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What gives outdoor grown that taste and smell ?

green404

Member
Over the last couple of years I have been vaping and smoking a lot of outdoor. Most of it is great stuff but it all has a very distinctive outdoor taste and smell no matter how it was harvested and cured.

I have been pondering the environmental effects on the plant and wanted to pick the expert genius minds here on icmag.

Have you guys noticed heat, cold, humidity, region, etc effect the taste, smell, maybe even the high ? Of outdoor grown.
 

Bobby Boucher

Active member
I've smoked outdoor buds all over the globe, and they don't all taste the same, at all. What you are probably tasting is an OG strain that has been whored out and mass produced. Crossed a little here and there, but the skunk trait always prevails.

Personally, it makes me feel sick and paranoid. Probably more to do with the pesticides and herbicides being used by god damn everybody than with the strain, but either way, I'm god damn tired of it. Every festival or social function I've been to over the past 5 years here in Chicago smells exactly the same, and everybody is still super f'n stoked on it.

"I got glue! I got glue!", "...Can you grab anything else? Ever?", "......no."

:dunno:
 

Douglas.Curtis

Autistic Diplomat in Training
Over the last couple of years I have been vaping and smoking a lot of outdoor. Most of it is great stuff but it all has a very distinctive outdoor taste and smell no matter how it was harvested and cured.
Ladybug and other bug feces, bear/skunk/elk/whatever dander and hair, pollen, fungi spores, insect bits, cells and fluff from all kinds of different plants... a LOT of dust usually. Rinsing outdoor at harvest time can help. I can generally tell "Outdoor" from "Greenhouse" from "Indoor." The environment definitely has an impact on final quality/flavors and they call it Terroir. :)

Save
 

Easy7

Active member
Veteran
Outdoor is great. Native soil, intense sun and uv, wind, rain, moon. It's the way bud is meant to be.

Indoors every gram is counted. Damn near every trichrome. It all cost a lot to produce. Outdoors is cheap. Best resin there is!
 

Bobby Boucher

Active member
Don't get me wrong, I love buds of all shapes, sizes, and origins. I've spent ~5 years of my adult life in Guatemala smoking real native outdoor equatorial sativas. As good as any indoor I can remember buying.

I'm more upset with the market demand for commercial skunk weed. Increasingly harder to find anything sweet around these parts. Dark times for any non-growing sativa lover here in Chicaca.
 

Switcher56

Comfortably numb!
Ladybug and other bug feces, bear/skunk/elk/whatever dander and hair, pollen, fungi spores, insect bits, cells and fluff from all kinds of different plants... a LOT of dust usually. Rinsing outdoor at harvest time can help. I can generally tell "Outdoor" from "Greenhouse" from "Indoor." The environment definitely has an impact on final quality/flavors and they call it Terroir. :)

Save
I saw a video where the proponent rinses all his outdoor colas (after harvest) in 3 tubs, One is H2O2, the last is clean water. I can't remember one of them. But just a quick swish and I couldn't believe the SHIT that was left behind.
 

Switcher56

Comfortably numb!
Soil biology and nutrient content has the greatest effect, I bet.
Yes siree! If it affects cigar plants, it definitely affects our sweethearts.


When the Cubans fled Cuba and relocated to The Dominican they brought their seeds with 'em. The composition of Dominican Republican's soil was a near duplicate of the soil in Cuba.


Although many Aficionados will stick to Cubans from Cuba. The un-brainwashed openly admit that the DR produces a slightly better product. Having smoked both... I can attest to that :)
 

green404

Member
Ladybug and other bug feces, bear/skunk/elk/whatever dander and hair, pollen, fungi spores, insect bits, cells and fluff from all kinds of different plants... a LOT of dust usually. Rinsing outdoor at harvest time can help. I can generally tell "Outdoor" from "Greenhouse" from "Indoor." The environment definitely has an impact on final quality/flavors and they call it Terroir.

Terroir. Thanks, new term in my vocabulary.

I hadn't thought of pollen and other stuff, makes sense. I have a plant outside right now that is completely covered in yellow/green pine tree pollen.

I've smoked outdoor buds all over the globe, and they don't all taste the same, at all.

Makes me think of some I have had in Mexico and Central America, lots of it was rather harsh. I usally conrubuted it to poor soil and poor drying.

Outdoor is great. Native soil, intense sun and uv, wind, rain, moon. It's the way bud is meant to be.

Indoors every gram is counted. Damn near every trichrome. It all cost a lot to produce. Outdoors is cheap. Best resin there is!

