ended up going into taking, like, basically money from my grows and things like that, and actually starting a CSA. So I'd got into like, community, shared agriculture and growing like tons of vegetables, all the while growing indoor, you know, still keeping my passion with cannabis, but expanding my horizons into, like, truly, like, all different types of crops, specifically food crops. So that was a really cool experience, too. It was difficult to sell the produce because it was a tough time for the economy. So I ended up getting a job in the hydroponics industry, and I had done my internship at a garden supply store that had a hydroponics section that was emerging as well because of the legalization and medical and everything coming on pretty strong. Everything's blowing up, yeah, blew up really hard in Colorado. Yeah. So that was, like amazing as well, to continue, keep working in the garden supply world, keep working with all different types of plants, but still having a really, really strong foundation in cannabis and strong focus on hydroponics. That's a pretty storied history, yeah. And then it's, I'm sorry it's such a long story. It's kind of a lot of background. No,
no, that's important information. Man, I like that you have such a broad scope of working with so many different plants. I think that's a trap that a lot of cannabis cultivators fall into, is they don't expand out enough. I know I love to hear that. And then you, you're educated as well. You have traditional education. You got the cannabis thing going on. This is important stuff, man. You know, that's why you know what you're talking about. Well, and I
love to agree with all the reefer madness. You know, cannabis is a gateway drug. It's a gateway to gardening for actually, food crops.
That's so funny. I see the exact same thing, right? The exact same joke. You know what I'm you know what I mean? It's true. Next thing you know, you're popping peppers and you're popping little ornamental flowers and stuff, you're so right. And
you're like, Damn tomatoes can run off the same recipe. Like, hell yeah, yeah. It's really cool. So, um, so that's all fun. And then really good for you as well. Obviously, it's like a cascading effect, like, super good for your own health and and we'll talk a little bit more in depth about the end of fights and, like, that connection of like the mind body and everything. But basically, I started working at way to grow, which was a large hydroponic store. We work with way to grow, yeah, and it was actually the largest hydroponic store in the world at the time. It was the largest buying account, like purchaser, single purchaser, because they had. At Five, I think at one point, you know, even, like seven or eight stores, and just during the heyday and big stores as well, and I ended up being the manager, the store manager of the headquarters location. So this was, again, just a great opportunity to talk with so many growers. Get so in depth in every different style of growing. Know, kind of everything forward and backwards. And then also be exposed to the manufacturers and be exposed to the reps all coming in to the headquarters location to talk to the purchasers and whatnot. Just really, really fun experience, really great experience, to get to see this huge moving engine of a retail engine, and everything. So that was when Colin Bell actually came into way to grow, doing some initial research into the industry, and met me. And I was like, uh, got the idea of his idea of basically this phosphorus liberating microbe, right? And we're rapping about it, and I'm like, honestly, this is a great fit for a beneficial bacteria for bloom, we don't really have a beneficial microbe or bacteria at that time for bloom, we had plenty for veg. So I was like, this is a huge gap in the market. And then I did all the initial testing with my brother on cannabis, and then in other subsequent grows, to make sure 100% that it worked, I came up with the recipe to use alfalfa because I knew the beneficial compounds like tricantinol, wow, and then also the high energy potential of alfalfa. So it ended up being the perfect thing to grow the bacteria as well. Like, it was a really good, long touring source of energy with all the trace elements in the alfalfa and stuff. So, um, that was really cool. And then it turns out, like long story short, that's actually why the product, mammoth P ended up working so well too. Because, in retrospect, after I stopped working for them, one of the salesmen came up to me, and they had had a huge R D department at this point. They had like 30 or 40 people in R D, even just alone, because they really hit it right in the boom of a kind of the time of when medical was coming on and Rec and everything. So they hit it at a really good time. Had a huge team. They actually tested sterilized mammoth versus mammoth P to try and prove that it was the microbes and not the alfalfa extract, but they got the reverse effect, that actually the sterilized one did better. That is
interesting. It's one of those things that makes me think, you know, it's like I said before. I imagine that the effectiveness of something like a bacteria that solubilizes phosphorus is dependent on how well your living soil and your plant is already solubilizing and uptaking phosphorus, right? There's kind of a limit there, yeah, whereas this is why it's really important as a grower and a home grower to know what your product is, what is in there these different categories of product, whereas triconal, which is like, more of a it's like a fatty acid, it's a hormone, right? It's a hormone, yeah? So it's like, I imagine that adding this as a kind of Xeno hormone is going to give you more benefits in that system. That's already phosphorus, sorry, solubilizing phosphorus already. Well, does that make sense? That, like this is the icing on the cake? Yes,
that's exactly right. And what tricantenal really, truly does is it more is a secondary messenger, so it'll actually tell the plant to increase the gene expression of the other hormone. Even though it's technically a hormone itself, it actually more gets the plant cranking on its own, auxins, Gibberellins, cytokinins, so it's more of a messenger to tell them to ramp that up, kind
