Pubdate: Sun, 29 Jun 2014
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Copyright: 2014 The Seattle Times Company
Contact:  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/409
Author: Bob Young
Page: B1

BEFORE POT YIELD OF THEIR DREAMS, CONSTANT CARE FOR FICKLE PLANTS

Seattle Startup

The Partners in Sodo's Auricag, Among the First 76 Licensed Growers 
in the State, Are Finding It's Not Easy Cultivating Marijuana on an 
Industrial Scale.

Editor's note: This is the second story in a seed-to-sale series 
focusing on one pot-growing operation in Seattle as owners take their 
historic product from seedling to retail-store shelf.

A marijuana grow room in Sodo blazes from a dozen 1,000-watt bulbs. 
The light is so intense that Mark Arnold, assistant grower for 
pioneering pot producer AuricAG, wears blue-tinted lenses to cut the glare.

Surveying the tall plants - made happy, Arnold believes, by his own 
positive attitude - he beamed: "Who says money doesn't grow on trees?"

If all goes according to plan, AuricAG could fetch $2 million a year 
for its products.

But it's not easy cultivating high-quality pot on an industrial 
scale. "It's remarkably hard to do consistently," Arnold said.

It's even harder when you're a do-it-yourself operation, like 
AuricAG. Converting a Seattle warehouse, last used for car repairs, 
into an indoor pot farm is far from the plug-and-play automated 
facilities whose probes and nutrient systems nurse pot plants like 
electric nannies.

Throw in AuricAG's ongoing build-out and fraught female plants - 
tricked into hypergrowth by artificial light - and you've got 
challenges. "This is when I go home and pray every night things are 
going to work out," said master grower Steve Elliott, after AuricAG's 
electrical system recently misfired and its air conditioning misbehaved.

The company, among the first 76 licensed growers in the state so far, 
had hoped to have its product in the initial wave of stores expected 
to open July 8. Now the team of middle-aged local guys is resigned to 
late July.

Elliott wanted to slow down and get everything working as desired. 
"People don't understand what a volatile crop it is," he said. "One 
wrong move, and you lose your room. It's hard to explain to business 
people. They say you're just losing money."

Mark Greenshields, president of AuricAG, thought Elliott was overly 
concerned. "What it's really about is plant perfectionists," 
Greenshields said, referring to temperatures in growing rooms "just a 
little outside the perfect zone" of 75 degrees.

There's not much choice but to defer to Elliott. He is like a lead 
singer in a band, Greenshields said. His talent demands that he calls 
certain shots when it comes to the plants he calls his "girls."

"You have to roll with things like this," said sales director Joby Sewell.

And, AuricAG's delay isn't devastating.

Retailers are scrambling for contracts with producers who can put pot 
on store shelves. They'll need product in August as well as July. 
"Just about every retailer wants to lock us down," Greenshields said.

State officials are expecting supply - which can only come from 
licensed producers - to be scarce at first, driving prices upward. 
Some growers are seeking up to $5,000 a pound, Greenshields said, 
almost triple the price of pot on the illicit market.

First step: starter plants

Greenshields and Sewell envision their product selling for roughly 
$3,000 per pound. They believe their pot will be as good as 
anybody's. But they want to be in the business long-term and 
establish a well-regarded brand. They don't want to be seen as 
gouging the first customers just because they can.

After retailer markup and before sales tax, Sewell hopes consumers 
can buy an eighth of an ounce of AuricAG weed for $60. Top-shelf 
eighths sell in medical marijuana dispensaries for roughly $40. But 
dispensaries don't pay the stiff state excise taxes that the 
recreational system will - 25 percent when producer-processors sell 
to retailers, and another 25 percent when retailers sell to consumers.

AuricAG's 500-square-foot grow rooms should each produce at least 12 
pounds per harvest, Elliott said, citing the growers' general rule of 
one pound per light. The yield could be much more.

In its assembly-line system, in which new clones are supposed to 
constantly replenish supply, the AuricAG team hopes to pump out 500 
to 1,000 pounds of pot in its first year.

That could bring roughly $2 million in receipts before taxes and 
expenses. As for getting rich, Sewell said, "I don't see it in the 
short term." But AuricAG does hope to increase the size of its 
operation one day, and it is already exploring new lines of business, 
such as packaging for other growers.

The company has more than 1,000 plants in various stages, from clones 
just 2 inches tall, to 2-foot-tall juveniles, to behemoths stretching 
above Arnold's head. Every plant taller than 8 inches must be 
assigned a bar code and a 16-digit identifier for the state's tracking system.

The first challenge, though, was rounding up the starter plants. 
Elliott, who had grown medical marijuana on a small scale, used some 
of his plants and reached out to friends and fellow growers. They 
offered him cuttings from their reliable mother plants.

