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Cannabis Pipeline to Europe is Open; Flora Growth is Investing

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Less than a month after debuting on the Nasdaq Stock Market, Colombia-based cultivator Flora Growth is connecting its cannabis pipeline to Europe through a manufacturing and distribution partnership with Hoshi International.

Headquartered in Toronto, but with 95% of its operations in Colombia, globally motivated Flora Growth made a 2-million-euro ($2.4 million) strategic investment to become a preferred supplier to Hoshicap Portugal—a subsidy of Toronto-based Hoshi International—the company announced June 7.

Courtesy of Flora Growth | floragrowth.ca

Luis Merchan became the CEO of Flora Growth in December as the company worked toward a public listing. 

The investment will provide Flora access to extraction facilities in Malta and Portugal to process its cannabis derivatives from Colombia and distribute them through Hoshi’s channels throughout Europe. The transaction is the first of many steps intended by Flora to launch its seven brands and 300-plus products across the world, President and CEO Luis Merchan told Cannabis Business Times. Flora’s cultivation practices to supply cannabis derivatives also include business divisions in cosmetics, hemp textiles, and food and beverage.

The Portugal license will allow for the cultivation and import of cannabis produced through good agricultural and collection practices (GACP)—guidelines outlined by the World Health Organization for medicinal plants—and also enable the Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP)-certified processing facility to export indoor and outdoor medical cannabis throughout Europe.

In Malta, Hoshi is completing its GMP facility to produce, process and package cannabis products, including oil derivatives, to be distributed throughout the European Union (EU). Hoshi’s Maltese entity received a provisional medical cannabis license covering cultivation, processing and importation/exportation under Malta’s Production of Cannabis for Medicinal and Research Purposes Act. 

“Those assets, the cultivation in Portugal as well as the facility in Malta, opened the door to us for completing the supply chain into the European Union,” Merchan said. “That’s very important to us because the market in the European Union is significant. Obviously, the No. 1 economy (in Europe), Germany, is very attractive and clearly is open for the import of cannabis derivatives. And having a partner as Hoshi as a critical partner and preferred distributor for the European Union became a no-brainer.”

Merchan said Portugal and Malta offer favorable regulatory environments, and low labor and energy costs. In addition, Hoshi’s analytical testing labs in Malta will allow Flora to establish a consistent import and distribution hub, which opens the doors for sought-after markets such as Germany, he said.

With a population of roughly 750 million and a health care spend exceeding 2.1 trillion euros, Europe has the potential to become the largest global market for medical cannabis products, according to Hoshi. That’s including non-EU members such as the United Kingdom (U.K.), which rivals Germany and France among the largest economies on the continent.

But that potential high-growth market has yet to be fully tapped because of a lack of legal infrastructure to supply GMP and GACP-grade medical product, according to Hoshi, which is on course to have EU cultivation licenses under both practices by first quarter 2022. 

Included in the Flora-Hoshi partnership, Flora will provide access to its library of tested and proven outdoor genetics to Hoshi for eventual cultivation at its Portugal facility. Hoshi also has import distribution agreements in the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and the U.K.

“With the partnership with Flora Growth, Hoshi can now fast track a number of established initiatives to sell high-quality GACP flower to the EU market,” Hoshi CEO John Aird said in a Flora press release announcing the partnership. “We look forward to working with the Flora team and accessing not only their high-end genetics and outdoor grown cannabis but also assisting Flora [to] move more finished products to its customers across the EU and globally.”

Courtesy of Flora Growth | floragrowth.ca

Flora Growth cultivates 100 hectares of cannabis year-round near the equator in Bucaramanga, Columbia. 

Founded in 2019, Flora leverages natural, low-cost cultivation practices with an all-outdoor cultivation operation that includes roughly 100 hectares (247 acres) of cannabis in Bucaramanga, Colombia. Approximately 500 miles north of the equator, Flora’s farm produces year-round yields with 12-plus hours of natural sunlight per day and a constant breeze of 3 mph at 1,500 meters above sea level, Merchan said.

Those natural conditions allow Flora to cultivate dried cannabis flower at 6 cents per gram (roughly $25 to $30 per pound), he said.

“We are cultivating under one of the best geographies in the world in terms of flower cultivation,” said Merchan, a dual citizen who was born and raised in Colombia but has spent his entire executive career specializing in retail and consumer packaged goods in the U.S., including his role as Macy’s Inc.’s vice president of workforce strategy and operations.

“The problem with cultivating and growing cannabis in [the U.S. and Canada] is the severe weather, right?” he said. “If you are doing it outdoors, you can only cultivate for a portion of the year. If you want to do it year-round, you have to build massive infrastructures to cultivate indoors, and that immediately increases your cultivation costs over the long term.”

When Flora debuted on the Nasdaq on May 11, the company publicized the U.S.-based initial public offering (IPO) as the first known cannabis cultivator to list without using a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), reverse merger or dual listing. Flora completed a $30 million pre-IPO equity raise in 2020, and then another $16.6 million once it completed the IPO.

Merchan said Flora already had enough funds to complete the transaction with Hoshi before the listing, but completing the IPO allowed the company to increase its cash position, which opened the door to freely finalize the Hoshi partnership as well as many other deals that are in the works and will be shared with investors and publicly as they become realities.

“[Expanding to Europe has] been part, all along, of our overall long-term strategy,” Merchan said. “We founded Flora Growth under the vision of becoming a global player in the cannabis industry. Europe, it’s a very attractive economy because of acquisition power, but also because of the favorable regulatory environment of some of the countries within the European Union. So, we knew all along that this was going to be an important step towards our expansion and distribution.”

Policy Changes to Eliminate Pre-Employment Drug Screening Continue to Spread: Week in Review

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As outside players continue to show interest in and support of the cannabis space, Amazon is the most recent actor to flex its voice in a favorable reform statement that could have major implications moving forward.