of like a supplement. If we take a supplement to boost our hormone health, exactly,
and it specifically ramps up photosynthesis. It ramps up the enzyme production, so they can actually absorb more CO two and make more sugars. And so many people are supplementing CO two, you know what I mean? So it's actually, literally the perfect thing there. It also helps drive calcium, iron and magnesium uptake, which so many people are running cow eggs, which typically have like that, literally, those exact three ingredients. And to your point, like in a good, like, well rounded soil, it's literally just increasing the overall, like stress resilience and just increasing the uptake. Specifically, so you can literally compare two plants and start adding the Alpha grease, the uptake will increase. The your alpha grease plants going to dry out faster. They can actually start taking more water. So that tells you right there, that they're growing faster. And you can see it too. So
the Alpha grease, your alfalfa extract product available at Grow, grow with grease.com. Uh, code grow cast Mike has set up for 10% off if you want to try it. But let's talk about the effectiveness, of course, of your product, Mike. But I imagine this to be the case because I was doing a little bit of research on tricontinol and how it was discovered through beeswax, and how it's high in a lot of plants. It's present in high levels in a lot of plants, like waxes on plants, like the wax of wheat and things like this. Isn't
that surprising, because you when you think about it, like the way we've learned about it was from the synthetic approach, so you actually didn't really think about it as a naturally occurring compound, but I'm really impressed that you did that research, and know that, because you're absolutely right it's in so many common plants, and believe it or not, it actually is in cannabis naturally. So that's what's so cool, too, is you're not just adding something funky, that's you're frankensteining out the plant. You're literally supplementing a natural pathway within the plant.
That makes a lot of sense. I've had some really waxy strains before. You know that has a leaf wax on it, right?
Right? Right, and you can see it like a nice OG with a really waxy leaf, absolutely, totally and like a deep waxy leaf. But to your point, for the common plants that have it, it's also your typically, really hard flowering plants, which also makes total sense, like corn, tomatoes, sugar cane, like wheat, like you said. So that's kind of interesting. Super
interesting. Yeah, so I was surprised to see that. And then the studies that I saw on alfalfa and this hormone were usually in a chop and drop scenario. They would say we cut alfalfa and laid it near other plants. They basically just chopped and dropped alfalfa. So so my question to you, Mike, I imagine that there's a enzyme breakdown, a micro breakdown going on that's releasing some of that trichantinol into available form. But how much can we reliably assume, compared to like, pouring on a bottle of concentrate like yours? That's
a really good point and a great question, and that is kind of what separates the product and makes it so interesting, and kind of makes it just the right effect and right levels. Because if you think about it, the chop and drop method, it totally works. But so much of it is getting degraded by like UV light. A lot of it's getting degraded and actually changing just from the microbes degrading all the compounds and basically composting it right there. So it's really hard to say how much and how consistently you're getting it from when you're mixing raw alfalfa into your soil or doing some type of chop and drop method, you're absolutely getting it in there. But just to guarantee that it's getting in there really quickly, the liquid applications definitely the best method, because you're coding the entire root system. It's getting absorbed all instantly, right through the roots, and you can be supplying it consistently at a low dose. And that's really how these hormones work. That's how they like it. They don't like the synthetic type of tricantinol, because it's very easy to overuse that one and too much can actually be harmful, and it can actually stunt and limit the growth. And not to mention all the synthetic forms are made from, from some pretty gnarly chemicals to the way that they there's a couple different pathways to form them, but they're coming from, like lithium and like crazy compounds. So by far, the natural approach is the best approach. And then you could even do both. You could add some alfalfa meal to the soil and use the Alpha grease. Good point, because then you kind of are ensuring that you're going to get maybe some slow release effect that's going to give you some extra layering, extra supplementation, but you're guaranteeing that you're getting it in there with the Alpha grease. And then the other interesting thing is, you want to be applying it actually early it you'd be surprised how good it is in veg and even in clone, because of what I said, it's this. It's actually ramping up the natural hormones within the plant. So in the cloning process, it's going to be ramping up those rooting hormones. And then same thing throughout the growth process, it's actually turning on more of those genes to turn on the enzyme production, so that when you do go into flip and go into flower, it will actually go into flower faster, like what I've noticed the number one thing, it seems to take about a week off of the time that you go into visible bud. They call it from when you know you can really see the transition. And all of a sudden you've got your little cotton balls and buds forming. And I think that that is how one of the main reasons why you get the extra 15 to 20% yield on the back end? Because you're basically gaining that week, if you think about it, we're growing such a short, growing such an intensive crap that really that one extra week, a couple extra days difference, makes a huge difference, right?
