Catching Up With Kyle Kushman

I had not spoken with Kyle Kushman in over 50 cannabis years, or about eight years in normal time, and then a week or so ago I was pitched a story on Kyle out of the blue. But I didn’t need a pitch to want to reconnect with the celebrated grower, breeder, writer, educator, and all-around flower evangelist, who I had profiled back in 2016 for another publication. Kushman, whose reputation as a grower was burnished by his five years (1999-2004) spent as a High Times staff writer,  was obviously still in the game, but how had the intervening years treated him? He isn’t invisible, of course. His opinion on strains still matters, and he is still a sought-after figure, to say the least. But no one is fully immune from the inevitable vicissitudes of life and business, and I was curious to see just how kindly or cruelly the cannabis gods had treated someone so pure of heart that his parting words in that article from so long ago was a plaintive plea for the industry: “Don’t forsake the flower. The flower is medicine. The flower is why we’re here.”

It turns out Kushman still lives in the same Hollywood Hills house I had visited in 2016, and he is very much the same person he was then, but he is also older and wiser, and the lessons he has learned in the intervening years have only sharpened his resolve to remain true to himself and his craft. “I tried a few times to get a dog in in the commercial cannabis race,” said Kushman during a call this week. “And I’m not even upset about it, but it didn’t work out for me. I’m literally just so upset with the whole cannabis market.”

His veganic nutrients company, Vegamatrix, closed about two years ago after almost eight years in business. “It wasn’t worth it anymore,” he explained. “The profits just weren’t there.”

But he also insists that the cannabis industry per se is not to blame for the falling fortunes of companies serving the supply side of industry. “I think it had as much to do with the general Covid and supply chain economy that affected every business in the whole world, and I really think a lot of the problems we’re facing right now don’t have anything to do with the president’s policies,” he said. “It has a lot to do with corporate greed, which has filtered down into every industry. I think that sales are down a lot, people are scaling back, and retail space in general is shrinking by huge percentages, but I certainly don’t think it has anything to do with the fact that less people are growing their own marijuana, or that less marijuana is being grown. That’s not it.”

Had demand peaked? How could that be if new markets continue to open up? Kushman reworded the question. “How can demand be going up, but the demand for the supplies to create the product be going down,” he asked rhetorically. “What’s happening is people are becoming more efficient, they need to use less supplies, and people are becoming savvy. Like back in the old days, when I used to tell people not to go to the hydroponic store to buy bone meal and blood meal because at the hydroponic store, it’s a specialty item. Go to your local nursery that’s been selling bone meal and blood meal for 50 plus years, and you’ll get it for pennies on the dollar. You can find all of these things that they would rather sell you through their specialty shop through other channels, because they’re all available elsewhere.”

That said, Vegamatrix users still contact Kushman about products they have been using for years. “To this day I still have people email me, saying, ‘I’m just running out of my last Vegamatrix. I’ve been using this for 10 years. What do I do,’” said Kushman. “I mean, I have a loyal following because of the cleanliness of the product. The reason I didn’t make multiple millions had to do with the feeding and the recipe chart that I made myself that I didn’t have people across the country testing, and R&D, and I couldn’t make it work for everybody without having that experience. So, luckily, what I found is I had to go find a new nutrient to grow. I needed to grow my own marijuana, and I found a new product that’s even cleaner. I found a product that went from low salt and low heavy metals to zero salts and zero heavy metals.”

This revelation occurred about two years ago, and he has been active ever since. “I’m growing and actually breeding for the first time in over a decade,” he said. “I have a 10×10 and a 4×8 tent in my second living room, and I put it all up on my Instagram, and basically that’s how I make my money now. I also created the hashtag #ichoosetouse, because it works the opposite way around for me. I use something for 5, 10, 20, 30 years, and then I contact the person and go, ‘I’ve been using this for so long and talking about it, you should start paying me.’ And guess what, they do. But most people don’t want to believe that you did something ethical, so I create a little bit of a subterfuge by not trying to hide it but masking it a little bit. I tell people, ‘You may think this is just another paid advertisement, but it’s not.’”