This past week, we covered news about how the second-largest private employer in the U.S. plans to eliminate drug testing for its workers. Amazon also announced its support of the reintroduced Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, a bill to legalize cannabis at the federal level.

One of the most powerful companies in the U.S.—and the world—Amazon isn’t the only outside actor providing an influential voice. In April, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said his company would “absolutely” consider cannabis delivery when the road is clear to do so.

When some of the most prominent business leaders in the world show an interest in cannabis reform, people take notice, including those who legislate our public policies in Congress. That momentum could be contagious and carry its weight to benefit those who have already invested all of their chips into the industry.

We’ve rounded up some of the major cannabis headlines from the week right here:

  • “Cannabis industry associations applauded Amazon’s decision to eliminate drug testing for marijuana and the company’s support for the MORE Act,” Senior Editor Zach Mentz writes in his coverage of the company’s policy change. Read more
  • Assistant Editor Andriana Ruscitto reports that “cannabis consumption lounges could finally be making their way to Nevada,” after two previous attempts by Las Vegas never became a reality because of “setbacks and political debates from the rival gaming industry.” Read more
  • National Cannabis Roundtable co-founder Christopher Jensen explains what the trade association is focusing on next “now that the SAFE Banking Act is on its way to the Senate, where there is hope it will finally pass after making its way through the House multiple times,” Editor Michelle Simakis writes in her Q&A feature, which details other challenges holding the industry back. Read more
  • “Organic living soil allows a plant to easily access which essential nutrients it needs when it needs them,” contributor Allison Troutner writes in her column that includes five tips to maintain a healthy soil for indoor cannabis facilities. Read more
  • Harborside Inc. announced Tuesday that it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Sublimation Inc. (Sublime), an award-winning cannabis manufacturing company in Oakland, Calif., for a total consideration of $43.8 million. Read more

And elsewhere on the web, here are the stories we’ve been reading this week:

  • The Seattle Times: “As the medical community witnessed the efficacy and heard more from the public about their interest in cannabis-based medicine, more providers became willing to have an open conversation.” Read more
  • The Spokesman-Review: “The National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Cancer Institute, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and the National Institute of Mental Health published a joint notice in the National Institutes of Health Guide to establish a standard THC unit [5 milligrams] to be used in research studies funded by these institutions.” Read more
  • NPR: “Since 1968, U.S. researchers have been allowed to use cannabis from only one domestic source: a facility based at the University of Mississippi, through a contract with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).” Read more
  • Forbes: “A young boy and his single mother are in the midst of a 1,000-mile walk across the United Kingdom, a journey they are making to raise awareness and funds to provide medicinal cannabis to chronically ill patients.” Read more
  • The Associated Press: “The leader of the organization that sponsored the voter-approved Mississippi medical marijuana initiative that was recently blocked in court says the program should be changed and improved by the state Legislature—but not by too much.” Read more

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Third Time’s a Charm for Cannabis Consumption Lounges in Nevada

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After four years of setbacks, cannabis consumption lounges could finally be making their way to Nevada.

As previously reported by Cannabis Dispensary, consumption lounges showed promise as part of a Las Vegas ordinance back in 2017 and again in 2019, but due to setbacks and political debates from the rival gaming industry, the legislation never became a reality.

Now, the measure has a third chance at passing, and this time might be the charm.

Assembly Bill 341 cleared the lower chamber in a 29-12 vote on May 27 and passed the Senate in a 17-12 vote on May 31. The legislation now sits on Gov. Steve Sisolak’s desk, awaiting his signature.

The bill would provide the licensing and regulatory framework for cannabis consumption lounges in Nevada, paving the way for an unlimited number of lounges to open across the state.

Assemblyman Steve Yeager, the sponsor of the bill, told 3 News that there would be two models for the consumption lounges once the bill becomes a law (Sisolak is expected to sign the legislation, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.)

One model is designed for already existing dispensaries, stating that if the dispensary has the space to put a lounge adjacent to it, it is permitted to do so; however, dispensary operators can only have one lounge, no matter how many dispensary locations there are.

The second model is for independent consumption lounges and states that independent businesses can apply to open up a lounge to sell single-use cannabis products, the news outlet reported.

Yeager also said that there would be separate licenses for social equity applicants. These licenses will help increase diversity and create opportunities for individuals to enter the competitive industry, Nevada Dispensary Association Executive Director Layke Martin told 3News.

The legislation would also provide cannabis consumers with something that they have been waiting a long time for; a safe and legal place to consume cannabis outside of their homes, which was a significant reason in the push for consumption lounges to be legalized, Martin told 3 News.

Additionally, Nevada attracts many tourists each year, with nearly 40 million visiting Las Vegas annually (before the COVID-19 pandemic). The consumption lounges would essentially give tourists the option of consuming cannabis in a safe and legal place, rather than illegally in public or a hotel room, the news outlet reported.

In addition to consumers, Nevada cannabis companies have also been patiently waiting for consumption lounges to make their way to the state.

Bob Groesbeck, co-CEO of Planet 13, a vertically integrated cannabis company in Nevada, said the process to secure lounges in the state has been “long and difficult.”

“We are delighted that the Legislature recognized the critical need for these types of facilities that will provide tourists with the ability to legally use cannabis products in safe, regulated facilities like Planet 13,” Groesbeck said. “Our goal is simple: provide our customers with exceptional cannabis products in a world-class lounge/club setting.”

If Sisolak signs the bill into law, cities and lounges will begin to develop ordinances. The application to receive a license to operate a cannabis consumption lounge is expected to open in January or February 2022, with lounges likely opening mid-next year.