It sure does. That's really makes a lot of sense. Man, when you say that it's this kind of hormone health booster, that's a big transition going from veg to flower, that's a stressful time. The plant needs to start producing totally different hormones. A lot of people, especially if you're on a bottled regimen, may still have some residual veg elements in the soil that might still be signaling to the plant. Hey, you know, there's still some nitrogen in here, so it's not quite veg. Never thought about using this hormone to kind of ease and speed up. Like you said, the transition process from veg to flower makes a lot of sense.
And I'm glad you just mentioned that, Jay the about the nitrogen, because that's another cofactor that it ramps up. It will actually ramp up your nitrogen uptake. And then that's another reason why you're getting faster growth. It's helping with the calcium supplementation, so it's building out the cell walls at the same time, but the nitrogen is driving more the speed of growth. And then this is another reason why you basically want to cut it out about week four or five, because it takes about two weeks to break down and dissolve and become fully bio available to the plant. So it's going to end up slowing down and just cascading off. Some people are different. Some people like to run it all the way to the end, but I think it can provide a little bit too much nitrogen at the end and almost induce Fox tailing. So I believe it's best to stop it maybe around week four or five. And you
know, this is, I don't want to say this is a product for advanced growers, because anyone can benefit from it, but this is one of those magic bullet products, Mike, and here's how I like to describe this. A lot of people come to a grow store, or they come to an educator, a content creator like me, and they're like, hey, what can I add to make my grow awesome? They're looking for the magic bullet approach. What's one thing that I can pour into my garden that makes my yields go up, or makes my terpene production go up, or what have you? And really, most of the time, what I say for the beginner, beginner and intermediate growers are really what you want to focus on is just overall plant health, allowing the plant to be as healthy as possible and remain even green, and praying from beginning to end. If you're over watering or your airflow isn't on point, and you don't defoliate enough and your plant isn't able to breathe properly, these magic bullet products, they're going to help ease the stress a little bit, but they're not going to give you the yield you're looking for, the for. These products. What makes them, what makes them so amazing is you can take a grow where someone is doing good, where the nutrients are on point, the lighting is on point, the airflow is on point, where all that stuff I just said is kind of maxed out, and then you add this product, and then you get pretty significant boosts in your yield. That's when products like this really shine, from what I can tell, like I said, not that they can't help a stressed out plant, too, but we're talking big increases in production. If you add this type of product to a grow that works. You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, no. Thanks a lot. And we've heard wild things like that too. Like, I've been growing for 20 years, like, the same way, and I just started adding alpha, and I've like, seen like new colors, new smells, like come out. Like, I'm actually seeing like crazy results from this. So I'm like, Heck, yeah. You know, it's really nice to hear things like that from super dedicated growers, and at the same time, you know, of course, everyone likes it and kind of enjoys the technology and the replacement of, like mammoth P knowing that Mammoth is in a lot of good recipes. But then we're coming in at like less than half the price. And then also where you're able to spray the Alpha grease too, which is kind of a unique application method. And it doesn't smell. It's got a great smell to it, being just the alfalfa extract. Oh, that's good. And then we even put a little bit of the our grease Gold Label in there, as well as a stabilizer. And just as an added benefit, what
are some of the percentages that you are able to confirm, or that you've had reported to you, as far as increased yield percentage?
Yeah, for sure, we're showing consistently 15 to 20% yield increase. Yeah, it's definitely just from all those factors combining. Like you said, it's really important to be hitting kind of all levels, and your environmental conditions, like are super, super important. I tend to think of it as kind of like a like a four legged stool. You've got your environmental conditions, the genetics play a huge role. Yeah, your recipe and, you know, cultural techniques is massive. And then the cure, you know, if you're hitting all four of those points and doing that correctly, then you're really, like, knocking it out of the park. I think
that's fantastic. That's a great way to look that's, that is the foundational Chair of any great grow. Yeah. And
also, I think you should, every once in a while check yourself and be like, am I spending too much time in one department of that? You know what I mean? Because it's really easy to get caught up in one thing. That's
a really good point man, it seems like you were kind of the weed guy over there at Mammoth. Is that? Is that? Like, safe to assume,
Oh yeah. Like, in the early days, it was really fun. It was three guys out of CSU, like, the founders were, like, two of them were university even department heads, and then it was Colin as well as, kind of like, their lead researcher on the project. And it was just awesome. It was a really amazing learning experience, but it was also crazy being able to kind of speak both languages and try and kind of bring them into the cannabis world. I taught Colin how to grow cannabis. I responsible for the name mammoth P I named it mammoth because I had found some mammoth bones in Colorado in the river out here. And I thought it was just the perfect thing to be a great analogy for size and yield, right? Wow, that was really cool. And
you have no background in, like, branding or anything. You just kind of stumbled into that amazing brand,
yeah. And I guess it was just doing retail. Kind of my whole life, I had worked in bike shops a lot too, and so you did have a little bit of that. Yeah, I did study some like visual merchandising, and even went out to a specialized bicycle University out in Morgan Hill, California when I was into the mountain biking world and road biking world. So that was really cool. And I did learn a lot of tips and tricks from them there, but it
