They say the plant chooses the grower.
If that’s true, then cannabis picked me long before I knew what photosynthesis meant.
I was sixteen when I saw my first garden — tucked behind a busted camper on a forgotten dirt road in the central plains. The guy who ran it had a mullet, a gun under his pillow, and more wisdom than a dozen textbooks. He told me, “Kid, these plants will give you everything — if you give them everything first.”
That line stuck.
Through the ‘90s and 00's, I grew in closets, attics, in canyons too remote for helicopters. The law called us outlaws, but we were just kids... and then farmers... trying to grow medicine before the world was ready to call it that. The work was dirty, the nights long, but damn if those plants didn’t shine like salvation under an HPS bulb.
Then came the wave — legalization, commercialization, and the slow grind of paperwork that turned passion into compliance. Some of the old dogs quit. Some got swallowed by the suits. I stayed — because I knew this plant was bigger than any one era.
I managed grows throughout California when LED was still a gamble (heck, remember Plasma?!), then took the craft to my own co-operative to enjoy the long days of summer with their bountiful harvests. But, as it happened for so many others, eventually the law changed and we had to close it all down because of a county swing. When one door closes, another opens, as now I am back in Northern California. Around folks who revere the plant like family, not felony.
The time spent in farms wasn’t just about money. It was about rebirth. It was about innovation and passion. And now, I take that decades of near outlaw grit and blend it with the science that Organitek is perfecting. I’ve run just about every bottle under the sun, but Success Nutrients hits a rare balance — clean chemistry, no snake oil, real results with exceptional terps. Out here in the grow world, where the bugs fight back like mercenaries, YetiControl keeps my canopy alive. It’s the kind of tool I wish we’d had in the hills.
Now I write these dispatches not from fear, but from peace — because someone out there is still in their first season, still doubting, still dreaming. Maybe these words will find them the way that busted camper garden found me.
We all start somewhere — some of us just had to dodge helicopters to get here.
Stay curious, stay clean, stay cultivating —
Jeff Funk
Science may guide the grow, but soul fuels the harvest.
Organitek | the science. the experience. the passion. the culture.