NSCP: Indoor Cannabis Growing Consumes 10% of Massachusetts’ Electricity

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If you scoop your fingers through layers of fresh, moist soil and look closely, you may notice the soil moves, crawls and even seems to breathe with life. There are more living organisms in a teaspoon of healthy soil than there are living people on Earth. Microbes, fungi, bacteria and insects are a few of the billions of hungry critters consuming and excreting their way through a living web of life within the soil. 

This is why some indoor cannabis growers are embracing organic living soil methods. Organic living soil allows a plant to easily access which essential nutrients it needs when it needs them. The microorganisms exchange nutrients and microlife with the plants, creating a symbiosis in the soil that will continue perpetually. Growers mimic this natural balance indoors using a base soil and adding amendments and inoculants filled with fungi, bacteria, beneficial insects and other microlife. Healthy, balanced soil will make available all of the nutrients necessary for an eager, hungry hemp seed while keeping pests and disease at bay without the use of harsh pesticides or herbicides.

Take advantage of the below tips at your indoor growing facility so you can ensure your living soil will continue to give back to your cannabis plants day after day, week after week, and season after season.  

Tip 1: Get a Base

The first step to maintaining a healthy living soil according to Chris Teeters, director of cultivation at Harbor Farmz in Michigan, is to have a good base. He’s not just talking about base soil, but also a base of knowledge and experience about growing organically. Take some time to understand the systems of microbes that are responsible for keeping the soil alive and nutrient-dense for your plant, called the soil food web.  

“Learn how to create a good base soil. Read about it, find a recipe that will work for you,” Teeters said. Research is important, as living soil can be a scientific process. But learning through experience is just as important as reading up. “Don’t get too wrapped up in, what I call, ‘analysis paralysis,’” he said. “A lot of people will get stuck on what they’re reading and what’s going on in their head that they forget to just learn through application and observation.”

Base Soil

Base soil is the foundation of your living soil. You can buy premixed recipes of living soil online, but Teeters recommends finding a local compost or soil business where you can see and touch the soil. They will also have a good understanding of soil mixes that will work well in your local environment. Most living soil recipes are a combination of peat, aeration (like pumice) and compost. 

Consider using a cover crop or mulch (such as shredded hemp stalk and defoliated plant leaves) which will help retain moisture and capture excess nutrients in the soil.

Tip 2: Start With a Healthy Plant 

A healthy soil that is mixed, fed and watered to perfection will mean very little if the plant you place into the soil is riddled with disease or a devastating stowaway pest. 

Unless you are taking cuts or clones from your healthy plants, it’s best to start from seed, said Jeremy Silva, owner of BuildASoil, a custom organic soil and fertilizer company in Colorado. “There are problems you just can’t see until you get more experienced. Even then, you’re going to have some that slip through the radar, and you have to determine if it’s worth it, and that should be based on experience,” Silva said.

If you find that you have unwanted pests in your soil, predatory mites and other beneficial insects that reside in living soil can be helpful. Teeters recommends using heavily fermented plant extracts like comfrey and pumpkin, or diatomaceous earth, a pesticide made from fossilized remains of tiny, aquatic organisms, to help with pest problems. If pest pressure is high, a root drench using Karanja cake can be used. 

Tip 3: Balance and Feed the Soil With Amendments and Inoculants

Just like in nature, your living soil will need a balance of macro and micronutrients to keep the plant thriving throughout its life cycle. Maintaining this balance in your living soil is largely determined by two things: amendments and inoculants. 

Soil amendments are the compost, manure or mulch that enhance the soil’s physical properties such as pH or texture. Inoculants are materials used to increase the level of microbes in your soil. Inoculants like fungi and bacteria promote root growth and break down the amendments, which in turn, feeds the plants. 

When to Amend

How often you amend your soil will depend on the environment you are growing in. Teeters oversees a large-scale operation at Harbor Farmz that creates the optimal environmental conditions for its plants, so he and his team amends every 10 days. “Every room is under a parameter control system. I’m running these plants at the highest temperatures and highest humidity levels possible … that they can handle during certain periods of their growth cycle to maximize growth,” Teeters said. “The soil does require amending and put in a faster regime than a home grow because of the science behind what we’re doing here.”

For home growers growing with varying temperature and humidity, Teeters recommends amending at the one-month mark after planting and once more before harvest. 

Pro tip: Validate your amendments if possible, especially if you are buying them online. You’ll want to review the Certificate of Analysis (CoA) to make sure you are OK with the level of heavy metals or potential of pesticides, which can affect the quality of your cannabis. 

Tea Time: Applying Amendments and Inoculants With Compost Teas and Seed Sprout Teas

Compost teas and seed sprout teas are both ways to apply amendments and inoculants that contain important fungi and bacteria to reamend the plants throughout their growth.

To create a compost tea, Teeters uses a large water reservoir fitted with a pump. He then adds worm castings, kale, alfalfa meal, feather meal, bone meal, nettles, comfrey and other organic amendments that contain calcium, magnesium, boron, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium—all the macro and micronutrients necessary to grow plants. The water is agitated, oxygen is added and once the tea is brewed, it is mixed into the organic living soil. “We utilize those teas because they are living. We brew them to a point where they’re full of oxygen and microbes and bacteria,” Teeters said. “So we utilize those compost teas to maintain a balance of life and nutrition in the soil.”

Sprout teas are created by soaking seeds, such as hemp or barley grass, in a container of water until they germinate. The seed-and-water mixture is blended into a concentrate which can be added to your water then dispersed to your plants during watering. 

Tip 4: Create a Watering Routine

Watering your plants is 20% of the process of maintaining living soil which can cause 80% of the issues if not done properly. BuildASoil recommends a watering formula of 5%-10% of the soil volume. If you have a small container with large plants, you’ll need to water daily. If you have a larger raised bed with smaller plants, you’ll only need to water about once a week. The temperature and humidity in your environment will also play a large role in watering your plants. “Think of soil moisture on a scale of 1-10. One being bone dry and 10 being muddy wet. We want to operate in the 3-7 range all day long, day in and day out,” recommends BuildASoil’s blog, “You can do this by calibrating automatic watering systems or by hand watering with a little intelligent thought.” 

