The Grow Project needs a name for its twigs and seeds

Cheech? Chong? Hi? Mary Jane?

Those are a few of the possible names being bandied about by Homestretch listeners who have weighed in on what to call the two seeds that launched The Grow Project on The Homestretch last week.

"Host plants, they need love — and you need to name them in order to give them the love," director Tracy Fuller said Monday on The Homestretch. "This is a very crucial, important, part of the process."

Fuller is trying to grow a pot plant, minus the thousand-watt bulbs and other gear that big bucks cannabis producers use to generate and germinate theirs.

Now that we live in a nation of legal weed, she wants to find out how difficult — and expensive — it is to grow your own.

• The Grow Project: Growing a no-budget pot plant

Fuller reported to Homestretch guest host Rob Brown on Monday that the two seeds she planted last week had both sprouted — much to her jubilation.

"It was super exciting," Fuller said, "because I am not a green thumb over here. And we had about one inch tap roots in just a couple of days and a little tiny green leaf — and I have to say that coming in today we have three inches of full-on root and the beginning of what is a leaf."

"Our seeds are growing."

Next step

The next step is to decide how to grow those seeds into pot plants, explained Beau Gaebel, the manager at Queen of Bud.

"Once you have fully germinated your seeds, you need to figure out if you are going to use soil or you're going to use water," Gaebel said.

"When you use water, the method is called hydroponics. It is very simple. It is the easiest way — but depending on which method you use, you're going to have to have all the necessary tools to make sure that your plant will thrive," he noted.

"If you're going to start with water, you need Rockwool cubes and you just need a tray of water.

"You'll have some foam cubes that you put the seeds in, tap root down, and within a few days, you should start seeing them sprout out of the Rockwool."

That means making sure there's water being replaced every day, he said. "And then once they start getting maybe a week or so in you have to find out what you're going to feed them because they do need food.

"So now if you do decide to go with soil, it does get a little more difficult. You can get bugs. Fertilizer can end up being really expensive.

"And it really boils down to your own preference."

Name game

So far, listeners have voted for names ranging from Bob (for Marley), Carl (for Sagan), and Pepe Le Pew, for the cartoon skunk in Bugs Bunny cartoons. Someone else suggested Irene, a nod to the Irene Adler character in Sherlock Holmes (the pot is a strain called Baker Street), and someone else suggested Mary Gaia.

The candidates have been narrowed down to a final quartet of candidates: Mary Jane and Herb; Hi and Lois; Bud and Sprout; and finally, Cheech and Chong.

"We've posted it on our Twitter feed that's at CBC Homestretch where everyone can go on and vote," Fuller said. 

Voting closes Wednesday.

With files from The Homestretch.