Afghan House Hash

Among our concentrates is Afghan House Hash, a hash in the Afghan style. UNODC’s 2009 survey of cannabis in Afghanistan traces Afghan hash back to garda, a resin-rich powder threshed and sieved from dried plants.

Drum, frame and cloth bag

The UNODC survey describes how garda is made. Dried plants are knocked against a drum so the buds come loose, the powder is collected and cleared of seeds, and the material goes through cloth stretched on a sloping wooden frame before being shaken in a cloth bag for about 5 minutes. The whole sieving runs three times.

Three routes from powder to hash

• Bricks: in Sensi Seeds’ “Black Afghan” account, farmers in provinces such as Balkh and Kandahar dry late-harvested plants in the sun, beat and trample them into mulch in the shade of mudbrick homes, filter it through cloth into a fine golden powder and compress it into hard bricks for transport, with the first batch counted as the purest.
• Palms and a low flame: southern makers press small amounts of garda by hand, UNODC says. Rich first garda gets sticky from rubbing alone, weaker garda needs a little water to bind, and rounds of rubbing and low-flame heating finish the job.
• Machines: UNODC calls machine kneading a newer development, run by traders rather than farmers, with equipment that came from Pakistan and turns garda into hashish paste.

Grades with no fixed standard

There are three main grades of garda, first, second and third, and UNODC found a fourth in a few cases in the south. Resin content sets the order, per UNODC: first garda holds the most and normally comes from the opening round of gentle shaking and sieving, while the later grades are thought to carry considerably more plant matter. The survey found that the grades follow no fixed standard between regions. Our dry sift guide walks through sift grades.

Sown in spring, harvested into winter

Afghan cannabis grows through the summer: UNODC gives April to June for planting and October to January for the harvest. Stem colour separates the two types farmers mentioned in the survey: green-stemmed plants, and pink-red-stemmed ones said to give better resin.