Tip 5: Set it and Forget it  

Once you’ve created a balanced web of life in your soil, resist the urge to till or disturb it. The whole goal of living soil, according to Teeters, is to get your soil balanced so that you can “set it and forget it.” 

“You want your soil to be settled in. That allows for the soil food web to start to generate itself and keep a balance and take off,” Teeters said. “There’s so many little microbes, bacteria, enzymes and fungi in the soil. By putting your hand in and mixing it up, you actually are destroying and disturbing that sensitive balance, even in the top layers of your soil.”

Apply and Observe

The food web you create in your living soil may do better with certain amendments, something growers have to learn through experience. “It’s OK to just try something, it’s OK to put some extra alfalfa meal in one of your batches or don’t put any alfalfa meal in a batch and use kale instead, and then add an additional amount of castings to your initial soil,” Teeters said. “You’re going to learn through practicality. You’re going to learn the most through application and observation when it comes to the actual gardening.” 

Using organic living soil in your indoor cannabis growing facility is a sustainable, low-waste growing method, as well as a beautiful example of how scientific application and Mother Nature can work together. This balance creates a mutually beneficial web of life that can create smooth, high-quality cannabis that some growers, like Teeters, believe is a difference you can taste. 

 

Cannabis Stocks Continue Surge in Wake of Amazon Statement

by

If you scoop your fingers through layers of fresh, moist soil and look closely, you may notice the soil moves, crawls and even seems to breathe with life. There are more living organisms in a teaspoon of healthy soil than there are living people on Earth. Microbes, fungi, bacteria and insects are a few of the billions of hungry critters consuming and excreting their way through a living web of life within the soil. 

This is why some indoor cannabis growers are embracing organic living soil methods. Organic living soil allows a plant to easily access which essential nutrients it needs when it needs them. The microorganisms exchange nutrients and microlife with the plants, creating a symbiosis in the soil that will continue perpetually. Growers mimic this natural balance indoors using a base soil and adding amendments and inoculants filled with fungi, bacteria, beneficial insects and other microlife. Healthy, balanced soil will make available all of the nutrients necessary for an eager, hungry hemp seed while keeping pests and disease at bay without the use of harsh pesticides or herbicides.

Take advantage of the below tips at your indoor growing facility so you can ensure your living soil will continue to give back to your cannabis plants day after day, week after week, and season after season.  

Tip 1: Get a Base

The first step to maintaining a healthy living soil according to Chris Teeters, director of cultivation at Harbor Farmz in Michigan, is to have a good base. He’s not just talking about base soil, but also a base of knowledge and experience about growing organically. Take some time to understand the systems of microbes that are responsible for keeping the soil alive and nutrient-dense for your plant, called the soil food web.  

“Learn how to create a good base soil. Read about it, find a recipe that will work for you,” Teeters said. Research is important, as living soil can be a scientific process. But learning through experience is just as important as reading up. “Don’t get too wrapped up in, what I call, ‘analysis paralysis,’” he said. “A lot of people will get stuck on what they’re reading and what’s going on in their head that they forget to just learn through application and observation.”

Base Soil

Base soil is the foundation of your living soil. You can buy premixed recipes of living soil online, but Teeters recommends finding a local compost or soil business where you can see and touch the soil. They will also have a good understanding of soil mixes that will work well in your local environment. Most living soil recipes are a combination of peat, aeration (like pumice) and compost. 

Consider using a cover crop or mulch (such as shredded hemp stalk and defoliated plant leaves) which will help retain moisture and capture excess nutrients in the soil.

Tip 2: Start With a Healthy Plant 

A healthy soil that is mixed, fed and watered to perfection will mean very little if the plant you place into the soil is riddled with disease or a devastating stowaway pest. 

Unless you are taking cuts or clones from your healthy plants, it’s best to start from seed, said Jeremy Silva, owner of BuildASoil, a custom organic soil and fertilizer company in Colorado. “There are problems you just can’t see until you get more experienced. Even then, you’re going to have some that slip through the radar, and you have to determine if it’s worth it, and that should be based on experience,” Silva said.

If you find that you have unwanted pests in your soil, predatory mites and other beneficial insects that reside in living soil can be helpful. Teeters recommends using heavily fermented plant extracts like comfrey and pumpkin, or diatomaceous earth, a pesticide made from fossilized remains of tiny, aquatic organisms, to help with pest problems. If pest pressure is high, a root drench using Karanja cake can be used. 

Tip 3: Balance and Feed the Soil With Amendments and Inoculants

Just like in nature, your living soil will need a balance of macro and micronutrients to keep the plant thriving throughout its life cycle. Maintaining this balance in your living soil is largely determined by two things: amendments and inoculants. 

Soil amendments are the compost, manure or mulch that enhance the soil’s physical properties such as pH or texture. Inoculants are materials used to increase the level of microbes in your soil. Inoculants like fungi and bacteria promote root growth and break down the amendments, which in turn, feeds the plants. 

When to Amend

How often you amend your soil will depend on the environment you are growing in. Teeters oversees a large-scale operation at Harbor Farmz that creates the optimal environmental conditions for its plants, so he and his team amends every 10 days. “Every room is under a parameter control system. I’m running these plants at the highest temperatures and highest humidity levels possible … that they can handle during certain periods of their growth cycle to maximize growth,” Teeters said. “The soil does require amending and put in a faster regime than a home grow because of the science behind what we’re doing here.”

For home growers growing with varying temperature and humidity, Teeters recommends amending at the one-month mark after planting and once more before harvest. 

