Mitch Tipton, Director of Cultivation for AltMed Florida Medical Marijuana Treatment Center, showed us his mother room. The mother room is kept at 18 hours of light and 6 hours of darkness. The mother plants never flower and are kept in a constant state of growing. They use the mother for clones for about 6 months. They then replace the mothers with clones and start the process over.
The lights are a mixture of LEP’s and high presure sodium which gives the light a nice blue spectrum of the time of year mimicing early spring.
The cloning room is 100% LED’s. They take the cuttings from the mother they then cut the stem of the clone at a 45 degree angle to open up the stem for the rooting hormones. The clone is then placed into a peatmoss pellet. They are kept in the rooting trays for about 10 – 14 or until they start to root out. Once they start to root out they are then transferred into 100% coco coir and are then assigned an individual seed to sale barcode and tag. After about 3 – 4 days you will actually start to see roots come out the the sides. This gives them the ability to track the plant all the way to the end patient. Thier cloning room can accomadate over 2,400 plants.
They then move the marijuana clones from the clone room to veg room #1 for 2 weeks. The lights are on for a 18 hour light cycle with a mixture of LED’s and high pressure sodium that mimics a late spring to early summer light spectrum. At AltMed they use a drip irrigation system and the plants are feed every half hour over the course of 12 hours. Slow but steady process that allows for better absortion of the nutrients and water. The plants to seem to really like this approach and catch on pretty quickly.
After 2 weeks in veg room #1 the marijuana plants are then moved to veg room #2. They are then given more media and the plants get dialed in and they up the plants nutrients. They really start to respond well with the extra media and the roots begin to explode in growth. After about 4 – 6 weeks or once they see the roots come out the bottom of the bag they know the plant is not root bound and they are ready to be moved to the flowing room.
After about 4 – 6 weeks the marijuana planst are moved into the flowering. The lights are 100% High pressure sodium with 12 hours on and 12 hours off, mimicing late summer spectrum. The buds and kolas begin to form and start to grow exponetially. They plants are kept in the flowering room until the tips of the leaves just start to turn brown thus ending the growing cycle for the plant. The plant is then harvested and sent to the drying room.
The marijuana plant is then foliated removing some of the leaves and then hung upside down to dry. They will hang about 5 – 7 days. During this time they take cuttings and do a moisture analysis looking for a moisture content of about 14% – 15%. They will then take the plant and put it through thier munch machine that will buck the buds off the stem and into a cure bin.