shows that was a big brand. Man, like it was one of the most recognizable brand. People were freaking out over those hats. When you guys printed those mammoth hats, people were trading a pound and humble for a hat. You did a good job on on the naming and branding. Seriously. Oh, thanks
a lot. Thanks a lot. Yeah, and I helped the graphic designer come up with that logo. Like that was my vision for the logo to do, like the side, like the side profile and everything. And then he knocked it out of the park too. But it was just a great time. I learned a lot. I really did, but I also brought a lot to the table being, like, you said, like their cannabis guy. And like, I came up with the guidelines on the back, how much to use, and everything. And then also I came up with the twin neck bottle. So that's why, and I had modeled that after Canna, because I believe Canna was is one of the best at marketing in the game as well. So it was just like, you know, imitation is the highest form of flattery, in my opinion. And so I just copied that,
oh, everyone uses that bottle tech now, of course, right? That's not, that's not a patented thing. That's just the dual neck bottle, dude. I didn't even think about that. And there's a little chamber in the top for measuring, yeah,
and the green look was important, so we did kind of the same thing for, uh, for Greece as well. Because, you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it type of thing. Yeah, yeah. And then now for mammoth to have gone out of business. It's just unbelievable to me. Like, I don't understand how they could have possibly, uh, scuttled the ship and basically completely gone out of business and not even passed it onto something else. I mean, I think they did a little bit here and there, maybe sold a recipe to someone else here and there. But still, it's just, like, fascinating, true
to its name, like it kind of just ended up in the mammoth graveyard with the bones, like you said, yeah, and, you know, maybe we'll get you on grow cast TV for the members, where we can be a little bit more open about, you know, talking about your story. I'd love to hear it, because I've heard about that, and I'm interested to know that stuff, man, a lot of people are interested to know that stuff and the story behind, you know, there's companies like like that that really took the cultivation world by storm, and now they're gone. So I think there's a lot to learn there. And that's so cool that you had that experience, man, really, you have a very storied background.
Thank you. And it definitely gave me the confidence, of course, to start grease, seeing it on the manufacturing side and everything, and then really getting into natural farming, drew a lot of inspiration from that. And then really it, what spawned everything was making the discovery of the Gold Label, essentially, and that our cannabinoid boosters. It was kind of an epiphany that happened to me, where all of a sudden I realized that, well, the cannabinoids and the compounds inside the trichomes are obviously protective compounds. So initially I was exploring it from a pesticidal approach and fungicidal approach. I'm like these have to work as a brilliant pesticide back on the plant, and it would be a natural pesticide. But then, in doing all my research, sure enough, I realized that then our potency numbers are going up, and I'm put two and two together, and it's like, oh my gosh, this is actually working as a as a natural potency booster. Because what, what our cannabinoid boosters do is they basically supplement, like the building block compounds of the resin itself. So these are hard compounds for the plant to make. It takes a lot of energy, so the plants really smart. If it gets a bio available compound that lines up with it, it's going to take it right in and integrate it into this pathway and supplement the pathway and also the same compound. On. They do actually worked as pesticides and fungicides, and they work as natural protectants on the trichomes themselves. So it works almost as, like a sunscreen or something like that. You could think about it. It's like, it's like us putting like moisturizer on our skin, but something very close to our own, you know, oils, or whatever.
Biology, wow, that's interesting. Are we spraying this product, or is it a root drench, or both, um,
both, and it's got great bioavailability in that way. So you can use it almost like mammoth p where you can run it like half a mil per gallon, like consistently as a drench, but then you can also spray it at kind of surprisingly higher numbers. I know normally your foliars are pretty low numbers, but you can actually spray it up to about two, three, even, you know, four tablespoons per gallon, but you can go low and slow too. You can just stick to around, you know, a tablespoon per gallon, but it just works great as a foliar too, because it goes right in and, like I said, acts as a protectant on the trichomes, even x as a stimulant to get more trichomes as well.
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man, I see more and more this idea of, like, feeding back the substance in the matter that you're trying to feed. So this is the same idea of, like, those healthy fan leaves that you're pulling off of your plant. I've never been able to look the same way again back in the day, back when I was growing in Humboldt, Mike, I would throw that stuff away. That was garbage, right? Totally. And it's like, those are all the nutrients that you paid for in that healthy green leaf. That healthy green leaf has everything that the next plant needs to survive. It's literally pre loaded, pre chock full. So so we talk on this show about how you can't let those leaves go to waste. Those defoliated leaves go to waste. Whether you compost them or you feed them to your cat or whatever you've got, you've got to find a way to put those minerals that you paid for back into your grow or back into a living organism like yourself, if you're juicing them, or your pet, if they like to eat cannabis, kind of like what you're talking about here, where, if we're trying to produce trichomes, why aren't we adding back some of these oils? Can you talk about what that looks like? Like? You don't have to give away the secret sauce. But what are you doing with this cannabis trichome enhancer formula.
Yeah, definitely. So it's, it is a patent pending process that we're doing, so I can't talk too too much about it, but it's a proprietary process where we basically take the extract and are able to break it down to, sure enough, like the building blocks and the constituent compounds. And the cool thing is, what we do is we actually have it source derived. So our Gold Label is from hybrids, and it's works best on your hybrids and poly hybrids and everything like that, which obviously most strands are these days, pretty well hybridized. But what we found in doing more and more of this research and getting really nitty gritty. Into it is, sure enough, if you apply a indica type extract onto more of an indica or indica dominant garden, you can get even almost 20% more increase. And same thing goes for sativa. So we have our our Amber label, which is for sativas, and our purple label for indicas. And same thing, it's indica and sativa source material. And sure enough, what basically the these building block compounds. They're called isoprenes and isoprenoids. There's like 50,000 of them, right? So when you're talking about trying to apply them on. It's a lot like, it's like stem cells. It's like, you're trying to line them up with the blood type of the plant so that it has the best take and sure enough, it does literally make a huge difference. You can also supplement them. We found that, like, the more the merrier. You could even run like our hybrid one, with the amber as well. And then what we have is, we've we've dug into it even deeper. We have even a finishing compound. So our yellow is more for late stage. What we do with that one is we take plants, we push them an extra two weeks past their maturation date, so we ensure that they've got all those, you know, hardcore, like finishing compounds. It's like, super mature, and then we break it down, so it's really unique, like they were starting to get a little bit more targeted with it, and that was what really broke us into the manufacturing side and doing grease. And that's why we originally named the product grease, because it's so targeted at potency, at the cannabinoid and terpene production, and not just increasing what you have just one thing, it's really playing on the diversity to it. What it'll do is, since we break it down to the building block, it doesn't homogenize the crop, it'll actually increase the natural expression. Like you could spray it on like 30 different strains, and it will literally increase what's naturally there, because that's how it works. It supplements their pathways.
That makes a lot of sense. Man, I like how you're thinking, and I like these products again, these aren't, you know, replacements for your nutrient lines. What's the NPK value of your products? Are they all near zero? Yes.
So all those cannabinoids are near are near zero? Our bison brew compost, which, you know, we could literally do a whole show on just the compost. It's a 111, for NPK, and then loaded with a secondaries in your trace. That's the heaviest one. Well, no, we actually have a grow and bloom as well. Oh yeah, that's true. They're fpjs, so I can't necessarily put a NPK on there and sell them as as a base fertilizer, because I think it's for labeling reasons. It's best to do it this way. But they are really unique additives, and like you were just saying, the plant us picking those targeted compounds, and the plant recycling on itself and from the fan leaves and such. We're really dialing into that too, and really 100% support that, because, like with our Fermented Plant juices, we're again taking them from the plant itself. So we're using cannabis on these we're we're growing hemp because we need a little bit larger volume to be able to make the product. Because it's a bulk type of thing. It's kind of a messy process. It takes a heck of a lot of it to make it but what we do is we grow like teen plants, like about knee high, and then chop them down really fresh early in the morning and ferment them in molasses, break the whole plant back down all those good hormones, proteins, enzymes, everything. And then for the bloom, we actually take the fresh buds and same exact thing, chop them up and ferment them. And it's such a nice way to harness not only like all those compounds, like in a more targeted way, from from plant specific, but you're also harvesting all the microbes. You're actually harvesting these endophytes that we're discovering. And I mean, we could do a whole episode on this too, where, literally, they've discovered, you know, pretty recently. And not many people know this, that, sure enough, like the trichomes themselves, are little miniature bioreactors. There's actually filled with nitrogen fixing bacteria and microbes, and the plant is feeding them sugar from photosynthesis, and they're regrowing and regenerating based on the atmospheric nitrogen. So actually sucking nitrogen right out of the atmosphere and are able to feed the plant that atmospheric nitrogen from the bacteria in their glandular trichome heads.