Pro tip: Validate your amendments if possible, especially if you are buying them online. You’ll want to review the Certificate of Analysis (CoA) to make sure you are OK with the level of heavy metals or potential of pesticides, which can affect the quality of your cannabis. 

Tea Time: Applying Amendments and Inoculants With Compost Teas and Seed Sprout Teas

Compost teas and seed sprout teas are both ways to apply amendments and inoculants that contain important fungi and bacteria to reamend the plants throughout their growth.

To create a compost tea, Teeters uses a large water reservoir fitted with a pump. He then adds worm castings, kale, alfalfa meal, feather meal, bone meal, nettles, comfrey and other organic amendments that contain calcium, magnesium, boron, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium—all the macro and micronutrients necessary to grow plants. The water is agitated, oxygen is added and once the tea is brewed, it is mixed into the organic living soil. “We utilize those teas because they are living. We brew them to a point where they’re full of oxygen and microbes and bacteria,” Teeters said. “So we utilize those compost teas to maintain a balance of life and nutrition in the soil.”

Sprout teas are created by soaking seeds, such as hemp or barley grass, in a container of water until they germinate. The seed-and-water mixture is blended into a concentrate which can be added to your water then dispersed to your plants during watering. 

Tip 4: Create a Watering Routine

Watering your plants is 20% of the process of maintaining living soil which can cause 80% of the issues if not done properly. BuildASoil recommends a watering formula of 5%-10% of the soil volume. If you have a small container with large plants, you’ll need to water daily. If you have a larger raised bed with smaller plants, you’ll only need to water about once a week. The temperature and humidity in your environment will also play a large role in watering your plants. “Think of soil moisture on a scale of 1-10. One being bone dry and 10 being muddy wet. We want to operate in the 3-7 range all day long, day in and day out,” recommends BuildASoil’s blog, “You can do this by calibrating automatic watering systems or by hand watering with a little intelligent thought.” 

Tip 5: Set it and Forget it  

Once you’ve created a balanced web of life in your soil, resist the urge to till or disturb it. The whole goal of living soil, according to Teeters, is to get your soil balanced so that you can “set it and forget it.” 

“You want your soil to be settled in. That allows for the soil food web to start to generate itself and keep a balance and take off,” Teeters said. “There’s so many little microbes, bacteria, enzymes and fungi in the soil. By putting your hand in and mixing it up, you actually are destroying and disturbing that sensitive balance, even in the top layers of your soil.”

Apply and Observe

The food web you create in your living soil may do better with certain amendments, something growers have to learn through experience. “It’s OK to just try something, it’s OK to put some extra alfalfa meal in one of your batches or don’t put any alfalfa meal in a batch and use kale instead, and then add an additional amount of castings to your initial soil,” Teeters said. “You’re going to learn through practicality. You’re going to learn the most through application and observation when it comes to the actual gardening.” 

Using organic living soil in your indoor cannabis growing facility is a sustainable, low-waste growing method, as well as a beautiful example of how scientific application and Mother Nature can work together. This balance creates a mutually beneficial web of life that can create smooth, high-quality cannabis that some growers, like Teeters, believe is a difference you can taste. 

 

Amazon To Eliminate Marijuana Testing, Supports MORE Act

by

If you scoop your fingers through layers of fresh, moist soil and look closely, you may notice the soil moves, crawls and even seems to breathe with life. There are more living organisms in a teaspoon of healthy soil than there are living people on Earth. Microbes, fungi, bacteria and insects are a few of the billions of hungry critters consuming and excreting their way through a living web of life within the soil. 

This is why some indoor cannabis growers are embracing organic living soil methods. Organic living soil allows a plant to easily access which essential nutrients it needs when it needs them. The microorganisms exchange nutrients and microlife with the plants, creating a symbiosis in the soil that will continue perpetually. Growers mimic this natural balance indoors using a base soil and adding amendments and inoculants filled with fungi, bacteria, beneficial insects and other microlife. Healthy, balanced soil will make available all of the nutrients necessary for an eager, hungry hemp seed while keeping pests and disease at bay without the use of harsh pesticides or herbicides.

Take advantage of the below tips at your indoor growing facility so you can ensure your living soil will continue to give back to your cannabis plants day after day, week after week, and season after season.  

Tip 1: Get a Base

The first step to maintaining a healthy living soil according to Chris Teeters, director of cultivation at Harbor Farmz in Michigan, is to have a good base. He’s not just talking about base soil, but also a base of knowledge and experience about growing organically. Take some time to understand the systems of microbes that are responsible for keeping the soil alive and nutrient-dense for your plant, called the soil food web.  

“Learn how to create a good base soil. Read about it, find a recipe that will work for you,” Teeters said. Research is important, as living soil can be a scientific process. But learning through experience is just as important as reading up. “Don’t get too wrapped up in, what I call, ‘analysis paralysis,’” he said. “A lot of people will get stuck on what they’re reading and what’s going on in their head that they forget to just learn through application and observation.”

Base Soil

Base soil is the foundation of your living soil. You can buy premixed recipes of living soil online, but Teeters recommends finding a local compost or soil business where you can see and touch the soil. They will also have a good understanding of soil mixes that will work well in your local environment. Most living soil recipes are a combination of peat, aeration (like pumice) and compost. 

Consider using a cover crop or mulch (such as shredded hemp stalk and defoliated plant leaves) which will help retain moisture and capture excess nutrients in the soil.

Tip 2: Start With a Healthy Plant 

A healthy soil that is mixed, fed and watered to perfection will mean very little if the plant you place into the soil is riddled with disease or a devastating stowaway pest. 

