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the sunday feb. 19-Feb. 25
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Inside a hot new industry, from seed to weed By chris kudialis Staff Writer
Extend your arms wide and you can almost touch both walls of an allwhite, fluorescent-lit hallway inside Desert Grown Farms Cultivation Facility in the central Las Vegas Valley. Jump with your hands up and you’ll almost touch the ceiling. The narrow walkway feels like a set piece from “The Matrix,” except in place of sunglasses and a leather overcoat, you’re wearing a hairnet, surgical mask, black rubber gloves, booties and a disposable, navy-blue bodysuit not unlike hospital scrubs. “The idea is that the environment is sterile and clean,” says Armen Yemenidjian — who co-owns Desert Grown Farms with philanthropist Armen Yemenidjian cares for marijuana plants at a Desert Grown Farms Camille Ruvo and Brian Greenspun, Cultivation Facility. (steve marcus/staff) CEO and publisher of Greenspun ing racks. A humidifier roars in the Media Group, the parent company of marijuana strains — many with fanbackground, nearly drowning out this magazine. “We take care to make ciful names such as Grape Stomper conversation. sure nothing from outside that could and Black Gorilla No. 3 — are as wide The harvested plants will sit two to infect our plants is brought inside.” as an ear of corn. THC crystals on the three weeks in the pitch dark, hangMedical marijuana facilities like buds glisten under high-pressure soing upside down so their nutrients this have been popping up around dium lights, which fill the room with move from their stems to their buds. town since late 2015, when dispenvarying levels of artificial sunlight When the dried-out trees are ready saries in Nevada began opening their for 12 hours each day, before they’re for shucking, Furtado hand-cuts the doors. The demand for grow houses switched off for 12 hours each night. remaining leaves and puts them in should only increase once the Legis“Go ahead,” Yemenidjian says, enairtight plastic bins. lature works out details on institutcouraging us to touch the live buds Though he’s cultivating 60 strains, ing Ballot Question 2, which passed with our gloved hands. Blue Frost Yemenidjian plans to sell only 15 at a in November and legalized up to flowers smell like freshly baked bluetime to dispensaries across the valley. one ounce of marijuana flower or an berry muffins, Strawberry Cough The rest will be preserved in the bins, eighth of an ounce of marijuana conlike newly picked strawberries. They to be sold when Desert Grown Farms’ centrates for recreational use. leave a sticky, sweet-scented nectar clients “get bored and want some“The number of people who qualify on our fingertips. thing new,” he says. to purchase cannabis will increase “We’re just hunting for the best gedramatically,” Yemenidjian says. netics right now, so we’re growing a nnn “The industry expects clientele to little bit of everything,” says Yemeni(increase) three or four times from djian, who also co-owns a neighborWith medical-marijuana facility medical.” ing edible production facility called license-holders set to get first dibs Desert Grown Extracts, and the valon a new batch of recreational facilnnn ley’s three Essence Cannabis Dispenity licenses that could double the saries, also with partners Ruvo and number of dispensaries and cultivaInside one of seven plant-filled Greenspun. tion, production and testing facilities rooms at the 54,000-square-foot DesBeneath the plants, a fertigation over the next 18 months, Yemenidjian ert Grown Farms, about 1,200 lush, system — that’s fertilization plus irsays recreational legalization will unskunky-smelling “trees” as tall as 4 feet rigation — feeds them a nutrient-rich doubtedly mean more business for have spent up to 18 weeks growing to mix of liquid fertilizer up to five times him. maturity. The process starts from the a day. The feed gets funneled in from Ditto for Kevin Biernacki, head time they’re clipped as a 3-inch branch six 1,600-gallon tanks in another cultivator at the Grove medical from one of the facility’s 400 mother room. “This place is way too big to marijuana cultivation facility, a plants — a process known as cloning. hand-water,” he says matter-of-fact32,000-square-foot grow house just The plants are raised in ground-up coly. “It would take way too much time.” south of the Strip. Biernacki, too, conut husks, a hydroponic substitute Back in the all-white hallway, C.J. passes his visitors a pair of booties, a for soil and Rockwool. Furtado, Desert Grown Farms’ ashairnet, a disposable face mask and a Half of this particular flower room’s sistant director of cultivation, opens bodysuit — white this time — to preadult plants were cut from their stems a door to a room of total darkness. vent common parasites such as thrips and taken to dry in a Desert Grown Yemenidjian activates the flashlight and spider mites from getting near Farms darkroom earlier in the week. on his cellphone and reveals some his plants. He leads to another sterThe remaining 600 trees are getting 70 marijuana plants — recently harile, all-white hallway leading to three close to being harvest-ready. Some vested and hanging from metal dryrooms home to more than 4,000 marof the thickly budded branches’ 60
ijuana plants. Each 1,600-square-foot room features double-deck growing racks, which allow Biernacki to produce twice as much marijuana in the same amount of space. This place cranks out 6,000 pounds of medical marijuana annually, later sold in its own Las Vegas- and Pahrump-based dispensaries, along with about 50 other medical dispensaries statewide. Across the hall, three more 1,600-square-foot rooms sit empty, waiting for recreational marijuana’s legal framework to kick in next summer, which could double the facility’s output. “We’re probably not looking until July 1 to expand, until we know how the Legislature is going to implement rec,” Biernacki says. “It’s hard to say right now how they’re going to fulfill that.” Unlike Yemenidjian, Biernacki uses only water to hydrate his facility’s plants, which grow 2 1/2 to 3 feet at their maximum height. Instead of fertilizers, the Grove’s marijuana trees get their nutrients from peatblended natural soil. New clones spend two weeks spreading their roots in the soil before vegetating two more weeks under 18 hours of sunlight and six hours in darkness, and finally, nine weeks flowering in 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness. The Grove is the only facility in the valley using all-LED lighting as sunlight for its plants, part of Biernacki’s mission to be “as energy-efficient as possible. We’re trying to produce the best carbon footprint we can produce and eliminate the amount of power usage that we draw,” he says. “LEDs are more efficient with power consumption; they’re also more efficient in heat mode, so we can cut back on our AC costs.” Instead of hanging and drying his marijuana plants after harvest, Biernacki cuts the buds off immediately, and places up to 200 pounds worth on baking racks in a dark, humidified drying room. The buds dry for up to seven days before they’re placed in small, air-tight glass jars — up to one pound apiece — where they’re cured for a month. During that time, a cultivation staff of 15 typically opens the jars once a day to air out the buds. After that, the buds stay shut in the jars, which are packed with nitrogen to remarijuana, Continued on page 51