I feel like outdoor can be more complex, I like that aspect as a connoisseur. More of an experience trying a strain from a region then just another indoor.

Over all I do like indoor better, indoors seems like more of the flower and terpenes flavors without the “outdoor” taste.

What you are probably tasting is an OG strain that has been whored out and mass produced. Crossed a little here and there, but the skunk trait always prevails.

I have been smoking lots of stuff from the OG dna, I like it. indoors and outdoors. Also been getting lots of other DNA haze, bluberry, sativa. One great benefit of living in a legal state we gets lots of DNA to choose from.

Soil biology and nutrient content has the greatest effect, I bet.

I have been wondering a lot about soil. High ph or other factors affecting the overall out come.


Although many Aficionados will stick to Cubans from Cuba. The un-brainwashed openly admit that the DR produces a slightly better product. Having smoked both... I can attest to that
smile.gif


I agree. I have had lots of Cubans and DR are just as good, probably better.
 

Bobby Boucher

Active member
I've only ever found $20 g type weed abroad (@$20-$50/oz) in touristy coastal areas, and never without the assistance of a local. Lots of semi-indoor rooftop style grows. Everything I've ever found inland or on my own was plain ol' nasty brick weed.
 

Lost in a SOG

GrassSnakeGenetics
three other big factors might also be natural precipitation and sunlight and how a slower maturation allows for greater epigenetic expression.
 

green404

Member
I have been thinking more about the pollen and dust on outdoor stuff and I think it might have a lot to do with the taste and smell of a lot of the outdoor I have had.
I know someone that has really healthy plants half dozen strains every year but they just don't taste good. Thinking about it his yard is right of a dirt alleyway on both sides I bet his buds get coated in dust.

I also make me think of some of the Mexi I have had south of the border that tasted like dirt maybe it was coated in dirt. A new angle to "dirt weed"

three other big factors might also be natural precipitation and sunlight and how a slower maturation allows for greater epigenetic expression.

I have also wondered about the slower growth, possibly more aged, developed
 

Douglas.Curtis

Autistic Diplomat in Training
I'm sure it has a lot to do with it.

I remember a dispensary in Van Nuys (I think) which was a small house off a main blvd. Right on the corner of the first alleyway on the street, and that alley had a LOT of traffic all the time. Their "Grow" could be seen through the privacy slats in the chain link fence behind the building.

Only bought from them once. Some "Trainwreck" which tasted like gas and diesel exhaust. lol

Yummy!!
 

Lost in a SOG

GrassSnakeGenetics
Since indoors you can definitely pull or activate genes/phenos out of a plant by the way you water/feed and light them etc it only follows logically that all of the variables unique to growing outdoors will create a unique product to those factors.

The difference is outdoors the plant has up to 6 months or more to have it's epigenetics sculpted by its environment and micro climate.

It's been shown anything grown within about 60ft of a road will have pretty terribly toxic levels of heavy metals so that's pretty disgusting that they grew like that.
 

green404

Member
I was listing to a interesting podcast with Ed Rosenthal they asked him about indoor vs outdoor. Ed said he thinks the biggest difference is the light, when most outdoor is flowering the light diminishes(less light, lower in the sky) as the plant finishes flowering.

Ed Rosenthal seems to have a preference to outdoor, he was saying that in a long growing environment like Sth Central Cali when people cover plants(manipulated light) and plants can flower in Augest, September that the buds will be as good or better then indoor.

It was an interesting angle from an old time grower.
 

Easy7

Active member
Veteran
Not a grow light yet has come even close to the intense changing spectrum of the sun and sky. They say good wine comes from bad soil. Microbe and mineral content vary a lot from place to place. Land has it's own uniqe fingerprint.
 

Weird

3rd-Eye Jedi
Veteran
terpene production is influenced by so much more than NPK and there has been enough science posted on it here it blows my mind it is still a mystery
 

Gry

Well-known member
Veteran
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]You may not vote on any more threads today.
[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]I used think what was scraped out of the horse stall the previous year had a positive effect.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Given a choice between 2 jars of the same canna grown by me, one inside, one outdoors, I would likely smile more reaching for the outdoor jar.
[/FONT]
 

superpedro

Member
Veteran
If I grow the same tomato outdoor and greenhouse, they too taste very different. The same goes for strawberry and cucumbers.
I know the primary cause is temperature. Cooler nights makes them higher in sugar content and therefore rich in flavor.
I believe the same goes for cannabis. More sugar content makes for a different flavor.
 
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