Bob Johnson is a humble, passionate, and accomplished man with notable, meticulous attention to detail in everything he does. He lives by the Hunter Thompson quote, “Anything worth doing is worth doing right”, and nowhere is that more evident than his grow.
He raced stock cars for 25 years. A rat rod mechanic and enthusiast to say the least, Bob custom built his 1936 Plymouth with a ’55 DeSoto Hemi. He calls her Mary Jane, and her interior is complete with intricate cannabis details throughout the cabin and she’s parked with the fleet out front including his ratified “cool bus,” refurbished 1946 rat rod school bus Chevrolet Panel Roadster. The 60 year old Arkansas native is driven to be the best that he can be in all that he does, and it shows throughout his spotless property. That said, he’s not yet that well known for his cannabis growing skills having moved to Oregon just five years ago to grow his first legal crop ever.
Some of you that have been growing for 20, 30, 40-plus years might ask what’s so special about Bob? In the game five years; couldn’t possibly be putting out anything notable or consistent or worthy of publishing, or so you might think. But this guy doesn’t mess around–remember my first paragraph? The one you just read, the intro, the build-up, well, I don’t mess around either when I tell you that I was compelled to share this story with you, not by Bob’s rat rods, nor his legendary glass pipe collection, rock collection nor enviable man cave where all of this was housed. Rather, it was the shelf on the back wall of that man cave–30 or so jars of various harvests of his own nug, grown on site, under LEDs.
At first sight, Bob’s buds were noticeably A++, denser, bigger, and more coated than any buds I have ever seen finished under straight LEDs. Many growers are hesitant to throw down the investment in LED solutions because they are worried about size and quality of their harvest under the current technological limitations of LEDs in horticulture applications. Bob, however, embraced the LED. In fact, it could be said that the owner of Green Fusion LED lights inspired Bob to stay in the game, uproot from Arkansas to Oregon, and show the world what these lights are capable of in the cannabis garden.
The humble German proprietor behind Green Fusion is not new to LED technology. He has digitally mastered chips on LED panels from the bottom of the ocean to the outer reaches of space, having built the LEDs responsible for the Titanic exploration and the International Space Station’s horticultural efforts alike. He is also responsible for a significant amount of the lights throughout the Hollywood cinema scene. And now, this same technology is finally producing buds on par or better than those fruited under traditional HID lamps, and for a fraction of the cost.
These lights are significantly lighter in weight than most LEDs, and you might have noticed Bob’s flower rooms, how close the lights are to the head colas, some even touching the bottom of the LEDs. It starts with the chips that regulate the diode and cooling fans. They are able to keep them so cool that they can be lowered directly to the tops of the plants and thereby allowing a maximum PAR while maintaining the integrity of the bulbous trichomes and the volatile cannabinoids and terps within.
You have to squeeze, smell and smoke these buds yourself to believe it. They were dense–nothing like these larfy, lanky buds that we saw from the first couple generations of LED grow lights. The flavor profiles were abundant and unique, bursting with terpenoids, dynamic takes on classics like White Widow, which had an extra something and Trinity, which was notably the original Trinity but with the terpene volume cranked full throttle. I smoked three or four of the tastiest bong hits of Mystery Haze out of one of Bob’s premier pieces from his collection. I was high–really high, giddy, and laughing like a school boy high, and this is saying a lot for someone who smokes all day for 25-plus years.
After about an hour of touring the facility I went back to the office. It was now almost two hours since my relatively small sesh with Bob and when I got back, Bear greeted me by saying, “Bro, you look baaaaaaaked!” This is someone I have smoked thousands of bowls with and who I smoke with everyday, and never, in the 12 years I have known him, has he ever commented about how baked I looked. I went to the bathroom to look in the mirror and he was right, I looked just as high as I was, all pink eyed and goofball. I busted back into the office determined to get everyone as high as I was, sharing some of the buds Bob sent home for the team here at Grow. Now, they are demanding Rat Rod Bob buds by his name rather than cultivar name. They don’t care about the lineage, sativa or indica, they just want Rat Rod Bob buds.