I think for a long time we've thought about those two things as totally separate, like the microbes are in the dirt and they're working with the plant, and then we realize that it's such a deeper relationship, they're going up in the plant, they're being produced. Boost and utilized within the plant, within the actual trichome head. Like you said, that's that's pretty wild
stuff, yes. So one of the best ways to actually harness that exact bacteria, which you are right, it's from these are soil bacteria that the plants taking, isolating, selecting and bringing all the way up to the trichomes. One of the best ways to skip that process and just supplement it is by harnessing it through the Fermented Plant Juice, because, and specifically our bloom product, because you're getting, literally the bud microbiome. You're getting all the all those microbes from the glandular trichomes are what's breaking down and fermenting and being encapsulated through that molasses and kind of fermentation process. So pretty darn cool. Super
cool. Man. Again, it's grow with grease.com and the code is grow cast, if any of these products interest you. But let's, let's talk on the home grower front a little bit here, Mike and say, you know, aside from the awesome lineup that you have that people can incorporate into your grow. Let's take a more broad like you said, kind of cultural practice look after speaking with so many home growers, working with them, working with them, in your products. What are some tips that you would say could take a beginner or intermediate grow and turn it into an outstanding grow? What do you see home growers specifically needing help with,
I would say, actually, believe it or not, something that's kind of under thought of is, is trace minerals. That's a big kind of missing gap and missing link in a lot of people's gardens, they're hitting so much of their macronutrients and micronutrients. But I would say the trace elements are kind of like the forgotten heroes, because that's really where what's stimulating a heck of a lot of quality and also feeding the diversity of your microbes. So if you're already putting down a lot of good biology, and you have you're paying money or putting down, you know, good microbes and fostering that, you should be using products like our OG grease, or even it's in our alpha grease, or the bison brew products that are just loaded with trace minerals, because it will not only keep the plant thriving, but it will produce all those secondary compounds, and like the entourage effect, it'll stimulate that. It will also help with the white ash at the end, because the trace elements help with the structure, structural compounds of the ash, but they don't necessarily add to the like an NPK like to like the darkness of it. So that's an interesting, you know, point to think of, and just to incorporate. And like our OG grease. It's like, the least expensive product, very, very concentrated. It's just a natural sea water that comes from one of the highest trace mineral locations on the earth. Like, there's only four of them.
Oh, man, you're speaking my language. Like, did you watch the member stream we did last night? This is serious. No. This is like, were you guys talking trace I will. I gave four kind of secret weapons that people might not be doing in their garden. Tricantenal was one of them. And then the last one was talking about these trace minerals because, and the reason Mike is because I'm not, I'm not a I'm not a science product guy like you are. But I do look at growth products, and I look at the back of Grow products, and every time it's billed as like a finisher or a ripener, or a Terp booster, or any of these things. I look at the back and it seems to be, there's often some sort of microbe in there, and then they have these trace elements. And I was always wondering, what's the relationship between putting these trace elements, you might see like molybdenum or iron or boron in some of these terpene enhancers or whatever, and then the microbes, like, I know there's some sort of stabilization or feeding process going on there, but, but what can you tell us about that and these products that have like microbes and trace minerals? And which trace minerals are you focused on the most? I would
say the Alpha grease is a good example, because alfalfa has a ton of trace minerals. It's a deep rooted plant. So when it, when it goes down so deep, it's pulling a lot of those minerals up and able to be pretty, pretty thick with, essentially, it's interesting. It's like, it's a pretty wide range. It's, it's almost the crazy thing about the OG grease, for example, is it's like the whole periodic table is in there, because, if you think about it, the ocean has come up over the land so many times. There's pretty much every mineral in the earth in a kind of a homeostasis in the ocean water. And in this one area where the Colorado River flows down and actually meets the ocean. It takes all the additional elements from the land and supplies even extra trace minerals to that area. So it has truly the full complement and even higher percentage. Now, the cool thing about it is that it's actually in low enough numbers that in. Interesting thing about trace is we're talking parts per million, parts per billion, parts per trillion. Sometimes you look at
the back of the bottle, it's like 0.002% boron or whatever,
right? And you would think that that would just be such a small amount that it wouldn't, wouldn't matter. But a lot of times it is a limiting factor to your point, the microbes, the diversity in the soil. It's almost like unfathomable how many different microbes and that true diversity of the soil, like there's trillions of organisms, and like a single gram of soil type of stuff, so they actually need a full complement of trace elements for their growth, and it's literally just a cascading effect. They'll think of them as your foundation of the pyramid. And the more that they have to draw on the better ecosystem, the better diversity that they have. It's like a large functioning city. It's like it goes from like, you know, a normal sized town to like New York City, because all of a sudden, once you've incorporating all that good stuff and have a good home for it, and then good food for it, that's pretty much all that everything needs. So
it is, literally it's food for the microbes. Having these nutrient diversity is just like having a nutrient diversity for us. They weather down the microbes, they take in, and there's some degree of sustenance there, and having that diversity just stimulates the economy, exactly.
But one more, really good point is that just like anything, you can have a little bit too much of a good thing. Yeah. And this is where we run into issues, like with glacial rock dust and Azomite, because all of a sudden you could end up with a heavy metal toxicity from mined resources that go into a little bit too much of a pocket of one element. That's why the ocean is so incredible. And these nature farmers figured this out in China, like 5000 years ago, that sure enough, if you use the sea water, it's in perfect balance, and it's a great way to apply those trace minerals without getting toxicity. And one more really funny story is like, when the Well, it's, I guess it's not funny, but it's an interesting story that when hurricanes and like typhoons hit Sri Lanka, the ocean came up and rose up and flooded out all these farmers fields. They were all petrified. They were worried like, oh my god, this is gonna salt out our land, right? Yeah, exactly. They're all, we're not gonna be able to grow on this. That next year, they had a bumper crop year. Wow, yeah. It surprised everybody. That
makes a lot of sense. We get so worried about the sodium in sea water, but there's a lot of good sea water derived products. Obviously, you can't pour the stuff straight on your plants, but that's why it's cool that you've kind of formulated it, in fact. But all the nutrients return to the sea. All the nutrients come from the sea. That's what Mary Beth has always said on this show. And when I when I have conversations like this, Mike with you, it just makes me think of that and how true that is.
