CLEVELAND — Galenas Cannabis, is responsible for growing thousands of organic cannabis plants at their cultivation facility located in Akron.
Christine DeJesus is the director of cultivation at Galenas Cannabis and explains that in order to have a healthy plant, you have to start at the bottom, with the soil.
“So there are 744 plants in this room,” DeJesus said while walking through a room full of flowering plants. “They are all in soil, they are all grown under total organic standards and we are also Certified Kind, which is a third party certifier that proves we are conducting all organic within the facility.”
She explained that in order to grow healthy plants, Galenas’ uses a special cannabis soil by Tilth Soil, from Rust Belt Riders, which is a Cleveland-based company that keeps food scraps out of land fills by turning it into compost.
“When I started here I reached out to them [Tilth Soil], and asked if we could design a cannabis specific soil together,” DeJesus said. “That project has now lead to their Bloom soil, which we use to flower all of our plants out currently.”
Bloom is available for anyone to purchase, and Nathan Rutz with Tilth Soil said the blend is one of his companies best sellers.
“What is special about this is has got a lot of compost in it and the compost is made from food scraps that we haul from the greater Cleveland area,” Rutz said. “The food scraps used in all of our products are made in the compost that is allowed in certified organic growing, so the stuff in here is about as clean as it gets in terms of what’s in there. It's fruit and vegetable scraps made with leaves and wood chips.”
Rutz said it’s important to use nutrient dense soil, like bloom, when growing cannabis, especially indoors.
“We need a mix that is going to be extra enriched that will meet the nutrient requirements of the generally very hungry cannabis plants,” Rutz said. “So cannabis plants just take a lot, they require a lot, because it uses a lot of nutrients to grow big and strong and make all of the sticky buds and all of the THC.”
DeJesus said once the cannabis plants have completed their life cycle, the bloom soil is then recycled.
“We actually repurpose all of our soil. It goes to either, ‘Lets Grow Akron,’ here in Akron, Ohio, which takes the soil then uses it to build community garden beds,” DeJesus said. “Or we send our soil to our Michigan facility and then use it as essentially a building block for outdoor field production.”