Powell Butte, OR
While planting typically makes us think of spring—it actually begins each fall, when the male plants we cultivate produce millions of seeds that we collect and save. In 2023, our males produced 2.7 million seeds.
The seeds are placed in our freezers to mature—a process called “stratification”. This mimics the natural process that seeds experience when growing in the wild. The prolonged cold helps to jump start the germination process the following spring when it’s placed in warm soil.
Our plant team in Powell Butte carefully monitors the projected frost dates, seasonal weather patterns, and soil conditions to know when the time is right. Usually sometime in April, the seeds are placed in trays and planting season is underway.
The trays are placed in our greenhouses for two weeks where we carefully control light, humidity, and temperature to help coax the seeds into germination. We have close to 14,000 square feet of greenhouse space to house our germinating seeds.
After a week, the trays are filled with little seedlings.
After two weeks the plants are a few inches tall and have developed their true leaves. These leaves are larger and have the characteristic shape of the cannabis plant. These will grow and develop into the plant’s actual leaves, while the cotyledons (first leaves) will die off, having done their job of getting the plant through germination and initial growth.
After two weeks, our team can start the hardening off process. Because the plants were raised indoors, they’ll need gradual acclimation to the elements so they can thrive when planted in our fields.
This starts in our hoop houses, which are like greenhouses with open sides to allow airflow. During cold spring evenings, the sides can be rolled down until the plants are ready to withstand the extreme change of temperatures that can occur in the high desert of Central Oregon.
In the final weeks, we’ll move plants to loosely covered shade structures to ensure the young plants are fully prepared for the long, hot days and cool nights.
As one can imagine, moving thousands of plant trays so many times is one of the more time consuming parts of the planting process, but it’s a crucial step the plant team must take to make sure each plant can survive and thrive.
During this time, the field team is working long hours to ensure that all the fields are ready for new plants. They check soil nutrients, and lay down irrigation under plastic row covers. This enables us to use less water and keep plant roots protected to ensure better yields. With the row covers, our water usage is incredibly efficient — we end up using about one tenth of our allocated water every year.
After five weeks, when soil temperatures in our fields are high enough—we truck all of our trays to our prepped fields, and begin loading up our Water Wheel Planter. We try and get all of our starts in the field as quickly as possible, to ensure a long growing season and make sure the plants are well established to withstand temperatures that can climb up above 100F in late June and early July.
The planter uses a large spiked wheel beneath the trailer to punch holes through the plastic, while simultaneously dripping water and nutrients into the new hole. A team of planters sits on the back of the planter and alternates plunging a hemp plant into each hole.
The plants, also referred to as starts, have enough initial nutrients and water to stay moist, and then the roots begin taking hold in the soil. Generally it takes about a month for us to outplant all of the plants across 317 acres.
Once the plants have taken hold, it’s all about monitoring them continuously, irrigating and fertilizing the right amounts, and waiting for the next big push — Harvest.
Over the course of the summer, these plants will grow as tall as 8 feet. We take careful note of which strains do well in which fields, so we can improve our yields the following year.