Oh, well, she nailed that, and we have to be very cognizant of that as growers, because so much of the runoff is ending up back in the ocean, and it's causing horrible algal blooms, because algae is actually a great thing, like we have our blue grease algae extract product, which algae has some of the best compounds to supplement photosynthesis. They were the first organisms to create photosynthesis, and they basically, kind of are pros at it. So hacking into some of those mechanisms and using it for our plant is pretty amazing. That's why your kelp extracts work well, and that's why our blue grease, which is actually a it's actually a Blue Green Algae extract, and it works extremely well to help amp up photosynthesis and help with antioxidants and stuff. So there are some great algaes out there, but to her point, when we start flushing too many of these nutrients down the Mississippi and all of our soil as well, it's degrading and causing that huge dead zone, it's it's really catastrophic, and then it's actually getting pulled away by ocean currents and increasing the nutrients, nutrient load in the entire ocean. So that's kind of surprising, too. But sure enough, like you would think, Oh, it's just causing a problem, right there? No, it's actually like poisoning the entire oceans.
Yeah, that does make sense, like the knock on effect, you know, and we're imbalancing that delicate balance, like you
said, and that's, I think, a lot of commercial growers, it would be really smart for them to create, like bog systems, where all their runoff just goes into a bog on site and then gets absorbed by large grasses. They call them bull rushes. So you just put all your runoff into basically like a pond and plant these grasses around it, and then you're not contaminating the water system. So you're actually kind of cleaning and scrubbing the water system. That's amazing.
And that's a question I get a lot with indoor growers, you know, whether or not you even have, you know, bottles, bottles, you. To mean bad for microbes and bad, bad for the soil. You know what I mean? Mike, like back in the day, when I used to grow, back in the day, you either used bottles and it killed your soil biology, or you didn't use bottles. Now, there's a bunch of products, like yours that are natural, that come in bottles, that are going to stimulate your microbes. There are even nutrient lines that are like, super, super organic. Maybe they're a mix of solids and liquids. They're all sorts of different kinds, but like, just because it comes in a bottle doesn't mean that it's bad for your soil. Now, in fact, quite the opposite. But when I do talk about, when I do talk to growers who use bottled nutrition for their main nutrient source for their plants, run off is one of the biggest issues that I hear about, they don't want to put it down the drain. They don't want to not have run off, because you get all this build up, right? And you can get lock out and burn your plants and all this crazy stuff. So usually I'll say, you know, it works great in your outdoor garden and things like that. But if you have a lot, I had never heard of this idea of of like, planting a bog and a in a bull rush, as you call it. That's really cool. Totally,
yeah, that's a fun one. And these endophytes too, they are coming up, and it starts actually at the seed level. So when we have this one product called a bison seed coat, and it's kind of what we use, it's almost like our mycorrhizae, but we use it. We called it bison seed coat, because, sure enough, the plant takes the very best microbes and it actually incorporates them into the seed coat, so that when the new generation is born, it has that instant microbiome and immune system right there, ready for it to go. So when you're buying seeds from a breeder, you're literally also buying the microbes from them, which is kind of fascinating. And then we are with that product, hacking into that system, providing the really good quality microbes, in this case, from our bison compost that we compost for two years. It's a pathogen free and extremely high quality. It's some of the most diverse compost from a microbial standpoint and nutrient standpoint that you can get, and that's due to the quality of the bison and the feed that the bison are able to forage over such a large area and such a large range. And basically, by supplementing those those microbes, we're getting like an extra 20, 25% in some cases, but normally around 20% increase in germination rate by supplementing these high quality microbes that boost the immune system right away. So if there was a plant that was, you know, not going to pop out or not do so well, it actually, like, boosts it right away.
