Tanasi sounds kind of exotic (or at least I thought so the first time I saw it online). Then I met him, and his southern drawl reached out and gave me a hug. “TAW NAW SEE,” he says to me and I know he’s a brother southerner.
I first became aware of him online as an avid Weed Nerd who told me he has watched literally every episode of my show and even had a spiral notebook for important tips he learned. He is also a combat Vet that uses Cannabis to combat PTSD and back pain from an IED. I must point out how bad ass that is – he is one of us and he certainly earned the right to use Cannabis IMO. He told me he learned fast because he paid attention and listened closely, you see he had to learn to grow his own Dank. He has seen both war and the inside of a federal prison, he is my brother and I wanted to share his story!
He started growing in super soil but slowly he made his own changes like I recommend everyone does, and he has DIY LED lights in veg that do really well. Flowering under my old favourite Hostile Bulbs HPS he uses both mammoth and Recharge and a dash of Cal mag. Thanasi grew up in Cleveland TN (30 min north of Chattanooga) just east of the base of the Appalachia Mountains.
Bradley county was the heart of Cherokee Nation. He grew up on the trails and rivers and his love and respect for the heritage back home is how he got the name Tanasi.
Tanasi was an Overhill Cherokee village that was the Cherokee capitol for a short time. Tanasi is in present day Monroe County and was the namesake for the state of Tennessee. A brief short and dirty history lesson for most…Tanasi.
When he was 19 Tanasi went to the Army and joined 82nd Airborne Division A Co. 2/504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. America’s First Strategic Response Team. His team could be boots on the ground anywhere in the world in 18 hours! The first place he went to was Iraq from June 2007 to July 2008.
Tanasi didn’t know about PTSD or TBI while in the army and for a while after he left. It wasn’t till years after he got out that he learned what was happening, 60 days after he got back from Iraq he ran into some trouble with the ATF for an incident that happened back home while visiting his family before heading to War.
The charges eventually caused him to be discharged from the 82nd Airborne and doing a nickel in the Federal prison system. While he was in prison he learned about PTSD and TBI and how they played a role in his current journey.
After prison things were rough, then he got massively lucky from an uncle that was in charge of a fabrication shop asked him to come learn to weld. He told me he felt like he won the lottery. He learned how to tig weld, which lead to him getting to take off to North Dakota field service team to install/repair the units he learned to weld.
While he was in the oil field and working in North Dakota, this was 2013, the company he worked for was just starting up in Colorado and he was the best choice for the Denver location. Tanasi had no clue about legal weed in Colorado his first month in Colorado, if that tells you how much the oil fields will kill you, not until he met up with an Army buddy that showed him legal weed for the first time.
Tanasi was able to legally grow for the first time. He had always been a pot smoker growing up and it was the only thing that helped him cope with life after the 82nd and the cruel nature of prisons. He immediately knew that he was going to grow his own dank. Growing for yourself is the most therapeutic act that a man can can do.
He discovered my morning show on Youtube via a friend after he had been growing for about a year. He was using Bio-Canna and Vegamatrix at the time when boom! Nuclear knowledge for a novice grower! He Weed-Nerded out on everyone after another, in order, with a spiral note book and pen taking notes.
He finished catching up to the recent episodes within two weeks of finding The Weed Nerd videos. His growing skills sky-rocketed and with a few more growing years he was not a novice grower anymore. Tanasi is still watching and learning.
He now helps teach and learns to grow through social media as much as he can, from making detailed posts about the strains he runs or sharing his own recipe for SuperSoil. He landed a gig as part of the weekly panel on the Embracing Organics Live Show on YouTube channel Embracing Organics Thursdays at 7pm MST. He tells me he enjoys sharing what he has been taught or learned the hard way. No one becomes a #dankster overnight.
Tanasi has been a tester for Subcool’s Seeds for about 3 years now and he tells me he has found more top-notch dank keepers than he will ever know what to do with. From dank outdoor to dank indoor, Tanasi was too kind and says, “I will be forever grateful for Subcool’s dedication and the heart he has to put out the massive amounts of information he has over the last 20 years.
I will always help the mission to over grow the world.”It is very inspirational to me to see someone get struck by the Grow Bug and wanting to dedicate his life to the plant and the culture that surrounds it.His pace of information reminds me of myself. I love introducing new talent to the world and especially so when the person is as nice as this guy is. Loved in his community, he fights a new war now
Written and Published By Subcool, The Weed Nerd In Weed World Magazine Issue 142
(RIP Subcool)
