Inside Ohio’s first medical pot growing facility
Tucked behind EASTLAKE — a school bus farm off Curtis Boulevard in Eastlake, thousands of marijuana plants are being cared for by hand as they grow into medicine for Ohioans.
Buckeye Relief’s 25,000-square-foot facility has been growing marijuana since July 31, making their plants the oldest in the state of Ohio.
Since then, they have planted every three weeks with the intention to eventually harvest every three weeks, said Buckeye Relief communications and community engagement specialist Leslie Brandon.
Ohio’s medical marijuana program relies on a multistep supply chain — cultivators grow marijuana, processors extract compounds from the plant and make edibles and other products, testing labs check every batch for potency and purity, and dispensaries sell marijuana flower and products to patients.
In addition to growing the plant, Buckeye Relief has also applied for a processing license, and they already have a processing lab ready to go. Buckeye Relief also has a commercial kitchen and in-house lab for testing their products.
Buckeye Relief began as an idea when a close friend of Andy Rayburn, co-founder and CEO of Buckeye Relief, developed an aggressive form of cancer. He told Rayburn that he smoked cannabis and, for the first time in months, felt like he was able to eat and sleep. That’s when Rayburn realized the power of medical marijuana.
Before starting Buckeye Relief, he founded Big Game Capital in Chagrin Falls, Brandon said.
At their facility, the plants move through three rooms over the course of their lives, which span about 15 weeks, Brandon said.
The seedlings are in the first room for about three weeks. At that point, the growers cannot distinguish male plants from female plants. The lighting in the first room is on a schedule of 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness. As the plants get older, they sit in the dark for 18 hours a day to mimic autumn, when the plants flower the best, Brandon said.
“This is an all-female facility,” Brandon said, because having male and female plants together leads to pollination, which leads to seeds in their product.
The male plants, and the non-flower parts of the female plants, are thrown in the trash. Cannabis trash can be thrown away with the regular garbage as long as at least 51 percent of the trash is non-cannabis.
“But everything is accounted for in the state system,” Brandon said.
The “teenager” plants, about two months old, will be harvested in late November. In this room, most of the plants are female because the males have already been rooted out and thrown away.
Workers tend to every plant by hand. Plants are checked daily throughout their life cycle for signs of mold and to ensure they’re getting the right amounts of nutrients and water. Workers also have a technique called “topping and trimming” to help the plant flower and grow.
The green lights in the “adult” room don’t induce photosynthesis, Brandon said. Buckeye Relief has automated systems to give the plants water and fertilizer.
Each strain has a name, like San Fernando Valley OG, as well as a 4-character moniker, such as SFVO. Those abbreviations are registered in Ohio and only used on the production side of the industry.
Rayburn, the co-founder and CEO, is a huge fan of the Grateful Dead, Brandon said — that’s why the Buckeye Relief staff registered the strain Deadhead OG under the moniker “ANDY.”
Many Buckeye Relief employees have previous experience with plants.
From working in the Cleveland Metroparks to scouting in the national parks, employees bring a wealth of horticulture knowledge to the budding medical marijuana industry in Ohio.
Brandon mentioned that Buckeye Relief is also hiring and training people for entry-level positions. They currently employ 20 people and hope to increase that number to 50 by the end of the year.
Buckeye Relief is growing phenotypes specialized for some of the 21 conditions for which medical marijuana has been legalized in Ohio, like pain and seizures. Eventually, they’ll be able to clone the best phenotypes, Brandon said.
In addition to sending their product off to testing mandated by the state, they also have an independent testing lab on site.
State law allows medical marijuana dispensed as flower, oil, tinctures, edibles and patches. Ohio law prohibits smoking cannabis.
With an eye toward the edible market, Buckeye Relief employs an executive chef who will be in charge of their commercial kitchen. They also have a chocolate partner.