Unless you are taking cuts or clones from your healthy plants, it’s best to start from seed, said Jeremy Silva, owner of BuildASoil, a custom organic soil and fertilizer company in Colorado. “There are problems you just can’t see until you get more experienced. Even then, you’re going to have some that slip through the radar, and you have to determine if it’s worth it, and that should be based on experience,” Silva said.

If you find that you have unwanted pests in your soil, predatory mites and other beneficial insects that reside in living soil can be helpful. Teeters recommends using heavily fermented plant extracts like comfrey and pumpkin, or diatomaceous earth, a pesticide made from fossilized remains of tiny, aquatic organisms, to help with pest problems. If pest pressure is high, a root drench using Karanja cake can be used. 

Tip 3: Balance and Feed the Soil With Amendments and Inoculants

Just like in nature, your living soil will need a balance of macro and micronutrients to keep the plant thriving throughout its life cycle. Maintaining this balance in your living soil is largely determined by two things: amendments and inoculants. 

Soil amendments are the compost, manure or mulch that enhance the soil’s physical properties such as pH or texture. Inoculants are materials used to increase the level of microbes in your soil. Inoculants like fungi and bacteria promote root growth and break down the amendments, which in turn, feeds the plants. 

When to Amend

How often you amend your soil will depend on the environment you are growing in. Teeters oversees a large-scale operation at Harbor Farmz that creates the optimal environmental conditions for its plants, so he and his team amends every 10 days. “Every room is under a parameter control system. I’m running these plants at the highest temperatures and highest humidity levels possible … that they can handle during certain periods of their growth cycle to maximize growth,” Teeters said. “The soil does require amending and put in a faster regime than a home grow because of the science behind what we’re doing here.”

For home growers growing with varying temperature and humidity, Teeters recommends amending at the one-month mark after planting and once more before harvest. 

Pro tip: Validate your amendments if possible, especially if you are buying them online. You’ll want to review the Certificate of Analysis (CoA) to make sure you are OK with the level of heavy metals or potential of pesticides, which can affect the quality of your cannabis. 

Tea Time: Applying Amendments and Inoculants With Compost Teas and Seed Sprout Teas

Compost teas and seed sprout teas are both ways to apply amendments and inoculants that contain important fungi and bacteria to reamend the plants throughout their growth.

To create a compost tea, Teeters uses a large water reservoir fitted with a pump. He then adds worm castings, kale, alfalfa meal, feather meal, bone meal, nettles, comfrey and other organic amendments that contain calcium, magnesium, boron, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium—all the macro and micronutrients necessary to grow plants. The water is agitated, oxygen is added and once the tea is brewed, it is mixed into the organic living soil. “We utilize those teas because they are living. We brew them to a point where they’re full of oxygen and microbes and bacteria,” Teeters said. “So we utilize those compost teas to maintain a balance of life and nutrition in the soil.”

Sprout teas are created by soaking seeds, such as hemp or barley grass, in a container of water until they germinate. The seed-and-water mixture is blended into a concentrate which can be added to your water then dispersed to your plants during watering. 

Tip 4: Create a Watering Routine

Watering your plants is 20% of the process of maintaining living soil which can cause 80% of the issues if not done properly. BuildASoil recommends a watering formula of 5%-10% of the soil volume. If you have a small container with large plants, you’ll need to water daily. If you have a larger raised bed with smaller plants, you’ll only need to water about once a week. The temperature and humidity in your environment will also play a large role in watering your plants. “Think of soil moisture on a scale of 1-10. One being bone dry and 10 being muddy wet. We want to operate in the 3-7 range all day long, day in and day out,” recommends BuildASoil’s blog, “You can do this by calibrating automatic watering systems or by hand watering with a little intelligent thought.” 

Tip 5: Set it and Forget it  

Once you’ve created a balanced web of life in your soil, resist the urge to till or disturb it. The whole goal of living soil, according to Teeters, is to get your soil balanced so that you can “set it and forget it.” 

“You want your soil to be settled in. That allows for the soil food web to start to generate itself and keep a balance and take off,” Teeters said. “There’s so many little microbes, bacteria, enzymes and fungi in the soil. By putting your hand in and mixing it up, you actually are destroying and disturbing that sensitive balance, even in the top layers of your soil.”

Apply and Observe

The food web you create in your living soil may do better with certain amendments, something growers have to learn through experience. “It’s OK to just try something, it’s OK to put some extra alfalfa meal in one of your batches or don’t put any alfalfa meal in a batch and use kale instead, and then add an additional amount of castings to your initial soil,” Teeters said. “You’re going to learn through practicality. You’re going to learn the most through application and observation when it comes to the actual gardening.” 

Using organic living soil in your indoor cannabis growing facility is a sustainable, low-waste growing method, as well as a beautiful example of how scientific application and Mother Nature can work together. This balance creates a mutually beneficial web of life that can create smooth, high-quality cannabis that some growers, like Teeters, believe is a difference you can taste. 

 

Dramm Offers Larger Injection Carts With Agitation for Dosatron Injectors

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If you scoop your fingers through layers of fresh, moist soil and look closely, you may notice the soil moves, crawls and even seems to breathe with life. There are more living organisms in a teaspoon of healthy soil than there are living people on Earth. Microbes, fungi, bacteria and insects are a few of the billions of hungry critters consuming and excreting their way through a living web of life within the soil. 

This is why some indoor cannabis growers are embracing organic living soil methods. Organic living soil allows a plant to easily access which essential nutrients it needs when it needs them. The microorganisms exchange nutrients and microlife with the plants, creating a symbiosis in the soil that will continue perpetually. Growers mimic this natural balance indoors using a base soil and adding amendments and inoculants filled with fungi, bacteria, beneficial insects and other microlife. Healthy, balanced soil will make available all of the nutrients necessary for an eager, hungry hemp seed while keeping pests and disease at bay without the use of harsh pesticides or herbicides.

