The following is from the January 2016 issue of Marijuana Venture.
Lacking the capital for expensive growing mediums, Uncle Buds took a low-tech approach and found success by using the fertile native soil of Eastern Washington.
Publisher’s Note:
When starting his legal cannabis company, Byron Miller did what any good entrepreneur should do. He looked at his resources and his capital and his skills and made the best of a challenging situation. Thus, his cultivation company, TechBud LLC (originally known as Uncle Bud’s), used the natural soil of Eastern Washington, rather than investing a ton of money on soil created specifically for the purpose of growing cannabis.
The name of the 2016 article — Dirt Weed (in name only) — was memorable in our minds, but it was never intended as an indictment on the quality of Byron’s product, only a reference to the soil in which it was grown.
Byron Miller, the owner of Uncle Buds, had two major challenges when he planted this past spring. He had limited capital and lacked the resources to plant in expensive pre-mixed potting soil. And, like so many others, he got a relatively late start to the spring planting season. After some serious soul-searching, Miller decided he’d scale back his original plans and see what he could do using mostly native soil, limited cash and a smaller crop.
“Sometimes, though, if you don’t have the cash, you go with what you have, and make do,” Miller says. “We decided to test it and see what would happen.”
When the first early maturing strains were harvested in mid-September, Miller was pleasantly surprised.
“I was blown away,” Miller said. “Our Juicy Fruit came in at 27% THC, and turned out to be quite good. It wasn’t the stuff of legends, but I’ll take 27% THC any day, and for the cost per gram that I produced it for, I consider it to be a big success.”
Later harvests also proved to be overachievers and consistently came in at 22-27% THC.