Growing up in online communities and doing guerilla grows with friends, Derek "Kronic" LaRose was an internet star long before he launched his podcast Homegrown Potcast. Before the days of marijuana acceptance, he taught cannabis cultivation to others on major platforms under the radar. He joins Dan Humiston to talk about sharing his years of cannabis cultivation experience with his listeners. He also provides some valuable podcasting tips. Produced by PodConx Potcasters - https://podconx.com/podcasts/potcasters Dan Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/dan-humiston Derek LaRose - https://podconx.com/guests/derek-larose Homegrown Potcast - https://homegrowncannabisco.com/
Growing up in online communities and doing guerilla grows with friends,
Derek "Kronic" LaRose was an internet star long before he launched his podcast Homegrown Potcast. Before the days of marijuana acceptance, he taught cannabis cultivation to others on major platforms under the radar. He joins Dan Humiston to talk about sharing his years of cannabis cultivation experience with his listeners. He also provides some valuable podcasting tips.
Produced by PodConx
Potcasters - https://podconx.com/podcasts/potcasters
Dan Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/dan-humiston
Derek LaRose - https://podconx.com/guests/derek-larose
Homegrown Potcast - https://homegrowncannabisco.com/
Dan Humiston: [00:00:00] All right, everyone. Thanks for joining us. And welcome back. We have another great show in store for you. Chronic AKA Derek. LaRosa's here to talk about his podcast, the home grown podcast from homegrown cannabis co chronic. Welcome to the.
Derek LaRoss: thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited. I've a. Multiple episodes of you guys. So I'm very
Dan Humiston: Well, it's fun to have you on. And I got to say you're the first cannabis cultivation podcast it was had on the show. I don't know why, but you're the first one. So I'm really excited to talk to you.
Derek LaRoss: Yeah. I'm, I'm more than thrilled. I love sharing information. So ask
Dan Humiston: And I, one of the things I always say about a good podcast, they're kind of generalists that you like, you're, you're not necessarily an expert in every nuance, but you have enough experience that you can hang with. Just about everyone. I thought maybe to get started, you're clearly know your way around cannabis.
How'd you get.
Derek LaRoss: so first off. I appreciate that. Definitely have a lot to learn and there's always more to grow. [00:01:00] But I grew up in Florida for like 15 years of my life originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but we moved to Jacksonville when I was a kid. And. Started smoking around like, I don't know, 14 or 15 and it costs money.
So, you got to sell it. So I started selling it back then and lucky for me, I actually made friends with people who were growing on a farm that was pretty discreet, but this farm actually was a home to a lot of the original strains. Like the creepy that would go around Florida or they had the original blue dream from like 1992.
I think it. And they had Matt burgers, Bubba Kush. And it was just like a really beautiful farm. And it was this indoor greenhouse set up kind of like in the Backwoods of like not the south Florida, but like heading towards Orlando area. Not going to give away too
Dan Humiston: Gator Gator
Derek LaRoss: but yeah, exactly the boondocks out.
yeah, so I, I got started then, and, and basically was just like a helping hand and I would move a lot of [00:02:00] weight for various people just around the cities and stuff like that. And it allowed me to introduce myself to a lot of different people and just like the cannabis industry in general. And.
I did get out of selling because of a girl, my fiance. So I did start selling, but during that time I got so intrigued with cannabis cultivation that I was like, all right, I'm going to hop on every forum. I can. I became a admin for grass, city forums Royal queen seeds, all sorts of other various seed companies where I eventually landed up working with my.
All time, favorite seed company, home grown Canada's co where that's like, where I molded the education I wanted to do. And it's pretty much like the last eight, 10 years of my life of just talking to various cultivators. I've been able to know I'm just running into people when I sold weed, asking them questions about their gross.
So just kind of like weird circumstances, to be honest.
Dan Humiston: it's an eclectic education, but it got you to where you are right now, which is [00:03:00] like I said, you know enough about every topic that you can. Comfortably with every one of your guests, tell our listeners what type of topics that they can expect when they're listening to your.
Derek LaRoss: Yeah, most definitely. So we have a wide variety. Um, Some of the older episodes are going to be more of the interview based like we have one of our first episodes on my Caribbean girls that my buddy jake Shelty, he does another podcast get to the roots and he talks more about like the microbial life, organic gardening, really how to build up microrisal development and getting into the fundamentals and foundations of like true organics and what no-till gardening is.
So that was a hit episode. And then you can expect a short, like, 15 minute segments on maybe more specifically. What items you might need for growing cannabis? The last episode I just put up was can you grow cannabis for under $500? So it's all pretty much every item I list out. And then we have more in depth interview episodes with [00:04:00] Kyle Cushman or Eric Branson.
Or the dank Duchess where we'll hone in on their specific backstories, as well as their specific skills like Kyle Cushman. We have two interviews where we did strawberry cough, backstory, as well as some fun stoner stories. So they can kind of expect education in every video. But it's not thrown at you all the time.
You get some fun content.
Dan Humiston: Yeah, I actually I have a clip from Eric brand Stantec episode, where he talked about light deprivation. Let me play this real quick.[00:05:00]
He is just so passionate. That guy is so passionate.
Derek LaRoss: he really is. He's one of my favorite people to talk to you about light deprivation and greenhouses. I learned an immense amount that epic.
Dan Humiston: And he's and he's, you know what, he's, family's been farming since 1860s, I mean like these, this is the real deal. This guy's the real deal. And it was a good interview too, because you didn't just talk about light deprivation, but you tied it into his expense. Following the dead and a bunch of other things that he did.