Take advantage of the below tips at your indoor growing facility so you can ensure your living soil will continue to give back to your cannabis plants day after day, week after week, and season after season.  

Tip 1: Get a Base

The first step to maintaining a healthy living soil according to Chris Teeters, director of cultivation at Harbor Farmz in Michigan, is to have a good base. He’s not just talking about base soil, but also a base of knowledge and experience about growing organically. Take some time to understand the systems of microbes that are responsible for keeping the soil alive and nutrient-dense for your plant, called the soil food web.  

“Learn how to create a good base soil. Read about it, find a recipe that will work for you,” Teeters said. Research is important, as living soil can be a scientific process. But learning through experience is just as important as reading up. “Don’t get too wrapped up in, what I call, ‘analysis paralysis,’” he said. “A lot of people will get stuck on what they’re reading and what’s going on in their head that they forget to just learn through application and observation.”

Base Soil

Base soil is the foundation of your living soil. You can buy premixed recipes of living soil online, but Teeters recommends finding a local compost or soil business where you can see and touch the soil. They will also have a good understanding of soil mixes that will work well in your local environment. Most living soil recipes are a combination of peat, aeration (like pumice) and compost. 

Consider using a cover crop or mulch (such as shredded hemp stalk and defoliated plant leaves) which will help retain moisture and capture excess nutrients in the soil.

Tip 2: Start With a Healthy Plant 

A healthy soil that is mixed, fed and watered to perfection will mean very little if the plant you place into the soil is riddled with disease or a devastating stowaway pest. 

Unless you are taking cuts or clones from your healthy plants, it’s best to start from seed, said Jeremy Silva, owner of BuildASoil, a custom organic soil and fertilizer company in Colorado. “There are problems you just can’t see until you get more experienced. Even then, you’re going to have some that slip through the radar, and you have to determine if it’s worth it, and that should be based on experience,” Silva said.

If you find that you have unwanted pests in your soil, predatory mites and other beneficial insects that reside in living soil can be helpful. Teeters recommends using heavily fermented plant extracts like comfrey and pumpkin, or diatomaceous earth, a pesticide made from fossilized remains of tiny, aquatic organisms, to help with pest problems. If pest pressure is high, a root drench using Karanja cake can be used. 

Tip 3: Balance and Feed the Soil With Amendments and Inoculants

Just like in nature, your living soil will need a balance of macro and micronutrients to keep the plant thriving throughout its life cycle. Maintaining this balance in your living soil is largely determined by two things: amendments and inoculants. 

Soil amendments are the compost, manure or mulch that enhance the soil’s physical properties such as pH or texture. Inoculants are materials used to increase the level of microbes in your soil. Inoculants like fungi and bacteria promote root growth and break down the amendments, which in turn, feeds the plants. 

When to Amend

How often you amend your soil will depend on the environment you are growing in. Teeters oversees a large-scale operation at Harbor Farmz that creates the optimal environmental conditions for its plants, so he and his team amends every 10 days. “Every room is under a parameter control system. I’m running these plants at the highest temperatures and highest humidity levels possible … that they can handle during certain periods of their growth cycle to maximize growth,” Teeters said. “The soil does require amending and put in a faster regime than a home grow because of the science behind what we’re doing here.”

For home growers growing with varying temperature and humidity, Teeters recommends amending at the one-month mark after planting and once more before harvest. 

Pro tip: Validate your amendments if possible, especially if you are buying them online. You’ll want to review the Certificate of Analysis (CoA) to make sure you are OK with the level of heavy metals or potential of pesticides, which can affect the quality of your cannabis. 

Tea Time: Applying Amendments and Inoculants With Compost Teas and Seed Sprout Teas

Compost teas and seed sprout teas are both ways to apply amendments and inoculants that contain important fungi and bacteria to reamend the plants throughout their growth.

To create a compost tea, Teeters uses a large water reservoir fitted with a pump. He then adds worm castings, kale, alfalfa meal, feather meal, bone meal, nettles, comfrey and other organic amendments that contain calcium, magnesium, boron, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium—all the macro and micronutrients necessary to grow plants. The water is agitated, oxygen is added and once the tea is brewed, it is mixed into the organic living soil. “We utilize those teas because they are living. We brew them to a point where they’re full of oxygen and microbes and bacteria,” Teeters said. “So we utilize those compost teas to maintain a balance of life and nutrition in the soil.”

Sprout teas are created by soaking seeds, such as hemp or barley grass, in a container of water until they germinate. The seed-and-water mixture is blended into a concentrate which can be added to your water then dispersed to your plants during watering. 

Tip 4: Create a Watering Routine

Watering your plants is 20% of the process of maintaining living soil which can cause 80% of the issues if not done properly. BuildASoil recommends a watering formula of 5%-10% of the soil volume. If you have a small container with large plants, you’ll need to water daily. If you have a larger raised bed with smaller plants, you’ll only need to water about once a week. The temperature and humidity in your environment will also play a large role in watering your plants. “Think of soil moisture on a scale of 1-10. One being bone dry and 10 being muddy wet. We want to operate in the 3-7 range all day long, day in and day out,” recommends BuildASoil’s blog, “You can do this by calibrating automatic watering systems or by hand watering with a little intelligent thought.” 

Tip 5: Set it and Forget it  

Once you’ve created a balanced web of life in your soil, resist the urge to till or disturb it. The whole goal of living soil, according to Teeters, is to get your soil balanced so that you can “set it and forget it.” 

“You want your soil to be settled in. That allows for the soil food web to start to generate itself and keep a balance and take off,” Teeters said. “There’s so many little microbes, bacteria, enzymes and fungi in the soil. By putting your hand in and mixing it up, you actually are destroying and disturbing that sensitive balance, even in the top layers of your soil.”