Kyle Kushman is of course his nom de guerre, a brand if ever there was one, just one that still retains its authenticity. What then would be whoring oneself out, because everyone is selling something. “Well, that’s just it, and that’s why I’m not trying to hide it from everybody,” replied Kushman. “I’m just trying to put an authentic twist onto it. For example, I took some money from Pro-Mix for a while, and the funny thing is, I switched off of it after 30 years. I had literally been using the product for over 25 years and repping it and telling people it’s the only thing I use and how to use it, and why I use it. And then I called them up and ended up getting a nice sponsorship for five grand a month for four months, but I couldn’t produce enough content to make them happy.”

But it all turned out to be for the best. “When I started using this new nutrient,” he explained, “I decided to go back to my roots a little bit and use not a neutral growing media, but a slightly fortified organic media, and I’m much happier. Now I’m not pigeon-holed by the veganic thing anymore. I use minimal animal byproducts, and I rely 97 percent on Organics Alive nutrients, which only has one ingredient in it, a microbial fermentation by-product. They had to create their own white papers to get it even registered as a nutrient in California, they created a whole new technology, and it’s just incredible. I amend it from there and have grown some of the best weed that I’ve grown in a long time.”

Turning a New Leaf

As fate would have it, in going back to his roots, Kushman is setting the stage for what comes next. “I’m breeding again, and I’m on my third or fourth iteration of a podcast,” he said. “I do a podcast called Grow Weed at Home with Kyle Cushman, and have had a couple of big guests on. Jim Belushi came to my house a couple months ago, and we’re bringing the show to the Emerald Cup in Oakland in two weeks. I’m going to be interviewing all the dignitaries, and we’re going to do about 12 episodes from the Cup, including Richard Delisi, who was just released from prison after 32 years for a 90-year sentence for cannabis. And I never say no to people’s local podcasts. I always go on all the little growers podcasts to keep the name up. I did one or two last week.”

Was he also consulting these days? “I’m not,” he replied. “Honestly, I’ve gotten away from consulting, because there are so many people who grow really, really well. Nowadays, I am more of a Tony Robbins. I am the guy who you can bring anywhere, and maybe I’ll talk for two hours, and two or three grow tips will go by, but in that time the whole team just feels better about themselves.

“I’m really looking for a vehicle at this point in my life,” he added. “I’m looking for a situation to fall into, perhaps some kind of production company. I have ideas of my own on how to produce entertainment, but I’m really just kind of cultivating my chops and cultivating my persona. I don’t really know where I’m going, but I’m going to get somewhere.”

Will it encompass the worlds of entertainment, education, cannabis, and agriculture? “I see it as I’m looking for my crossover moment,” responded Kushman. “I think I have more words to say than just on the cannabis world. I have confidence, and so I don’t care if it’s a cooking show. I learned during Covid that I can literally cook anything. But I really feel like my biggest attribute right now is that I’m malleable.”

Speaking of malleable, I noted that Snoop had all but ruled at the Olympics? “He is globally recognized,” agreed Kushman. “You put him in an ad, it can run in any market, anywhere in the world. So, when you ask what my ambition is and what I’m trying to cultivate, it’s not anything in the commercial cannabis space. If anything, it would be growers products, growers amendments, tools I know how to improve, that I could knock off and make better. I could make the shovel better if people wanted to sell it! So, I really just need a situation, I need a production team, I need somebody who wants to exploit the persona that I’ve cultivated.”

Kushman remains affiliated with Homegrown Cannabis Company, a longtime supplier of high-quality seeds. “I’m going on literally nine years with them,” he said. “I still get compliments from people who think it’s my company, just like when I worked for Buds and Roses,” he added, laughing.

Homegrown naturally caters to the cannabis home grow community, a group that includes newbies as well as longtime hobbyists. “I think the majority are probably first-time growers who don’t have any connections in the culture,” he said. “They’re looking around online, they know that scams are everywhere, and they’re looking for a recommended place to go buy something. Or they’re looking for a strain that they want to try, and they’ve heard that we have a library of a thousand different genetics. You can order up any one you want and have it delivered.”

