With a well-practiced flip of his fingers, Shane Wahl plucked baby plants from an array of small black padded circles and tenderly placed them, one by one, into individual planters.
This sort of transplanting is work that Wahl has long excelled at as a hydroponic vegetable farmer, but his new gig — as head gardener for CannaMan Farms — has taken his career in an odd new direction, he said.
CannaMan, so far Clark County’s only licensed marijuana production facility, is about midway to harvesting its first batch of pot plants. The process, from cutting to budding, takes 10 weeks per plant for the fast-growing varieties.
But even the fastest growing plants probably won’t meet the demands of consumers once the first stores start opening this summer.
“I won’t be able to meet demand,” Wahl said. “I’m going to do the best I can. I’m the smallest tier gardener. It’s sort of like a brewer brewing in his closet.”
Each week, Wahl takes hundreds of clippings from his “mother” plants and places them in hydroponic containers (with those small black padded circles) to help them grow new roots.
From there, they get transplanted, moved through a series of rooms and are eventually placed in the budding room, which simulates the 12 hours of sunlight and darkness needed to make the plants flower.
“So there’s cutting, and they sit cloning for a week, then they’re in the vegetable planters for a week, and then they grow for about two months,” Wahl said. “So my plants are alive for two months and two weeks, and then we harvest them.”
Production at the small facility is moving along well so far.
Brian Stroh, who owns the company, said he’s already thinking about expanding from the smallest tier to a higher one.
“Right now we’re approved for a 2,000-square-foot canopy,” Stroh said. “We hope to expand out to the next tier as soon as we can, but we’re starting small.”
CannaMan is the first licensed marijuana business in Clark County, but it won’t be the last. The Liquor Control Board is moving forward to license more growers and processors as it also works on license approval processes for the first retail locations.
“What you’ll start seeing is 15 to 20 new growers and processors a week coming on line as (the state starts) to churn through applications,” Stroh said. “They’re starting to know what they’re doing now.”
And while some businesses would frown on competition, Stroh said he thinks there’s plenty of need to go around.
He said he’s looking forward to sharing notes with other growers as they start to set up shop.
“To be involved in the industry at this level is bizarre, and at the same time it’s really invigorating,” Stroh said.
So far, the Liquor Control Board has been pretty good about tweaking regulations to fit the needs of the new companies, Stroh and Wahl said.
Wahl recently asked the agency to change one of its regulations about dead plant leaves to make it easier for growers to track and destroy them.
Originally, growers were supposed to take dead leaves from each individual plant, weigh them individually and catalog them separately before destruction. He asked that the state allow growers to do that in bulk with leaves from similar plant types, and they agreed.
“It’s going to save all the growers a lot of time,” Wahl said.
But for Wahl, the fun part has been working with the diversity of strains he’s managed to find.
“My goal is to have more registered plants in the state of Washington than anyone else in my tier,” Wahl said.
Walking through his mother plants, some of which are chest high, he pointed out the differences between strains named “Love Potion,” “The New Kush,” “Godzilla,” Northern Superskunk,” “UDub,” and a hybrid he made called “Blackberry Dub.”
All the plants were originally grown from seeds, most of them purchased from legal medical growers in other states. But now he’s propagating them, working on about 900 new cuttings a week.
“This strain, ‘Godzilla,’ that I’m working with here is a spin-off of the G13 strain that was used by the federal government … for people with AIDS,” Wahl said.
Another strain he likes, called ‘Blackberry,’ has dark purple, almost black budding flowers when it matures, he said.
Other plants are tall with skinny leaves, or short with fat leaves — or a mix of the two.
Both men said they smoke recreationally on occasion. But one of the odd rules is that they are only allowed to sample one gram of each strain, or the equivalent of two small joints.
If they want more, they’ll have to go to the store like everyone else and buy it, they said.
“I probably will, because I’m a casual smoker,” Stroh said.
The company is looking at packaging for its products. Everything sold must be completely sealed in its own packaging, unlike in Colorado — where customers can look at individual buds or smell them.
“It’s something unique to our area,” Stroh said. “Everything has to be sealed in packaging.”
It’s still early, and a lot more needs to be — and will be — worked out in coming months.
Another problem is difficulty in finding a bank willing to hold earnings once sales begin, something Stroh said may lead him to wire money overseas.
And the rules for distribution from his facility to retail sites — transportation, containers and other aspects, are still being hammered out, he added.
