Jorge Cervantes
Jorge Cervantes, a pseudonym for George Van Patten, born 1954, is an American horticulturist and writer specializing in indoor, outdoor, and greenhouse cultivation of Medical cannabis. His books, articles, photographs and instructional DVDs have been sold worldwide as guidebooks to horticultural techniques to high-yield closet, basement, backyard, and guerrilla gardens.
Contents
Background
Van Patten was born in Ontario, Oregon and developed his lifelong interest with cannabis as a university student in Mexico. After graduation, he moved to California and became a guerrilla grower of "sinsemilla" (Spanish for without seeds) marijuana, the "new" high-quality cannabis that Mexicans reserved for domestic consumption. In the early 1980s, Cervantes started growing indoors, but a lack of credible information about indoor cultivation led him to author Indoor Marijuana Horticulture in 1983. The book became a best-seller, and successful indoor growers dubbed it the "Indoor Grower's Bible" which became the book's subtitle.
Book
Van Patten (as Jorge Cervantes) first published the book Indoor Marijuana Horticulture in 1983. That first edition was 96 pages long, bound by staples, and printed in black and white. It is now in its fifth edition, with 512 full-color pages, and 1120 full-color photographs and illustrations. Marijuana Horticulture sold over 600,000 copies printed in Dutch, English, French and German. Marijuana Horticulture has recently been released in Spanish, Italian, and in Russian. The book's credits list more than three hundred contributors including Rob Clarke and Ed Rosenthal.
Van Patten has reworked "Marijuana Horticulture" as " Gardening Indoors with Soil & Hydroponics" to appeal to non-marijuana indoor growing enthusiasts. He publishes that title, along with several other books on hydroponics, under his real name. Alongside Jorge on his book tour is his new publicist Zeke Van Patten. His new publicist role is to make Jorge the most famous weed grower in America.
Other publications
He wrote a monthly question-and-answer column, Jorge's Rx, from 2000 to 2010 located in High Times magazine's cultivation section, Cervantes provides his solutions to growers problems. He also pens a regular column in Soft Secrets magazine. Van Patten is Bilingual and speaks at several international cannabis fairs in Europe and the USA every year, and contributes feature cultivation articles to more than 20 different cannabis magazines published in 10 languages including High Times, Soft Secrets, Cañamo, and other European and Latin American cannabis magazines.
Video
The English language Jorge Cervantes' Ultimate Grow DVD I (2006) and Jorge Cervantes' Ultimate Grow DVD II (2007) are training videos for cannabis cultivation. In them, Van Patten (in disguise) tours indoor and outdoor gardens, giving tips and advice for growers of marijuana. He was interviewed at Spannabis 2013 in Barcelona for Freedom Seeds about the size of the Cannabis industry.