These are some of the very people he wants to reach. “The market itself is very passionate,” explained Kushman. “and that’s why I’m trying to find some professional help now to find a project while I still have some vitality, and while I still want to get up every morning and invest myself in something. And the people that know me, that appreciate me, we’re a bit of kindred spirits,” he added. “We’re a little bit of a rebel, and we like to be able to take care of ourselves and have self-determination.

“So, I just try to keep visible, and pretty much say yes to anything,” he added. Very Kushman-like, his self-awareness obliterated any sense of self-deprecation.  “I went to Barcelona about six months ago and spoke at the University of Barcelona about the importance of organics. I made it up on the spot and spoke for 35 minutes, and I got rousing applause at the end. That was fun, and they actually called me back and wanted to offer me an honorarium of a few hundred dollars to write a class for them to teach. But I couldn’t nail down the fact that they were going to be selling it for thousands of dollars and making all this money while offering me $200, so I didn’t do it.”

That story could stand-in for most of Kushman’s more recent interactions with business entities in the current cannabis industry. He recounted a few incidents involving certain companies that shall remain nameless that forced him to decide between gross profit and personal imperatives, with the latter ultimately prevailing.

“What happened was that I had a fucking epiphany that I fucking don’t have any respect for this commercial cannabis industry,” explained an exasperated Kushman. “I just put a submission in for South-by-Southwest to do a panel, and the title of the panel that I came up with is, ‘Should I buy weed from a dispensary or grow my own?’ It’s actually a little bit tongue in cheek, because I believe that in any kind of a free society it’s all part of the picture.

“Not everybody can grow their own weed,” he admitted, “and dispensaries are needed, just like food stores, but unfortunately, what I learned is that I’m glad that I’m not in that business, because if I was in a shop every day and I watched hundreds of people come through the door, and saw these people and the money that they were spending on what I would call not really very good cannabis, I think that I would feel really bad that people are spending hard earned money and paying a 25 percent tax to the government on top of it for stuff that is exacerbating other issues in your body by having high levels of heavy metals. It’s not poison, but if you have ailments, if you have Crohn’s disease, or autism, it needs to be pure, it needs to be medicine, not McDonald’s food, which you eat once in a while. This is something that you use every day.”

This is the foundation of his way forward. “I am proud to be championing growing weed at home,” said Kushman. “People should spend $400 and grow a fucking ounce. Spend $700 and grow two ounces, spend $1,000 or $1,500 and grow your own half fucking pound. Whatever it is, it’s worth it. I’m proud to be in this space, and I get a certain amount of credibility for that alone.”

Besides, he added, “The big box retail model is not going to work for the cannabis industry. You can’t stock 40 types of perishable flower. You have to stock the three kinds that 85 percent of the cool people are smoking.”

Unfortunately, some states are legalizing but not allowing home grow. “That’s why I’m still championing people to make sure that as you legalize cannabis, you also allow home growing,” said a passionate Kushman. “You have to allow home growing, and maybe one thing that could still come to fruition someday would be for me to partner with an AC Infinity, a Hydrofarm, or even a Homegrown, and sell an all-in-one kit. We do a late-night infomercial, you get the seeds, you get the tent, you get a grow guide from me, and it’s all approved.”

He paused before continuing. “I said to somebody the other day, one of my problems is I don’t go to sleep at night or wake up in the morning thinking about how to make money,” said Kushman. “That’s my problem. I would rather spend my day helping somebody. But I guess you can make money doing that, too, and I don’t mean by the thing that you do, but by the people you meet. You make associations, and then somebody gives you a good idea, and you go, ‘Hey, you should start your own nutrient company.”

I agreed that the question going forward is what to do with that legendary Kyle Kushman persona. “I don’t want it to fade into obscurity,” he said. “I still have to build something, whether it becomes an entertainment or edutainment type of vehicle. I’m very ready for that.”

The best way to contact Kyle Kushman is via Instagram or his email address, which he said “is as old as the wind and has been shared a million times, [email protected].”

But then, as we were about to ring off, Kushman said something I had never heard before from anyone. “If, in conversation, anybody who you speak with feels that they would like to speak with me about any subject at all, just feel free to share my number. It’s not private.”

Anyone who wants it can email me at [email protected].

Image: Strawberry Cough strain