And I think there's a lot to the idea that having a good healthy start to popping seeds, having a good healthy seedling stage and having a good healthy veg stage is really what sets up a successful flower. I can't tell you how many times where the opposite is is apparent. Where you you traumatize a seedling or you traumatize a young veg plant, and it never really quite performs for the rest of its life like, you know, it could have, yes, yes. I think that's why that microbiome is so important. A healthy microbiome on that seed and get it exposed to microbes early and get that kick start. You know,
definitely appreciate you saying that, and it just brings to mind a story that recently happened where a friend showed me he had a whole huge tray of seedlings, like tons, like basically tables of these seedlings, and he'd, uh, fried them by giving them just a little bit too high a nutrient. You could see they were all locked out and everything. What he did is he brewed up a bison brew compost tea and applied that. And I was like, Dude, I bet you that's going to work. Watch them come right out of it. And sure enough, it was like the enzyme production and the microbes right away went in there and went to work and basically buffered and corrected the whole system and started getting the plant back on track. You wouldn't believe. Like, the next photo he sent me, like, a week later, they're all green and popping up and looking great. And it's like they almost turned around and, like, practically benefited from the high, you know, fertilizer or something. But, uh, no, to your point, it's like, obviously, the very best is, like, just a strong start, where you never get any interferences, and you're just like, off to the races right away. That vigor will carry all the way through into flower. And those are always your best crops, right when you have just like those banger clones and really good looking start.
And I think that's also what's really interesting. Like, no matter how skilled you are, no matter how experienced you are, we were just talking about this with the members, you still have good runs, you still have bad runs. You got perfect runs, you got dead runs. You know, like, I think absolutely your average quality goes up if you're a good grower, but you're still gonna have tough runs. You're still gonna have flawless runs. Yeah. Just, it's just part of growing.
I still talk with, like, my friend that taught me way back in the day. And we're like, we're like, what was that one run? What the hell did we do? We're like, Mars was closer to the earth than it had been in 70 years, really,
looking for any explanation, yeah, as to why it's so true. Man and life changes. And it's, it's very interesting. Yes, this hour flew by, Mike, I want to make sure we give you time to do plugs. Tell people where they can follow you. Of course, grow with grease.com. Is the website? Grow cast is the code? Well, wait before we get into Instagram and stuff, and it's okay if the answer is no. But is there anything on the horizon for grease that will be dropping soon? Any new products you could maybe tease?
Yeah, I did want to tease, I think we're going to do a bison bio char, and that's going to be pretty exciting. Bison char, yes, bison char. And then also pretty unique. And especially, I did want to mention this to a lot of your home growers and more tent style growers, we're going to come out with a something called bison breath, and it's a CO two bucket where what we're doing is we're tapping into, again, the diversity of these microbes in the bison eating away and liberating, basically coco fiber in a bucket system to provide a continuous level of CO two in basically a miniature compost, aggressive composting system. So that's kind of on the horizon, and should be really cool. We're getting a, we're getting getting some pretty amazing, sustained, very high CO two levels using it. That's
awesome. I know a lot of people are trying to accomplish that higher CO two level. So yeah, fantastic bison char, another good addition to the lineup. Mike, I look forward to see what you guys do with grease, with your current products, with your new product line. I'm looking forward to trying some of that alpha grease. I've been missing that tricon all in my garden. So thank you for sending along that care package. I do appreciate you, Mike, where can people find you? Instagram, website, everything.
Thanks for taking the time. Jay, it was so much fun, and sorry for talking your ear off. I really, really appreciate it. Was great, man. Thank you. The website is www.growwithgrees.com or Instagram is grow with Greece. And we have a YouTube, grow with Greece as well, and definitely open to ideas and other platforms and kind of actively, you know, looking into that. But for now, just hit us up on Insta and and find us out there on the web. Fantastic
Mike, we appreciate you. This was a fantastic first appearance on grow cast, and we look forward to having you back, maybe on the member show, definitely on this podcast again in the future, whenever you can Great job today one more time. Thank you to the whole grease team and to you, Mike, appreciate you, Jay, it was an honor thanks for having me on and stay tuned everybody. You can expect some more good content dropping here soon, and Mike back on the show in the future. So don't touch that dial. Growcast.com. Is where it's all at. You know what to do? Go and subscribe and follow our youtube.com/grow cast. We're going video here shortly, so see you. There everybody for now. This is Mike and Jordan signing off, saying, Be safe out there, everybody and never grow alone. Bye, bye. See
ya. Have a great day.
That's our show. Thank you everyone for tuning in. Thank you to Mike from Greece. Fantastic first episode, grow cast.com, for all your grow cast needs, join membership. Folks. What are you waiting for? We're doing so much good stuff in there. Come and try it out. There's a seven day free trial, grow cast.com/membership, and of course, the cultivators cup coming up, 412, grab your tickets. Half sold out. This venue is amazing. We got food trucks on site. We got Nick from rooted leaf coming down to speak. The growcast team is going to be speaking. Everyone's gonna be hanging out. There's a dab bar. There's a non alcoholic drink bar. It's gonna be so much fun. I'll see you there on 412 grab your tickets. Grow cast.com/events, and one of you is gonna win grower glory. Take home the cup. That's all for today. Thank you so much. Everybody. Stay tuned. We got some good content in the works, and I'll see you members on Wednesday for the next stream. Love you all. Be safe. Goodbye. You.
Horticulture was actually like the top five most useless degrees in.