Apply and Observe

The food web you create in your living soil may do better with certain amendments, something growers have to learn through experience. “It’s OK to just try something, it’s OK to put some extra alfalfa meal in one of your batches or don’t put any alfalfa meal in a batch and use kale instead, and then add an additional amount of castings to your initial soil,” Teeters said. “You’re going to learn through practicality. You’re going to learn the most through application and observation when it comes to the actual gardening.” 

Using organic living soil in your indoor cannabis growing facility is a sustainable, low-waste growing method, as well as a beautiful example of how scientific application and Mother Nature can work together. This balance creates a mutually beneficial web of life that can create smooth, high-quality cannabis that some growers, like Teeters, believe is a difference you can taste. 

 

Amazon Now Backs Federal Legalization

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Amazon’s Senior Vice President of worldwide operations, Dave Clark, wrote a blog post yesterday that is making headlines in the cannabis community. Clark’s blog announced a couple of major changes coming to the company’s operations.

Clark first touted changes to their “Time off Task” policy, a way to measure employee’s time spent logged in to company software. The changes basically boil down to averaging over a longer period of time to better gauge how employees spend their time.

Dave Clark, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Operations & Worldwide Consumer CEO

The second company policy change is why the blog post made headlines in the cannabis community. Clark says in the blog that Amazon will adjust its drug testing policy and no longer test for cannabis use in their drug screening program. “We will no longer include marijuana in our comprehensive drug screening program for any positions not regulated by the Department of Transportation, and will instead treat it the same as alcohol use,” says Clark.

The new drug testing policy change is big news for such a large and influential employer to make the shift in the United States, where surely other companies will follow. But even more influential is their backing of federal legalization. “And because we know that this issue is bigger than Amazon, our public policy team will be actively supporting The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2021 (MORE Act)—federal legislation that would legalize marijuana at the federal level, expunge criminal records, and invest in impacted communities,” says Clark. “We hope that other employers will join us, and that policymakers will act swiftly to pass this law.”

Given Amazon’s extremely large influence in American business and policy, the company backing federal legalization is sure to lead other large companies down a similar path. The show of support for the MORE Act represents the growing normalization of cannabis use and brings us another step closer to federal legalization.

Mark Your Calendars: The Cannabis Extraction Virtual Conference

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On June 29, 2021, Cannabis Industry Journal is hosting the Cannabis Extraction Virtual Conference. From Noon to 5 pm EST, you’ll get access to five veterans of the extraction market discussing a variety of topics related to the ins and outs of extracting cannabis and hemp.

Hear from subject matter experts who will share their perspectives on cannabis and hemp extraction, supercritical CO2 extraction, post-processing, risk management, hazards and controls, optimization, closed loop hydrocarbon extraction, machine learning algorithms and more.

Alex Hearding, Chief Risk Management Officer at the National Cannabis Risk Management Association (NCRMA) will kick things off with a session exploring the Hazards and Controls of Extraction with Liquified Petroleum Gases. Dr. Markus Roggen, Founder & CEO of Complex Biotech Discovery Ventures, will follow that up with a discussion surrounding the kinetics and thermodynamics of cannabis extraction.

Other talks from the Cannabis Extraction Virtual Conference include:

  • The Quest to Discover the Limnits of CO2 Extraction
    • Jeremy Deihl, co-founder & CTO of Green Mill Supercritical
  • The Future of Cannabis Concentrates: Developments in Hydrocarbon Extraction and Manufacturing
    • Michelle Sprawls, Laboratory Director at CULTA
  • Process Scale Up in the Cannabis/Hemp Industry
    • Darwin Millard, Committee ViceChair on ASTM International’s D37.04 on Processing & Handling of Cannabis

You can check out the agenda in its entirety and register here. Attendees will have the opportunity to ask speakers questions during the live Q&A session that follows each session. Registration is complimentary. For sponsorship opportunities, contact RJ Palermo at Rj@innovativepublishing.net

CU Boulder, Charlotte’s Web Begin Sleep & Anxiety Studies

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Charlotte’s Web Holdings announced a new collaboration with the University of Colorado-Boulder and their Research and Education Addressing Cannabis and Health (REACH) Center. The University’s REACH Center will conduct a preclinical study on how hemp oil can influence sleep quality and anxiety.

Charlotte’s Web and University of Colorado-Boulder Collaborative Study to Assess CBD and CBN’s Potential to Support Improved Sleep (CNW Group/Charlotte’s Web Holdings, Inc.)

The study will use Charlotte’s Web hemp products, including their full spectrum hemp formulations containing CBN, CBD and less than 0.3% THC. Monika Fleshner, PhD, Professor of Integrative Physiology and member of the Center for Neuroscience at the University of Colorado, will be the project lead and will conduct the study in her Stress Physiology Laboratory. “There is a great need for properly controlled experimental studies that are designed to test the potential neural and physiological impacts of hemp derived phytocannabinoids,” says Dr. Fleshner. “With support from CU REACH and Charlotte’s Web, our research will explore both the efficacy and mechanisms of how these substances can affect complex brain-mediated behavior, such as disturbed sleep.”

Tim Orr, senior vice president of Charlotte’s Web and president of its CW Labs division, is currently working on more than twelve scientific research studies with the company. “Charlotte’s Web is committed to advancing science on the benefits and safety of CBD and other hemp phytocannabinoids through rigorous scientific investigations such as this sleep and anxiety study,” says Orr. “We’re honored to team up with CU’s REACH Center to explore the potential impacts of full-spectrum hemp extract with CBD and CBN on anxiety and sleep quality.”

Long term, Charlotte’s Web expects this study will help build the foundation for future clinical studies to “better understand how specific ratios of cannabinoids and different delivery formats are effective at supporting improved sleep quality and instilling healthier sleep architecture in humans,” reads the press release.