In all, Elliott gathered 232 of these. Then the team started snipping 
off small branches, about 2 inches in length, creating more clones, 
as they're called. Those are nourished until they produce stringy roots.

Then they're transplanted into red keg cups filled with crushed 
coconut husk, which Elliott thinks is better than soil for growing. 
They graduate to three-gallon buckets in a couple weeks. All along, 
they're fed a diet of water and nutrients, including calcium and magnesium.

All of their products must be tested by state-accredited labs to 
certify their chemical content and lack of contamination.

Inside the rooms, you can see distinct differences in the plants.

Some are cannabis sativa, a tall, spindly species that hails from 
tropical zones and is known for its energizing effect.

Others are shorter and thicker. They're derived from cannabis indica, 
which has its origins in Afghanistan and Central Asia. Indica is 
prized for its more sedating properties.

Because of rampant crossbreeding, most of the strains are actually 
hybrids that lean one way or another, dominant in either sativa or 
indica genes. Marrying the two produced a plant generally "short, 
fast and strong," according to Michael Pollan, author of "The Botany 
of Desire."

A happy gardener

AuricAG has more than 30 strains in all, including Berry White, 
Cotton Candy, Obama Kush and Snoop Stream. The tallest plants are 
Skunk #1, whose lineage can be traced to Mexico, Colombia and 
Afghanistan. Another strain called Hog's Breath tastes, Arnold said, 
like you fell face-first into dirt and apricots.

The Blueberry strain dominates several rows. Look at their hearty 
happiness, Elliott said like a proud papa, marveling at the similar 
structure and color in plant after plant.

But disaster lurks around every corner, Arnold said, from botrytis, 
or gray fungus, to bugs, like the mayfly. Defenses include neem oil 
sprayed on plants and a crunchy silica substance spread around the 
base of the plants, which looks like shards of glass under a 
microscope and lacerates tiny insects that crawl on it. Even the 
wheels on AuricAG's watering buckets get bleached, to prevent contamination.

The best overall defense, Elliott said, is good air flow that 
maintains the right temperature and humidity. If rooms are too hot, 
plants will dry out and droop. If they're too cool, dampness will 
invite pesky critters.

The growers believe their positive energy also helps the plants. If 
so, Arnold may be the equivalent of a human vitamin. A former Boeing 
inspector with a big scar on his back from spinal surgery, Arnold is 
a believer in the medicinal properties of marijuana.

His first growing experience came after he got his medical card and a 
friend challenged him to try keeping one plant alive for a year. "I 
was able to get off painkillers," he said. "It allowed me to dream." 
Now he's living his dream, he said, tending plants at AuricAG.

"You always have to think about the gardener," Elliott said. "If the 
gardener is happy, the plants feel it."

Progress, challenges

The most exciting moment in growing, Arnold said, comes at the first 
sight of little flower buds, called "popcorn." These clumps of tiny 
white pistils are the beginning of flower clusters that eventually 
reach the size of a zucchini, sticky with resin full of pot's active 
chemicals. The appearance of popcorn stirred pride and joy in Elliott 
and Arnold.

Getting the air-conditioning system working on automatic controls was 
another big relief. That allowed sensors and actuators to adjust each 
room to ideal conditions, even while Elliott lay in bed. Until that 
juncture, Sewell was trooping down to the warehouse around midnight - 
because he lives closest - to check on the plants. Some of the 
biggest ones would gulp a gallon of water during his visits.

"I can actually sleep at night," Elliott said. "We turned the corner."

He's eager to get software that will allow him to monitor the grow 
rooms from his phone and alert him via email if something goes 
astray. With it, he can even fine tune warehouse conditions from home.

But more challenges wait.

Some of his plants are too tall, growing several inches a day. That 
called for raising lights in one room, where plants were topping 6 
feet. In turn, that meant less illumination spilling onto the lower 
branches of the biggest plants.

Elliott's next task is to construct two more growing rooms, with 
17-foot-tall tarp walls to reduce the risk of mold and other 
contaminants. He'd rather manage plants. But Elliott sees his sweat 
equity as the price of autonomy. AuricAG could seek help from outside 
investors. "But then somebody else has say," he said.

A retailer visiting from Bellingham said he was impressed by 
AuricAG's progress. "I like what I see, in terms of the setup. It 
leads me to believe you will have a high-quality product," Justin 
West, owner of Cascade Herb, told Sewell and Elliott.

But West said he wouldn't sign a contract to buy pot from AuricAG 
until he could see and sample some of the product.

As Greenshields and Sewell meet with more and more potential retail 
partners, Elliott is reminded of his burden in the coming weeks. "For 
a grower," he said, "there isn't a good day until harvest."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom