Farm Spotlight: Otis Gardens
This fall our friends at Otis Gardens graciously hosted nearly the entire Farmer's Friend team (21 of us!) for a tour of their outstanding indoor cannabis grow, led by Head Grower Joey and Director of Operations Ellie Walsh. Located in Hood River, Otis Gardens is in good company among a number of Oregon's well-revered farms, with a unique regional grow culture deserving of recognition. Rooted in tradition but thriving with innovation and a data-driven approach, Otis's talented team excels at meticulously controlling indoor conditions, creating an ideal environment that benefits every bud and results in fan leaves rich in trichomes. Their innovation and outstanding attention to detail make Otis a source for magnificent, deliciously pungent flower that we are are grateful to work with year round for exceptional oil collaborations.
Otis's modest-appearing facility opens up to reveal an expansive two-floor operation, showcasing an inviting combination of old-school methods and modern applications geared to create ideal conditions for each strain. Otis houses 16 independently operating flower rooms, with a rotating schedule that allows them to harvest every week. With a grow crew of 4 full-time and 2 part-time team members tackling various tasks, it's usually all-hands-on-deck when it comes time to harvest. It's a quick 2 day turnaround from harvest to resetting the freshly cleaned bloom room with new plants from a veg room. Otis's schedule requires methodical coordination to keep up with their frequent output of carefully cultivated flower, while allowing the plants to thrive comfortably and respecting variables in grow time.
When we recently chatted with head grower Joey Moscarillo, Otis had 35 strains growing while he was also outlining which seeds to explore in their next pheno-hunt. "We like having a big menu. As a grower, I love it when I open a room and every room smells different. I think it’s one of the benefits that comes with having this offset room schedule- that we do get to see a lot of plants in late flower." Pheno-hunting is done in-house, usually testing 9-12 strains per hunt. Some strains are run more often to cater to what customers and patients are fond of (like Otis's enticing Blueberry Muffin), but the search for dynamic flavor profiles keeps the team devoted to exploring new strains- a horticultural adventure that Joey describes as a "roll of the dice that makes it so exciting.”
Otis's grow team utilizes a variety of lighting to help fine tune optimal conditions for photosynthesis. Using HPS, LED, and combinations of HPS/LED and LED/CMH lighting, the Otis team caters to their plants with a variety of spectrums. Joey highlights the benefits of the mixed-spectrum rooms, noting that the different lights working together can lead to unique-looking flower. "I appreciate genetic expression in a plant so it’s cool to have different parameters that can help bring those out, because I think that’s when you get your best flower."
The lights at Otis are all on a convenient winch system, able to be raised or lowered with the push of a button. They measure PPFD (Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density), which Joey explains as “a fancy way of saying how much of that light the plants can actually use for photosynthesis.” The PPFD metric is tracked for each strain to document the ranges that the plants thrive in, keeping ideal conditions as consistent as possible. Once the plants are in late flower, the lights are adjusted to simulate the end of year reduction in light that naturally occurs outside, bringing out the plants' rich colors.
Otis's cannabis is grown in coco and nourished using irrigation system (or “fertigation”) controlled by a multi-tasking software program aptly named Argus- a many-eyed giant known to be a great watchman in Greek mythology. Through the Argus computer dashboard, the Otis team can track environmental factors and schedule watering and feeding to accommodate the changing needs of the plants. For instance, if one room is a little dry, they can use the software to send a single pulse of any given recipe that they are using for that room. Using Argus saves an immense amount of time that would otherwise be spent on hand-watering, and does an excellent job of monitoring and providing what the plants need. In addition to irrigation, the Argus software tracks environmental factors like temperature, humidity, CO2 levels and light, and also saves the data. This data allows the team to track each room's environment in real-time, highlighting which aspects need optimization.
The grow team at Otis are masters of pruning their plants to leave no "filler". A meticulous task that is the "easiest thing to over or under-do", Joey highlights how this crucial pruning process benefits from Otis's long-term staff who intimately understand the specific care their strains require. The end result is flower that is consistent in size and quality, as well as fan leaves that are chock full of trichomes thanks to very selective defoliation. Because of Otis's high standards for the flower they put out on the market, Farmer's Friend oil benefits from including beautiful smaller buds among trichome-rich fan leaves in our extraction process.
Making the most of their exceptional, small-batch cannabis, Farmer's Friend often combines complimentary Otis strains to create unique oil collaborations like our super tasty "Super Oranges" full-spectrum oil, made by blending Super Boof and Candied Oranges. Be sure to look for these upcoming Otis Gardens x Farmer’s Friend collaborations coming out this fall, featuring straight-forward strains and special blends:
Blueberry Muffin, Oops Just Berries, Velvet Montage & Wet Peach. Unique blends: Coconut Lobster (Coconut Clouds + Lobzter), Frozen Trop (Frozen Throne + Super Trop Cherry), Sparkling Lime Dog (Sparkling Lime + Anubis) and Secret Gas (Secret Wedding + Gas Burzt).