I think that's one of the things that I like about your show is , it's less sterile. It's more about, the person and I think you do a good job of of making it. Not just the experts can enjoy the show, but a novice can listen to the show and pick up a lot too.
, I'm sure that's a little bit challenging too, to tell your episode so that everyone within that spectrum can understand what you're talking about.
Derek LaRoss: I appreciate you saying that because it actually is a lot of work [00:06:00] because a lot of the things people don't understand about cultivation is like, it's easy in a sense, but it's very scientific and it's very number based. And so when you start hitting. Novices with all this scary information. It can be so overwhelming that it turns people away from growing.
And that's like the last thing that we ever wanted to do at home grown and that I wanted to do, I wanted to help people really round off the knowledge that they already have and get them confident, understanding what they're reading. So. I really take my time to try to break down. The stuff that I knew was explained to me, like 10 times, , I'll explain it the way that it finally hit me.
Right. And I'll try to even break that down further. And I found that bringing a little bit of lightheartedness, we're all people at the end of the day, we all have stories. And these people that we, you look up. They'd been on so many interviews, but it's basically always asking about like, how do you do this with cultivation?
It's like, well, let's hear some backstory to , their own tails and how this passion and creation, like, how [00:07:00] did you create light deprivation, Eric brand status? That's something viewers can go check out that he breaks into. And all of that came from his journey and his journey was so important to how he created light that.
That journey for me in that tale of understanding rounds, more information to people because they can relate to it versus having to sit like a lecturer in a classroom and understand the material.
Dan Humiston: , just to add to that, he mentioned in, about. Making it so that his day was I come home from work. I do this, I go to bed, I do this. Like, that's like a real world issue. Like I, I got, I have kids, I have a family, I have to eat dinner. I don't, can't spend my whole time out in the garden.
And I thought that was really interesting how he, like I said, you brought it back full circle to like everyday.
Derek LaRoss: yeah. It's and it's really important. Exactly what you said. You have a family of kids and even if you don't have a family, when you come home from work, if you're a single person you're tired, you're exhausted. You don't want to necessarily spend six hours in your garden. So really making [00:08:00] sure that you have.
Quality understanding of your knowledge dialed in setups and very, very automated systems. Even if they're not like all mechanically and robotic, automated, but automated in a sense where you only have to go out, check for 10 minutes, hang out for maybe 20 minutes max, once or twice a day. And you're done.
And that was the big thing with greenhouse growers and something that we experienced in our homegrown garden was just Parker was in the garden so much water. Dealing with caterpillars and all these issues that I knew that going into that interview with Eric brands that I really want to break in. So how home growers could, if they have hoop houses or if they have greenhouses, they don't have to spend two hours in their greenhouses daily because it is overwhelming.
It.
Dan Humiston: Yeah, that was great. well, before I finish, I always like to give a little advice for aspiring podcasters from the experts. And you're really good at staying true to your audience. I mean, just clearly in this interview, you can tell that you're passionate about this and you stay true to your audience. This is going to [00:09:00] sound like a really obvious question, but, but for some reason, so many pod-casters get this one wrong. Why is it important to stay in your podcasting lane?
Derek LaRoss: well, it's important to stay in your podcasting lane , for a few reasons. I'll give my top three reasons. One would be your marketing standpoint. If you're staying in your lane for your marketing standpoint, as an aspect from a business, or just from a, you're trying to relay a message. If you're trying to shout your message to gamers and musicians and various other people in your messages.
It's not going to really go out there, cause they're paying attention to music or gaming. So with me cultivation we stay in the home and garden section and we upload to pretty much only the home and garden areas or the cultivation forums. And we don't really try to go outside our lane in the sense of like, yes, we I'm backed by a seed company on the home grown podcast and you'll hear me shout out.
But I'm not drilling deals every episode, I'm not drilling seed sales up every episode. So it's important to stay in your lane and the marketing [00:10:00] aspect. And then as a personal, like for being able to sleep at night, it's really important to stay in your lane. I say that in a few standards. So if you're going to become a podcaster or anyone on social media, You need to pick the route that you want to take your channel and you want to pick your morals and your moral representation of your channel and stick by it because it's a very important thing to build a community, but it's even more important to make sure that community's not toxic.
It's the community that uplifts you at the end of the day. And when you go to bed at night, you're not questioning the words that you put out there or the messages that you put out there. There's a lot of different podcasts out there and in this day and age, anyone can have a word and it might sound fun to hop on a mic and Blab European.
But your opinion might shift through the years, so it's just for that. Just staying in your lanes important for progress in your own career progress for the people who are listening and just for your moral comfort.
Dan Humiston: Those are, those are . Two [00:11:00] really good reasons to do that. And I think that as a listener, I get frustrated when a podcast that I am listening to for this specific. Reason or topic starts talking about something totally unrelated, but , it's a, maybe a passion that the host has, but it's not consistent with anything else that they've done.
They lose me and like I said, you've done a really good job on that. Well, you can listen to a new episode of the homegrown podcast every week on all the major podcast networks. Is that right? Okay.
Derek LaRoss: yup. Yup. Every single Wednesday. Yeah. We we put up a new episode and it's on YouTube.
Dan Humiston: Well, chronic AKA Derek. Thanks for being on the show today. That was fun.
Derek LaRoss: Yeah, no problem. Thank you for having me. And I'm happy to come back anytime.